US police chase Facebook murder suspect as site vows improvements

Police in the US have said they are continuing to search for a man who is reported to have uploaded a video of himself killing another man to social media site Facebook.

Suspect Steve Stephens uploaded the video to his profile on the site, which appeared to show him shooting dead an older man in Cleveland, Ohio after speaking about his own distressed state. Police spoke to Stephens in the hours following the shooting in an attempt to persuade him to turn himself in, but he remains at large.

The incident is the latest to bring to light the issue of how Facebook moderates its content, after the recording remained online for several hours after it was uploaded.

Cleveland police chief Calvin Williams said that the search for the man had been extended to "all over this country". Robert Godwin, 74, was gunned down after Stephens filmed a brief conversation between the two men, who did not know each other before the incident.

Facebook said it was attempting to improve its content filters so such videos would be monitored closer

Facebook said it was attempting to improve its content filters so such videos would be monitored more closely and removed quicker in the future.

'We prioritise reports with serious safety implications for our community, and are working on making that review process go even faster," said Justin Osofsky, Facebook's vice president for global operations and media partnerships.

Osofsky added that it only took the site's moderators 23 minutes to disable the suspect’s account, but admitted that it still had work to do.

"We disabled the suspect’s account within 23 minutes of receiving the first report about the murder video, and two hours after receiving a report of any kind. But we know we need to do better."