Less than two weeks after the incident, Facebook is still feeling the heat after a man uploaded a video of himself murdering an elderly shopper and spoke about it on Facebook Live. Now, the livestreaming section of the social media site has been used to broadcast another atrocity: a Thai man killing his 11-month-old daughter.
20-year-old Wuttisan Wongtalay filmed himself tying a rope to daughter Natalie's neck before dropping her from the rooftop of a deserted building in the seaside town of Phuket, according to Reuters.
The two clips remained on the site for around 24 hours, before being taken down at around 5 p.m. Bangkok time yesterday. The first video had been viewed 112,000 times, while the second had 258,000 views. Both clips were also uploaded to YouTube, but the site took them down within 15 minutes of being notified, writes The Guardian.
"This is an appalling incident and our hearts go out to the family of the victim," a Singapore-based Facebook spokesman said in an email. "There is absolutely no place for content of this kind on Facebook and it has now been removed."
Wongtalay committed suicide after murdering his daughter, though it wasn't broadcast. Police found his body next to Natalie. Thai officers say he was paranoid about "his wife leaving him and not loving him." Jiranuch Triratana, who had lived with Wongtalay for over a year, said their relationship had gone well at first, but he started to become violent and sometimes hit her 5-year-old son from an earlier marriage.
Thailand's ministry of digital economy contacted Facebook and asked it to remove the videos following a request from police.
Ministry spokesman Somsak Khaosuwan said: "We will not be able to press charges against Facebook, because Facebook is the service provider and they acted according to their protocol when we sent our request. They co-operated very well."
Coming so soon after Steve Stevens incident has led local police to question whether this was a copycat act. "It could be influenced by behavior from abroad, most recently in Cleveland," said deputy police spokesperson Kissana Phathanacharoen.
The incident comes just after Mark Zuckerberg promised to improve Facebook's reporting process during the F8 developer conference. The CEO said he had "a lot of work to do" after it was discovered the Stevens clip remained up for two hours despite notifications from users.