Police in Thailand is looking to speed up process of taking down “inappropriate online content” after a man broadcast himself killing his 11-month-old daughter in a live video on Facebook.
The two videos show Wuttisan Wongtalay hanging his daughter from a building on the southern Thai island of Phuket before he turned off the camera and killed himself. The videos were available for nearly 24 hours and garnered over half a million views before it was taken down.
The delay in taking down the video was alluded to the many layers of request for take down, from the police request following to Ministry of Digital Economy before the ministry finally contacted Facebook for the videos to be taken down nearly a day after they had been uploaded. The incident has since sparked outrage and questions to how Facebook’s reporting system works and how violent content can be flagged faster.
“In the future we will discuss inappropriate online content, whether on Facebook or YouTube or Instagram, and how we can speed up taking this content down,” deputy national police spokesman Kissana Phatanacharoen told reporters.
It’s not clear exactly what actions will be taken. Kissana blamed the delay partly on the time difference between the United States, where Facebook is headquartered, and Thailand.
He said Thai police currently have two ways of being alerted about disturbing content: monitoring by a dedicated technology crime suppression division or a tip-off from the public using police hotlines.
The Thailand case isn’t the first – in face there has been a stream of violent crimes that have been broadcasted through Facebook Live. This came not long after a posting of the fatal shooting of a man in Cleveland, Ohio was visible for two hours before being taken down.
Facebook said it was reviewing how it monitored violent footage and other objectionable material after .
A cousin of the baby’s mother told Reuters the family was too traumatized to think about removing the video from Facebook. “We didn’t think about removing the video because all we wanted to do at the time was find them [the father and baby] first,” said Suksan Buachanit.
Thailand’s digital ministry said it would review how it handles similar cases in the future. “We will take this as a lesson and come up with a solution … but this is not something we can do immediately,” ministry spokesman Somsak Khaosuwan told Reuters.
Thailand’s health ministry said it records on average 1-2 suicide videos a month that are posted to social media, including YouTube and Facebook. Thailand has a technology crime suppression police division which handles inappropriate content and computer crimes that are insulting to the monarchy.
