A police officer stands guard in front of the Masjid Al Noor mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, Sunday, March 17, 2019, where one of two mass shootings occurred. New Zealand's stricken residents reached out to Muslims in their neighborhoods and around the country on Saturday, to show kindness to a community in pain as a 28-year-old white supremacist stood silently before a judge, accused in mass shootings at two mosques that left dozens of people dead. (AP Photo/Vincent Yu)

LONDON | Why did Facebook air live video of the New Zealand mosque shooting for 17 minutes? Didn’t anyone alert the company while it was happening?

Facebook says no. According to its deputy general counsel, Chris Sonderby, none of the 200 or so people who watched the live video flagged it to moderators. In a Tuesday blog post, Sonderby said the first user report didn’t come until 12 minutes after the broadcast ended.

A police officer stands guard in front of the Masjid Al Noor mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, Sunday, March 17, 2019, where one of two mass shootings occurred. New Zealand’s stricken residents reached out to Muslims in their neighborhoods and around the country on Saturday, to show kindness to a community in pain as a 28-year-old white supremacist stood silently before a judge, accused in mass shootings at two mosques that left dozens of people dead. (AP Photo/Vincent Yu)
A police officer stands guard in front of the Masjid Al Noor mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, Sunday, March 17, 2019, where one of two mass shootings occurred. New Zealand’s stricken residents reached out to Muslims in their neighborhoods and around the country on Saturday, to show kindness to a community in pain as a 28-year-old white supremacist stood silently before a judge, accused in mass shootings at two mosques that left dozens of people dead. (AP Photo/Vincent Yu)

All of which raises additional questions — among them, why so many people watched without saying anything, whether Facebook relies too much on outsiders and machines to report trouble, and whether users and law enforcement officials even know how to reach Facebook with concerns about what they’re seeing on the service.

“When we see things through our phones, we imagine that they are like a television show,” said Siva Vaidhyanathan, a professor of media studies at the University of Virginia. “They are at a distance, and we have no power.”

Facebook said it removed the video “within minutes” of being notified by New Zealand police. But since then, Facebook and other social media companies have had to contend with copies posted by others.

The shooting suspect carefully modeled his attack for an internet age, as he live-streamed the killing of 50 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Tim Cigelske, who teaches about social media at Marquette University in Milwaukee, said that while viewers have the same moral obligations to help as a bystander does in the physical world, people don’t necessarily know what to do.

“It’s like calling 911 in an emergency,” he said. “We had to train people and make it easy for them. You have to train people in a new way if you see an emergency happening not in person but online.”

To report live video, a user must know to click on a small set of three gray dots on the right side of the post. A user who clicks on “report live video” gets a choice of objectionable content types to select from, including violence, bullying and harassment. Users are also told to contact law enforcement if someone is in immediate danger.

Facebook also doesn’t appear to post any public information instructing law enforcement how to report dangerous or criminal video. The company does have a page titled “information for law enforcement authorities,” but it merely outlines procedures for making legal requests for user account records. Facebook didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment and questions about its communications with police.

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