House Panel Seeks Answers From Tech CEOs Over Shooting Video -- Update
March 19 2019 - 8:14PM
Dow Jones News
By Kristina Peterson
WASHINGTON -- The head of the House Homeland Security Committee
asked four technology companies to attend a closed-door briefing
next week on their efforts to prevent violent videos from being
disseminated in the wake of last week's mass shooting in New
Zealand.
Chairman Bennie Thompson (D., Miss.) asked the chief executives
of Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc., YouTube and Microsoft Corp. to
appear before the committee on March 27 for a private briefing
"regarding your response to the dissemination of the video of the
New Zealand terrorist attack on your platforms and how your
companies intend to prevent this disturbing incident from happening
again."
The letter, dated Monday, was publicly released Tuesday.
Representatives for Microsoft and Facebook said the companies
planned to brief the committee as requested but didn't commit to
which executives they would send. YouTube didn't respond to
requests for comment about how it would respond to the letter, and
Twitter declined to comment.
The companies have faced criticism after scenes of Friday's New
Zealand mosque massacre were streamed live on Facebook and
recordings of it were posted on Twitter and YouTube, which is a
unit of Alphabet Inc.'s Google.
New Zealand police said the footage of the attack on a pair of
mosques, which left 50 dead, was "extremely distressing" and urged
people not to circulate it. Yet the video was widely available
online as the tech platforms scrambled to pull down the offending
posts only to have them reappear elsewhere.
The video shows a gunman walking through a mosque and firing at
worshipers who slump to the floor.
"Your companies must prioritize responding to these toxic and
violent ideologies with resources and attention. If you are
unwilling to do so, Congress must consider policies to ensure that
terrorist content is not distributed on your platforms -- including
by studying the examples being set by other countries," Mr.
Thompson said in the letter to the four chief executives.
A Facebook spokeswoman has said the company removed the video
once New Zealand police flagged it, and deleted the Facebook and
Instagram accounts belonging to the alleged shooter, Brenton
Tarrant, who has been charged with murder.
Twitter said it had suspended Mr. Tarrant's account and worked
to remove the video from its platform. YouTube said it had removed
thousands of videos related to the shootings.
All three platforms have struggled to block, uncover and remove
violent content despite public outcry and political pressure. They
have invested heavily in artificial-intelligence systems designed
to detect violence, and have hired thousands of moderators to
review content flagged by users.
But the sheer volume of material posted by the platforms'
billions of users, along with the difficulty in evaluating which
videos cross the line, have created a minefield for the
companies.
--Jon Emont and Georgia Wells contributed to this article.
Write to Kristina Peterson at kristina.peterson@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 19, 2019 19:59 ET (23:59 GMT)
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