Could Facebook have known about ominous direct-message threats made by a gunman who Texas authorities say massacred 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school?
FILE -The logo for Facebook appears on screens at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York's Times Square, March 29, 2018. Facebook stepped noted that the Texas gunman, who Texas authorities say massacred children and teachers at an elementary school, sent one-to-one direct messages, not public posts, and that they weren’t discovered until “after the terrible tragedy.” Texas Gov.
Facebook could, for instance, flag certain phrases such as “going to kill” or “going to shoot,” but without context — something AI in general has a lot of trouble with — there would be too many false positives for the company to analyze. So Facebook and other platforms rely on user reports to catch threats, harassment and other violations of the law or their own policies. As evidenced by the latest shootings, that often comes too late, if at all.
Apple has long had end-to-end encryption on its messaging system. That has brought the iPhone maker into conflict with the Justice Department over messaging privacy. After the deadly shooting of three U.S. sailors at a Navy installation in December 2019, the Justice Department insisted that investigators needed access to data from two locked and encrypted iPhones that belonged to the alleged gunman, a Saudi aviation student.
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