ISPs that block access to sites hosting the Christchurch shooting video set a worrisome precedent that ISPs may put up barriers between customers and content
Facebook and YouTube were right to delete the video shot by the New Zealand shooter. Internet providers were wrong to try to do it, too.
Context & Ripple Effects
The arc here starts with the attack itself: one of the shooters livestreamed on Facebook, and Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter spent days failing to contain the spread before Facebook reported blocking more than 800 distinct variants of the video. The moderation failure is what created the vacuum the ISPs stepped into.
Australian telcos had already gone further than any platform, cutting off customer access to 4chan, 8chan, Voat, Zerohedge, and Liveleak for hosting the footage. Slate's argument is that this network-level response — unlike the platforms' own deletions — puts a permanent intermediary between customers and whatever content an ISP deems objectionable.
First-order effects
- Sites like Liveleak lose reach not through their own conduct but through their hosts', as telcos such as those in Australia can sever access for entire subscriber bases with no appeal to the site itself.
- Facebook and YouTube's deletion decisions stay within their own walls, but the ISP moves extend censorship decisions to every destination on the open web, changing what a customer can reach at all.
Second-order effects
- Platforms now face a new pressure point: if they moderate too slowly, as happened with the Christchurch video, they invite carriers and regulators to do it for them at the network layer, where the remedy is blunter.
- Other ISPs gain a template — once blocking is framed as a legitimate response to terrorist content, the same mechanism stands ready for less consensual categories, from copyright to political speech.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, content governance migrates from platforms with policies and appeals toward infrastructure operators with neither, and the question resurfaces each time a mass shooting is broadcast — as coverage of later incidents shows it did by 2022.
- The likely end state is formalized access-control regimes where governments mandate carrier-level filtering, converting an emergency measure into standing infrastructure.
The trend: Content moderation is migrating up the stack from platforms to network operators, with each broadcast atrocity expanding who is empowered to decide what customers can see.