The suspect in a shooting that left a TV reporter and cameraman dead while they were doing a live news report in Franklin County, Virginia, Wednesday morning has shot himself on I-66, police tell WDBJ-7 in Roanoke. Video footage from the live broadcast that comes from Ward’s camera, which drops to the floor after he’s been shot, is also still accessible online despite requests from many users that the video not get shared.
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In the videos, we see the profile of Alison who is interviewing Vicki Garder, the head of the Smith Mountain Lake Chamber of Commerce, about tourism in Virginia.
Nearly 17,000 tweets mentioning autoplay were posted within 24 hours. Facebook prohibits celebration and commission of criminal activities on the platform.
In the name of self-care and not unwillingly subjecting yourself to disturbing and damaging videos like these, here’s how you can turn auto-play off in Twitter and Facebook. Those warnings would appear to any users who asked to be informed of sensitive content in their settings. Twitter has taken down Williams’ account completely. From there, Auto-play should be chosen, then “Never Play Videos Automatically”.
That means many users were unexpectedly viewing a video of the murders right in their newsfeeds.
Facebook started testing the feature in September 2013 and rolled it out three months later.
Where newscasts have limited time and newspapers limited space, Twitter – where we can all afford e-ink by the barrel – has to make an active decision to strike down content as beyond the pale. And then the shots rang out and viewers could clearly see the results. Many have expressed disgust at seeing the shooting appear in their timelines, and some disabled the auto-play feature on their devices. “And none of them could be corroborated by anyone”, he said. If you’re using the Twitter app on i0s, you find the Video autoplay by checking the gear icon then selecting Settings.
Twiter users on desktop must go to their settings and untick the “Video autoplay” option under the “Account” tab. Turning autoplay back on is simply a matter of selecting On.
Last year, a video that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria released showing the beheading of U.S. journalist James Foley spread through social media, even though video-sharing sites tried to stop it from going viral.
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The autoplaying video footage was posted immediately after the murder of the two media crew.
