New Zealanders’ access to online material about him was blocked. In what has become standing operating procedure after mass attacks, social media accounts connected to the perpetrator disappeared. Internet service providers in New Zealand blocked access to sites like 4chan, 8chan, LiveLeak, and the file-sharing site Mega if the sites did not take down material related to the shooting.Īrdern then announced that the government would consider further policing social media, saying, “We will look at the role that social media played and what steps we can take, including on the international stage and in unison with our partners.” In the wake of the attacks, the prime minister promised to keep the murderer “nameless,” and the internet promptly obliged by flushing the perpetrator’s identity down the memory hole. And they don’t just involve her calls for stricter gun control and decision to ban all semi-automatic rifles. It said the video was made by a "psychopath," and that it did not wish to be "a vehicle of choice for those who carry these events out.Serious concerns have arisen over how New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has handled the recent Christchurch mosques massacre. LiveLeak-well-known for hosting graphic videos of combat and violent crime-had already said it would not host footage from the Christchurch attack. I view it as a debatable but entirely rational editorial decision." "One could argue about whether it violates the spirit of the First Amendment for the telecoms to have made that decision. "The First Amendment applies only to the government, so the decision of telecoms about what to carry could not violate the First Amendment any more than a decision of a newspaper or magazine could," he explained.
would be within their rights to block sites if they so wished. Floyd Abrams, a senior counsel at Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP in New York and a First Amendment expert, told Newsweek that ISPs in the U.S. companies may follow the example being set in Australia. There has not yet been any suggestion that U.S.
Given that the shootings were streamed live on Facebook, the social media giant came in for additional criticism. Lawmakers and activists across the globe called on social media companies and other sites to do more to block and remove extremist content in the aftermath of the Christchurch attack. The Australian Communications Alliance also cited "extraordinary circumstances" for the ISPs' decision to block the websites, noting the companies had been working to "minimize any inconvenience that may arise from legitimate content being blocked," which it called an "unavoidable, temporary consequence." Optus said it made its decision after "reflecting on community expectations." Companies tried to scrub copies from the internet as the world reacted to the massacre but struggled to keep up with its spread.Ī spokesperson for Vodafone said that the company would only usually block access to a site on the request of law enforcement or the courts, but that this "was an extreme case which we think requires an extraordinary response… While there were discussions at an industry level about this issue, this is a decision Vodafone Australia came to independently," the statement said. New Zealand police and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern asked people not to share the graphic video. The Australian citizen live-streamed his attack on Facebook, and the footage quickly spread across the internet. The block on 4chan was lifted after a few hours, Nine News said, but the other websites remained inaccessible.īrenton Tarrant, 28, was accused of murdering 50 people at two mosques in Christchurch last Friday, in what authorities described as a white supremacist terrorist attack. Telstra released a statement in which Networks and IT Executive Nikos Katinakis explained, "We understand this may inconvenience some legitimate users of these sites, but these are extreme circumstances, and we feel this is the right thing to do." The sites were also unavailable on Optus and Vodafone networks, although the companies had not confirmed the names of the sites they had blocked.
Several major Australian telecom companies blocked access to many websites accused of hosting and contributing to the dissemination of footage of the Christchurch, New Zealand, terrorist attack on two mosques last Friday.Īccording to Nine News, Telstra-the country's largest telecommunications company-blocked access to 4chan, 8chan, Voat, the blog Zerohedge and hosting platform LiveLeak on Tuesday.
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