How World Leaders Will Control Social Media after Sri Lanka Massacre

In a move that could entirely disrupt the multi-billion dollar Social Media industry, World leaders are organizing a May meeting to curb extremist from “misusing Social Media.”

While the meeting slated for May 15 is still collecting ideas on the best practice to adopt, New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Arden, has floated the idea of delaying live-streaming of videos for the purposes of monitoring.

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This comes against the backdrop of a March attack in Christchurch, New Zealand, where a white supremacist livestreamed himself shooting Muslims in two mosques.

In the attack, 50 Muslims died in the twin mosque attack that elicited a hot debate on why Whites are not labelled as “terrorist.”

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In the wake of the deadly Sri Lanka attack where some 360 people lost their lives including 39 foreigners, reports indicated that the carnage could have been a revenge on Christchurch.

However, New Zealand Premier, Jacinda Arden rubbished the reports, saying the two attacks were isolated cases of extremism.

Now, PM Jacinda is organizing a meeting which seeks to curtail major Social media lee-ways that are often abused by terrorists.

“This isn’t about freedom of expression; this is about preventing violent extremism and terrorism online,” Ardern told reporters on a Wednesday conference in Auckland.

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 “What we’re trying to tackle here is a global issue and therefore I think requires a global response,” she said.

Roping in high-ranking Social Media industry executives and heads of State of Industrialized nations, the conference is said to be about monitoring and filtering of social media posts before they are actually posted.

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A Human Rights Watchdog, however, says the move could be an affront on the basic freedoms and rights of privacy and freedom of expression.

“There is this tendency after large-scale, national security crises and terrorist attacks to overreact to the problem,” said Adrian Shahbaz,
a research director for the D.C.-based watchdog Freedom House.

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“One of the ideas Jacinda Ardern mentioned was perhaps delaying any livestreaming. The fear we have is that we’re sort of sleepwalking towards a future in which all social media posts are filtered prior to being posted,” he added.


“We should be treating the root cause of the problem rather than its symptoms,” he says.

Cases have emerged linking YouTube videos of a hate Islamic preacher to the Easter Sunday terror attacks where some 360 people were killed and 500 more injured.

Sri Lanka on Sunday shut down Facebook and Instagram, after the government moved in to prevent the “circulation of false information to the public.”

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Between the years 2017 and 2018, some 27 countries have banned Social Media, according to Freedom House.

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