We remove content if it celebrates, glorifies violence: Facebook

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took to his social network to comment on the livestream’s contents a day after it went live. “We need this so that justice can be served…but we don’t need access to it forever”, says Patton.

Reynolds’ video in particular, which has been viewed more than 5.3 million times, opened up the world to the grim situation and her stark suffering. “I wanted everyone in the world to know that no matter how much the police tamper with evidence, how much they stick together …” He said police investigating police does not work.

On Friday, Facebook acknowledged it hasn’t mastered monitoring live video. In 2013, 47 percent of all US users said they got news on Facebook; this year, it was 66 percent.

“There have been 560 police killings this year already, including 16 in July, but the nation is talking about Castile and Sterling because of the videos“, Nicholas Mirzoeff, professor of media, culture and communication at New York University, said in an email. He was on the street which he identifies as “Main Street & Lamar” in the video, when the first round of gunfires were heard.

This led to “Chewbacca Mom“, the Texas woman who attracted a vast audience when she Facebook live-streamed herself playing with a battery-powered “Star Wars” Wookiee mask. Witnesses in Dallas used Facebook to broadcast live footage in which the sound of rapid gunshots could be heard in an attack that would leave five police officers dead and seven others wounded. Last month, for instance, Antonio Perkins of Chicago live-streamed his own murder. A decision to remove or not a video would depend on context and degree, said Facebook.

Longtime Facebook observers, though, note the social network’s history of deleting first, if it deems content possibly problematic, and apologizing later (as it eventually did in this case). Although 66 percent of Facebook users use the site for news today, just 47 percent of Facebook users consumed news through the site in 2013.

The Castile video had quickly gone viral, yet had also sparked claims that Facebook had reacted to numerous complaints when the video became temporarily unavailable while in the process of streaming, or that the video may have been deleted by police when they took possession of Reynolds’ phone.

At the end of the day, there are so many exciting ways that this technology can be used to enhance TV and online storytelling, but there will likely be stumbling blocks and mistakes made along the way.

The Menlo Park, California-based company pegged a disclaimer to Reynolds’ video: “Warning-Graphic Video”.

The company insists it will only remove a video of someone’s death if it has been “used to mock the victim or celebrate the shooting”.

These real-time videos that beamed images of violence bit by bit, as it happened, have dragged the social media company into the quagmire of mainstream breaking news, something that Zuckerberg and company have been jockeying to do for a long time now, as they try hard to keep their 1.65 billion users actively engaged within Facebook. That means when you see a live-streaming video you can interrupt it if there is a violation of the Community Standards. “It’s a serious responsibility, and we work hard to strike the right balance between enabling expression while providing a safe and respectful experience”. This story has been amended to include that information.