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Another day, another shooting on Facebook Live

NORFOLK (Virginia) — Less than a week after the troubling images of Philando Castile, bloodied by gunshots from a police officer, were broadcast on Facebook Live, another shooting has been streamed as it happened thanks to the popular feature. This time three men in Norfolk, Virginia, were badly wounded.

Screenshot of Mr T J Williams in the Facebook Live video. Photo: Facebook/TJ Willams

Screenshot of Mr T J Williams in the Facebook Live video. Photo: Facebook/TJ Willams

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NORFOLK (Virginia) — Less than a week after the troubling images of Philando Castile, bloodied by gunshots from a police officer, were broadcast on Facebook Live, another shooting has been streamed as it happened thanks to the popular feature. This time three men in Norfolk, Virginia, were badly wounded.

The authorities said the men, ages 27 to 29, came under attack on Tuesday (July 12), as one of them was streaming live video of the group hanging out in a car.

Less than six minutes into the broadcast, as the men smoke and listen to the hip-hop of Lil Bibby, gunfire erupts, sending the camera to the floor. With the lens now pointed away from the men, more than 30 pops can be heard over the span of a gut-wrenching 20 seconds.

The three men, whom the police declined to identify, were taken to a hospital with life-threatening injuries. A spokesman for the Norfolk police, Officer Daniel Hudson, said on early Wednesday that two of them had improved overnight but that one remained in critical condition.

No information was available on a suspect, Mr Hudson said.

By Wednesday afternoon, the video, preserved on the Facebook timeline of the man who apparently captured it, had been viewed more than 160,000 times. The police said investigators were reviewing the footage.

A friend of one of the victims, who asked not to be identified because she did not want to upset his family, confirmed that the man holding the camera in the video was Mr T J Williams, and the man in the driver seat was Mr Dante Rashad Williams. She did not know the third man seen sitting in the back seat.

Friends and family members of the men have been huddling since Tuesday night at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital, where they are being treated, she said.

The shooting was the latest example of disturbing content being broadcast live and unfiltered over social networks. The footage, at times intensely intimate or brutal, has put companies like Facebook and Twitter, which owns the live-streaming application Periscope, in a tricky spot as they try to navigate the line between sensitivity and censorship.

Facebook has said its moderators watch videos as they are broadcast and remove those that are “shared for sadistic pleasure or to celebrate or glorify violence”. Its policy is to allow graphic videos to remain if they condemn or raise awareness of violence.

After the broadcast of the aftermath of Castile’s shooting, Mr Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, wrote that such videos “shine a light on the fear that millions of members of our community live with every day”.

In the cases of Castile and Alton Sterling, whose shooting by the police was captured on video in Louisiana, the outrage that followed elicited protests across the country and expressions of concern from elected officials all the way up to the White House.

Minutes after the roar of gunfire quieted in Norfolk on Tuesday, a man can be heard on the video comforting the wounded men.

“Stay with me,” he says repeatedly. “It’s going to be all right.”

As emergency workers treated the victims, they mentioned several wounds — to the chest, shoulder, right arm and right temple. A woman can be heard saying a prayer. THE NEW YORK TIMES

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