Fact:
On April 3, 2017, the day Vladimir Putin was due to visit the city, a suicide bombing was carried out in the St. Petersburg metro, killing 15 people and injuring 64. An al-Qaeda affiliate, Imam Shamil Battalion, claimed responsibility.
(New York, N.Y.) — Recently, Counter Extremism Project (CEP) Senior Advisor and University of California, Berkeley professor Dr. Hany Farid spoke to the Guardian, in which he discussed the aftermath of the May 14, 2022 Buffalo, New York grocery store shooting. The gunman—who allegedly released a manifesto identifying himself as a white supremacist, antisemite, and believer in the Great Replacement Theory—livestreamed part of his attack on the Amazon-owned platform Twitch. Twitch took down the stream in less than two minutes but not before the footage was captured, allowing users to reshare it across multiple sites and platforms.
Speaking on the technology that tech companies need to combat the video’s redistribution, Dr. Farid states:
Therefore, the problem that online platforms are seeing with reuploads and redistribution is not as complex as tech companies make it out to be. Rather, there is a lack of motivation and investment on the part of Big Tech. Dr. Farid points to the lack of a financial incentive to act:
Finally, Dr. Farid states that if the tech companies are not willing to invest the time and money into fixing the issue, the future of preventing reuploads of extremist content will have to fall to public policy such as the EU’s Digital Services Act.
To read Dr. Hany Farid’s full interview with the Guardian, please click here.
Extremists: Their Words. Their Actions.
Fact:
On April 3, 2017, the day Vladimir Putin was due to visit the city, a suicide bombing was carried out in the St. Petersburg metro, killing 15 people and injuring 64. An al-Qaeda affiliate, Imam Shamil Battalion, claimed responsibility.
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