“We have certain companies that have built systems that have inadvertently served the cause of violent hatred around the world,” Vaidhyanathan said.įacebook and YouTube were designed to share pictures of babies, puppies and other wholesome things, he said, “but they were expanded at such a scale and built with no safeguards such that they were easy to hijack by the worst elements of humanity.” If Facebook wanted to monitor every livestream to prevent disturbing content from making it out in the first place, “they would have to hire millions of people,” something it’s not willing to do, said Vaidhyanathan, who teaches media studies at the University of Virginia. In 2017 it said it would hire 3,000 people to review videos and other posts, on top of the 4,500 people Facebook already tasks with identifying criminal and other questionable material for removal.īut that’s just a drop in the bucket of what is needed to police the social media platform, said Siva Vaidhyanathan, author of “Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy.”

The video’s spread underscores the challenge for Facebook even after stepping up efforts to keep inappropriate and violent content off its platform.