UNBLOCKED

Video of a Livestreamed Murder Spread on Facebook for Over a Day

Meta took down the video and made a digital fingerprint of the footage to track and eliminate duplicates. But at least 10 videos still circulated for 24 hours.

Facebook and its parent company, Meta, attempted to block a widely circulated livestreamed video of a gruesome murder in Louisiana—but the footage was still making the rounds on the platform a day later. Police in Baton Rouge announced Wednesday that Earl Lee Johnson Jr. was arrested for violently stabbing Janice David to death in a car during broad daylight. Johnson, who later told investigators he was high on meth and heroin at the time, allegedly streamed the attack on Instagram for at least 15 minutes, The Advocate reports. A Meta spokeswoman, Stephanie Otway, reported that the company took down the video from its platforms after it was reported by a social media user and made a digital fingerprint of the footage to track and eliminate duplicates. Despite those efforts, at least 10 duplicates continued to circulate online for at least a full day after Johnson was arrested. One video was reportedly viewed 56,000 times and shared 2,300 times. The Advocate reports that Otway did not respond when asked how many times the video had been reported.