My daughter Alison was murdered on live television on August 26, 2015. To this day, the video of her murder is still being hosted on YouTube and Facebook.
Andy Parker is an activist and author of „For Alison: The Murder of a Young Journalist and a Father’s Fight for Gun Safety.“ The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. My daughter Alison was murdered on live television on August 26, 2015. To this day, the video of her murder is still being hosted on YouTube and Facebook. Both platforms took down the original videos, but the videos were reposted by conspiracy theorists and other bad actors. Along with my advocacy for gun violence prevention, I’ve spent the last five years trying to get Facebook and Google, which owns YouTube, to take down the reposted videos. Facebook says it has banked and removed the content. It also claims it created a digital fingerprint so that any visually similar videos would be automatically detected and removed when uploaded. But despite this digital fingerprint, videos of my daughter’s murder continue to appear on Facebook. Google says it has been training its machine systems and human reviewers to flag this type of violent content. It says it also removes content when flagged by users, and terminates the channel of repeat offenders in accordance with its three-strikes policy. Alison Parker and her father Andy pose together for a photo. But, in early 2017, Google suggested that I view and flag the content I found offensive myself. They wanted me to watch my daughter’s murder and explain why it should be removed. I never have and I never will watch any of those videos. Read More In late spring of 2017, I reached out to Lenny Pozner (whose son Noah was murdered in the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting) for help.
