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| Jiranuch Trirat, second from left, holding the body of her 11-month-old daughter at a hospital in Phuket, Thailand, on Tuesday. The daughter’s death was broadcast on Facebook. |
The four-minute recording of the man, Wuttisan Wongtalay, 20, hanging the girl from a building on the resort island of Phuket spread quickly, with the mother of the child ultimately seeing the video, according to the Thai police. It was online for about 20 hours.
The gruesome case is the latest in a string of violent crimes that have been broadcast over Facebook to a wide audience, sometimes of millions. The killing raised debate in Thailand and is likely to bring further pressure on Facebook, which has struggled to manage the huge number of broadcasts on its site.
In an emailed statement, a Facebook spokesman called the case “appalling,” adding, “There is absolutely no place for content of this kind on Facebook, and it has now been removed.”
In Thailand, there was broad anger over the crime, which the police said appeared to have been driven by jealousy. Mr. Wongtalay had fought with his wife the night before the killing after searching her phone and accusing her of having another relationship.
The video showed Mr. Wongtalay fixing a noose around his daughter’s neck and then dropping her off the side of a building. After a burst of crying, he climbed over the side to retrieve her body. His subsequent suicide was not shown online.
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A second video of the police taking both of the bodies down that night remained on Facebook.
Facebook has been under scrutiny for what role it should play in overseeing the billions of posts and videos that are uploaded on its site each day. Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, addressed the issue at a company conference this month in response to a case in which a man in Cleveland posted a video of himself shooting and killing a 74-year-old stranger.
The deaths in Thailand highlight the global scope of the problem. As Facebook has pushed to further ensconce itself in the lives of its users, it has urged them to share their most intimate experiences on its site. That has resulted in a flood of posts and videos in different languages, cultural contexts and time zones across the world. Accidents and crimes have also occasionally shown up, and patrolling that has proved difficult.
Last summer, an Italian wing-suit base jumper streamed his own death in an accident, while in January, three men in Sweden were arrested and accused of raping a woman and broadcasting it to a private Facebook group. In February, two journalists were fatally shot during a Facebook Live broadcast in the Dominican Republic.
Facebook has said it is working on using artificial intelligence and a better reporting system to ensure that such content can be flagged faster. The company has also introduced tools to help with suicide prevention and assigned review teams to deal with reports that come in.
Still, as the Thailand case showed, some posts can slip by.
After major news outlets in Thailand broadcast the videos, prompting viewer complaints, the country’s News Broadcasting Council issued a statement instructing the news media not to run the clips because it could lead to copycat violence.
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