Facebook Live was announced in August 2015 as a rival to Twitter’s Periscope live-streaming app. To begin with, access was restricted to VIPs like Serena Williams, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, Ricky Gervais and Michael Bublé. Journalists were next to gain access. Since then, all of Facebook’s two-billion-plus active users can live stream video to their hearts’ content.
Facebook Live, which had both been introduced within the past year, allowed the social network, lets you record video and broadcast it live to your friends, followers and even the world.
Whereas before, videos had to be recorded and uploaded to the app or website after the fact, Facebook Live makes it possible to share those moments as they’re happening.
When reading about Australia’s proposal to make Facebook and other tech platforms criminally liable for all the live video they publish. Cat Zakrzewski reports in the Washington Post:
Tools that democratize the sharing of information have followed a familiar pattern. First they are discovered by the early adopters, who use them generally for good; then they are discovered by criminals, who exploit them relentlessly. The Arab Spring, which was organized and promoted on social platforms, led directly to the events of 2016, as foreign states learned the platforms could be used to distort public discussions and interfere with elections.
From the start, live-streaming tools raised concerns about the frequency with which they are used to broadcast self-harm and other violent episodes. With the Christchurch shooting, we seem to have reached the end point of all newly democratized communications tools: its usage for unabashed terrorism.
In response, lawmakers around the world are now pressuring Facebook to err on the side of removing live streams, with the threat of stiff penalties if they don’t. And while I don’t expect the United States to consider any such legislation soon, the movement is picking up steam in Europe as well as in Oceania, and could lead to a further splintering of the internet.
Perhaps Facebook will hire the moderators and build the artificial intelligence necessary to adapt to these regulations — or perhaps it will simply make Facebook Live unavailable in those countries. If it does, it’s worth remembering that live broadcasts have been a powerful, pro-democracy tool in this country and others — and that regulations drafted in haste and passed in anger might cost us the kind of freedom that those House Democrats found so useful, and not that long ago.
