Burger King and Lotto are to boycott Facebook after Christchurch terrorist live-streamed massacre

New Zealand’s biggest companies are set to pull ads from Facebook and Google after the Christchurch massacre gunman was able to live-stream his killing spree.

Burger King, Lotto NZ, ASB and Kiwibank are among the companies boycotting ads to take a stand against the harm caused by unmoderated content. 

According to reports, the footage showed gunman Brenton Tarrant moving through the inside of the mosque in Christchurch and shooting at his victims indiscriminately. 

The video was later taken down but not before the social media giant was scrutinized for allowing the content.  

The extent of the boycott is still unclear, but the decision comes after the companies’ marketing managers discussed what they could do to spark change in the industry.  

The Association of New Zealand Advertisers (ANZA) and the Commercial Communications Council called on social media platforms to do more to make sure such horrific scenes are never live-streamed again. 

ANZA chief executive Lindsay Mouat said he had a ‘real outpouring of concern’ from senior marketers asking what they could do to help change how advertising money is spent, he told NZ Herald.   

Police guarding the road outside Al Noor mosque in Christchuch where 50 people were killed on Friday, has since sparked concerns over a live-streamed video of the attack posted to Facebook 

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has spoken of her intentions to look into how social media can be better regulated, but Mr Mouat says this can take time.   

Mr Mouat is calling on businesses to seriously consider ‘if they wish to be associated with social media platforms unable or unwilling to take responsibility for content on those sites’. 

He also said he found it really hard to believe that more couldn’t be done to moderate the content on social media sites, saying live-streaming poses a massive risk of the same thing happening again. 

Facebook stands to lose a hefty amount in advertising revenue, raking in hundreds of millions of dollars from digital advertising in New Zealand every year. 

The latest figures from the Interactive Advertising Bureau showed that a total of $659.5 million was spent on search-based advertising in 2017.  

However it’s not the first time Kiwi brands have pulled ads from certain social media sites.  The decision comes just weeks after telco company Spark pulled its advertising from YouTube over concerns about paedophilic content targeted at children. 

Disney and Nestle followed suit, also removing their ads from YouTube over the content scandal. 

An 18-year-old is accused of sharing a live-stream of the Christchurch massacre and writing ‘target acquired’ next to a photo of a mosque faces 14 years behind bars as he’s denied bail

Several years ago, a number of Kiwi brands also pulled their money after it was revealed that their ads appeared alongside extremist content.  

France has also adopted a similar stance against graphic content being shared online, after their spate of terror-related killings in 2016. 

Following the attack in Nice, French media no longer published photos of the perpetrators of killings to avoid possible glorification.  

Meanwhile, an 18-year-old man accused of sharing a livestream of the shooting that left 50 dead has been denied bail.

The teen faces two charges: one of sharing the livestream and a second for posting a photograph of one of the mosques attacked with the message ‘target acquired’ along with other chat messages ‘inciting extreme violence’. 

He will reappear in court in April.