A man filming the events unfolding during this week’s shooting in Dallas. (Image Credit: Laura Buckman / Getty Images)
This past week Facebook Live has served as a means of distributing a disturbing but necessary video to the general public, which highlighted fatal and potentially criminal police behavior in the US. The death of Philando Castle, a black man shot dead by a police officer who had reportedly pulled him over in order to check his broken tail-light, has created a national debate in regards to the frequently speculated existence of internal racial bias harbored by law enforcement in the United States.
A video of the aftermath of his death was broadcast via Facebook Live by Castle’s girlfriend, Lavish Reynolds, with over 300,000 viewers having watched it at the time of this writing. It depicts here explaining the situation, being completely complicit in the officer’s demands while he continues to point his gun in the direction of her bloodied boyfriend, who is shown dying next to her. It is later revealed that her 4-year-old daughter had been in the vehicle at the time of the shooting and, when backup police arrive, she is handcuffed and placed in the back of a police vehicle. She informs the viewers that Philando had warned the officer that he had a licensed firearm on his person, but that the officer had demanded his present a form of ID. When Philando reached into his pocket in a non-threatening manner, Reynolds said that the officer had shot him four times, causing wounds that eventually led to his death. The officer was shown failing to give Philando medical attention after the shooting, instead continuing to point his gun in his direction while he bled out in his car.
Facebook Live, which allows users to broadcast footage to the social network as it happens, is important in that it allows such recordings to instantly make their way onto the site, circumventing the issue of a mobile user having to store their video on their phone and then upload it to Facebook at a later date. It allows viewers to see the footage in real-time, as it happened, eradicating the concern that their smartphone may be confiscated or destroyed, thus leading to their footage being deleted. However, using the social network in order to broadcast these videos ultimately allows Facebook to turn a profit, a morally questionable dilemma to say the least.
A woman records a police officer using her smartphone in Dallas. (Image Credit: Laura Buckman / Getty Images)
Facebook isn’t responsible for the videos that are hosted on its site, but thanks to the huge number of views the Philando Castle shooting has received, they have inevitably made money on it. While Facebook Live isn’t yet monetized, with the company still looking for ways to profit on the feature, the footage has since been re-uploaded an innumerable amount of times, with each of these videos seeing Facebook earn money with each view.
Facebook video monetization differs from YouTube in that instead of playing ads during a video, the site instead makes money by playing a sponsored video after each view. This system hasn’t been implemented in Facebook Live, but is utilized by the company’s traditional video player, which is where Facebook would have financially capitalized on the Philando Castle video. This largely goes unnoticed, though, either as a result of Facebook’s source of monetization not being as obvious as YouTube’s, or because Facebook users are less likely to police pages that are seeking to turn a profit under such heinous circumstances.
Though YouTube has a notably lackadaisical approach when it comes to keeping an eye on the content its users upload to the site, the community is generally quick to call out practices committed by YouTube channels that they feel are unethical. Facebook doesn’t have that, meaning that a variety of pages can reupload the footage of the Philando Castle shooting and both the page – and by extension Facebook – can essentially earn a substantial amount of money by way of a video of a man’s death.
If Facebook Live is going to continue to be a major tool in tragic circumstances such as these, then it seems like it will be only a matter of time before more people begin noticing that, when all is said and done, Facebook is turning a profit in its role as a platform for such footage to be distributed. Whether or not the majority are okay with this remains to be seen, but it’s unquestionable that the site is currently occupying a morally dubious area that will likely lead to further criticism, and it could well impact upon Facebook’s final decision on how it should monetize these live-streamed videos. When one of the service’s most-viewed videos is of a black man being shot down to death by a police officer, it damn well should impact upon their decision, too.
