France’s president Emmanuel Macron and New Zealand’s Prime minister Jacinda Ardern have joined forces to fight against online extremism.
They have launched the ”Christchurch Appeal”, an inter-governmental call to put an end to terrorist acts stemming from online radicalisation.
It follows the deadly terrorist attack on Christchurch mosques in New Zealand on March 15, which was streamed live on Facebook.
Ardern and Macron will lead a meeting in Paris today that seeks to get world leaders and chiefs of technology companies sign a pledge to eliminate violent content online.
It comes after Facebook announced on Tuesday evening that it would begin banning users who don’t respect its guidelines around live-streaming events.
“For instance, someone who shares a link to a statement from a terrorist group with no context will now be immediately blocked from using Live for a set period of time’, the blog post from social media giant read.
Facebook has also announced it will partner with three universities and invest $7.5 million in research to ”improve image and video analysis technology”.
“There is a lot more work to do, but I am pleased Facebook has taken additional steps today and look forward to a long term collaboration to make social media safer by removing terrorist content from it,” Ardern said.
