Even when I was only 13 years old and the leader of a school debating team, I could have driven a ‘truck of peace’ through Ardern’s totally flawed logic.
Let’s look at her first statement:
These tech companies, I do not for a moment believe they wanted to see their platforms used for such a vile heinous act
PM Jacinda Ardern
The vile, heinous act was shooting, injuring and killing all those innocent people. The tech companies played no part in the violence. They did not cause the violence and their service did not enable or arm the terrorist to shoot, injure or kill those poor people.
Let us now consider the second part of Ardern’s statement:
But she says an open internet should not mean having to “accept that these kinds of activities will happen as a by-product.”
Twitter
A by-product of the process of manufacturing and selling knives is that some will be used by criminals and terrorists to stab people. No one is proposing to regulate and control companies that make or sell knives.
A by-product of the manufacture and selling of trucks and cars is that some will be used to run people down. No one is proposing to regulate and control companies that make or sell cars and trucks.
A live stream cannot be used to kill or injure people but knives and trucks can. The massacre in Christchurch was not a by-product of a Facebook live stream. The live stream was a by-product of the massacre.
Media record and publish atrocities all the time. How many times have you seen on the news the people jumping to their deaths from the Twin Towers and footage of the planes flying into the buildings?
Terrorists have been recording their atrocities for well over a decade but before the advent of digital media atrocities still happened and terrorists still terrorised because the ability to broadcast the atrocity is not something that enables the atrocity. No terrorist is going to say, “Damn, I can’t live stream it, I’d better give up my plan and go home and take up knitting.”
Jacinda Ardern is an embarrassment. Imagine if her statements were about truck or knife companies.
These Truck and knife companies, I do not for a moment believe they wanted to see their products used for such a vile heinous act
But she says an open market should not mean having to “accept that these kinds of activities will happen as a by-product.”
While violence and death may be an actual by-product of the sale of knives and trucks, that was not what happened in New Zealand. Instead, the non-lethal by-product of the atrocity that Ardern is referring to was the live stream.
Someone needs to sit Ardern down and explain to her that her focus should be on protecting New Zealanders from an atrocity happening in the first place, not on preventing people from viewing it.
Why is she not addressing the issues of how the terrorist was able to carry out his plan? Why was he not detected by the GCSB? What is she doing security wise to prevent another attack? Viewing a massacre is pretty disturbing, but the massacre itself is what she should be putting all her resources into preventing in the future. Preventing the live stream would not have prevented the atrocity. She knows it and we know it.