Flangan, 41, a former employee of WDBJ in Virginia who went by the on-air name Bryce Williams, allegedly shot and killed reporter Allison Parker, 24, and cameraman Adam Ward 27, as they were conducting a live interview early this morning.
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While the Facebook account in question contained little more than the horrific video-captured in the above gallery the moment Facebook acted to suspend it-the Twitter account contained more confessional posts, some of which can be seen in the above gallery.
Twitter and Facebook both rolled out auto-play video features that automatically play video ads, Vines, and GIFs.
Flanagan sent a series of Tweets from his cell phone, which is how law enforcement says they were able to locate him. After today, Twitter should consider tweaking the feature, when users who were following the news that a pair of Virginia journalists had been shot to death on camera this morning were automatically prompted to watch the footage on their feeds.
Update: Vester L. Flanagan – also known as Bryce Williams – was pronounced dead, according to Fox News.
The first video is above, showing the approach.
Facebook’s community standards prohibit using the platform for criminal activity as well as to celebrate crimes committed. The ATFs Twitter account confirmed that a manhunt is now in motion. “YouTube has clear policies against videos containing gratuitous violence and we remove them when they are flagged”, a spokesperson said.
It is unclear if this was a police request or whether Twitter made the takedown decision.
But in Wednesday’s scenario, viewers didn’t even have to turn on the TV to see the shooting, because Williams’ social media posts quickly spread thanks to autoplay and an algorithm that prioritizes content based partially on interaction.
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Another user, Corrine Marquez, said via Facebook that it’s “shameful to recirculate the video”. In their place is this message: “This video has been removed as a violation of YouTube’s policy on shocking and disgusting content”.
