CHARLES PAYNE (HOST): We do though want to stay in New Zealand. And again, at least 49 people there are dead after a shooter targeted worshipers at two mosques. A livestream was posted to Facebook of the massacre, which Facebook later confirmed and deleted. Joining us, Raheem Kassam, he's the Human Events global editor-in-chief. Raheem, how much of a problem does livestreaming and other incidents like this, how much of a problem do you see it being for Facebook and that whole industry?
RAHEEM KASSAM (HUMAN EVENTS): Well look, I think it's extraordinary, the tech companies now are drunk at the wheel with power. They are able to very quickly censor political opinions, political discourse that they don't like, but when it comes to things like this, in very, very severe and extreme incidents, they seem to be asleep at the wheel. And so questions need to be asked as to what kind of efficacy there is behind their maintenance, their demands that they are the guardians of the free speech galaxy at the moment. And look, I think the problem is this. We have these entities that are somewhat public utilities, somewhat private companies, and they can't decide whether they are more interested in the profit making side of things or more interested in being these arbiters of speech and these platforms of discourse.
PAYNE: OK, but having said that, you're not suggesting, though, that Facebook would deliberately allow these sort of videos to linger. They must be making some attempts at making this -- mitigating this problem.
KASSAM: What I'm saying is I think for the past couple of years, they have focused their efforts in a different direction than actually dealing with immediate problems like this. They have focused their attention on the direction of building these algorithms which en masse ban conservative opinion. Now, I think it's a much more serious thing than conservative opinion that they actually stop these things happening. And we saw the same thing a couple years ago with Twitter, when the Islamic State was uploading videos to Twitter and it took time for those things to come down. And I just think these tech companies, they behave like the queen bees for so long and their arrogance is what's leading to a lot of this terrible stuff going on.
