News reporter Alison Parker and photojournalist Adam Ward, employees of CBS, were shot dead in the midst of a live interview in August of 2015.
While it has nearly been five years since their unexpected and tragic demise, the videos of her incident are still prevalent across YouTube.
What’s more, it is now revealed that Parker’s father Andy had been repeatedly requesting the platform to take down the videos, but to no avail.
Though Andy has been flagging several videos, including the go-pro footage of Parker’s killing posted by the shooter, not all of them are being taken down by YouTube.
“We’re flagging the stuff. Nothing’s coming down. This is crazy. I cannot tolerate them profiting from my daughter’s murder, and that’s exactly what they do,” said Andy.
As of now, there isn’t any law that prohibits YouTube from posting horrific or disturbing content, because of which countless videos of people getting injured and dying are still existent on the platform.
So as to bring a new movement and disallow YouTube from hosting disturbing content online, Andy filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission on Thursday, saying that YouTube was violating its own ToS by hosting the content it prohibits.
Here’s what the aforementioned complaint, drafted by the CivilRights Clinic of the Georgetown University Law Center read: “Vidoes of Alison’s murder are just a drop in the bucket. There are countless other videos on YouTube depicting individuals’ moments of death, advancing hoaxes and inciting harassment of the families of murder victims, or otherwise violate YouTube’s Terms of Service.”
YouTube, on the other hand, said that it took down several such videos in the past, and continues to do so where it can.
“Our Community Guidelines are designed to protect the YouTube community, including those affected by tragedies. We specifically prohibit vidoes that aim to shock with violence, or accuse victims of public violent events of being part of a hoax. We rigoursly enforce these policies using a combination of machine learning technology and human review…We will continue to stay vigilant and improve our policy enforcement,” said YouTube in a statement.
Moreover, YouTube said that it removed more than one million videos in 2019 alone, saying that it only makes exceptions for content with educational, news, scientific, or artistic value.
Read the complaint here.
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