At an initiative initially known as the Chirstchurch call, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and French President Emmanuel Macron will host other world leaders including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Jordan's King Abdullah II, British Prime Minister Theresa May and EU Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker.
After the horrific massacre in March, where a white supremacist shot 51 people in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, the country's PM Ardern was angry at the way video of the assault went viral on social media. The summit is an initiative to curb online extremism. While call for the summit saw a wide response, attendees do not include US President Donald Trump or Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Participants will be asked to commit to pledges to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content on social media and other online platforms.
Other prominent figures from tech and social networks will also be present, most notably Twitter founder and chief executive Jack Dorsey who will also have bilateral talks with Ardern.
“It was designed to be broadcast on the internet. The entire event was livestreamed... the scale of this horrific video's reach was staggering,” Jacinda Ardern wrote. Facebook removed 1.5 million copies of the video within 24 hours of the attack, she added, but, she still found herself among those who inadvertently saw the footage when it auto-played on their social media feeds. “Asking both nations and private corporations to make changes to prevent the posting of terrorist content online, to ensure its efficient and fast removal and to prevent the use of live-streaming as a tool for broadcasting terrorist attacks,” she wrote in The Times.