Suicide content in a United States-made video has gone viral on several social media platforms in New Zealand, prompting Netsafe to take action to get it taken down.

Warnings circulating about the content have urged parents to monitor their children’s social media use, suggesting the material may have been hidden in content designed to appeal to children and young people.

Netsafe has also updated its website information on dealing with upsetting internet content. The updated article, Helping Young People Exposed to Upsetting Content, is available here.

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Netsafe chief executive Martin Cocker confirmed to the Southland App this afternoon that the upsetting and violent content had gone viral in New Zealand.

He was working with the chief censor, the Department of Internal Affairs, Police, Mental Health Foundation, Ministry of Education, and multiple other agencies and industry players to get the video removed from the internet.

He understood the content first posted on September 1, New Zealand time, however, the first report to Netsafe was made yesterday (September 7).

The content has been reported as being hidden among images of puppies and kittens, encouraging young people to look at it. Schools around the country have warned parents about it in newsletters.

Mr Cocker said it was “the most graphic piece of content I have seen for a long time”.

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“It is a disturbing piece of footage to see, no matter what state you are in and obviously if someone is vulnerable then it definitely can be dangerous. The issue for us is that it is hosted somewhere – we know where it is –which is untouchable, places we can’t take any action on.”

Conversations about it were spreading, as well as the actual content, exposing more New Zealanders to it, Mr Cocker said.

Facebook, Twitter, Google and TikTok were working on the issue.

Mr Cocker said their systems could automatically detect and remove upsetting content but had to learn the different versions as they popped up. 

Within a few days, 99% of the content could be removed without anyone seeing it, but in the intervening period, it could be picked up and spread, he said.

“People often talk of it being like whack-a-mole, that old arcade game. The thing is events like the mosque shootings did lead to change and certainly from the bigger platforms they have invested pretty heavily in systems to detect content. Systems are getting better and better all the time so the opportunity for people to make this type of content to go viral is reduced. It is still there but it is reduced,” Mr Cocker said.

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The media played an important role in helping connecting parents with Netsafe and support services like 1737. 

But if the media shared too much, it could alert people to something and then people would go looking for it, Mr Cocker said.

There was plenty of upsetting content on the internet and the risk of being exposed to it was ever present. But the difference between this video and other videos was this one was going viral on social media and people were talking about it, Mr Cocker said. 

While many people were affected by something like this there were also a lot of people there helping to work against the harm of these types of things, he said.

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