Facebook says no one flagged NZ mosque shooting livestream

[turbinetree]

Source: Associated Press

By KELVIN CHAN 56 minutes ago

LONDON (AP) — Facebook says none of the 200 or so people who watched live video of the New Zealand mosque shooting flagged it to moderators, underlining the challenge tech companies face in policing violent or disturbing content in real time.

The social media giant released new details about its response to the video in a blog post. It said the gunman’s live 17-minute broadcast was viewed fewer than 200 times and the first user report didn’t come in until 12 minutes after it ended. Fifty people were killed at two mosques in Christchurch.

Facebook removed the video “within minutes’” of being notified by police, said Chris Sonderby, Facebook’s deputy general counsel.

“No users reported the video during the live broadcast,” and it was watched about 4,000 times in total before being taken down, Sonderby said. “We continue to work around the clock to prevent this content from appearing on our site, using a combination of technology and people.”

Read more: https://apnews.com/fa25b8ec26fd4fac82ae411a05f21f5d

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There are no words to describe the absolute incompetence in Facebook, they did not know how to have a means to delay transmission, maybe its time to break-up this firm, since they Facebook self regulates it own platform, just like Google and You Tube they don't care just so long as the advertisement dollars flow into the firm......................

[SWBTATTReg]

1. Kind of hard to believe that no one flagged this...makes you wonder if FB is lying or not telling...

the whole truth here.

[turbinetree]

3. It is hard to imagine that they have 10,000 people sitting in front of screen

supposedly watching for this kind of stuff.......................like don't they have department to stop violence.......................yeah they have 10,000 of them world wide watching and not doing anything, they said they could not stop the live down stream, there AI was not equipped to do this, .....................

[SWBTATTReg]

6. Really! it does stretch the imagination that FB failed to 'catch' this and I don't believe that...

their AI (if they have, which if they do, they need to do a lot more enhancement to) didn't catch.

All one has to do is tag a video/etc. if all of a sudden after an event it (the video) would jump to a priority screen in front of their monitors based on number of rapidly gained number of views as well as other criteria
(violence).

FB usually knows asap w/ thousands of FB people chatting all of a sudden about a topic, before anyone else knows about it. FB's claim is unbelievable at best.

They need to fire a lot of people and rewrite their AI.

[mathematic]

10. I think you misunderstand this article

It's not (only) about removing the recorded video from facebook (which they are, the article says 1.5 million uploads of it were blocked/removed). It's about the actual livestream, the original broadcast of the event. Only 200 people watched it and none of them reported it. (Presumably they didn't report it because they were all the shooter's white supremacist internet buddies.) 4000 people watched the original recording before it was taken down.

The fact that a video that hundreds of millions of people know about and tens of millions have sought out was taken down after only 4000 views is REMARKABLE. That in itself is an amazing example of engineering and organizational accomplishment. I guarantee that the only way this gets done quicker is something even more dystopian than what you think facebook is today.

[SWBTATTReg]

11. Good points. But this people who allowed this livesteam should face ramifications...

otherwise are we going to have videos of child rape, or worse? There needs to be some morality and accountability here on the part of users/viewers. Of course we get into censorship issues and the like once one goes down this road.

You're right, in that after 4000 views it got stopped/taken down. That is amazingly quick.

[forgotmylogin]

13. Agreed. Facebook is HUGE. I seriously doubt it was advertised publicly in advance.

It was probably discussed on 4-chan where a lot of people are posers and were used to hoaxes. The people who were there from the beginning while it was broadcast live were there hoping to see a massacre, or possibly they didn't really believe it was actually going to happen. The actual shooting took up the last few minutes of the video (I accidentally saw it on Twitter right after it happened when someone re-posted, and I alerted on that.) There has to be a lot of secrecy for something like this to happen live on a public site because there are enough users who will flag the moment someone threatens to do this sort of thing.

I work as a forum moderator on a tiny message board. As big as Facebook is, they can't monitor every single live stream or video the moment it is posted. They rely on users to alert them about sensitive content. 12 minutes doesn't seem unreasonable for an official to get a flagged alert (likely jumped to the top of a long list based on severity), realize what was happening, verify the content, and pull it.

[DURHAM D]

2. So FB is blaming the consumer... nt

[EarthFirst]

4. Essentially.

I’m sure the end user agreement has been updated to account for this...

[DRoseDARs]

8. It's facinating to see FB fight the likes of EA Games, Comcast, Monsato for title of Most Hated Co.

eom

[mwooldri]

9. If you have a bunch of white nationalists watching a live stream...

... of another white nationalist terrorizing XYZ community - maybe even committing mass murder in the process - does one think that the live stream may get flagged? My guess is probably not.

Live streaming is nice, but it is just like live TV. Live streaming the kids school play or sports event... good. Live streaming fatalities (planned or accidental)... not good. Short of delaying the stream for 10-15 seconds and having a human watch the live stream ready to kill it when objectionable content is shown ... I don't know how it could be policed. Maybe a job for an Amazon Mechanical Turk type of thing? Consumer has to pay to live stream?

As for the 200 vs 4000 thing... My guess is that 200 views before it was flagged, another 3800 before the stream was removed.

[Marthe48]

5. Viewed 200 times or 4000?

Get yr story straight

[Blue_Adept]

12. or read the article properly?

200 people viewed the LIVESTREAM

4000 people saw the finalized video before it was removed.

[DRoseDARs]

7. Delay... on a livestream? Wut? That's an oxymoron.

Why a delay instead of shutting it down like they did when the police reported it? (200 people watching, no one reported it? Yeah, I'm not remotely buying that, Facebook). You're upset that it happened in real-time instead of, what, a 5-second delay? Of COURSE they have a means to "delay" a livestream: It's called uploading a pre-recorded video. They've been doing that since the Internet became a thing. I think in your anger you're getting confused. What you probably want is quite simply the "livestream" option to be removed entirely. That is not a terrible option nor terribly hard to implement. They literally just remove it from their service, no complicated programming work.



You cannot possibly be seriously demanding a digital Panopticon AI in the hands of companies like Facebook or Google or *any* government, right? ... Right?

[scarytomcat]

14. they need to police themselves

relying on users is bull shit
they make plenty of money. They should spend few buck and pay some people to watch what is going on on their platform.
I don't visit any of these types of sites so I don't really care

[Papyro]

15. I googled "Facebook lied"

And I found lots of results.

[DirtEdonE]

17. Wow that's a good search term. Thanks. nt

[DirtEdonE]

16. That little prick zuckerberg

Needs to face some real justice for his part in overthrowing democracy. IMO.

I never liked that lizard-eyed creep. He looks like some fucking alien, just like trump.

[X_Digger]

18. Under what power of the government would you 'break up' this 'firm'?

'Cause I want to' isn't it.

[Honeycombe8]

19. I can believe that.

I don't think anyone believes that FB actually reads those alerts to FB. Even if it had been alerted, FB and Twitter probably get thousands of alerts daily.

I don't blame FB or Twitter. They have a staff that can't possibly review all videos put on their sites. They rely on users to alert them.

What I try to convince people of is that social media is not a place to get news or news videos. They're just not. They don't have news departments or journalists or anything of the sort. If a video or photo is legit, there will be a link to the source. THAT is what I would use to view a video or read news. Never social media.

Didn't we all learn that before the 2016 election? FB is not a source of news, just links to news. Twitter is not a source of news, except to link to a real source.