Coursework Assignment 1: Facebook Live Killings

Facebook’s Legal & Ethical Responsibility in Policing Depraved Videos
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Does Facebook have a legal or ethical duty to rescue a crime victim?
In matters legal, the existing legal framework does not compel Facebook and other social media platforms to be answerable for the content posted on their sites by their users. Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act notes that providers of “interactive computer service[s]” are not the speakers or publishers of information provided by others. The law has not caught up with the technological advancements to compel social media giants to be accountable for their users’ content CITATION Cit17 \l 1033 (Citron & Wittes, 2017). Additionally, Facebook argues that it is a publisher and therefore its decisions should be protected by the first amendment. Sonal Mehta, a lawyer for Facebook drew a comparison of Facebook’s role as a publisher and likened it to traditional media publishing industry protections claiming that ‘The publisher discretion is a free speech right irrespective of what technological means is used. A newspaper has a publisher function whether they are doing it on their website, in a printed copy or through the news alerts’ CITATION Lev18 \l 1033 (Levin, 2018). These laws protect Facebook from being answerable for posts that are meant to rescue a crime victim and therefore under the existing legal framework, Facebook is not legally obligated to rescue crime victims.
Ethically, Facebook is obligated to help crime victims as in the case of Steve Stephens who broadcasted live his crime. Facebook has been making efforts to address this problem though it is difficult to police. It has instituted features like report this content. It also has other suicide prevention tools that users or viewers can use to reach out to a friend in need and tips on what they can do. Though these efforts have not comprehensively addressed the problem, they have helped save a life in several instances. In 2013, a California girl named Jackie Rosas alerted authorities of a girl who intended to commit suicide in new jersey. She helped mobilize a team that tracked the girl’s identity and eventually found her in time after she had swallowed prescription pills CITATION Sus13 \l 1033 (Scutti, 2013). Hence the reporting measures instituted by Facebook help involve the community to help police against such happenings. It is nearly impossible for Facebook to review all the content which is posted on its platform by the minute to ascertain which ones should be pulled down on suspicion that they were intended for committing a crime. Additionally, such a decision is highly subjective and it could also open a pandora's box of other issues on the usability of the platform. Some people have suggested that AI to be used to address this problem and currently it is being used to avoid revenge porn publishing on the social media giant CITATION Sar17 \l 1033 (Salinas, 2017). However, it is not yet effective and Facebook is still trying to train its AI systems to help police the platform better. Thus, Facebook has an ethical obligation to rescue crime victims but seemingly the technol...