“This is spreading like a virus,” Ms Hochul said, demanding that social media executives review their policies to ensure “everything is being done to ensure this information is not spread.”
There may not be easy answers. Platforms such as Facebook, Twitch and Twitter have made strides in recent years, experts say, removing violent content and videos more quickly. In the wake of the New Zealand shooting, social platforms and countries around the world joined an initiative called the Christchurch Call to Action and agreed to work closely together to fight terrorism and violent extremism. One tool that social sites have used is a shared database of hashes, or digital footprints of images, that can flag inappropriate content and have it removed quickly.
But in this case, Ms. Douek said, despite the hash system, Facebook seemed to fall short. According to CrowdTangle, a web analytics tool, Facebook posts linking to the video on Streamable generated more than 43,000 interactions and some posts were active for more than nine hours.
When users tried to flag the content as violating Facebook’s rules, which don’t allow content that “glorifies violence,” they were in some cases told that the links did not violate Facebook’s policies, according to screenshots viewed by The New York Times.
Facebook has since started removing posts with links to the video, and a Facebook spokesperson said the posts violated the platform’s rules. When asked why some users were warned that posts linking to the video did not violate the standards, the spokesperson had no answer.
Twitter had not removed many posts with links to the shooting video, and in several cases the video had been uploaded directly to the platform. A company spokeswoman initially said the site might remove some copies of the video or add a warning for sensitive content, and later said Twitter would remove all videos related to the attack after The Times asked for clarification.
A spokeswoman for Hopin, the video conferencing service that owns Streamable, said the platform was in the process of taking down the video and removing the accounts of people who uploaded it.
