Facebook says it has removed more than 4.5 million pieces of content related to the Christchurch terror attack.
Fifty-one people were killed when a suspected white supremacist gunman opened fire at two mosques on March 15, before he was arrested.
"The Christchurch attack was unprecedented in both the use of live streaming technology and the rapid sharing of video, image, audio and text-based content depicting the attack," said Guy Rosen, Facebook's vice president of integrity.
Much of the content was removed despite being uploaded from overseas locations. The Chief Censor earlier this year made possessing or distributing copies of the footage in New Zealand an offence, unless you have special permission to do so.
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"While some of this content violated our Community Standards and was subsequently removed, we also saw people and news organisations share edited, non-graphic versions of content to condemn or raise awareness of the attacks," said Rosen.
"This would not normally violate our policies, however, out of respect for the people affected by this tragedy, and due to a range of factors including the virality and cross-platform spread of this content and the New Zealand Government's decision to classify the content as objectionable, and therefore illegal, we took the unprecedented action to remove globally - instead of locally restrict - all content depicting the attack.
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Facebook has technology which allows it to detect copies of the Christchurch attacker's video. Ninety-seven percent of the attempted uploads were detected and removed proactively before they were reported.
The 4.5 million figure was recorded at September 30.
"Since this horrific attack, we've continued to make significant product, policy and operational changes to prevent our services from being used in future to cause harm or spread hate," said Rosen.
"We've made restrictions to who can use Facebook Live and continue to make meaningful progress on our commitments to the New Zealand Government's Christchurch Call to Action."
A spokesperson for the Prime Minister said it was good to see Facebook being proactive in removing the high volume of footage of the attack from its site, calling it evidence the cooperative work the Government has done with social media companies to stop terrorist content getting online is working.
Facebook on Thursday morning was set to reveal more figures about the amount and types of content it's had to remove over the past six months.
Newshub.
