The attacks in Christchurch continue to haunt Facebook. At the Wednesday, September 18, hearing of the main Internet platforms parr American senators, the social network was the main accused.
Indeed, Facebook was strongly criticized in March, during the killings for being slow to block the live broadcast of killings in two mosques in New Zealand by their alleged perpetrator. The massacre had killed 51 people.
The senators urged the Californian group to explain what additional efforts had been undertaken in the light of the proliferation of attacks and mass killings attributed to extremists of the supremacist movement.
The previous Christchurch
In front of elected officials, Facebook officials have assured that they have taken emergency measures, such as the closure of 200 supremacist organization pages, and stressed that their algorithms have already become much faster for detecting live broadcasts of violence. "We have reduced the time it takes for our artificial intelligence (AI) to average 12 seconds to identify such content. It's a 90% drop in reaction time compared to a few months ago, "said Monika Bickert, Global Policy Officer for Facebook.
The day before the audition, however, the group had recognized that it still had to "improve its detection". To date, he does not have enough video footage shot, shot in a subjective view, to teach his algorithms to recognize them.
It is now on this point that the social network wants to focus. He announced Tuesday, September 17, his intention to work with British and American police to obtain the necessary images.
Cameras to be fixed on the police torso
In the United Kingdom, Facebook is just a few weeks away from implementing its plan. From early October, the social network will provide police training centers in London with cameras to hang on the torso of agents, report the British media. Recordings of the shooting sessions will then be sent to the Californian group to feed the database of his AI.
The provision of videos from real life situations should allow Facebook's algorithms to differentiate between a terrorist who decides to broadcast his actions on the Internet and a movie sequence or images of video games.
"We are pleased to be able to work with Facebook on this project," said Neil Basu, the boss of the anti-terrorist section of the British police. The US giant has said it plans to share its technology with other platforms and organizations to help better identify the uploads of violent videos. If these contents are detected quickly, "this can potentially allow the police to intervene faster," summarized Neil Basu.
Since the attacks in Christchurch, far-right counter-terrorism experts warn of the danger of letting this type of video spread over the Internet. They participate in a "gamification" of the attacks: by borrowing the codes of the shooting games in view subjective (FPS - First Person Shooter), it dehumanizes the massacre, which can be reduced to "a score to beat", writes the site Bellingcat investigation.
"This 'gamification' is used to celebrate the killings online, to maintain the memory of the attack," deciphered this summer for France 24 Bharath Ganesh, assistant professor of media studies at the University of Groningen (Netherlands) and specialist on the far right on the Internet. These videos become very effective tools of motivation or recruitment to inspire other aspiring terrorists of the supremacist sphere.