♪♪
-Am I live?
-What up, peeps?
-We are live from
Phuket Walking Street.
-Two months after the public
launch of Facebook Live in 2016,
more than 800,000 people
tuned in
to watch
an exploding watermelon.
[ Crowd shouting ]
The app, described by
the company as a great medium
for sharing raw
and visceral content,
has been used to stream events
from the silly to the serious.
-Everybody move out.
-But then it captured
the aftermath
of a fatal police shooting...
-He let the officer know
that he was -- he had a firearm
and he was reaching
for his wallet,
and the officer
just shot him in his arm.
...and then this.
-A 15-year-old girl
sexually assaulted
by four or five teenage boys
who streamed
what they did on Facebook Live.
-Professor Desmond Patton
studies the relationship
between youth violence
and social media.
-We now have a window into
what's happening in communities
where trauma and stress
and violence
are everyday occurrences,
and so Facebook Live
captures those moments
inadvertently or advertently.
-In the sexual-assault case,
Chicago police charged
two juveniles with taking part
and using their phones
to share it online.
-There is this thing
that happens around celebrity
and, "Who's seeing this?
How far can it reach,
and will it make me famous?"
-Authorities say
at least 40 people
viewed the Facebook Live video,
but not a single person
called police.
-It just disgusts me.
-But police went out
of their way
to chastise another group,
what might be called
the digital bystanders.
-Where are we going?
What are we doing as a society
that people will actually look
at those crimes taking place
and not pick up the phone
and dial 911?
-But that troubling question is
not unique to the digital age.
Take a case from the 1960s
in New York City,
where 28-year-old
Catherine Genovese,
or "Kitty," as she was called,
lived with her partner,
Mary Ann Zielonko.
-She was very outgoing,
very gregarious,
very people-oriented.
We were sort of closeted.
I just never thought about it,
you know?
It just was my life.
-They shared an apartment
in Kew Gardens, Queens.
-We just both tended bar,
lived a very quiet life.
The area was very, very nice.
It was rather artsy in a way.
Kew Gardens
was really very safe.
-But late one night
in March 1964,
Genovese drove home
from the bar she managed,
unaware she was being followed
by a serial killer.
As she got out of her car,
she saw Winston Moseley
and started to run.
-This is where the killer
must have started
to catch up with Kitty Genovese.
She didn't quite make it
halfway down the block
before the killer
drove a knife into her.
-She screamed, "Oh, my God.
He stabbed me. Help me.
Somebody help me,"
and she goes down on the ground,
and she continues to scream.
There are lights going on
in the apartment houses,
windows going up,
and a man looked out,
and he yelled,
"Leave that girl alone."
-Witnesses saw Moseley,
startled by the noise, run away,
but none of Genovese's neighbors
came to her aid,
even as she staggered
into a nearby doorway,
screaming again for help.
-As she's lying helpless
on the floor and the door opens,
it's her attacker.
He stabs her multiple times.
Then he cuts off her clothing.
He sexually assaults her.
Winston Moseley flees.
A police car pulls in.
-But it was too late.
Kitty Genovese died
in the ambulance
on the way to the hospital.
Her partner, Mary Ann,
didn't hear the news until later
when the police
knocked on her door.
-I felt, well, she was so close,
and I was sleeping,
and I didn't know what happened,
that I could've saved her,
you know?
That's what
I really think still.
-At first, the murder
was not big news,
but two weeks later,
after a tip from police,
The New York Times published
a chilling front-page story
that began,
"For more than half an hour
38 respectable,
law-abiding citizens in Queens
watched a killer stalk
and stab a woman."
-The story was absolutely
and utterly shocking.
No one could imagine
that not only would people
fail to call the police,
but that they would watch
the murder take place
over half an hour.
-One witness was quoted
as saying,
"I didn't want to get involved."
The story became a sensation,
and the public reacted with
disgust and fear of city life.
-Tell me why you felt
it was necessary
for you to carry a knife.
-The Kitty Genovese case
where no one came to her rescue
even though she begged for help.
-38 of her neighbors
watched the woman die,
and when it was over,
they all went back to bed.
-In the aftermath of the murder,
the 38 witnesses, who were not
involved in Kitty's murder
but were only witnesses to it,
had been portrayed almost worse
than the murderer himself.
-29-year-old Winston Moseley
was picked up by the police
and confessed to the killing.
-The detectives asked
the killer,
"How could you attack this woman
in front of so many witnesses?
Weren't you afraid?"
And the killer said, "I knew
they wouldn't do anything.
People never do."
-Genovese's death
became a metaphor
for public apathy
and moral decay,
but two young
social psychologists,
John Darley from NYU
and Bibb Latané
from Columbia University,
had a different take.
Their idea became known
as the bystander effect.
-What struck me and struck John
as we talked about it
is that 38 might not have been
just a coincidence.
It might have been a cause.
It might have been
what made it happen,
that it might have been
that each of the people
was actually concerned
but somehow was misled
by the idea
that other people were watching.
-Using students, Latané
and Darley designed experiments
to test their
counterintuitive theory
that the more people
who witness an emergency,
the less likely it is
that any of them will intervene.
-I would like to thank the two
of you for being here today.
-A student was told
she was speaking privately
over an intercom
with one other student
who suddenly said
he was having a seizure.
-If somebody would -- would
give me a l-little help.
-Hello?
-She quickly got up
and ran for help,
as did most of the subjects
who thought that they alone
knew someone was in trouble.
-Anybody here? Help!
We need some help!
We've got somebody hurt!
Hello!
-But look what happened
when students were told
there were others listening
to the conversation.
-Somebody g-give me
a little -- little help here.
I'm having a real prob-- problem
right now.
-In repeated experiments,
the majority of them
just sat there and didn't help.
-You think that
if there are many people
who witness something
that other people certainly
already have done something.
Why should it be me?
-New evidence in the
Kitty Genovese case has emerged
showing that details of that
shocking New York Times story
were exaggerated.
Two neighbors
did call the police,
and while dozens
heard her screams,
only a few actually
saw the attack take place.
-We can look back and say that
it wasn't entirely accurate,
but the fact is that it was
a powerful change agent
for society.
-911 emergency.
-In the wake of the murder,
the 911 phone system was created
to make it easier
to report a crime,
and more states
passed Good Samaritan laws
to encourage people to help,
but tougher measures,
so-called duty-to-assist laws,
are not widespread.
-It's the law in many,
if not most, states
that there's no criminal penalty
for failing to get involved,
for failing to help someone
who's in dire straits
or an emergency.
-Others watching the violence
take out their cellphones
and record it
without intervening.
-But the age of violent videos
taken by bystanders
has led to calls
for new kinds of laws.
[ Indistinct shouting ]
That happened in California
after a 14-year-old boy
suffered a concussion
during an assault by one teen
while another filmed it
and posted it on Snapchat.
-Why would you do this?
For a laugh?
For a like?
-The boy who threw the punch
was given probation.
The teen who filmed it
was not charged.
-Taking someone's worst moment
and making it your best moment
on social media
is expanding exponentially,
and we need to do something
about it now
before it gets out of control.
-California has since
passed a law
that allows additional jail time
for those who take part
in a crime and video-record it,
but what about
those watching online?
-Viewing things around rape
and beatings and murder
are extreme cases that are
actually rare on social media,
but what do you do
when you see negative things?
Should you report it like you
would a physical situation?
Should you call 911?
Should you call
a community-based organization?
I think that police and schools
and parents and technology
companies could come together
and really put forth some ideas
on what people should do.
-Under fire for not anticipating
how its platform would be used,
Facebook has hired
thousands of people
to remove offensive material
faster
so its users don't become
unwitting bystanders
to violence.
-We will keep doing all we can
to prevent tragedies like this
from happening.
-But social scientists say
the bystander effect,
taught in textbooks worldwide,
is a much broader phenomenon,
as ingrained in us today
as when it came to light
55 years ago
in the Kitty Genovese case.
-What we now understand
is that this observation
and not knowing what to do
is something that we've done
for a really long time
and that technology
has not shifted that.
It just puts a finer point on
what we've already been doing,
and I think we should stop there
and think about,
"Why are kids doing this
to other kids?"
And social media gives us
an opportunity
to really dig into that,
and so that's where
I think our attention
should be at this moment.
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