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This morning, a gunman shot and killed both a reporter and cameraman while conducting a live interview for a morning segment. The alleged gunman turned out to be a disgruntled journalist also working for the same station, but had been dismissed for behavioral issues. The story can be read here.

Moments after getting away, the shooter, now confirmed as Vester Lee Flanagan II posted a first person video of the shooting as it occurred to Twitter and Facebook. The post was repeatedly shared and was taken down after people reported it. Because the post was a video, anyone scrolling through their feed by default will have the video autoplay – exposing the user to the highly unexpected graphic content. By default, the Twitter autoplays videos on the feed as you’re scrolling through. This can be disabled in the user setting.

Here are a few tweets from people talking about the autoplay feature:

Video autoplay: Until now, it sure did always seem like a great idea that everyone would love and find value in. — Jason Feifer (@heyfeifer) August 26, 2015

@cfohlin Autoplay is the pop-up of streaming video. Forcing interaction, ad impressions. Don’t think anyone wanted their brand on that today — Ron Ayers (@ronayers) August 26, 2015

In terms of media, the only other thing I can compare this to is the protocol of news stations when covering a high speed chase by helicopter that has ended to zoom out when the driver is exposed and uncontrolled, lest the driver is shot by the police or decides to do a self induced suicide. The chase that spurred this practice is probably the suicide/chase of Daniel V. Jones.

Placing blame on Twitter or Facebook is obviously wrong. First, users freely choose the types of post they’ll see based on the users they follow. Second, the difference between a video and a photograph (which is displayed essentially in full) when it comes to containing disturbing content is the same. If the post was “merely” a photo of the shooting, would the conversation have been any different about how content comes into the feed?

I’m not a user experience expert, but I can surmise that it involves balancing convenience, ease of use and optimization for business interests. Now it seems, maybe including risks such as this morning’s disturbing content as well.

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