Facebook asked to block beheading videos

Facebook said it would delete video of beheadings that are being spread on the social network. While it previously refused to ban the clips, Facebook seems to have changed its position less than two hours after a member of its safety advisory board criticized the stance. Facebook initially said people had the right to depict the “world in which we live.” But it shifted its position, saying it will remove instances of video “that are reported to us while we evaluate our policy and approach to this type of content.” The warning came after a one-minute video of a woman being beheaded by a masked man was uploaded on the site. The chief executive of the US’ Family Online Safety Institute, one of the organizations that the social network consults for online safety policies, said that Facebook had “crossed a line” and had failed to consider long-term psychological damage on viewers of violent material.


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