and why the focus of Facebook? This could have happened to Twitch.tv or a self-hosted platform (and who do you go after then? Vultr? Amazon? DigitalOcean?)

Live streams are a game changer in helping people get out content. If you try to force more providers to vet material, it breaks down the massive availability. Sure it might foster a growth in self-hosted solutions like PeerTube, and help increase more tooling for discovery and reach; but there still aren't any really decent self-hosted streaming solutions. It's a hard problem space. U-Stream was in that market, before it was sold to IBM.

I lived NZ for several years and I find the current moral panic feels very reactionary. It's finding fear in everything; not unlike how schools locked down after Columbine with lots of security theater (more locked doors; made it harder for the smokers to hide--for better and for worse).

Many people I know there are totally willing to defend not having free speech, which made me truly realize how much it's baked into the psyche of the American identity.

Yeah we are looking at introducing hate speech laws after the attack. https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2019/04/08/524142/what-will-happe...

Many people here don't value free speech even a little bit. I fear where this will lead us.

Don't value? They have been begging for free speech to be utterly decimated and cry foul if you even suggest that maybe they shouldn't lockup a teenager over sharing the video.

They just want to "teach people lessons", it's quite sad really.

To show how bad it is here. Our Civil Liberties society doesn't fight for free speech https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2019/03/there-sho...

Seems like a nation well on its way to becoming a "bad" historical example in a 100 years or less.

I wonder if they’ll ban the Old Testament. There’s still some fairly hateful passages in there.

Why is free speech a good in itself, as opposed to other forms of action which are not good in themselves? Why is a law against hate speech objectionable?

I don’t know if I agree that this could have happened on any platform. Facebook’s core functionality is sharing; unlike twitch.tv, and self hosted services which by their nature have terrible discovery.

Only on Facebook could this have spread like it did.

Let's be honest, it's fairly simple. You submit all content to the Office of Film and Literature Classification and allow the Chief Censor to make the decisions. That's ultimately what the government wants.

As one Kiwi told me recently: "I have never heard anyone complain about our Censor".

While also getting charged a $100 processing fee for each request you make.

And how does this handle the streaming of real time content? The traditional submission would be a complete “video” with a start and end, not an “unpredictable” live feed that is ongoing.

Simple. No streaming allowed.

I agree these are hard problems to solve, and don't fault facebook for not having come up with a solution. I still think the "morally bankrupt liars" label isn't too far off the mark though. All of the negative stories that have emerged this past year, their denials and ham-handed cover ups, and perhaps finally the fact that they are actually asking some people to give them passwords for 3rd party services... I can't regard them as a thoughtful, ethically-minded company.

You are correct, but this is one of the few cases where it's unjustified. We have moved to online discourse more and more. Do we really want super powerful AI and armies of moderators combing through all of that?

Indeed, Facebook has probably been in violation of existing New Zealand privacy laws since it started, but there hasn’t been a peep out of the Privacy Commissioner, or anyone else in Government.

If you are a New Zealander, then you should know better. Freedom of speech is NOT an unalienable right in NZ, nor has it ever been.

The ridiculous scare-mongering by some of the sibling comments on this post about this being "the start of the end for NZ" is not representative of: A) New Zealand B) Most countries outside of the US.

(Because it's a continuation of existing policy; That not all speech is protected).

As a society, at some point we have to make the decision: Where do we draw the line with speech designed to incite hate and violence; and where do we draw the line on those that enable that speech to reach the masses?

In the US, the answer has been "We don't". In NZ, the answer has been "some speech is reprehensible and we will not tolerate it." This means there's an expectation that anyone of the scale and influence of Facebook should be able to moderate violent speech as it pertains to NZ (Keep in mind that something like 80% of the countries population is on FaceBook. That's an enormous amount of influence they have on the nation).

I'm also a New Zealander, and I work in tech; I agree with the Government here. Facebook will effectively benefit from this event in multiple instances:

1) It drives engagement with there platform (outrage -> views -> engagement) 2) It's more data for there technical god, which will in turn use it to better sell the people (political/fear-mongering?) adverts.

The easiest solution, and one that I think is entirely reasonable, is to not offer live videos in New Zealand. If they're unable or unwilling to moderate the content with regards to NZ law, and given the scale of there operations in NZ (even if that's small fry compared to facebook's scale in other nations) then it's reasonable for the government to impose restrictions on them.

(More generally, I feel government exists to ensure the collective safety and security of society. NZ's government serves the collective safety/security of the people of NZ; That's their role. If they feel the existence of facebook's live streaming threatens NZ's security, then bringing action against it is the reasonable response.)

> More generally, I feel government exists to ensure the collective safety and security of society.

Do you honestly believe that if FB (and no other platform except self-hosting) offered no live videos (in NZ or worldwide), the shooting would not have happened?

“If you are a New Zealander, then you should know better. Freedom of speech is NOT an unalienable right in NZ, nor has it ever been”

I do know better. It should be an inalienable right. We probably will pass these hate speech laws. We will suffer for it. The founding fathers of the USA got this one right. Trying to engineer society is not a good idea.

It’s not the governments job to descide what speech is okay and what speech is not.

>It’s not the governments job to descide what speech is okay and what speech is not.

What if that speech is child pornography, or assault and threats, or intellectual property?

What if that speech is child pornography, or assault and threats, or intellectual property?

Child pornography, is not speech. Should be banned.

Assault, is not speech. Should be banned.

Threats, you are correct threats and incitement to violence should be banned. This is the special case to freedom of speech it results in direct harm or coercion. Harm and coercion should be prevented.

Intellectual property is interesting. Yes the government should be able to enforce contracts. But this raises a good point.

You are correct however the blanked statement "It’s not the governments job to decide what speech is okay and what speech is not." is too simplistic and is incorrect.

There is a better overview that I could provide here: https://www.kialo.com/should-hate-speech-be-legally-protecte...

>You are correct however the blanked statement "It’s not the governments job to decide what speech is okay and what speech is not." is too simplistic and is incorrect.

Why isn't it? We already allow the government to decide many other things, such as what we are allowed to sell (i.e through food safety regulation). Is there any reason why speech is different from other actions that it should have special treatment and be untouchable?

Speech is verbalisation of our beliefs. Once the state starts dictating what we can believe we lose much of our freedom and liberty. As such any restrictions on speech should be done with extreme care.

I'm pretty libertarian on many of my views. I think the government should have as little influence in peoples lives as possible. That's the only way, that I can see, you can have a society that allows for a truly diverse range of cultures and beliefs living as they desire under one government.

Where the government does need to step in is on interaction between people. Such as enforcing contracts and keeping actors in the markets honest. This doesn't infringe on personal liberty nearly as much as restrictions on speech.

But there are plenty of regulations I disagree with and think people should be left to make their own decisions freely.

Also I'm not sure you understood my concession above. You're question doesn't seem to follow?

instead of censorship, why not educate your fellow citizens to make the right decision by themselves?

It is a hard problem to solve, yes, but the solution has to be initiated from somewhere because it won't happen by itself.

And Facebook is not targeted because who they are, but because Facebook+WhatsApp+Instagram covers a ridiculous large part of the online communication spectrum today.

It's a channel where more and more diseased trash is shared unhindered, and if the owner doesn't do enough to stop it, then the government has to force them by any means necessary.

There are an even more fundamental questions than "How": Should we censor? And if you should, what should we censor and where is the line?

These are hard questions, and need good answers, not some laws referring vaguely to "abhorrent" content, and some politicians grand standing without really saying anything.

Just to name a few things that I think are utterly abhorrent, but also think should not be censored, because I think the merits of the society being able to see and talk about those things outweigh the downsides:

- The 9/11 footage and the Falling Man in particular: abhorrent

- The dead Syrian refugee kid on the Turkish beach: abhorrent

- Footage from concentration camps and the Holocaust: abhorrent

- The Christchurch shooter and his murder spree: abhorrent

- The footage from the Paris attacks: abhorrent.

- The footage from the Boston Marathon bombing: abhorrent.

- The screaming naked girl, running away from her village in Vietnam: abhorrent

If you don't care about user experience and cost it's a pretty simple problem to solve - everything vetted before it gets posted

Yup. It’s a hard problem to solve while keeping the business profitable. But so is safety in mining, aviation, oil drilling, medicine etc. Some tech companies won’t be viable businesses once regulations kick in. Good riddance.

There's something hilariously ironic in saying that tech companies should be treated like mining, aviation, and medical companies. How many natural disasters have the biggest mining companies caused and what repercussions have they faced? Do you really think Boeing is going to dissolve or that the pharmaceutical companies that kill tens of thousands each year by selling opioids and bankrupt millions more are actually held accountable by government regulations? It's all a circus show.

Just to clarify, is it your position that the FAA, FDA, and OSMRE are circus shows and that abolishing the FAA would make aviation safer, abolishing the FDA would make medicine safer, and abolishing the OSMRE would make mining safer?

Or are you saying those agencies don't do enough to hold accountable the companies that caused all those problems? Because that doesn't seem like an argument against regulating tech companies. That seems like an argument for regulating tech companies, and those other companies, more strictly.

No. He is basically saying that as long as we have these much larger problems, we should all of our time trying to fix those, instead of wasting time and money on a problem that is 1 thousand times less serious of a problem.

If social media starts killing 10s of thousands of people every year, then we should start talking about FAA, or FDA style regulations. But as long as that number is measured in dozens of people, we shouldn't be wasting billions worrying about it.

Lets take that moral outrage of yours and spend it on something a bit more productive, shall we?

Are you willing to pay someone for x hours a day every day to monitor and approve everything you post online? If your job is livestreaming then you will need to pay someone almost full time to watch you work.

Rules like that would cripple the open web. You can't only expect them to apply to unpopular companies.

Doing this at Facebook's scale is very much not "pretty simple".

The underlying assertion (and debate) here is that the value facebook is providing to society is worth the cost.

government censorship comes with a significant price to a society. Far to high as to push problems on it that amounts to bad parenting and consuming objectionable comments.

Do you reckon "de-scaling" Facebook would make the problem more manageable?

No, but it's more intuitive that it's unmanageable at smaller scales. Nobody thinks Reddit or HN could start pre-vetting all submissions in the first place.

The more 1984 process is that laws are put into place where all video can be tracked back and we can punish people for their speech.

Vetting first puts legal responsibility strongly onto Facebook and it's not something they'd accept.

If you don't care about heritage and politics then I'm the King of England.

I challenge the premise that anything needs to be “posted”. What is it with this incessant drive to give everyone a voice? It turns out that the majority of “user-generated content” is either trivial or outright harmful. Perhaps the time has come for this experiment to end.

If we abandon the idea that everyone gets a voice, then who decides who does, and how do they do so?

Professional guilds, such as those which have existed for centuries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guild

> I challenge the premise that anything needs to be “posted”.

Agreed, delete Usenet. The web should just be for Disney, Universal Studios, Netflix and Amazon. The common person does not need nor deserve a voice.

Don't be so dramatic. The common person really does not have anything interesting to say. I'm sure you've seen Facebook: that's what the common person is like. This isn't new: people have been boring for a long time, but until recently we had no way to know exactly how boring. Now we do.

If you haven't been bored to death with this comment, I may have to try harder. Let me know.

> It's a hard technical problem to solve. It's an even harder political problem to solve.

hard to solve; not hard to address. I read this as being an expression of frustration at fb's lack of concern rather than capacity

> Automatic censorship of live feeds, how do you do that?

Make it live but with a time delay (say 1 hour). Allow .1% of all users to see it immediately. Add a Flag This Content button. Depending on how many people flag it, triage as safe to show/don't show/ask a human to decide.

I'm sure this could be refined. Maybe an hour is too much or too little. Maybe .1% is to many or too few. Also, over time you should be able to recognize groups of users that are better at recognizing different problems based on the fact that they agree with the human review done by fb or whoever.

How would that work for the NZ attack? Apparently only 12 people were streaming the video, and nobody reported it until after the attack was streamed in its completion. Effectively nothing could have stopped this stream save for magically accurate and effective filtering mechanisms, or manual intervention.

This kinda destroys the value prop of “live” though right?

Also the tone of the content could switch at any time.