Facebook and Twitter's Quick Actions Stopped Video of Virginia Shootings From Being Widely Shared

Monitoring systems worked

Social media doesn't make tragedies any more or less sad. But this morning's shootings in Virginia demonstrated that platforms like Facebook and Twitter can play a role in such tragic stories, and the tech companies behind them need to be ready.

To Facebook and Twitter's credit, they both were today. And they ultimately stopped an unthinkably horrible video from being much more widely circulated.

A gunman, suspected to be Vester Lee Flanagan, who went by the name Bryce Williams as a local TV journalist, shot and killed television reporter Alison Parker and her photographer, Adam Ward, each of who worked for WDBJ-TV, a CBS affiliate for the Roanoke/Lynchburg area in central Virginia.

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