Activists call for Facebook 'censorship' change after Korryn Gaines death

A consortium of activist groups has sent an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg asking him to implement an “anti-censorship policy” at Facebook in its dealings with law enforcement officials in the wake of the death of Baltimore woman Korryn Gaines. Gaines, killed just after her Facebook Live video stream of her confrontation with police officers was turned off, was being served an arrest warrant after failing to appear in court for a traffic violation.

She was shot dead by police and her five-year-old son, whom she was holding at the time, was wounded. The archived video from the stream was briefly unavailable as well, in what Facebook called “a technical glitch”. Police officers said they had asked Facebook to turn off Gaines’s video stream. The signatories of the letter say they don’t buy the “glitch” story. “If your company agrees to censor people’s accounts at the request of police – thereby allowing the police to control what the public sees on Facebook – then it is part of the problem,” they wrote.

Among the organizations represented in the letter are Color of Change, a political advocacy group that focuses on the rights of African Americans, Demand Progress, MoveOn.org, and Free Press.