Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg expressed his condolences Tuesday to the family of the 74-year-old Cleveland man whose killer posted a video of the murder on the social media site.
“Our hearts go out to the family and friends of Robert Godwin Sr., and we have a lot of work — and we will keep doing all we can to prevent tragedies like this from happening,” he said.
Zuckerberg spoke publicly for the first time about the chilling video, which stayed up on Facebook for almost two hours before it was removed.
An hour after Steve Stephens shot himself to avoid capture, Zuckerberg told a crowd at the Facebook for Developers, or F8, conference in San Jose, Calif., that the site would rededicate itself to make its 1.86 billion-member community safer.
The killer posted two videos Sunday afternoon – one announcing his intention to commit murder and the other of him killing Godwin. He later went on Facebook Live to talk about the murder and other alleged crimes.
Facebook said it received its first report about the shooting video about 4 p.m., about two hours after Stephens started to upload his footage. His page was removed and his account disabled at 4:22 p.m.
Justin Osofsky, Facebook’s vice president of global operations, acknowledged in a blog post Monday that the site’s review process is flawed.
“As a result of this terrible series of events, we are reviewing our reporting flows to be sure people can report videos and other material that violates our standards as easily and quickly as possible,” Osofsky said.
People have used Facebook Live to broadcast more than 60 sensitive videos, including murders, suicides and a beating of a mentally disabled teen in Chicago, according to a tally by The Wall Street Journal.
A Facebook spokeswoman told the paper that the company is “in touch with law enforcement in emergencies when there are direct threats to physical safety.”