NZ privacy commissioner right to delete his Facebook tweets about live stream
Wednesday, 10 April 2019
OPINION Privacy commissioner John Edwards has deleted outspoken tweets he posted over the weekend in which he labelled Facebook 'morally bankrupt pathological liars' and criticised the company for allowing 'the live streaming of suicides, rapes and murders'.
Edwards said he deleted the tweets because they were 'causing distraction' and had resulted in 'toxic and misinformed' debate.
He declined an interview, but spokesman Charles Mabbett said the tweets had not been deleted in response to any feedback or threats from Facebook.
Tensions between Facebook and Edwards have been running high for months, with Edwards appearing frustrated by a stoush over the extent of his jurisdiction over the social media firm's activities.
**READ MORE:
* Privacy commissioner: Facebook are 'morally bankrupt pathological liars'
* Facebook to crack down on hate speech and livestreaming after Christchurch attacks**
That boiled over in the wake of the Christchurch shootings, which were live-streamed on Facebook, with videos of the atrocity then widely and repeatedly posted to Facebook and other social media platforms, including Twitter and YouTube, all of which struggled to identify and remove the footage.
Mabbett said Edwards wanted Facebook to 'at least suspend the live-streaming until it had a way to prevent a repeat of how it was used by the Christchurch gunman' – though Mabbett said Edwards did not have an opinion on how exactly that could be achieved.
Facebook spokesman Ben McConaghy says company representatives met with Edwards last week to discuss his concerns and had been providing updates to his office since then.
The company hasn't ruled out making changes to the way it handles live-streams so it may be a case of 'watch this space'.
But Facebook has also pointed out that it was not the live-streaming of the video, as such, that resulted in the video being widely viewed.
Fewer than 200 people watched the live stream of the Christchurch shootings on Facebook, vice president Guy Rosen said last month.
But it's a fair guess that millions around the world have seen it since.
The video appears to have been mainly spread as a result of extremist sympathisers creating new copies of the video that they repeatedly tweaked and reposted to social media platforms to evade their automated defences.
Separately, the video was also shared by people who posted links to the video on social media. Not the actual video itself importantly, but links to nefarious foreign websites where it could be viewed.
Of course, if the video of the atrocity had never been live-streamed or otherwise sent out by the gunman, then the sharing of the video could not then have occurred.
But there are dozens of popular online services that facilitate the live-streaming of videos and it is also possible for people to use their own software to live stream video direct to a website willing to host it, or to a website they set up themselves.
Frankly, emailing the video without live-streaming it might have proved just as an 'effective' way of distributing it.
That means that even if Facebook Live, Twitch and Twitter's Periscope shut down entirely tomorrow, it would be optimistic to think that would solve the horrific and relatively new prospect of what is being dubbed 'performance terrorism'.
The chief executives of Spark, Vodafone and 2degrees wrote an open letter to Facebook, Google and Twitter shortly after the shootings.
It called on the three social media giants to 'urgently discuss' a solution to the problem of videos such as live footage of the Christchurch shootings being upload and shared on their platforms.
But the letter did not set out suggestions on any concrete steps the companies thought the social media firms should take.
Spark spokesman Andrew Pirie said on Tuesday that the three firms that wrote the letter had now had 'some engagement' from Google and Facebook 'which at least acknowledges some of the issues we addressed in our letter'.
'It has been useful to get a better understanding of the complexities of the issues as they see them, but we haven't made any specific demands,' he said.
All this is not to say it is excusable to throw up one's hands and say nothing can be done.
But the problem – and the possible solutions – need to be defined more clearly.
If it proves impossible to prevent the video-distribution of future terrorist attacks, then better reporting tools for social media users and faster action from them taking down objectionable videos and links would certainly help.
It is also easy to imagine that Facebook and other social media firms could come under pressure to delay the publication of all videos that are uploaded or shared on their platforms (not live-streamed) in the immediate aftermath of any future atrocity.
That could at least give them more time to root out and remove footage that was being reposted and shared through their platforms.
That would be during the period after which they became aware an objectionable video was circulating but before the spread of that content spun out of control and became impossible to manage.
At the moment, Facebook doesn't appear to be taking any steps in that direction, and arguably it would be a difficult policy to apply.
While the Christchurch attacks were an aberration in New Zealand, atrocities in which people are murdered in large numbers occur on a daily basis around the world, so social media companies could face a permanent pressure to go on pause.
Yet, Facebook and others will need to think about what they would do 'next time'.
Realistically, a combination of measures may be the best hope.
Dealing with the large US social media companies can leave regulators as well as seasoned journalists and members of the public feeling pretty impotent.
The likes of Facebook, Google, Twitter, Amazon and Apple don't yet have anything like the 'bandwidth' that they need to communicate with and be genuinely accountable to the media and other members of the public.
That makes them fundamentally different from the IT giants of 20th century such as Microsoft, IBM, Hewlett-Packard.
Many may sympathise with Edwards in appearing to lose his rag.
But a relentless, constructive and concerted push for practical solutions – of the kind we are belatedly starting to see applied to gun control – will be needed to bring about actual change.
Flashes of outrage, alone, won't do that.