Nonetheless, in March 2019, Brenton Tarrant, a 28-year-old Australian, was able to activate Facebook Live and use it to broadcast his killing of more than 50 people over the course of 17 minutes. Then, 12 minutes after the attack, a user flagged the video as a problem, and it took nearly an hour, after law enforcement contacted Facebook, for the company to remove it. But by that time, the content had reached, and inspired, countless others.
Similarly, in an echo of what happened in the build-up to violence in Myanmar, Cambodian monk and human rights activist, Luon Sovath, was forced in August 2020 to flee government prosecution. A significant contributor to his exile, according to recent reports, was misinformation and disinformation shared on Facebook. The company took almost a month to remove the page and the four doctored videos that endangered and defamed him.
“As a company, you would think they would want to be more vigilant and not allow their platform to be misused,” said Naly Pilorge, the director of the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights in a recent New York Times interview. “Facebook’s reaction has been like little drops from a…
