On Sunday a man posted a video to Facebook detailing his intent to kill another man. Two minutes later he posted another video of the murder. That video was available on the social media site for over two hours before the suspect’s account was disabled and the video was no longer visible. Today Facebook says it is reviewing its reporting flows in order to help people inform the site about content like this.
According to Facebook, the first report about the video containing the shooting arrived one hour and 45 minutes after it went posted. The suspects account was disabled 23 minutes after that report was sent.
The social network also posted a detailed timeline of events:
11:09AM PDT – First video, of intent to murder, uploaded. Not reported to Facebook.
11:11AM PDT – Second video, of shooting, uploaded.
11:22AM PDT – Suspect confesses to murder while using Live, is live for 5 minutes.
11:27AM PDT – Live ends, and Live video is first reported shortly after.
12:59PM PDT – Video of shooting is first reported.
1:22PM PDT – Suspect’s account disabled; all videos no longer visible to public.
In addition to hopefully making it easier to report videos like this, Facebook’s VP of Global Operations Justin Osofsky stated in a post, “we are constantly exploring ways that new technologies can help us make sure Facebook is a safe environment. Artificial intelligence, for example, plays an important part in this work, helping us prevent the videos from being reshared in their entirety.”
The company is also working on its internal review process and says, “currently, thousands of people around the world review the millions of items that are reported to us every week in more than 40 languages.”
Sadly this wasn’t the first death to be broadcast with Facebook Live. As livestreaming and video uploads are adopted by a wider audience, the site will need better tools for reporting and taking down content like this.
