Four sickening slayings that were streamed on Facebook Live in one day this week are renewing questions to the social media platform on how – and when – to control the distribution of violence to its massive audience, Axios reported.
The incidents Tuesday include two journalists who were fatally shot during a Facebook Live stream in the Dominican Republic – with three men later being arrested in the case, The New York Times reported.
On the same day, Facebook Live captured the slayings of a 2-year-old child and a 25-year-old man – and a pregnant woman who was critically injured in the shooting – in crime-plagued Chicago, NBC News reported.
The new live-streamed violence comes in the wake of a gruesome Facebook Live stream of the kidnapping and torture of a disabled teen in Chicago in January by four teenagers.
Axios noted similar attacks took place on Facebook Live last year, including:
- In March, a Chicago man was shot and wounded on the street as he was live-streaming his visit to his old neighborhood, ABC News reported.
- In June, a 28-year-old Chicago man captured his own shooting death while on Facebook Live, the Chicago Tribune reported.
- In July, a shooting spree involving three men hanging out in their car in Norfolk, Va., and captured on Facebook Live left one of the victims critically injured, CNN reported.
- Also in July, a woman in Minnesota filmed her finance's death on Facebook Live as he was shot dead by police.
Facebook has not commented on Tuesday's incidents, Axios reported.
But in the wake of incidents last summer, the tech giant said the rules for live video are "the same for all the rest of our content." Later in the interview with TechCrunch, the company said it would only remove content "if it celebrates or glorifies violence."