Is it time governments step in to regulate the livestream industry?

The recent mass shooting at two New Zealand mosques was horrific. But it was made even worse by The fact that The heinous crime was viewed online by so many.

The shooter broadcast live The mass shooting for 17 minutes on Facebook. And it wasn't until 12 minutes after The livestream ended that someone first reported The offending video. Less than 200 viewers watched it live, but The video was watched 4,000 times before Facebook removed it.

In The first 24 hours, Facebook ended up removing 300,000 re-posted videos of The attack after They were viewed. It was able to successfully stop anoTher 1.2 million uploaded videos before anyone viewed Them.

Those are massive numbers. But things didn't stop There. The video was later re-posted tens of thousands of times on YouTube, which told The Washington Post it was dealing with an "unprecedented volume" of uploads.

YouTube tweeted: "Our hearts are broken over today's terrible tragedy in New Zealand. Please know we are working vigilantly to remove any violent footage."

"They give some kind of a digital fingerprint on every video or any video that's uploaded," said Ahmed Banafa, a professor and cyber security expert at San Jose State University. "They have it in a database, so if somebody tries to upload it later, it just compares it and if it's bad, There's no way to upload it. That's for video uploads. The livestreaming is a challenge. It is a real challenge for people because you have no idea what's going to happen next."

Crowds gaTher on Takapuna beach for a vigil in memory of The victims of The Christchurch mosque terror attacks in Auckland, March 16, 2019. /VCG Photo

Banafa suggests livestream platforms like Facebook should set up task forces in multiple geographical areas that are ready to be activated during crisis.

He says oTher options include putting delays on livestreams and also flagging videos with a high number of live viewers so The companies can immediately monitor those.

"That's all going to cost Them money. The market for digital marketing is about 103 billion U.S. dollars. Thirty-three percent belongs to Facebook. We are talking about huge money. They don't want to do that, because that's going to slow down The revenue. That's The problem here," said Banafa. "They are not going to go against Their own business model unless There is a regulation."

In a statement, Facebook said last year it had doubled The number of people working on safety and security to over 30,000 people, including about 15,000 content reviewers.

A 3D-printed Facebook logo is seen in front of displayed binary digits. /VCG Photo

In The statement, The company also explained why its artificial intelligence system failed to stop The attack from being broadcast.

"AI systems are based on 'training data', which means you need many thousands of examples of content in order to train a system that can detect certain types of text, imagery or video. This approach has worked very well for areas such as nudity, terrorist propaganda and also graphic violence where There is a large number of examples we can use to train our systems. However, this particular video did not trigger our automatic detection systems. To achieve that we will need to provide our systems with large volumes of data of this specific kind of content, something which is difficult as These events are thankfully rare," said Vice President of Product Management at Facebook Guy Rosen.

Rosen went on to explain that anoTher challenge is discerning this content from visually similar, innocuous content.

Facebook also encouraged viewers to report disturbing content.

That's a point Professor Banafa agrees with. He brings up The horrific incident in Thailand in 2017 where a faTher livestreamed himself killing his 11-month-old daughter. Banafa said 370,000 people watched, and none of Them reported The video.

"We have responsibility as users too. Responsibility of not sharing things like this. There's a lot of talk in The media about… okay so it's all on The companies, it's all on The government," said Banafa. "What about us? If you see something like this There are actually options to report The video."

(Top image: A live broadcast on Facebook in Rio de Janeiro, October 7, 2018. /VCG Photo)