Facebook has been forced to act after versions of the Christchurch mosque attack livestream were found on its social media platforms seven weeks after the shooting.
On Thursday (local time), CNN Business reported it had obtained nine versions of the livestream from Eric Feinberg of the Global Intellectual Property Enforcement Center, which tracks online terror-related content.
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The videos were edited to show only parts of the attacks but had been posted in the week of the attack and remained on Facebook and Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, ever since.
Within 24 hours of the attacks, Facebook removed more than 1.5 million copies of the video and began a process to identify versions of the video which had been edited or manipulated.
This process of 'hashing' breaks the video down into key frames with a unique signature. This can then be compared to other videos to see if they have a matching frame.
Facebook told CNN Business that the newly-found edited versions of the video didn't match any of their other 900 'hashed' versions and it would act by adding two videos obtained to their database.
One of the videos on Instagram had triggered a sensitive content warning but had been viewed thousands of times.
Feinberg said he has identified 20 copies of the video live on the platforms in recent weeks. Facebook removed versions of the video last week after Feinberg provided copies to NZME.
Facebook's policy director Brian Fisherman reportedly told the United States congress that the company's livestream algorithm didn't detect the massacre because there wasn't "enough gore".
While the livestream was viewed roughly 200 times while live, no one reported it to Facebook, the company said.
After the attacks on March 15, Facebook announced it wouldn't allow white nationalism and separatism on its platform anymore.
"Our conversations with members of civil society and academics who are experts in race relations around the world have confirmed that white nationalism and separatism cannot be meaningfully separated from white supremacy and organised hate groups," the company said in a statement.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and French President Emmanuel Macron will meet later this month in Paris to co-chair a meeting on how to stop the spread of terror-related content online.
Newshub.
