Thread by @daphnehk

Serious thoughts on hard questions: How many people who sought out or re-posted footage of the horror in Christchurch did so because they learned about it from normal news sources? Is it possible for responsible news reporting to avoid that problem? I fear the answer is no. 1/

https://twitter.com/daphnehk/status/1108485432109469696

Some parts of an ugly picture: People who want it can reliably find horrific material in corners of the Internet like 8chan. News cycles about mainstream platforms trying to take the video down unavoidably drive more uploads and more people wanting to find the video. 2/

Once you are in that cycle, with interlocking roles for big platforms, small ones, and pro-hate ones; plus the news media, the hateful, and the curious - is there some way to break it? 3/

I don’t think any existing or on-the-horizon technology could avoid the video being posted in the first place. A lot of the coverage seems to come from a place of assuming that is possible. 4/

I assume this is the chain of reasoning that leads some observers to say we should just not have livestreaming any more. That would be a radical change in ordinary people’s access to communication technology. 5/

That's all without even asking more fundamental questions about goals, and what rules journalists and anyone else should apply to footage of a highly public, but also highly personal, tragedy. 6/

I don't have answers. But I am hearing an awful lot of supposed answers that I think only work if you can eliminate one or more of these hard underlying issues.

Thanks in advance for taking this as a serious set of questions, not one side of a potential fight. 7/