The Press Box - Ep. 148: What Facebook Live Didn't Expect to Stream

Episode Date: July 14, 2016

On a special edition of 'The Ringer Tech Pod,’ Molly McHugh and staff writers Alyssa Bereznak, Kate Knibbs, and Victor Luckerson discuss the use of Facebook Live to stream the tragic events in Minnesota, Louisiana, and Texas last week, and the implications that real-time violence has for the future of the platform. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to a special edition of the Ringer Tech podcast. I'm Molly McHugh, and I'm joined today by Ringer staff writers Alyssa Bresnack. Hi. And Kate Nibs. Hey. And Victor Lukerson. Hey, Molly. Today we're going to be talking about Facebook Live.

And more specifically, some of the graphic videos that were streamed and uploaded using Facebook's video service last week, following the deaths of Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, and five Dallas police officers during a shootout. A quick warning. Some of the content were going to be discussing and clips were going to play may be upsetting. On July 5th in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Alton Sterling was approached by two police officers who were responding to a call about a disturbance. He was shot and killed by the officer and several bystanders captured the incident on video and uploaded it to Facebook and Twitter. The next day, Sub-Ostates over in Falcon Heights, Minnesota. Philando Castile was driving with his girlfriend and her daughter when he was put over for a broken tail light. When attempting to reach for his license in his back pocket, he was shot by the officer and later blood to death.

His girlfriend calmly streamed the entire incident on Facebook Live. The next evening at a Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas, Texas, five law enforcement officers were killed. The assailant is thought to be a man named Micah Johnson. A bystander captured the shootout and also used Facebook Live to stream it. We're going to talk about Facebook's role in these events throughout today's episode, but I just wanted to start by addressing something that happened with the live stream of Philando Castile's death. There was a blackout period where Facebook actually removed the video and attributed it to a glitch.

It was shot by his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, and her entire account and the video were gone for a while. And Kate, you wrote about this this week and you've kind of talked to Facebook about their policies with all this. So can you give us any background you have on why this might have happened? Yeah. So Facebook is sticking with the story that the broadcast was taken down due to a technical glitch that they won't give us any more specifics than that, which is difficult to believe. because Facebook's moderation policy for live video right now relies pretty heavily on users flagging content, and then a Facebook moderator or an algorithm pulling that content based on how many users have flagged it. So, you know, this was a very graphic video that could have easily been flagged as such by users.

And in the past, when that has happened, Facebook has said, you know, we accidentally pulled this down because it was flagged so many times. Maybe because this is so politically sensitive, they're insisting that it was just a sort of happenstance technical malfunction. But that's difficult for me to buy. You know, it just doesn't make that much sense. Or if it was a technical glitch, that makes me worried about people who want to use Facebook Live as a citizen journalism tool because it implies that it's not. a very secure, you know, platform. Yeah. No.

Yeah. So we don't have any answers beyond what Facebook is giving us about the glitch. So at this point, it's sort of you can believe Facebook or you cannot believe Facebook, but we're likely not going to get a straighter answer than that. When I tried to ask them for any more information about it and I sort of expressed my skepticism, they pointed me towards their community standards as though that held answers, which it didn't. That's so Facebook.

So I don't know. Maybe it's the conspiracy theorist in me, but I have a feeling that it was, you know, a moderator accent or an algorithm accent and not just an unrelated technical error. I mean, if you watch the video, it is very graphic. I mean, he's bleeding out right there in front of your eyes. Actually, right now might be a good time to listen to the video really quick, just so we have some more background. The video was broadcast on Facebook Live, and it was by his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, while they sat in a car. He just shot his arm off.

We got pulled over on Larpener. I told him not to reach for it. I told him to get his hand off. You told him to get his ID, sir, his driver's license. Oh, my God. Please don't tell me he's dead. Please don't tell me my boyfriend just went like that. Keep your hands where they are, please.

Yes, I will, sir. I'll keep my hands where they are. Please don't tell me this, Lord. Please, Jesus, don't tell me that he's gone. Please don't tell me that he's gone. Please, officer, don't tell me that you just did this to him. You shot four bullets into him, sir. He was just getting his registration, sir.

So, yeah, I mean, just listening to it, It's actually kind of surprising, but she is so incredibly calm. But if you watch the video, I can understand why someone who maybe was like a lower level employee, maybe someone who's a contract worker, just sees, you know, somebody bleeding and they hit some button and pulls it down. Why they wouldn't admit that, though, that's what doesn't really make sense to me. And that kind of brings me back to just like this secret sauce of what is and isn't okay on Facebook.

I don't know. Did you guys think about that anymore? like why this could have happened? Well, I think Facebook keeps these things intentionally vague because they've seen what can happen when they take sides. The entire sort of news feed bias story that sort of has captured the public's attention this spring and summer has really made people think, okay, well, maybe Mark Zuckerberg doesn't support my beliefs or maybe they're, you know, conspiring to promote.

liberal ideas in my Facebook news feed or vice versa and so I think the the more vague they can be about their editorial standards for instances that are so politically charged especially like this one the the easier it is for them to get off and say well you know things happen in the crazy complicated world of code and technology and it's not our fault right that's the fact that it all played out I guess like between like 2 and 4 a.m. is when the video is down around that time. So I think probably a lot of normal people might not even know this happened, you know,

because it's just an odd time for it to be happening, basically. Right. I mean, it did go back up and Zuckerberg released a statement kind of talking about Facebook's role in violence and activism, which we, the three, four of us have discussed this week as being kind of confusing. But Victor, you wrote about it a little bit. So what is, I mean, I guess bottom line is Facebook actually a sense? safe place for social justice?

Well, it's definitely the most powerful place. I mean, it has 1.6 billion users. And we saw in the case with Diamond Reynolds that she was able to broadcast what was happening in the moment. Like, that's pretty unprecedented, honestly. If you think about even like going back historically to other instances of release brutality, like Rodney King, for instance, when a Bicenter recorded that video, we had to take it to a news organization.

It took several days for that video to sort of like reach national consciousness. This happened like in real time and we saw everyone reacting to it, you know, within hours. I mean, that's an incredible power that Facebook is a creative platform for other people to use in really incredible ways. But on the other hand, the company itself doesn't necessarily seem to want to acknowledge that it's more than like a utility, you know, because they have all this control over what content is going to be shown or not. We see that with the glitch and they decide in the future that this is not the role they want to play, but people have already sort of invested in them as. a tool for public good, that's something that they should, I guess, be more articulate about what their role is going to be so that people know whether or not they can trust the platform in the future for these kind of things.

Yeah, I mean, I feel like after she's, Diamond Reynolds, she's been talking to the press a lot and is very, like, really wants to get this story out there and has very plainly said, like, she wanted this to happen. She wanted people to talk about it. That's probably going to mean we see this stuff more. Right? I think so. And I think that's good.

It seems to me like Facebook Live is more than a utility. Because of its immediacy, it gives people who wouldn't have a platform, an instantaneous platform. And that's a really powerful thing that you can't discount. And I think the issue is just how is Facebook as a company going to do with the fact that it now provides this power to people that, um, wouldn't have it and, you know, aren't necessarily who it was courting with Facebook Live. Like, it wanted, you know, Obama to be on Facebook Live.

It didn't want a protester necessarily. And I think it's going to be really vital for Facebook to approach this carefully and not screw up horribly. Yeah. I mean, they definitely want a lot of light content, you know, floats to the top of Facebook Live. I mean, we have the three of us or four of us have said it so many times. this week like Chewbacca Mom is the mascot of Facebook Live. Well, I mean, I do, I mean, just to make the point that Facebook really wants to promote a certain sort of image, like she was sort of the face of Facebook Live for such a long time.

And then this thing came along and it was like clearly so much more difficult. Yeah, and important, but also difficult to deal with. And I think that they really clearly didn't show like a willingness or like an outward yearning the way that they wanted to promote like Chewbacama. Where are you? You want to come back? But yeah, I mean, it has been really crazy. And one thing you pointed out, Victor, is that like we do have platforms that are ready for

this as far as just like they are willing and ready to totally support these kind of videos and get them out there because it's important. But they don't have the users. Like you talk to the Periscope people. Right, yeah, Periscope, which is owned by Twitter, their CEO actually launched the platform because he was in Turkey in 2014-1 to be able to film protest in real-time.

And obviously, Twitter as a whole is heavily invested in activism and sort of supporting that kind of work. The ACLU also has a mobile app that you can use to document police interactions. But those tools are really useful and you see a lot of activists using them. Over the weekend in Baton Rouge,

DeRay McKesson was arrested And that was on Periscope, like being live streamed. So we're definitely seeing those tools being used sort of in tandem. But at the end of the day, Facebook has the numbers and has the scale. And even before, I guess this all happened, I was very struck just watching, like, normal people on Facebook Live. I just remember, like, they have this giant map. I think this is probably some, if you go on their website, you can see a giant map. I love the map.

The map is great. You just see all these random people who have never been live stream anything before in their lives. Just suddenly it's on their Facebook app and they see it's really easy to use. And they'll just, like, shoot whatever is around them. So it's definitely captured something. also with just like normal people understand intuitively how to engage with it. And that's sort of probably why you're seeing both really frivolous fun things and really terrible, powerful, important things at the same time. Yeah. Like this week, just watching social feeds has been

kind of crazy. And I know we've just talked about it a little bit, you know, anecdotally seeing your friends and family respond to something that you would, it's kind of surprising to see. I mean, my friends and family react to like the live, you know, a live cam on like the zoo or something. that's the most exciting thing that comes into my Facebook feed from most people. But this like struck a chord, like other things really haven't, these three incidents. Yeah, I think maybe, I mean, I guess just the starkness of having those things happen three days in a row, which sort of like compels more people to want to speak about it. And I also think maybe the fact that both the Alton and Staling and Falano-Castel videos sort of emerged

before there was a police narrative or before they were sort of like an authoritative, taken what had happened. The first thing you see is these black men dying basically on video. So that and then you just create a much more visceral immediate reaction. Maybe compared to some of the earlier incidents which involved a lot of confusion in the initial days. So I think that might be part of it. But also just interesting just watching like sort of everyone's feeling they have to take aside and people

sort of implying that if you won't say anything, if you won't write anything on your Facebook then you're like not supportive of the issues. It just seems like everyone, the more people that talk about it, the more people feel compelled to talk about it. So it's definitely like a snowball effect. Not about happening among your friends, but also I'm like celebrities and that kind of thing.

It was like the woke Olympics out there. Right. It seems like it. I identify with something and just like feeling this like, I can't even, you know, you don't blame people for feeling this like strange visceral need to talk about it. But it was like a heightened conversation like I haven't really seen with, you know, non-media people.

Twitter is kind of always like that. If our Twitter feeds are ridiculous. But Facebook isn't really like that generally. Yeah, no, I think ultimately it's probably a good thing. I think that so many people are sort of being put out of their comfort zones and being forced to confront what's happening or just talk about it in a more direct way. So, I mean, I think definitely people, like, feel scared for whatever reason

sort of wait into those waters at first. But then it seemed like a lot of people sort of dove in headfirst this week for a variety of reasons. It would be interesting to also see, I guess, now that this sort of wall has been breached on that social network, whether that changes the general sort of demeanor of it, does it become more like combative with Twitter or sort of generally combative or like a little bit less frivolous and Facebook? It would be interesting to see whether that becomes like a permanent change, the dynamics of the social network. Yeah, that would be very strange. I was going to ask if, listen, Kay, did you guys kind of notice family and friends getting involved in a way that you were just, you know, surprised by? I'm always a little disheartened by the amount of people that I'm Facebook friends with who have very different political beliefs than I do. But it's weird because I've been like trying to figure out whether I should engage with people who I vehemently disagree with about stuff like this on Facebook or not.

And so far I haven't really been doing that. Like I'm a lot more combative on Twitter. And in my Facebook world, I'm I tend to just not comment. and now I'm trying to figure out whether that's like a different form of your responsibility. Like I don't really know. Like do you guys fight with your Facebook friends about stuff like that? Or is that? Yeah.

I mean, I would just say that I'm like the fact that Facebook is just now sort of experiencing this nexus of issues and people are really sort of reacting in a visceral way to it. But the fact that only recently did we get like the reactions to post that are other than like a thumbs up is an example of like how strangely it's built for discussions like this. Yeah. You can't. I mean, I think the reason why for you Kate, it's so easy to maybe have a quick discussion on Twitter and then let it go is because those tweets disappeared on a timeline. But Facebook in a way, it's like a post comments are just sitting there. are like ready to be screenshot and also ready to be attacked by anyone who comes along and notices it.

So there is sort of a strange, like Facebook in itself, I think, was always originally created to have very casual friendly conversations. And now that we've been given like much heavier topics to discuss and it's becoming, you know, I mean, it's the biggest social network in the world. We have to have these discussions because that's where the majority of the people are. I think it's really just like the the wear is showing through and the fact that it's not designed necessarily for this is showing through. And this is all very relevant right now because I, what was it like? Is it two weeks ago? A few weeks ago, Facebook said, you know, posts from your

family and friends are going to be weighed higher against news sources. So places like the Washington Post and, you know, NPR, they're not, their posts are not going to show up over. your friends and family talking about things. So when your friends and family are the ones like Diamond Reynolds who are either streaming something newsworthy that's happening or getting, having thoughts about it or reposting it. So it's going to be a very different place because I think live is going to change all of this. Yeah, I don't know if they've already made that change, but I do know just sort of like being forced to read a lot of stuff about all this happened last week.

I was definitely more like sucked into my own Facebook and just like reading people's perspectives because everyone's like written a pretty direct opinion about racial relations in America in the last week on Facebook. People who had had no idea what their opinions were before. So I just think it's been very interesting. Like it's that we made Facebook to me at least something that's like actually more worth like looking through and sort of like seeing what everyone's saying about stuff. Even if it's like emotionally overwhelming, sometimes combative. Like it is like substantial and interesting and important, which is not a way I would characterize my Facebook feed on a typical day. Yeah, I think the post that I hated seeing the most was not even the people who were angry and disagreeing with who are like guns are great or something like that.

I think the people that bothered me the most for people who are posting things like, Facebook is so dark today. Like here's a picture of a puppy. Right. Did you guys see stuff like that? I saw all the time. Yeah. And I also saw people saying that Pokemon Go was a great way to take a break from all of the sadness. Someone, I actually saw a pretty great status update where someone was like, you know, July 2016 was the year that people retreated into their phones to escape the horrors of the world.

But it was more eloquent than that. And I thought it was a fairly astute observation of what's happening with Pokemon Go. But, no, I didn't actually say anyone and be like, Facebook's too heavy for me. just people who I vehemently disagreed with. Oh, God. Yeah, it is strange. I remember when Facebook Live first launched, Kate in particular, we talked a lot about like the violence is just, it's coming.

There's no, there's nothing to stop it. This is definitely going to be used to stream violence. And I don't think we really thought about it further than that because when I was thinking about it, I was thinking about videos like the one from like, last year where the two journalists were killed and the shooter shot it on his phone and uploaded it to Facebook. It wasn't streamed with Facebook Live. But that's the kind of thing I was thinking about. We were going to see a lot of things from the shooter's perspective and how that's always been something that social networks have a hard time dealing with because, you know, you don't want to be

giving a shooter or a violent person more attention, what they're seeking. So that's like where my brain first went. And now I'm thinking of all the people who are going to be using this as a news source because we don't have as many fair news sources as we used to. That's a problem. They're apparently not going to be promoted on the world's largest social network as much anymore. So, I don't know, it makes me really hope that there was some big meeting at Facebook last week where they all sat down and were like, okay, guys, we're a news source. How do we deal with it? I hope they had that too, although I will say, I don't really think that there's ever been a time where there has been a golden age of objective news.

I kind of think that's something that's more of a myth than a reality. Like there's always been yellow journalism. And while the internet has given polar, like extreme polarized viewpoints of easier platform, I don't necessarily see it as like citizen journalism and this like opening of who gets to speak is inherently bad. But I do think that it's very important that Facebook takes this role that it's given itself as like the gatekeepers of the news seriously. And it doesn't mean that they get to push really frivolous, you know, recipe videos on us. It means that they need to figure out a way to facilitate the conversations that we need to have. And I'm kind of worried about what they're going to do.

Sure. I mean, I feel like it's, you know, building the tracks as we're flying down. Yeah. So how can we actually build a social network that works for social justice? I know it's something you kind of talked about a little bit, Victor. Yeah, I think having more specific community guidelines would be really helpful so that people better understand the boundaries of what can and cannot be done and also understand what the company itself is willing to allow on this platform.

Like if Facebook, for instance, made their community guidelines more specific, that might make it easier to understand what happened with this video, or if they had transparency reports where they said, hey, X number of videos this month were taken down because they had like gore. They violated this specific point in our standards. That helped people better understand sort of like where they stand as an organization because obviously they have their own biases and agendas, but you can't really understand what those are without data about what they do.

Yeah, that's going to be really important because now they're sort of purporting that they're going to be able to discern the motivations of people who share these videos. Like, if you're doing it mockingly, they'll take it down, but if you're doing it earnestly, they'll leave it up. And my question is, like, how the hell is Facebook going to figure out your intention in a way that's consistent? You know, like, I just feel like it's good that they're being ambitious

about trying to do this in a smart way, but it's a really, really tall order. And I would like to know more about how they plan to do it. Yeah, I think when you think about Facebook's sort of, growing role as a news organization, like them hiring an ombudsman or a public advocate of some sort would make a lot of sense. Like if there was someone who could go to Facebook, whatever executive, and ask them directly, what is the technical glitch? People want to know about this and get a direct answer. In the same way, when a confusing New York Times story emerges, Margaret Sullivan or the new

ombudsman will go to the editors and talk about it. That would be a great thing for the platform to have, and I think it would make people more trusting of it. The people, the experts I'll talk to for that story. We're talking about how trust is a really big part of creating a platform that's good for social activism. So if there's like an understanding that when things go wrong, I will have some sort of recourse in a somewhat democratic way. I think that would make people trust Facebook a lot more.

There definitely needs to be some sort of better oversight or overview happening that makes a lot of sense. I think Victor's idea for a public editor is really smart. And I also think, you know, when something like the accusations that Facebook was suppressing certain political views and trending topics came through, it conducted an internal investigation. And it's not easy to believe their internal investigations because so many journalists have caught Facebook in lies before.

So I think it would be awesome if they opened up themselves to independent investigations when allegations like that get pushed forth. And it would go a long way to viewing Facebook as a trustworthy news source. You know, it wanted to be the newspaper and it should do things that respected newspapers do, like have a public editor. Right. It all feels so much crazier to be having this conversation when I think back to the fact that, like, in 2004, Facebook was a semi-private social platform to post pictures of yourself.

getting super drunk in college. And now it's like a news changing force. And like the same, obviously Mark Zuckerberg is not a child anymore. But like there's got to be some fundamentals from the same kind of thinking that started this thing that are propelling it forward. And that's kind of crazy to think about. Maybe. I don't know.

I didn't start earlier this year. Zuck had this interview in like early 05. That's on YouTube where he's like at the first Facebook office. It looks like basically like a college dorm. They have a keg and stuff. I love that. And he's like wearing like basketball shorts and flip flops drinking a solo cup, drinking out of a solo cup.

And the interview asks him like, what does he want Facebook to be? And he's like, you know, I think just like for the college kids is like really good for us. Just like focusing on this one aspect. So I don't know when his world beating ambitions grew out of that. But it's interesting to see that like he at one point thought that he wanted to make a really good site for college kids basically. Yeah.

It's just crazy how fast that really did happen. What is he like? He's 32. So pretty quick. Any other thoughts on like how Facebook Live is going to become this citizen journalism tool and how we're going to deal with, you know, this becoming a platform for discussions on things like guns and violence and police violence? I think the thing that really spoke to me when I watched the Diamond Reynolds video was that she was really ready for that moment. Like strangely because we've we've spent. I mean, it's depressing that she was ready for that moment, but because we've spent so much time on our devices and we are trained to narrate our lives and we know how to sort of speak to people through our technology, she was doing something that I was astounded by, which is like calmly narrating one of the most horrific things that could possibly happen to her.

And just the emotion and the rawness of it, I think, is what made the video so effective. And I mean, I think to your point that we all sort of grew up with Facebook and maybe it started as like a place for college kids and now is maybe a vehicle for social change. We also sort of developed our own skills during that period of time where we can articulate ourselves better than we ever expected. and really express like something that CNN is not going to show. Like she also had a post like a post rally that she streamed on Facebook Live. And I mean, it was just heartbreaking to watch. It was it was overwhelming. And I think just being able to see those moments completely unedited has been really, really eye-opening in this experience.

Yeah, I guess bottom line is people know how to use this tool. We're learning more and more people know how to use this tool, whether it's just, you know, to stream yourself doing absolutely nothing or to stream something like this where you're capturing police violence. That's important. And man, I hope Facebook is prepared to deal with a lot of it. Okay, well, thank you guys for joining me. This was really, really awesome. That's all we got for today's special edition of the ringer tech pod. You can check out Victor's piece is Facebook a safe place for social activism and Kate's called Facebook Lives Identity Crisis at the ringer.com. And Alyssa also has a

a great pace on Facebook Live and it's about churches who are live streaming services. Obviously not quite as dark as a lot of the other stuff we talked about today, but it's still really interesting to read about how some people are using the service. I'm Molly McHugh and thanks for joining me today, guys. Bye. Thanks for having me. Thanks, Molly.