AirAsia CEO quits Facebook over Christchurch shooting

Malaysian airline company AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes has announced to quit Facebook amid New Zealand’s Christchurch shooting where in an Australian terrorist live streamed the video of the mass murder on the social media platform.

Fernandes, who had 670,000 followers, announced to quit Facebook in a series of tweets.

‘Facebook needs to clean up after videos of the New Zealand's Christchurch shooting 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.

Facebook said it has removed over 1.5 million videos that were uploaded of the attack within 24 hours after the mass shooting and has also removed the shooter’s account.

But it looks like 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.

Facebook still has a big challenge ahead of it, in reviewing the content that goes in the platform. As video is the next big thing and Facebook wants to grab a bigger pie of it, to drive the revenue, however, the company’s efforts to identify and remove content that’s offensive, illegal, or disturbing have been left wanting, and allow terrorists to use the platform to spread their message quickly.

Soon after the mass shooting, a number of world leaders have criticised Facebook for its role in regulating this type of content. According to the media reports, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern wants to speak with the company about live streaming, while British Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn said that such platforms must act, and raised the question about regulation.

In November of 2018, a Facebook ex-employee has accused the social media giant of having a 'black people problem’.