Facebook to ban rule breakers from livestreaming in response to NZ terror attack

Facebook LiveFacebook is reportedly preparing to crackdown on livestreaming in response to international pressure following the Christchurch terror attack. Under changes to live broadcasting, the social network will stop people who have previously broke the site’s rules from going live.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the restrictions are set to be introduced prior to an Australian government-led taskforce meeting later this month and ahead of Facebook’s first quarter earnings call.

Since last month’s terrorist attack in New Zealand, where 50 people were killed in a shooting on two mosques that was livestreamed on Facebook, the social network has faced widespread pressure to limit livestreaming. The original footage of the attack took around an hour to be removed by Facebook and it was then reuploaded millions of times across a variety of social media platforms, which have all struggled to cope.

Facebooks problems when it comes to livestreaming and violent attacks arent entirely new. Looking back almost exactly two years, a murder was livestreamed on the social network. It took Facebook over two hours to remove videos linked to the shooting and, at the time, it promised to get better at dealing with these types of videos.

The latest move comes a month after Facebook began banning all ‘praise, support, and representation’ of white nationalism and separatism on both its main platform and its Instagram app.

Array