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Facebook imposes restrictions on live-streaming to prevent future abuse

Facebook imposes restrictions on live-streaming to prevent future abuse

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‘Our goal is to minimize risk of abuse on Live,’ Guy Rosen said

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Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

On Tuesday, Facebook announced that it would start restricting who can live stream video on the platform following the white nationalist terrorist attacks in New Zealand only a few months ago.

According to the blog post, Facebook said that it would be applying what it called a “one strike” policy to Facebook Live that would ban users who violate the platform’s community standards once from using the live-streaming service for set periods of time. This applies to content posted elsewhere on the website, not just streamed on Facebook Live. If a user were to post a harmful link on their profile, like content which leads to a terrorist website, they would be banned from live-streaming as well.

“Our goal is to minimize risk of abuse”

These new restrictions also apply to Facebook’s Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy that was introduced earlier this month and led to right-wing personalities like Paul Nehlen, Alex Jones, and Milo Yiannopoulos being banned from both Facebook and Instagram.

“Our goal is to minimize risk of abuse on Live while enabling people to use Live in a positive way every day,” Guy Rosen, Facebook’s vice president of integrity said in a blog post.

Rosen said that Facebook hopes to expand these restrictions to other parts of the platform in the future. Soon, these same users who violate Facebook’s Community Standards will be banned from creating ads as well.

The decision to impose restrictions on Facebook Live comes after a white nationalist terrorist entered mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand and live-streamed the attack on the platform. After the shootings, Facebook was hotly criticized for allowing the individual to stream and for not removing copies of the video at a fast enough pace.

“Following the horrific terrorist attacks in New Zealand, we’ve been reviewing what more we can do to limit our services from being used to cause harm or spread hate,” Rosen said.

Facebook also announced that it would be partnering with more researchers and universities to improve the platform’s “image and video analysis technology.” Rosen wrote that these partnerships are valued at around $7.5 million.