Flak over ‘final moments’ live

– The first reaction of Southwest Airlines passenger Marty Martinez when an engine exploded on the plane on Tuesday was to live stream what he feared might be his last minutes of life.

It was possibly the first time someone who thought he was going to die in a plane crash livestreamed the experience.

Martinez lived. One passenger, bank executive Jennifer Riordan, was killed when she was partially pulled through a shattered plane window.

But while Martinez, who runs a Dallas marketing agency, said he wanted to communicate with loved ones, many social media users attacked him in expletive-laced postings, with one saying Martinez himself should have been the one who died.

“Trying to contact loved ones is one thing, but to morbidly video and take pictures to post publicly is completely disgusting. Evidently the wrong person was taken from that flight,” Dennis Miller said on Facebook in a posting that included colourful language to describe Martinez.

Many social media users defended Martinez’s use of Facebook Live, but some said he violated passengers’ privacy and sought cheap fame.

“You represent the worst of social media,” Tom Burke said on Facebook.

The event illustrates thorny issues facing platforms such as Google’s YouTube, Twitter’s Periscope and Facebook, already under pressure over privacy and news curating, over hosting live-streaming material.

Facebook did not respond to a request for comment on Martinez’s posts.

Since 2016, the average number of daily Facebook Live broadcasts has doubled, with 3.5 billion live broadcasts since then.

Martinez explained why he opened his laptop and fumbled for his credit card to pay $8 (R96) for WiFi while other passengers were grabbing oxygen masks.

“All I could think of in that moment was, I need to communicate with my loved ones,” he said on ABC television. “I thought, ‘These are my last few moments on Earth and I want people to know what happened’.”