Since the incident, Facebook, YouTube, Reddit, and Twitter have all struggled to keep video of the massacre from spreading, playing a game of digital whack-a-mole as users uploaded content that continued to avoid the detection of algorithms and content moderators. Reddit’s decision to remove /r/gore and the seven-year-old /r/watchpeopledie subreddits illustrates the tensions social networks face as they police content that violates their rules in real time.

“Subreddits that fail to adhere to those site-wide rules will be banned.' 'We are very clear in our site terms of service that posting content that incites or glorifies violence will get users and communities banned from Reddit,” a company spokesperson said in a statement. People then shared links to those videos in the now-banned Reddit groups, which critics and some Reddit users had questioned for years.

Internet users were able to capture the video before Facebook took it down, uploading clips of the incident on platforms including Twitter and YouTube. The social network moved to eliminate the /r/watchpeopledie and /r/gore subreddits less than 24 hours after a shooter killed at least 49 people at two mosques in Christchurch and streamed the event live on Facebook. Reddit banned two contentious but popular groups that regularly featured human injury and death following the widespread sharing of videos of the New Zealand terrorist incident on Friday.

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