Leading New Zealand brands have pulled their ads from Google and Facebook following the live streaming of the Christchurch massacre which led to the death of 50 people and injured dozens of others.
So far, top NZ brands including ASB Bank, ANZ Bank, BNZ, Burger King, Westpac, TSB, Kiwibank and Lotto NZ have withdrawn their ads or are considering the option.
This is in response to widespread calls on social media for more and effective measures to control the propagation of hate content on online platforms.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was the leading voice against the spread of hate on social media in the wake of Mosque terror attack.
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“We cannot simply sit back and accept that these platforms just exist and what is said is not the responsibility of the place where they are published,” Ardern said in a parliamentary address.
“They are the publisher, not just the postman. There cannot be a case of all profit, no responsibility,” she added.
The Christchurch massacre went live for 17 minutes on Facebook without any intervention from the authorities.
Facebook says the livestream was watched by only a “handful” of people but admitted that the millions of clips from the video are still on the internet. It claims to have blocked around 1.5 million clips of the massacre within 24 hours of the shootings.
