AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes has removed its Facebook account over New Zealand’s Christchurch mass murder wherein an Australian terrorist live streamed the video of the shooting on the social media platform for approximately 17 minutes.
Fernandes, who had over 670,000 Twitter followers, announced to quit Facebook in a series of tweets.
‘Facebook needs to clean up after videos of the New Zealand mosque attacks were uploaded to the platform. The amount of hate that goes on in social media sometimes outweighs the good. Facebook could have done more to stop some of this,’ Fernandes said in a series of tweets.
While Facebook removed approx. 1.5 million videos of the shooting that were uploaded in just 24 hours, but it was not enough for Fernandes.
‘It is a great platform to communicate. Strong engagement and very useful but New Zealand was too much for me to take along with all the other issues,’ added Fernandes.
The terrorist designed the attack to go viral. He also posted the 17-minute long video to Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube, which further boosted the attack to reach more people.
Quickly after the Christchurch mosque mass shooting, world leaders have criticised Facebook for its inefficiency in handling disturbing content. According to the media reports, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has asked to speak with Facebook over live streaming.
This is not the first-time people have decided to quit Facebook in such a horrifying event. There have been other examples too wherein terror attacks were streamed live on the platform.
In 2018, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak quit Facebook over the misuse of data of approx. 87 million in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. In an email interview with USA Today, Wozniak said that Facebook monetises its users’s data and renders them 'product[s]'.
