Transmitting violence': Livestream video's dark side

SAN FRANCISCO: A gunman's livestream of a mass killing in New York state was taken down in a matter of minutes-- but even that was not fast enough to prevent those images from becoming effectively impossible to erase from the internet.

Posting horrific clips like those is not barred by US speech laws, experts told AFP, so the decision on whether to keep them online is largely left up to individual tech companies.

But even the sites that want them taken down say they struggle to do so, since once unleashed onto the internet, the videos can be edited and shared again and again.

In the case of the Buffalo shooting that killed 10 African Americans at a grocery store on Saturday, it's particularly chilling because writings attributed to the suspect noted he was in part inspired by another mass shooter's livestream.

"If (companies) are going to commit to live streaming, you are committed to transmitting a certain number of rapes, murders, suicides and other types of crimes," said Mary Anne Franks, a professor at University of Miami school of law.

"That's just what comes with that territory," she added.

The live feed of the killing on Amazon's Twitch platform was pulled down within two minutes, the company said - far quicker than the 17 minutes New Zealand mosque shooter Brenton Tarrant's attack was streamed on Facebook in 2019.

Social media firms say they fight hard to keep these types of images off their platforms, with automated and manual efforts by workers to squelch video of the Buffalo attack and similar horrors.

But the images can be edited, titles or names changed and then re-posted on sites that are happy to have the traffic that others have decided is beyond their limit.

One tweet on Wednesday cited the Buffalo suspect's name, 18-year-old Payton Gendron, and included a link to a video about the attack, but did not show the killing.

However, once on the site viewers were offered additional videos, including one showing over 90 seconds of the attack and which said it had nearly 1,800 views since Sunday.

Websites don't have to allow this type of video but American law is mostly silent on prohibiting them.

"There is nothing illegal in the US about posting a video of the (Buffalo) livestream. It doesn't really fall into a category of speech that is unprotected," said Ari Cohn, who is free speech counsel at think tank TechFreedom.