Antidote To The Dark Side

Michael Hedges March 17, 2019 - Follow on Twitter

News media’s attention swung to the Southern Hemisphere this past week. Hate, once again, unleashed its ugliness. It was vile, brutal and shameless; the horror movie we could not turn away from. Yet we have seen it before.

Various ranges of the internet were called out, appropriately, for fueling the violence in Christchurch, New Zealand that took the lives of fifty people, old and young, who had gathered to pray. The perpetrator, a white supremacist terrorist, came to two mosques equipped with semi-automatic weapons and outfitted with a body-camera mounted to a helmet. The acts of violence were live-streamed. Minutes before the act, he posted a rambling, hate-filled declaration referencing far-right mass murderer Anders Breivik and US president Donald Trump. Dark-web chatrooms, which he frequented, buzzed with sick, juvenile congratulations.

Social media platforms, again, felt pressure to do something. "New Zealand Police alerted us to a video on Facebook shortly after the livestream commenced and we quickly removed both the shooter's Facebook and Instagram accounts and the video," said Facebook Australia and New Zealand director of communications Mia Garlick, in a statement. "We're also removing any praise or support for the crime and the shooter or shooters as soon as we're aware. We will continue working directly with New Zealand Police as their response and investigation continues.” The company later touted removal of 1.5 million videos and “over 1.2 million of which were blocked in the upload stage,” noted New Zealand news portal TVNZ (March 17).

Other well-known platforms confirmed similar results, citing rules on violent content. Considerable time and resources were poured into efforts that were too difficult and costly to do correctly beforehand. Artificial-intelligence solutions, oft paraded by social media executives, were much more artificial than intelligent.

Propagating the violent videos was hardly limited to the internet. Broadcasts of news channel Sky News Australia, a subsidiary of News Corporation Australia, in New Zealand were terminated by local cable distributor Sky TV NZ, unrelated to the former, “to avoid causing any distress to our viewers,” said a statement, quoted by NZ Herald (March 16). Right-wing Australian and UK tabloids sought, as usual, to normalize the horrific acts by referring to the extremist terrorist as “an angelic boy” (Daily Mirror), “just an ordinary white man” (West Australian) and “a good boy” (Daily Mail).

“49 Muslims were massacred in 2 mosques during prayers. But enough about them!” posted BBC reporter/news anchor Shaimaa Khalil on Twitter (March 16). “Do tell us about the ‘Angelic boy’ and the ‘ordinary white man’ who mowed them down…”.

“This is an issue that goes well beyond New Zealand but that doesn’t mean we can’t play an active role in seeing it resolved,” said prime minister Jacinda Ardern at a press conference, quoted by Bloomberg (March 17). “This is an issue I will look to be discussing directly with Facebook.” PM Ardern has also promised tightening the country’s gun laws.

“There is no room in our society for hate, especially on the basis of religion,” said legendary American civil rights leader John Lewis, quoted by the Atlanta Journal Constitution (March 16). “I am overwhelmed by sadness.”

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• Hot Topics - Hate Speech

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