CEO and founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, addressed the Facebook killing that took place on Sunday. After sending his condolences to the family of the victim, Robert Godwin, 74, Zuckerberg promised to do better in weeding out violent content from his social network. The speech was given at the company's annual developer conference on Tuesday, amid growing concern over the increasing number of videos that show violent content to millions of users worldwide.
Zuckerberg mentioned Robert Godwin in his brief comments about the Cleveland murder. The senior citizen was shot dead by 37-year-old Steve Stephens who was filming the tragic incident at the time. Stephens later posted the video of the shooting on Facebook, then went live using the Live platform, and even went on to boast about the other killing he had done.
According to BBC, the Facebook killing can be viewed on the social media for more than two hours before the social network removed the clips despite having received complaints within the time frame. Mark Zuckerberg said in the speech that the company has a lot of work, and that they will keep doing all they can to prevent tragedies like the Cleveland murder from happening. He also gave a brief outline regarding the changes that have to be made to improve the social network's ability to weed out violent content.
Per Daily Mail, Zuckerberg plans to use its enormous amount of talent and sophisticated artificial intelligence to deal with the issues in the long-term. AI can solve the problem of delayed response to complaints by shortening the time required to flag and remove offensive and inappropriate material amidst the endless growth of user content. Zuckerberg also introduced new plans on using augmented reality in Facebook apps, such as Messenger.
To prevent anymore graphic Facebook killings to be shared, Mark Zuckerberg suggested to use digital objects in video and live streams viewed on mobile phones. It may still take a few years for the AI to be fully functional , but Zuckerberg gave assurance in an interview that they have already started testing its uses. Currently, human moderators receive violent content complaints on Facebook who then make a decision about whether to take down the content and disable the user's account.
