In YouTube’s case, the company was so overwhelmed with uploads it eliminated human review for any videos flagged by its algorithms that had to do with the shooting, knowing it might take down legitimate or unrelated videos by mistake. Facebook had trouble removing all videos because people uploaded different versions of the original - for example, videos of the original recorded off a separate screen, or watermarked - that didn’t fully match. But the technology isn’t foolproof, as we learned this past week.
From there, people started uploading versions of the shooting video back to Facebook and YouTube, and the tech platforms simply couldn’t keep up with the speed or volume.įacebook has technology that can match video content to an original for quicker automatic removal. While the original video reached only around 4,000 people, according to Facebook, it was online long enough for copies to start spreading to other internet forums, like the messaging forum 8chan. In a statement, a Google spokesperson said the video uploads were “unprecedented both in scale and speed, at times as fast as a new upload every second.” YouTube’s head of product told the Washington Post, “Every time a tragedy like this happens we learn something new, and in this case it was the unprecedented volume. In the first 24 hours we removed 1.5 million videos of the attack globally, of which over 1.2 million were blocked at upload.- Facebook Newsroom March 17, 2019Īt YouTube, the situation wasn’t any better. In just 24 hours, Facebook and Instagram users tried to upload video of the shooting 1.5 million times. The problem is the 20 percent of videos that got through the net totaled some 300,000. Facebook said its technology was able to detect and block 80 percent of the videos people uploaded of the shooting. The New Zealand shooting, which left at least 50 people dead, served as a horrendous reminder that Facebook’s scale - and YouTube’s and Twitter’s - are a serious problem. Suddenly that Super Bowl-size audience had access to something Facebook didn’t want them to see, and the company couldn’t take down fast enough the more than 1 million copies of the video uploaded by users in the next 24 hours. Adding tens of millions of people to your app every quarter is a tremendous story to tell investors, advertisers, and media companies.īut when a gunman opened fire at a New Zealand mosque late last week, broadcasting video of the shooting live on Facebook for anyone to see, the platform’s enormous size became a complete and total liability. Having more than 2 billion monthly users is great for business.
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has a phrase she likes to use on company earnings calls as a way to pitch Facebook’s business: Advertisers, Sandberg says, can reach a Super Bowl-size audience any day of the year.įor years, Facebook’s size and scale have been considered a real positive.
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