New Zealand’s largest telecommunications providers have issued a strongly-worded open letter to senior executives at major technology companies, criticizing their failure to prevent a filmed terrorist attack from spreading widely online.
On March 15, a far-right attacker targeted members of the Islamic community in Christchurch, killing 50 people and injuring many others. The attacker live-streamed part of the assault on Facebook, and copies of the footage were quickly shared across multiple social platforms.
Spark, Vodafone NZ and 2degrees jointly published the open letter to Facebook, Twitter and Google executives, urging the platforms to accept greater responsibility for preventing the distribution of extremely harmful material. The providers said they took the extraordinary step of identifying and blocking websites hosting the footage in New Zealand to limit further exposure. They acknowledged such measures cannot completely stop access, but argued the action made it harder for users—especially vulnerable people—to encounter the content and reduced the publicity sought by the attacker.
Mark Zuckerberg, Chairman and CEO, Facebook
Jack Dorsey, CEO, Twitter
Sundar Pichai, CEO, Google
The letter explains that internet service providers are effectively “the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff,” able only to take blunt, after-the-fact measures such as site blocking. The signatories called for an urgent, industry-wide discussion—with New Zealand government participation—to find lasting solutions that balance internet freedom with the need to protect the public, particularly young and vulnerable users, from harmful content.
They emphasised that social media platforms and hosting companies that enable public sharing of user-generated content have a legal and moral duty of care to prevent the upload and redistribution of material like this video. While the platforms acted to remove the footage once alerted, that response came after the content had already spread rapidly across the globe. The providers said society has the right to expect companies operating large content platforms to take greater responsibility for proactive monitoring and prevention.
The letter called for content-sharing platforms to: proactively detect and block harmful material; act promptly to remove content flagged as illegal; and ensure once identified that content cannot be readily re-uploaded. The providers noted existing technology—such as AI-based detection techniques used for copyright enforcement—could be adapted and prioritised to identify and prevent the distribution of terrorist and other seriously harmful material.
For the most serious categories of content, the letter suggested stricter obligations similar to proposals under consideration in Europe, including mandated timeframes for takedowns, proactive measures and financial penalties for non-compliance. The providers argued that consumers deserve protection from harmful content regardless of whether a service is funded by money or by user data.
They closed by calling on the named companies to join an immediate discussion and work collaboratively on sustainable solutions to prevent similar incidents in future.
The open letter acknowledges the scale of the challenge. Facebook reported removing 1.5 million instances of the video within the first 24 hours after the attack, with roughly 1.2 million removed before they were viewed by users. Platforms have relied on a mix of automated systems and manual review to act quickly, but limits in current technologies remain exposed in crises like this.
YouTube described how its systems and teams worked continuously to remove tens of thousands of uploads that appeared in the hours following the massacre, sometimes at rates approaching one upload per second. Engineers used “hashing” to identify and automatically delete exact clones of the footage, but edited or altered versions frequently evaded automated detection, highlighting a shortcoming in current algorithms.
AI and automated tools are already part of the response and will be essential to improving prevention, the providers said. However, technical solutions alone are not enough: clearer obligations, faster takedown mechanisms, industry cooperation and appropriate governance are also necessary to reduce the likelihood of violent content spreading online.
There is no simple or immediate solution. The incident exposed weaknesses in how platforms detect and remove highly harmful material, and it underlined the urgent need for coordinated action by tech companies, internet service providers and governments to limit the reach of such content while respecting legitimate freedoms.
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