'It's kind of strange really, we've been blocked by governments before but not telecoms deciding themselves. 'It would appear we're either being blocked because a copy was temporarily available via sharing for a very short period, or by reputation,' Hewitt said. Optus and Vodaphone are also blocking LiveLeak, he said. The block itself came as a complete surprise, said Hewitt, who noted his site is still shut out of New Zealand and Australia. 'We don't want it on our platform and we will continue to remove it whenever it is discovered,' a company statement reads. Liveleak co-founder Hayden Hewitt told NPR that Liveleak will not carry the video. 'We understand this may inconvenience some legitimate users of these sites, but these are extreme circumstances and we feel this is the right thing to do.' 'We've started temporarily blocking a number of sites that are hosting footage of Friday's terrorist attack in Christchurch,' Telstra said on Twitter. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says she has been in contact with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg to ensure the video is entirely scrubbed from the platform.Īnd some websites accused of hosting footage of the attacks, such as 4chan and LiveLeak, have found themselves blocked by the country's major Internet providers.
