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| Social media platforms were used by the NZ gunman Website/Handout via REUTERS TV ATTENTION EDITORS – THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES |
Some New Zealand companies are weighing whether to advertise on social media, as two industry groups urged them not to in the wake of last weekโs mass shooting in Christchurch that was livestreamed on Facebook and redistributed on other platforms.
Fifty people were killed and dozens wounded in the shootings at two mosques in Christchurch on Friday. Australian Brenton Harrison Tarrant, 28, a suspected white supremacist, was charged with murder on Saturday.
State-owned Lotto NZ said it had already pulled advertising from social media โas the tone didnโt feel right in the aftermath of these eventsโ.
โLike the rest of the country, Lotto NZ is shocked and saddened by the tragic events that occurred in Christchurch on Friday,โ Lotto NZ spokeswoman Kirsten Robinson said in emailed comments.
ASB Bank, one of the countryโs biggest banks and a unit of Commonwealth Bank of Australia, is in talks on whether to pull its ads from social media, a spokesman said.
The Association of New Zealand Advertisers and the Commercial Communications Council asked all advertisers on Monday to consider where they place their ads and challenged Facebook and other platform owners to take steps to moderate hate content.
โBusinesses are already asking if they wish to be associated with social media platforms unable or unwilling to take responsibility for content on those sites,โ the two groups said in a joint statement.
โThe events in Christchurch raise the question, if the site owners can target consumers with advertising in microseconds, why canโt the same technology be applied to prevent this kind of content being streamed live?โ
Media representatives from Facebook and Alphabet Incโs Google did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment.
Facebook said on Saturday it removed 1.5 million videos globally of the attack in the first 24 hours after the attack and is removing all edited versions of the video that do not show graphic content.
Both Facebook and Alphabet Incโs Youtube said they are also using automated tools to identify violent content and remove them.
New Zealandโs biggest telecommunications company, Spark NZ Ltd, worked with a number of broadband providers late on Friday to cut off access to dozens of websites that were redistributing the video of the killings, to stop it spreading.
โThis is a pretty extreme step. Weโve never done this before,โ said Spark spokesman Andrew Pirie. He declined to name websites that had been blocked, saying the list was evolving.
Spark did not bar access to Facebook as many customers were depending on it to contact friends and family after the massacre, Pirie said. The company is not considering pulling advertising from any social media, he said.
