Furthermore dissemination of such material may result in a criminal investigation,” he said. “Sharing terrorist propaganda serves only to cause harm and is seized upon by extremists seeking to divide communities. There should be no safe spaces for terrorists to promote and share their extreme views and radicalise others,” a No 10 spokeswoman said.īritain’s most senior counter-terrorism officer, the Metropolitan police assistant commissioner Neil Basu, warned those circulating the footage made by the attacker of the killings could be subject to criminal prosecution.

The government has been clear that all companies need to act more quickly to remove terrorist content.

“Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other providers have taken action to remove the video and other propaganda related to the attack. Copies of the footage were then downloaded and uploaded to other social media sites.ĭowning Street issued a coded criticism of tabloid news outlets, suggesting they should follow the lead of tech companies and remove videos posted by the attacker. The gunman’s 17-minute footage of the attack was initially uploaded to Facebook via a mobile app called LIVE4, which is designed to allow extreme sports enthusiasts to stream footage from personal body cameras. On further reflection, we decided to remove it some hours ago.” The spokesperson also said: “In common with many other news organisations around the world, MailOnline carried for a time a very short excerpt from beginning of the Christchurch mosque gunman’s video that showed no violence or victims. This was an error and swiftly corrected.” A spokesperson said: “A link was briefly carried to the gunman’s ‘manifesto’. MailOnline also uploaded the alleged attacker’s full 74-page manifesto to its website, deleting the document after being accused of spreading terrorist material. Many traditional media sites including MailOnline, the Mirror and the Sun also hosted edited videos of the same footage, although MailOnline and the Mirror later admitted this was a mistake and removed the videos. One version of the video monitored by the Guardian was left live on Facebook for at least six hours, while others were available on YouTube for at least three.

Christchurch livestream shooting video