Zuckerberg addresses 'Facebook killing'
Facebook’s chief has paid his respects to the family of a man whose killing was filmed and posted onto its site.
“Our hearts go out to the family and friends of Robert Godwin Sr,” said Mark Zuckerberg near the start of Facebook’s annual F8 developers conference.
His social network had been criticised over the amount of time it had taken to take the clip offline.
About an hour before the event got underway, police had revealed that the murder suspect had killed himself.
Steve Stephens had been the subject of a national manhunt.
He was believed to have uploaded a video to Facebook showing his killing of 74-year-old Mr Godwin on Sunday and then boasting on subsequent Facebook Live streams that he had killed others.
Facebook subsequently acknowledged it had taken it more than two hours to remove the clips after the first video was posted, despite it having received complaints in the interim.
“We have a lot of work and we will keep doing all we can to prevent tragedies like this from happening,” added Mr Zuckerberg.
What was reported when
11:09AM PDT (19:09 GMT) – first video, of intent to murder, uploaded. Not reported to Facebook.
11:11AM PDT – second video, of shooting, uploaded.
11:22AM PDT – suspect confesses to murder while using Live, is live for 5 minutes.
11:27AM PDT – Live ends, and Live video is first reported shortly after.
12:59PM PDT – video of shooting is first reported.
1:22PM PDT – suspect’s account disabled; all videos no longer visible to public.
One analyst attending F8 said it was no surprise Mr Zuckerberg had felt compelled to discuss the matter.
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“Obviously this is something they have to get on top of with some urgency, but it’s an extraordinarily difficult problem,” commented Geoff Blaber from the CCS Insight tech consultancy.
“What Facebook has at its disposal is a enormous amount of talent and a very big emphasis on artificial intelligence, and I think that will be how it deals with this in the long-term.
“AI holds the key to shortening the time required to flag and remove offensive and inappropriate material amidst the endless growth of user content.”