Facebook Live Killings Law Coursework Research Paper (Coursework Sample)

Facebook’s Legal & Ethical Responsibility in Policing Depraved Videos
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Does Facebook have a legal or ethical duty to rescue a crime victim?
In matters legal, the existing legal framework does not compel Facebook and other social media platforms to be answerable for the content posted on their sites by their users. Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act notes that providers of “interactive computer service[s]” are not the speakers or publishers of information provided by others. The law has not caught up with the technological advancements to compel social media giants to be accountable for their users’ content CITATION Cit17 \l 1033 (Citron & Wittes, 2017). Additionally, Facebook argues that it is a publisher and therefore its decisions should be protected by the first amendment. Sonal Mehta, a lawyer for Facebook drew a comparison of Facebook’s role as a publisher and likened it to traditional media publishing industry protections claiming that ‘The publisher discretion is a free speech right irrespective of what technological means is used. A newspaper has a publisher function whether they are doing it on their website, in a printed copy or through the news alerts’ CITATION Lev18 \l 1033 (Levin, 2018). These laws protect Facebook from being answerable for posts that are meant to rescue a crime victim and therefore under the existing legal framework, Facebook is not legally obligated to rescue crime victims.