Yahoo News Facebook slammed following second Live stream murder
Facebook has come under fire after another gruesome Live broadcast showed a man murdering his baby.
Wuttisan Wongtalay filmed himself killing his daughter in a four-minute video at an abandoned hotel in Phuket, Thailand, on Monday (April 24). He later took his own life.
The video received hundreds of thousands of views and was seen by relatives including the mother of the child, according to Thai police.
The authorities were alerted, but assistance arrived too late to save Wongtalay or his daughter.
It's only been a week since the murder of 74-year-old Robert Godwin in the US, which was live streamed on Facebook by Steve Stephens.
Stephens took his own life two days after the incident, after police were tipped off about his whereabouts.
After Godwin's murder, Facebook said that it "disabled the suspect's account within 23 minutes of receiving the first report about the murder video, and two hours after receiving a report of any kind. But we know we need to do better."
Facebook has now sent condolences following the "appalling" incident in Phuket, adding that "there is absolutely no place for content of this kind on Facebook, and it has now been removed".
According to Reuters, it took Facebook almost 24 hours to remove the videos from the site.
BBC Thai editor Nopporn Wong-Anan says that Thai Facebook users reacted to the footage with anger, in addition to offering sympathies to the child and her family.
But pressure on Facebook is now growing – the above murders are two of several recent incidents where the platform has been used to share video of criminal acts.
In January, three men in Sweden were arrested, accused of broadcasting the rape of a woman to a private Facebook group.
Critics claim that Facebook is neglecting its ethical responsibilities by not acting sooner, or implementing more effective systems to stop such content being shared.
Facebook has said it's working on AI and better flagging systems, to improve its response in future.
"We have a lot of work and we will keep doing all we can to prevent tragedies like this from happening," Mark Zuckerberg said at last week's F8 developer conference.
Want up-to-the-minute entertainment news and features? Just hit 'Like' on our Digital Spy Facebook page and 'Follow' on our @digitalspy Twitter account and you're all set.
You Might Also Like
