Dying to Stream: The Rise in Violent Acts Streamed Live Online
“内容为王”,” we like to repeat frequently amongst ourselves at trade shows and industry forums, even when those events are focused on the technical challenges of streaming video. 在现实中, 我们有多个国王, as content varies widely between video platform types: business-to-business (B2B), 企业对消费者(B2C), 以及社交媒体平台.
在社交媒体上, production quality is less important than content—those compelling, can’t-lookaway content snippets that we Share or Like dozens of times per day. When it was just cats and dancing babies, there was a clear line of demarcation between serious and silly, and social media was the campground in which silly often pitched its tent alongside inane, 可笑的, 和乏味的.
然而, a growing trend in social media live video streams—which started with the launch of Periscope and Vine, and has continued today into the mainstream with the Facebook Live platform—has parents and authorities worried: Live streaming platforms are being used to narrowcast selfharm or criminal activity against others.
最近的一次 《百家乐app下载》 article highlighted Facebook’s recent dilemma dealing with the dark side of live social media streaming, as numbers of livestream incidents—assaults, 枪击事件, 抢劫, 以及更多的自杀事件, sometimes as many as two per day—has been steadily rising on Facebook Live throughout 2016 and early 2017.
The problem actually started several years ago, not too long after Periscope hit the market with its 24-hour-archive option.
“What will happen is likely to be very shocking,” a teenage girl in the Egly suburb of Paris stated in an archived version of her mid-2016 Periscope live feed, retained after her suicide broadcast at the Egly train station.
Law enforcement tried to reach the girl’s location—she had been broadcasting for a number of minutes prior to the event, 甚至发布多个视频, including one in which she warned her audience, “If there are underage minors watching later on, 不会停留.” But police were too late to save the girl.
Is the answer to prescreen live streams, in the same way that broadcast television has a multisecond “dump” button so that they don’t run afoul of the Federal Communications Commission and its 体面的法律? 可能不是. But if the number of “shock videos” rises on social live streaming platforms, it’s likely that they’ll either be litigated or regulated. 或者两者都有, as some events have continued to be broadcast for hours after the companies were warned about the type of objectionable or illicit content being shown in a particular live stream.
推特, which is Periscope’s parent company, faced questions about a number of acts—from kidnapping to rape to suicide—that were being livestreamed via Periscope.
“维持一个健康的平台, explicit graphic content is not allowed,” noted 推特 spokesperson Ian Plunkett in May 2016, 在埃格利自杀事件之后. “Explicit graphic content includes ... 人身伤害. Periscope is not for content that is intended to incite violence, or includes a direct and specific threat of violence to others.”
The consolidation of 推特 and Periscope, a text broadcast tool merged with a live video streaming tool, means it’s even easier to draw an audience, clearing a streamlined path toward selfpromotion of selfharm live streams.
就我个人来讲, 作为一个父亲, the ease of live narrowcasting on social media platforms concerns me, if not for my own daughters then for friends of theirs. 青少年就是青少年, 当然, but in their yearning for attention, they sometimes make splitsecond choices they later regret.
As an industry, we shouldn’t help them make those choices in front of a global audience. Our best and brightest need to address ways to safeguard against this type of easy livestream access, yet the “we don’t allow that type of content” mantra is too often used by the major players. We all know that mantra is just a coveryour-ass approach that makes the overall industry appear as if it condones this type of unfiltered content. 这不行.
This article appears in the April/May 2017 issue of 流媒体杂志 “渴望流媒体”."