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 Instagram account was cut off at the request of police, 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. Police officers said they had asked Facebook to turn off Gaines’s video stream; Facebook, which owns Instagram, later confirmed this.

Earlier this year, 32-year-old Philando Castile was killed by police; his girlfriend broadcast his death on Facebook Live, but the video was removed in what Facebook called “a glitch.” The “glitch” explanation was disputed. “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.

“We know that you personally have taken a strong stand in support of the Movement for Black Lives,” the authors said. “Just last month, you hung a massive #blacklivesmatter banner on Facebook’s campus. And we hope that you will ensure that Facebook implements an anti-censorship policy that honors and respects black lives.”

A Facebook staffer said the company had received the letter and was reviewing it. Some of Gaines’s videos remain offline.

Gaines is the ninth black woman to be killed by US police in 2016 and the first of the summer, according to The Counted, the Guardian’s ongoing record of police killings in the United States. Since her death, 10 other black people have been killed by police.

• This article was amended on 24 August 2016. It originally stated that Korryn Gaines had used Facebook Live, not Instagram, to upload video of her encounter with police.