In the wake of the livestream, a version of the video surfaced on YouTube every second over the weekend. It was also shared to Reddit forums such as "r/watchpeopledie" and "r/Gore," both of which have since been banned. And Facebook itself scrambled to pull down 1.5 million videos of the incident in the first 24 hours.

Meanwhile, New Zealand ISPs including Vodafone, Spark and Vocus were forced to block access at the DNS level to websites that didn't respond to takedown requests. Together they cut off controversial messageboards such as 4chan and 8chan (where the shooter was a member and, according to Facebook he shared a link to a copy of the video hosted on a file-sharing site). Worse still, mainstream media like The Daily Mail and Sky News Australia ran excerpts from the shooter's Facebook livestream, forcing Sky New Zealand to pull the latter off air.

As usual, Facebook has been transparent in its response. But it's facing a chorus of condemnation from lawmakers worldwide, who've grown tired of its meek attempts at self-regulation. Germany has already set penalties for social media sites that fail to swiftly remove harmful content and the UK is following suit. Though Facebook is pumping more money and manpower into its moderation systems, this latest failure will only result in more scrutiny of its reviews process.

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