Jesse Jackson calling for a Facebook Live moratorium
When Robert Godwin was shot and killed on Easter as he walked home from dinner with family, it shocked the nation. The fact that the killing was random only served to unsettle people even more. The way that the killing was uploaded to Facebook Live and stayed up for hours just added to the disturbing nature of the crime.
Now, Rev. Jesse Jackson and other officials in the Chicago area are asking Facebook to drop its live function for 30 days while they figure out a way for these types of videos to be flagged and removed from view instantly.
Specifically, it’s Cook County Commissioner Richard Boykin, Father Michael Pfleger, a Chicago activist and Jackson who are asking for this feature to be added. They feel that the 30-day moratorium would give Facebook the time they need to develop and implement such a feature.
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The pause on the live button would be like “a time out” in order to help Facebook learn how to stop people from using it “as a platform to release their anger, their fears and their foolishness,” Jackson told USA TODAY.
“The moratorium is … an opportunity for tech companies, elected officials, law enforcement, community-based organizations and civil rights advocates and others,” he went on.
“We have asked him [Zukerberg] to put an emergency button, a 911-type button to get videos to the front of the line to make sure they don’t stay up for several hours,” Boykin said to ABC7.
Facebook has not released a comment on the request.
