26 Apr 2013

Why the Facebook abuse video is no UK news report

There have been many developments across the day over the Facebook baby-battering video.

Last night Facebook took the video down. This after a month of taking no action at all, despite complaints from the public and from the internet watchdog Ceop, as detailed in my earlier blog “Let’s beat up a baby”.

Facebook’s position and argument has oscillated across the day, along with its actions. This afternoon it changed course and said the video would be going back up.

Facebook told us they had only taken it down because their were doubts about the identity of the original poster and it needed to be checked out. That done, the video was good to go.

They say it highlights serious abuse like a news report might do, of a child. They say the thousands of likes are in fact expressions of disgust, because the original poster asks people to express disgust at the video. Although Facebook terms and conditions prevent people putting up “gratuitous violence and graphic violence” this is not in fact gratuitous or graphic.

Still with me?

What they are trying to do is suggest in some ways this is like a news report.  If so, there are a lot of holes in the argument:

1.            UK television news would not broadcast several minutes of uninterrupted violence perpetrated against a baby.

2.            It would conceal the baby’s identity and that of the child who is looking on at the assault.

3.            The video would be contextualised in a TV bulletin with an introduction and background – not simply flung on anybody’s Facebook wall at random without their consent.

4.            Viewers would not simply be asked to like the video – whether that means “like it” or “like to condemn it”  – obviously the concept just doesn’t apply to TV.

5.            Facebook argues that the video cannot be shared for sadistic purposes – but that cannot be tested, and unedited video of considerable length is clearly open to precisely this kind of abuse.

6.            TV news is legally and wholly bound by Ofcom – an external and independent watchdog – this does not apply to Facebook. As the police watchdog Ceop pointed out, they could do nothing beyond ask Facebook to take the video down and Facebook declined.

7.            Facebook says a sustained, unedited assault upon a baby by an adult using fists, a pillow, a cigarette lighter and a mobile phone does not constitute “graphic violence” which is against its terms – but I don’t think anybody outside Facebook would concur with this proposition.

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