Thai Man Kills Baby Daughter in Video Posted Live to Facebook
26 April 2017 - 9:13AM
Dow Jones News
By Deepa Seetharaman
A man in Thailand this week live-streamed himself murdering his
baby daughter on Facebook, the latest example of the use of the
social-media platform to broadcast disturbing, violent videos.
The incident highlights the global scale of Facebook's challenge
in sifting through live video in different languages and countries
largely from its offices in Silicon Valley.
The footage of the killing on Monday was up for about 24 hours
before Facebook took it down, according to media reports. Reuters
reported that the man broadcast two videos, the first of which was
viewed 112,000 times, and a second which garnered 258,000 views.
The man later killed himself off-camera, the media reports
said.
A spokeswoman for Facebook Inc. confirmed the incident but
declined to say whether users had flagged the videos to Facebook
for removal.
"There is absolutely no place for acts of this kind on Facebook
and the footage has now been removed," the spokeswoman said.
The Thai live stream is likely to put even more pressure on
Facebook to do more to prevent or more quickly take down violent
videos. The site has been used as a platform to display a series of
violent events in the past year, including the shooting earlier
this month of an elderly man in Cleveland.
Facebook came under fire for its failure last week to quickly
remove the video, which showed the victim being shot in the head.
After posting the video, 37-year-old Steve Stephens went on
Facebook Live to talk about what he had done and other alleged
crimes. He committed suicide two days later in Pennsylvania
following a brief pursuit by police.
Following the outcry over its handling of the Cleveland video,
Facebook said last week that it would conduct a deeper review of
how it handles objectionable content.
In a blog post last week, Justin Osofsky, Facebook's vice
president of global operations, acknowledged its content-review
process was flawed and that it wanted to improve how it allowed
users to flag objectionable content to Facebook. Mr. Osofsky said
Facebook was also looking into how the company managed and
prioritized the reported content.
It is unclear if Facebook changed anything in its review process
before the Thai killing.
Facebook didn't respond to a request for comment on the status
of the view.
That content-review process could be even more complicated for
videos outside the U.S. and Europe such as the Thai murder. The
team of contract workers that Facebook has tasked with handling
live video reports for now is located in the Bay Area. It works
around the clock in eight-hour shifts. It is unclear how the team
works.
According to a tally of local news reports by The Wall Street
Journal, people have used Facebook Live to broadcast more than 60
sensitive or violent videos, including murder, suicide and rape.
The episodes include the beating in January of a mentally disabled
teenager in Chicago and a gang rape of a woman in Sweden in
February.
Write to Deepa Seetharaman at Deepa.Seetharaman@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 25, 2017 18:58 ET (22:58 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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