Why did mosque video air live?

Facebook: Shooting not flagged till later

LONDON — Why did Facebook air live video of the New Zealand mosque shooting for 17 minutes? Didn’t anyone alert the company while it was happening?

Facebook says no. According to its deputy general counsel, Chris Sonderby, none of the 200 or so people who watched the live video flagged it to moderators.

In a Tuesday blog post , Sonderby said the first user report didn’t come until 12 minutes after the broadcast ended.

All of which raises additional questions — among them, why so many people watched without saying anything, whether Facebook relies too much on outsiders and machines to report trouble, and whether users and law enforcement officials even know how to reach Facebook with concerns.

“When we see things through our phones, we imagine that they are like a television show,” said Siva Vaidhyanathan, a professor of media studies at the University of Virginia. “They are at a distance, and we have no power.”

Facebook said it removed the video “within minutes” of being notified by New Zealand police.

Tim Cigelske, who teaches about social media at Marquette University in Milwaukee, said that while viewers have the same moral obligations to help as a bystander does in the physical world, people don’t necessarily know what to do.

“It’s like calling 911 in an emergency,” he said. “We had to train people and make it easy for them.”

To report live video, a user must click on a small set of three gray dots on the right side of the post. A user who clicks on “report live video” gets a choice of objectionable content types to select from.

Users are also told to contact law enforcement if someone is in immediate danger.