Twitter is forcing users to delete links to videos of the horrific massacre at two New Zealand mosques, one of which was livestreamed on Facebook.
A shooter using the name ‘Brenton Tarrant’ had posted to 8Chan that he was going to commit an attack — along with a link to the Facebook livestream. He filmed himself killing at least 30 people before driving away from the first mosque. Police have now reported a shooting at a second mosque, but it remains unclear if there was more than one shooter.
New Zealand police are reporting that there are at least 50 casualties between the two mosques. The authorities have one person in custody.
Researcher and journalist Nick Monroe, who is well known for quickly gathering information about breaking news events, had his account locked and was forced to delete a tweet containing three links to videos of the footage — despite it being a clear matter of public interest.
https://twitter.com/nickmon1112/status/1106391768239652864
Monroe had initially embedded the video in a Tweet, but thought better of it and decided to link to an external source. This way people could make a decision about if they wanted to see it or not.
“Tonight was one of the most difficult times in my life when it comes to making twitter threads. I’m fast at what I do, enough so that I was in a position where I caught the Daily Beast up to speed on the matter, and even had my thread appear on the local news in North Carolina,” Monroe told The Gateway Pundit. “I initially used Twitter’s video feature to upload the content and people were immediately disgusted — so I compromised. Deleting that tweet and uploading the videos to a separate site so people could have more of a chance to stop themselves from seeing the brutal act of violence committed.”
https://twitter.com/nickmon1112/status/1106392337469579265
Monroe added that he does not share his research for fame or followers, and that wasn’t his intention with linking to the video.
“I already have 36,000 and I consider that more than enough,” he said. “I did it so there wouldn’t be a million copies floating around and further spreading the graphic video to the four corners of the internet.”
