Facebook didn't block Capitol Hill bomb threat suspect's account until after he livestreamed for hours

The man who claimed to have explosives in his truck outside of the Library of Congress on Thursday streamed live on Facebook for hours before the platform took down his account.

The suspect, who surrendered to D.C. police on Thursday afternoon, "livestreamed his anti-government remarks for hours" on Facebook before his account was taken down, Politico reports. In the videos, the man said that he was "ready to die for the cause" and claimed a device in his truck would go off if its windows broke, per The Washington Post.

According to BuzzFeed News, Facebook ended the suspect's live streams around 12:30 p.m. following hours of on-and-off streaming. This, Politico wrote, is likely "to prompt fresh scrutiny of Facebook's ability to detect and take down dangerous and incendiary content." In 2019, the gunman who killed 51 people at two Christchurch mosques livestreamed the shooting on Facebook, and Facebook said that it later removed 1.5 million videos of the massacre.

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Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone told Politico on Thursday that "we are in contact with law enforcement" as they investigate the threat, and "our teams are working to identify, remove, and block any other instances of the suspect's videos which do not condemn, neutrally discuss the incident or provide neutral news coverage of the issue."