Live-Streamed Shootings Pose 'Tremendous Challenge' for Stopping Them

Preventing shootings from being live-streamed could help dissuade future violence, but stopping the information from being broadcast presents a "tremendous challenge" for social media companies.

At least three shootings in the last few months were live-streamed, broadcasting the suspect's violent actions across social media platforms. Experts told Newsweek that the appeal of live-streaming violent crimes might come from the world's obsession with social media, making it even more critical that social media companies quickly remove violent content.

Thaddeus Johnson, a senior fellow with the Council on Criminal Justice and former Memphis, Tennessee, police officer, said that the live-streaming ability on social media platforms "have provided everyone a platform to be a star" on the "world stage."

"People are drawn to the attention," said Johnson, who also serves as an assistant professor of Criminal Justice & Criminology at Georgia State University's Andrew Young School of Policy Studies. "Also, over the pandemic, we have become so disconnected from each other, as far as being face-to-face and our new world is social media."

Last week, 19-year-old Ezekiel Kelly was arrested after several shootings in Memphis that resulted in the deaths of at least four people. Kelly reportedly live-streamed one of the shootings and recordings of the incident were shared on social media.

Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy told Newsweek that social media companies taking down the content would be "helpful" toward preventing future shootings.

"If criminals get some sort of perverse pleasure in giving themself publicity, then we need to deprive them of that publicity, so that we deter future incidents like that," Mulroy added.

In May, Payton Gendron, 18, reportedly live-streamed a shooting at a Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo, New York, that left at least 10 dead. Last month, a man was arrested in San Francisco after allegedly live-streaming the killing of his father and stepmother.

David Carter, a criminal justice professor at Michigan State University, sees three possibilities for why people decide to live-stream crimes. They could be engaging in "copycat actions" or have fallen prey to the violent aspects of "gaming," or it could be a combination of the two.

"In my opinion the most likely, involves elements of the first two but is also 'violent exhibitionism' rooted in the evolving social media culture to 'show everything,'" Carter told Newsweek.

"We have seen people who are involved in a wide variety of crime post incriminating information—images and videos—on social media. It seems to be part of an evolution of culture where digital media and human behavior of all forms are integrated."

Following the most recent live-stream incident in Memphis, a spokesperson for Facebook told Newsweek that the company is working with law enforcement on the investigation and noted that the live-stream was taken down shortly after it was posted.

However, Johnson and Carter said it might be difficult for social media companies to stop all live-stream crimes.

"On the one hand, social media platforms have such massive amounts of information that is uploaded and shared every microsecond on a global basis. It is a tremendous challenge," Carter told Newsweek.

"And while the social media have increased their capability and effort of monitoring inappropriate and illegal content, perhaps their efforts could become even more robust. Even so, the ability to identify a live-streamed shooting event on a timely basis could remain to be challenging simply because of the volume of content."

Similarly, Johnson said that while social media platforms have a responsibility to prevent these incidents from being live-streamed, he noted that there are some difficulties to entirely stopping it "without pretty much cutting off complete access to these services."

"Is it the criminal justice system's job to police what goes on Twitter and other platforms? No," Johnson said. "It shows that we also all have a part in this."