YouTube removed ‘tens of thousands’ of shooting videos

YouTube on Monday said it has removed “tens of thousands” of videos depicting last week’s mass shooting in New Zealand, which was livestreamed on Facebook and reposted millions of times across major social media platforms.

The video-sharing website said the volume of videos posted to YouTube after the attack was “unprecedented both in scale and speed,” with users uploading the gruesome videos much faster than YouTube could take them down.

“Since Friday’s horrific tragedy, we’ve removed tens of thousands of videos and terminated hundreds of accounts created to promote or glorify the shooter,” a YouTube spokesperson said in a statement to The Hill. “The volume of related videos uploaded to YouTube in the 24 hours after the attack was unprecedented both in scale and speed, at times as fast as a new upload every second.”

YouTube in the hours after the attack went into overdrive trying to take down the footage, which the shooter apparently filmed using a GoPro camera strapped to his head. The video shows the gunman shooting into crowds of worshippers at a mosque in Christchurch.