Facebook, a popular place to share baby and engagement photos, has been dealing with more grisly footage this month: shootings captured on live video.
Three Virginia men were injured on Tuesday night in a shooting that was streamed in a Facebook Live video, Norfolk police said. The video, which was posted publicly on Facebook by TJ Williams, has more than 210,000 views and more than 3,000 shares.
“During the shooting incident, one of the men inside the car was broadcasting a live video to Facebook. This video has been confirmed to be of the actual shooting incident,” police said in the news release.
In the video, three men are sitting in a car as they smoke and sing along to hip hop music. The camera then falls to the car floor as multiple shots are heard in the background.
The video comes days after a Minnesota woman streamed footage of her boyfriend bleeding in the car after being fatally shot by a police officer. During a shooting in Dallas that left five police officers dead, a witness was also streaming a Facebook Live video as he hid behind a tree.
Facebook said last week that they understood challenges come with live video, noting that one of the most sensitive matters is when people post violent or graphic footage. It’s an issue that social media companies have grappled with even before live video streaming became more popular.
“In those situations, context and degree are everything. For instance, if a person witnessed a shooting, and used Facebook Live to raise awareness or find the shooter, we would allow it. However, if someone shared the same video to mock the victim or celebrate the shooting, we would remove the video,” the company wrote in a post on July 8.
The company’s rules about what can be posted on the site notes that they want people to warn their audience about what they see if it’s a graphic video.
Photo Credit: Karen Bleier/Getty Images.
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