CYBERSPACE—An extremely disturbing video showing “a grown man sexually abusing an infant girl” somehow made its way onto Facebook’s news feeds Wednesday morning, where it remained and was widely circulated by members of the social network for hours thereafter until Facebook finally removed it from its servers, according to users who saw the video. By then, it had succeeded in “garnering as many as 32,000 shares and over 5,000 likes,”as well as a "fury" of outraged tweets that only spread the video farther.
The Dallas Morning News is now reporting that the video is not a depiction of recent abuse from somewhere in the Oak Cliff area of Texas, as had been thought, but “is six years old, according to the FBI, which is also investigating the case. You can see an image of the perpetrator here. As of right now, the man has not been identified and is known as 'John Doe 8.'”
Facebook commented on the situation, saying, "Nothing is more important to Facebook than the safety of the people that use our site, and this material has no place on Facebook. We have zero tolerance for child pornography being uploaded onto Facebook and are extremely aggressive in preventing and removing child exploitive content.”
The spokesperson also stated that the network is “pleased that this material was reported to us quickly enabling its swift removal.” But those covering the story still questioned the claim of swift removal, as well as the fact that the video "managed to be circulated without being detected by Facebook's state-of-the-art [Microsoft PhotoDNA] firewall system launched two years ago.”
