Facebook rejects idea of putting time delay on live videos to stop horrors like the New Zealand mosque shootings being broadcast to the internet – By Jake Kanter (Business Insider) / March 21 2019
Facebook said the volume of live video would make this difficult to police even with a time delay, while it may also slow down first responders.
A policewoman at the burial ceremony of a victim of the New Zealand mosque attacks. Reuters
Facebook has rejected the idea of putting a time delay on live videos to stop horrific acts like the New Zealand mosque shootings being broadcast to its billions of users.
The time delay trick is regularly applied during live television, helping broadcasters bleep out unsavoury language or deal with unexpected events that may take place while the cameras are rolling.
But Facebook said this just won’t work on its platform. In another blog laying out its response to the mass shootings in Christchurch last Friday, Guy Rosen, vice president of integrity, gave a couple of reasons why:
There are millions of live broadcasts every day. Even with a time delay, Facebook would not be able to respond quickly enough to events like those seen last week. “A delay would not help address the problem due to the sheer number of videos,” Rosen said.
The time delay would only “further slow down” harmful videos being reported and reviewed.
Finally, Rosen said it would also delay first responders, like police and ambulance services, being alerted to the incident and scrambling support to the scene.
Facebook’s integrity boss said the company is “learning” from the New Zealand attack, in which 50 people were killed when a gunman stormed two mosques in Christchurch.
One area Facebook is examining is reporting.
The firm said the first user report on the video did not arrive until 12 minutes after the broadcast had ended. It was reported for “reasons other than suicide,” which potentially slowed down the time it took to be reviewed. As a consequence, Facebook is considering adding new reporting tags, with some reporters observing it could mean the addition of categories like “murder” or “terrorism.”
“We are re-examining our reporting logic and experiences for both live and recently live videos in order to expand the categories that would get to accelerated review,” Rosen explained.
Facebook removed a total of 1.5 million videos of the attack, including 1.2 million at the point of upload and 300,000 copies of the original after they were posted.
