Facebook Denied User’s Claim On Reporting The New Zealand Mass Shooting Video

On Friday, Facebook offered more details on its response to the footage of the mass shooting that killed 50 people and left 50 injured in New Zealand.

During the attack, a video was live streamed on Facebook through a body-mounted camera attached to the gunman.

On Monday, in a blog post, Facebook said the video had less than 200 views during its broadcast. The footage was viewed 4000 times in total before it was taken down.

Despite its claim, people are still having doubts about these numbers. The viewing figures of the platform are currently the center of a lawsuit accusing the social network of boosting its viewing figures to lure advertisers.

Facebook claimed that while the video was live, no one reported it. The first report from user came 29 minutes after the broadcast started and 19 minutes after it ended.

However, a Right Wing Watch reporter called Jared Holt said he had reported the live stream during the attack. Holt then went on checking on Facebook and could not find his report.

In an interview with Business Insider, Holt said:

But for Facebook’s account, it claims that the video was removed "within minutes" after the New Zealand Police contacted the platforms.

Now, Facebook’s challenge is to not allow the video being re-uploaded.  According to the company, it has created a hash from the video to detect any unedited versions. It is also utilizing audio recognition to identify screen-recorded versions.

In the first 24 hours, 1.2 million videos were blocked at upload. However, 300,000 still made it through Facebook’s filters.

Besides Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, YouTube, and even Steam are struggling to prevent the spread of the shooting video.