French killer's Facebook video underscores live broadcast challenges from offenders
All social media platforms can remove offensive content, but turnaround time of 24 hours proves a drag
After Larossi Abballa killed a French police commander and the commander’s partner on Tuesday, he took to Facebook Live to encourage viewers in a 12-minute video to follow his example: Kill prison staff, police officials, journalists, lawmakers.
The incident underscores the immense challenges companies such as Facebook, Twitter and Google’s YouTube face as they push live video streaming to hundreds of millions of people.
Facebook in recent months has made its Live feature – which allows anyone to broadcast a video in real time – a central component of its strategy. Twitter, similarly, is focused on live content, and online video leader YouTube is also moving into live streaming.
All the companies have protocols in place to remove content that violates their terms of service, mainly by asking users to report offending material for review. But the companies generally promise a turnaround time of 24 hours on such reports, while live videos would have to be reviewed and removed in minutes to prevent wide dissemination.
“We do understand and recognise that there are unique challenges when it comes to content and safety for Live videos,” a Facebook spokeswoman said. “We are deeply committed to improving the effectiveness of how we handle reports of live content that violates our Community Standards.”