Facebook is in the process of removing two GIFs of Port Arthur shooter Martin Bryant from its Messenger platform because the material violates its community standards.
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The individual GIFs included a short excerpt of a police interview with Bryant in the wake of the massacre in 1996, as well as one featuring an old interview with a pre-adolescent Bryant for television news.
Facebook had no involvement in adding the GIFs in question to the platform and it's understood the company is currently endeavouring to take them down and that the content should be gone once users refresh their cache.
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The Port Arthur massacre resulted in the deaths of 35 people and prompted then Prime Minister John Howard to significantly tighten the nation's gun laws.
Messenger is Facebook's instant messaging app, enabling people to not only exchange messages with each other, but also videos and GIFs.
Facebook Australia head of communications Antonia Sanda said GIFs that could be sent via Messenger were "content-supplied" by third parties.
"We apply our community standards to all content on Messenger and Facebook," Ms Sanda said.
"If we are made aware that GIFs provided by a third-party are violating our policies, we reach out to the provider to ensure they remove the violating content.
"In this instance, as soon as we became aware of the violating content, we took steps to make sure the content was taken down."
Part of Facebook's process of removing content that violates its policies involves contacting the parties responsible for providing the content and making sure they remove it.
The social media giant has been under significant pressure in recent months to do more to ensure that offensive content is removed from the platform as soon as possible, following the rapid proliferation of the Christchurch shooter's live-stream of his devastating mosque attack in March this year.