Facebook needs to suspend ‘Facebook Live’

Mark Zuckerberg announced the arrival of Facebook Live a year ago this month, surrounded by the young developers who created it.

“The reason we’re so excited about this is it’s this new, really raw, personal, spontaneous way people can share,” the Facebook founder and CEO “went live” to say.

The pact was obvious. Facebook wanted to beat TV, and if you were willing to help them they would give you a bit part and a decent-sized audience and 15 minutes of flying thumbs.

And because their TV goes on air without commissioners or editors or a 30-second curse delay, your part could be a rendition of Drake, or a rant about politics, or a rape or cold-blooded murder.

Media organizations know that “going live” makes business sense. Facebook has ensured that its algorithm promotes live streams over other forms of content on your timeline. If you make a live, people are going to see you doing it.

Last week I even met a young video producer from a major website who faked Facebook Lives – by playing pre-recorded videos of chefs making meals on holiday days – to win the attention game.

Earlier today a man in Cleveland “went live” to broadcast his killing of a 74-year-old by the side of a road – an apparent homicide performed for an audience of friends and acquaintances.

The self-confessed killer, Steven Stephens, who is being hunted by police, then posted another live in which he vowed to “keep killing until they catch me.”

His videos were later removed, but not before several of them had been posted, and not before they had been shared by thousands of users and archived by news companies.

The incident is said to be the first homicide streamed live on Facebook, but it isn’t the first violent crime. Last month six men in Chicago “went live” to gang rape a 15-year-old girl. In January, four people “went live” seemingly to torture a teenager with mental health issues.

Responsible news organizations should stop going live until Facebook suspends the service and promises to pull down live-streamed atrocities within minutes, and ban users from streaming if they have been reported before.

If we don’t, we are putting out shows on the same network that has hosted a homicide.