In the wake of the Christchurch attack, New Zealand yesterday said that it would work with France to bring together countries and tech companies in an effort to stop social media from being used to promote terrorism and violent extremism.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said in a statement that she would cochair a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on May 15 that would seek to have world leaders and heads of tech companies agree to a pledge, called the Christchurch Call, to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online.
A lone gunman killed 50 people at two mosques in Christchurch on March 15, while livestreaming the massacre on Facebook.
Brenton Tarrant, 28, a suspected white supremacist, has been charged with 50 counts of murder for the mass shooting.
“It’s critical that technology platforms like Facebook are not perverted as a tool for terrorism, and instead become part of a global solution to countering extremism,” Ardern said in the statement.
“This meeting presents an opportunity for an act of unity between governments and the tech companies,” she added.
The meeting is to be held alongside the Tech for Humanity meeting of G7 ministers, of which France is the chair, the statement said.
Ardern would also meet with civil society leaders on May 14 to discuss the content of the call.
Facebook has faced criticism since the Christchurch attack that it failed to tackle extremism.
One of the main groups representing Muslims in France has said that it is suing Facebook and YouTube, a unit of Alphabet’s Google, accusing them of inciting violence by allowing the streaming of the Christchurch massacre on their platforms.
Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg last month said that the company was looking to place restrictions on who can go live on its platform based on certain criteria.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
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Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
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