Raymond Weber's Livestream Of Alleged Homicide Aftermath Stayed Up On YouTube For Nearly 20 Hours
VACAVILLE (CBS13) — The livestream of the double homicide aftermath in Vacaville amassed tens of thousands of views in the roughly 20 hours before YouTube took it down. But now, and days later, people continue to watch.
There is a growing number of people re-posting portions of the video online or copying the title of the now-removed clip. Some are even profiting off the video by uploading copies of the livestream to paid subscription fan sites.
CNET's Ian Sherr explains the longer it takes for a platform to remove a video, the farther it spreads.
"Once it's on the Internet, it's there forever. You can't delete it," Sherr said.
He points to the 2019 New Zealand mosque massacre. Facebook reported that had to block 1.5 million copies of the livestream in the first 24 hours.
Facebook said that video had just 4,200 views in the 30 minutes before it was taken down. This weekend's YouTube video, which was up for nearly 20 hours, had roughly 47,000 views.
READ ALSO: Vacaville Suspect Accused Of Double Homicide Then Livestreaming Bodies Appears In Court
Sherr said it's not clear how long it typically takes for YouTube to remove an inappropriate video.
"YouTube doesn't share this type of information very well," Sherr said.
While he says social media sites, in general, are good at blocking things like ISIS videos or child exploitation, other content slips by.
"A lot of these systems have still not been built to make sure that they can take down something so horrible as a livestream aftermath of a murder," Sherr said.
He says the technology is largely automated, but law enforcement sources say they tried - unsuccessfully - for hours to get this weekend's video taken down before finally turning to the media for help.
In a statement, YouTube said, "we quickly removed it when flagged to our attention."
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"Do you call nearly 24 hours, quickly removing video?" Julie Watts asked.
"Leaving it up for 15 minutes is too long," Sherr said.
In a statement, YouTube said their "machine learning technology now automatically detects over 90% of the videos it removes before a human ever reports it." But the company did not comment on why it took so long to take this video down.
