Above is the feed of news alerts that I woke up to on 15 March 2019. Before drifting into sleep the night before I had heard the alert vibrations on my phone which was lying beside my pillow. I did not check the phone at the time and chose sleep. Waking up to this was brutal. Yet another mass shooting. Another act of white supremacy, targeting the Muslim community this time. Despicable violence and hatred perpetrated against a community that has been consistently and increasingly demonised since 9/11 and more so since the election of the 45th president of the United States.

I began reading the details. A white supremacist perpetrator. An elaborate plan. Semi-automatic weapons. A manifesto published online theday before, promising a live streaming of the attack. A GoPro camera. Almost 17 minutes of Facebook live streaming. The gunman leaving his car, exclaiming: ‘Let’s get this party started.’ Chilling.

As outrage and debate unfolded, the same questions were recurring. Shouldn’t powerful media enterprises such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and any other similar platform automatically remove material propagating hatred against groups and showing the actual killing of humans? Why have the algorithms of filter tools failed and what are the potential outcomes of this? What can its ripple effects be? CNN correspondent Anna Coren, visibly shaken, described the video and her own reaction to it, saying: ‘It is one of the most horrendous things that I have ever seen in my entire career.’ She added, ‘It was like watching a video game’ as the shooter proceeded systematically to ensure each person was dead, shooting them point blank.