I watched a man die on Facebook last week.
At around 9 p.m. July 6, Philando Castile — an African-American man — his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, and her 4-year-old daughter were driving along Larpenteur Avenue in Falcon Heights, Minn., when police officer Jeronimo Yanez stopped their car because Castile fit the description of a robbery suspect. During the stop, Castile, reportedly told Yanez he was carrying a licensed firearm. Moments later Yanez shot Castile four times, killing him.
At this point, Reynolds took out her smartphone, logged into Facebook and began streaming the incident live. The 10-minute video is a gut-wrenching look at a human tragedy unfolding in real time.
Castile, covered in blood, writhes and moans as he bleeds out.
Reynolds sobs in disbelief.
“Please, Jesus, don’t tell me that he’s gone. Please don’t tell me he’s gone,” she says. “Please don’t tell me, officer, that you just did this to him. You shot four bullets into him, sir. He was just getting his license and registration, sir.”
Minutes later, Reynolds briefly composes herself as she recounts what transpired as she sits handcuffed in the back seat of a police cruiser. Eventually, she breaks down once again and screams in grief.
Reynolds’ daughter comforts her mother. “It’s OK, Mommy,” she says. “I’m right here with you.”
(Watch the entire graphic video here: bit.ly/castile-vid).
In the following hours, the video went viral and was viewed more than 1 million times before Facebook briefly removed and reposted it with a graphic content warning. It has since been viewed 5.7 million times.
A day earlier in Baton Rouge, La., Alton Sterling — another African-American man — was shot to death by police outside a convenience store after officers responded to a call that Sterling had threatened someone with a firearm. During an altercation with police, they discovered a gun in Sterling’s pants pocket; whether or not he was reaching for it is unclear. Witnesses captured this incident in two separate videos, which were posted to social media where they have several million views (bit.ly/sterling-vid1, bit.ly/sterling-vid2).
On July 8, in Dallas, Texas, a sniper opened fire on police officers, killing five, during a peaceful demonstration protesting the deaths of Castile and Sterling. Parts of that incident were also broadcast live on social media (bit.ly/dallas-vid).
This spring when Facebook announced the launch of Facebook Live — the social media platform’s live-streaming video feature — it seemed like an obvious progression for a company which has always been about sharing life moments and connecting people around the world. Early viral Facebook Live moments were light-hearted proofs of concept; BuzzFeed’s exploding watermelon (bit.ly/bf-melon) and the Chewbacca Mom (bit.ly/chewey-mom) demonstrated the technology while only providing a glimpse of its true potential.
Live-streaming video apps are nothing new. Meerkat and Periscope have both been around for more than a year (an eternity in the tech world). Both received some buzz, but failed to keep users’ attention. Unlike Facebook Live, neither app initially allowed users to permanently save and share videos, though Twitter now does.
The other difference is Facebook’s ubiquity. For many people, Facebook IS the internet; it’s the first thing they see in the morning and the last thing they see at night (as well as a couple dozen times throughout the day). By integrating Facebook Live directly into its platform, Facebook brought live video into the mainstream. You don’t have to download and learn a new app. Facebook Live delivered live video to wherever people are, dropping it into their feed for them to use or watch at will.
For the Facebook friends of Diamond Reynolds on the evening of July 6, that meant watching Philando Castile die.
All this may have been more than Facebook had bargained for when they launched Facebook Live, but I’m sure it was not unexpected. Periscope and Meerkat have both struggled to keep inappropriate and illegal content off its platforms. Some people will inevitably misuse technology and companies must address it accordingly.
The death of Castile presented a dilemma. What was Facebook’s responsibility in this situation? Yes, the content was graphic, but it was also important. It was the latest example of police violence against African-Americans — an example that occurred within 24 hours of the previous example. To remove it would arguably make Facebook complicit in the denial that such a crisis exists.
By allowing the video, Facebook has set a powerful precedent. While I don’t foresee a slippery slope by which increasingly violent or shocking content will flood Facebook like something out of “A Clockwork Orange,” I do think we will see more videos like Castile’s. More to the point, I think we should see them.
In the days since Sterling and Castile’s deaths, Facebook Live has been used by citizens and journalists to document the numerous resulting demonstrations, which have occurred around the country, as well as monitor police activity and interactions with demonstrators. A video filmed by Huffington Post crime reporter David Lorh, in which a police officer draws an automatic rifle at a crowd of demonstrators, offers tense firsthand look at one such demonstrations from the front lines (bit.ly/BRprotest-vid).
Yes, these videos are unpleasant, upsetting and even heartbreaking, but I believe they need to be seen. Fear, bigotry and a lack of empathy are plaguing our country right now. For many of us, myself included, it is far too easy to escape, to filter out the things that make us uncomfortable and remind us of the ugliness in the world we’d rather pretend don’t exist. It’s only through the arrogance of privilege that we can deny the existence of racial injustice in this country.
In a speech last week mourning the deaths of Sterling, Castile and the five Dallas police officers, President Obama said the following:
“… (I)t’s been said, sunshine is the best disinfectant. By seeing it, by people feeling a sense of urgency about it, by the larger American community realizing that, gosh, maybe this is a problem … So, it hurts, but if we don’t diagnose this we can’t fix it.”
Live-streaming video gives us the power to confront this problem. It closes the gap between audience and subject. It strips away the filters. It creates accountability. It is immediate. It is real.
