A little over 2 months ago, during Friday prayers, at Christchurch, New Zealand, a man with firearms took it upon himself to eliminate “the invaders”. The act itself gave a cold chill to the world, more so when it was digitally immortalized with his Facebook Live feed of the whole event. It’s clear that social media plays and played an important part when it came to extremist behaviours.
Facebook’s very algorithm is based on sensationalism. The more controversial and divisive articles are published, when an interest has been identified in a user, Facebook will then churn out more such articles to the user to keep them engaged. Even though Facebook is at the forefront, most other social media platforms, use a very similar algorithm for their platforms as well.
A month after the NZ attack, came the bombing in Sri Lanka, at 3 different locations during Easter Sunday. What has this world come to? This week, to curb the spread of terrorism and extremism online, representatives from Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Google and Amazon came together to discuss the next steps.
In my opinion, this talk has come a little late, but A for effort right? Hate crimes have been around for quite some time, evidently since 11th September 2001, especially in America. However, the incident in NEW ZEALAND really struck a chord in the world, knocked some sense into these Tech Giants. Only when a country as peaceful as NZ, do they realise to take measures on changing their regulations and algorithms.
As for the changes discussed, it's all very sound, however, only time will tell if these elements will help decline the online hate around the world.