The murder video of two US journalists Alison Parker and Adam Ward went viral after gunman Vester Flanagan posted his first-hand shocking video on his personal social accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Within the first 24 hours that the video was uploaded on Flanagan’s personal social accounts, over 17,000 tweets about ‘auto-play’ were posted by people who accidentally were ‘forced’ to watch the shocking video that automatically played on their Facebook and Twitter feed.
Parliamentary Internet, Communications and Technology Forum (Pictfor) co-chair Matt Warman said for BBC that ‘both social media sites should automatically sift for such content.’ “Facebook, Google, Microsoft and others have already worked together with government and regulators to prevent people being exposed to illegal, extremist content, using both automatic and manual techniques to identify footage. Social media, just like traditional media, should consider how shocking other content can be, and make sure consumers are warned appropriately," said Warman.
"For victims, friends and families it's important to make sure that, in an online world without a watershed, users know what they're about to see and have a reasonable opportunity to stop it. [...] Many people who are ordinarily happy that videos play will have seen shocking footage by accident, without warning of its graphic nature,” he added.
Even though the Virginia shooting was caught live on TV, the murder video that was auto-played on thousands of users’ feed, a first-hand video shot by the gunman himself, made people watch the murder of the two US journalists from different angles. Consequently, thousands of people started complaining about Facebook and Twitter’s auto-play feature putting Facebook and Twitter in a difficult position. Flanagan’s social accounts were shortly removed after people started flagging the content but the damage was already done to those unfortunate who already saw the video that was re-twitted and shared by other users’ accounts.
According to BBC, in order to ‘make videos easier to use on its platforms,’ Twitter started to use the auto-play feature in June of this year. “It used to be that watching a video on Twitter required several taps. So when something was unfolding in real time... that extra effort meant you could miss something that you care about.” Facebook has started testing the feature around 2 years ago and decided to finally add it on its platform in the end of 2013 with the goal to increase the number of videos watched through its platforms. “In just one year, the number of video posts per person has increased 75% globally,” Facebook said in January 2015.
If you want to prevent this happening to you, you have the choice to deactivate the auto-play feature. All you have to do is go to Facebook settings, click ‘videos’ and then turn off the auto-play option. For Twiter, you have to go to settings and un-tick the ‘Video auto-play’ option under your ‘Account’ tab.
(Picture Source: gazettereview.com)