Mark Zuckerburg: Facebook has 'a lot of work to do' after live murder video

Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg has admitted the social network needs to improve the way it responds to violent videos after a man posted footage showing him committing a murder.

Speaking at the F8 developers' conference in San Jose, California, he said: "We have a lot of work and we will keep doing all we can to prevent tragedies like this from happening."

Facebook took two hours to remove the video posted by Steve Stephens, 37, which revealed him shooting dead 74-year-old Robert Godwin Sr in Cleveland, Ohio, on Sunday.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Stephens killed himself following a pursuit by police in Erie, Pennsylvania, about 100 miles from the murder scene.

He had also shot a Facebook Live video in which he boasted about killing 15 people, although police say there was just one victim.

The Daily Telegraph says the killing "raised new questions about Facebook's ability to police the millions of hours of video uploaded to the social network".

The social media site has pledged to make it easier for users to report videos and to speed up the process of reviewing items once they are reported.

Justin Osofsky, vice president of global operations at Facebook, wrote in a blogpost: "It was a horrific crime - one that has no place on Facebook, and goes against our policies and everything we stand for.

"We 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."

Days before the killing, reports USA Today, Zuckerberg said Facebook had a responsibility "to get better" at making sure it was not a tool for spreading video of violent acts.

"But the long-term solution is going to be having better artificial intelligence tools to give context of what's going on," he added.

He also published a manifesto in February saying artificial intelligence was beginning to prove effective at revealing problems.

USA Today says it is not clear if AI played a role in flagging up the Stephens' footage.