Christchurch Call to Action: One year on
Thursday, 14 May 2020
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and French President Emmanuel Macron have reaffirmed their commitment to the Christchurch Call, a year after its launch.
The leaders revealed the global pledge to end the spread of extremist content online, to be known as the Christchurch Call to Action, at a summit in France two months after the Christchurch terrorist attack.
On March 15, 2019, a 28-year-old gunman broadcast on Facebook Live as he carried out a massacre at two Christchurch mosques, killing 51 worshippers.
The video remained online for nearly an hour before New Zealand police flagged it with Facebook. While the original footage was viewed fewer than 4000 times, users attempted to re-upload it 1.5 million times over the next 24 hours. From there, it quickly spread across the internet.
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The three-page pledge outlined voluntary commitments from governments and online service providers, intended to address the issue of terrorist and violent extremist content online and to prevent what happened on March 15, 2019 from happening again.
A year later, 48 countries, the European Commission, two international organisations, and eight technology companies have signed it.
Ardern in a statement said she was proud of the advances made in the last year.
'Because of the Christchurch Call, we can coordinate internationally across governments and tech companies to stop terrorist and violent extremist attempts to weaponise the internet,' she said.
“If an attack like we saw on March 15 last year happened again, we have an international network of governments and tech companies ready to mobilise and work against the forces that boosted the viral spread of content from Christchurch and caused such widespread harm.'
A Christchurch Call Advisory Network of civil society members helped ensure ongoing work struck the right balance between protecting population from online harm, while still guarding freedom of expression and a free, open and secure internet, she said.
Work on the Call would move forward in four phases: reforming the Global Internet Forum for Counter Terrorism (GIFCT), developing a crisis response protocol, better understaning research that's been done or needs to be done on violent extremism online, and better understanding of the roles of algorithms in radicalisation online.
The first two at least appeared to be in the process of being ticked off by the one-year anniversary.
As members of a new advisory committee, New Zealand and France continued to contribute to the non-profit GIFCT as it was restructured. The independent body was expected to drive much of the technology sector's work on implementing the pledge. According to its website, it was still advertising for an executive director, a job it listed in December last year.
Anjum Rahman, spokesperson for the Islamic Women’s Council of New Zealand and a member of the Christchurch Call Advisory Network, said the fact copycat attacks overseas hadn't gained the same sort of online traction as the Christchurch terror attack showed the Call had made a difference.
On October 11, 2019, a gunman shared live video on Amazon-owned streaming platform, Twitch, as he killed two and injured others in an anti-semitic attack in the eastern German city of Halle. The crisis response protocol kicked in, Ardern said at the time, lessening the online impact of the footage.
In the coming years, Rahman hoped to see the Call focus on a better distribution of power between government, technology and civil society groups.
“[Government and technology companies] are much better able to organise and resource themselves. But it’s imperative there’s a strong civil society voice to create that accountability.”
She hoped progress wouldn't stall amid the global pandemic.
'We know that in economic times of hardship there tends to be a lot more divisiveness and disunity, and that'll play out online. Now more than ever we need strong, coordinated and comprehensive approaches to ensure communities aren't oppressed, in terms of what's happening in online spaces.'
InternetNZ, in a statement penned by chief executive Jordan Carter and chief international advisor Dr Ellen Strickland, said the Call meant any response to future events using the internet for terror and harm would be 'better and more coordinated than it was back in March 2019'.
'There are shared crisis event protocols, the refounding of the [GIFCT] continues with input from a wide range of stakeholders, and research coordination and activities have been revitalised. There were many commitments made — many have been advanced, some achieved and some not — which we could list and reflect on.'
The Call had broken down walls between companies, governments, civil society and the technology community, they said.
'But the way forward from here for The Christchurch Call — in a world with vastly different circumstances and priorities than a year ago — will be challenging. From the work we’ve seen over the last year, the issues of terrorism and violent extremism online and the need to continue to improve responses to it remain.'
In October last year, the Government promised $17 million over four years to boost the country's efforts to counter violent extremism online. It also said it would consider strengthening censorship laws and would investigate whether social media should be regulated more heavily.
While Australia has since passed legislation to crack down on violent videos on social media, and announced a tough mandatory code to force Facebook and Google to share advertising revenue with local media companies, New Zealand hasn't followed suit.
Meanwhile, the Government has recently been criticised for continuing to embrace Facebook as a powerful political tool.