Tech giants must now use their power to fight racist hate online

The question for politicians and powerful companies is what can be done to make horrors such as the Christchurch killings less likely in future

After the shootings, Sajid Javid told tech companies: 'Take some ownership. Enough is enough' (PA)

Sajid Javid, the home secretary, reflected the common view in the wake of the killings in Christchurch, New Zealand, when he told the big tech companies: “Take some ownership. Enough is enough.”

Addressing Facebook, YouTube, which is owned by Google, and Twitter – on Twitter, ironically enough – he was right to identify their responsibility. Of course, the white supremacist who killed 49 people is the only person guilty of those murders.

The question for politicians and powerful companies is what can be done to make such horrors less likely in future. We have come a long way since Marshall McLuhan in the 1960s, who coined the phrase, “the medium is the message”, and who popularised the idea that communications technologies are not neutral.

In the early days of the internet – which McLuhan foresaw – there was much naivety about its ability to democratise communication and to liberate people from powerful media interests. Indeed, there is still a lot of this naivety still about in the distrust of the “mainstream media”.

But for some time now it has been widely understood that the big tech companies, who provide the online platforms on which people communicate, have amassed great power – and that with that power comes responsibility.

Long gone are the days when internet companies could claim that they were “not publishers”, and that they had no right to interfere in what their customers used their technology for.

Now the question is one of urgency and priority. All the tech giants accept that they must do more to prevent their platforms being used to promote hatred and violence. Mr Javid is rightly urging them to step up their efforts.

Facebook tried to act quickly after the New Zealand murderer started to live-stream video of his killing spree on its website, but it and YouTube were always lagging behind. As quickly as they took the material down, their users shared and reposted it. For companies with revenues greater than those of many sovereign nations, this ought to be a soluble problem.

But the tech giants have a more profound responsibility than simply trying to censor offensive material after the event. They need to consider how the openness of their platforms allows the spread and reinforcement of racist hatred and violent ideologies.

Such ideologies are the product of human psychology. They are, therefore, to a certain extent predictable. The tech giants invest vast sums in applying the insights of behavioural science to purchasing decisions. They need to divert some of that investment into detecting patterns of racist hatred before it turns to violence.

That inevitably means cooperating with law enforcement authorities and compromising their users’ privacy to some extent, but that is where their responsibility lies.