There is plenty of coverage everywhere you look about how Pete Hegseth and the Pentagon have announced plans to livestream the firing squad execution of Nidal Hasan, the Army officer who shot up Fort Hood, killing 13 people and wounding dozens more. There is plenty of debate about the moral atrocity that is a firing squad execution and plenty of comparison to the botched lethal injection execution in Tennessee last week. This is not the place for such discussions, other than to make it clear that the entire concept here — no matter how terrible Hasan is or no matter how terrible his crime — of the state putting people to death is a barbaric practice that should be ended.
But there is one angle here that we can talk about that most other places won’t: whether hosting the livestream would violate the platforms’ own rules — and whether they’ll simply ignore (or rewrite) those rules to do it anyway. While it’s probably perfectly legal in the US to stream the execution, it still might violate the various platform rules that most sites have set up for themselves. (Hosting it globally may also create legal headaches in countries with stricter rules on violent, extremist, and terrorist content, but that’s a separate question.)
But let’s look more closely at the possible platforms Hegseth might use, since the Pentagon hasn’t yet said where this “livestream” is supposed to occur.
X
Elon Musk’s X is (duh) a likely choice. In theory, X has a “violent content policy,” but it leaves a lot of wiggle room for Elon to claim the barbarous execution doesn’t violate its policies:
You may share graphic media if it is properly labeled, not prominently displayed and is not excessively gory or depicting sexual violence, but explicitly threatening, inciting, glorifying, or expressing desire for violence is not allowed.
X is a place where people can express themselves, show and learn about what’s happening, and debate global issues, often sharing images and videos as part of the conversation. However, healthy conversations can’t thrive when Violent Speech is used to deliver a message, and not every participant wishes to be exposed to Violent Media. As a result, we may remove or reduce the visibility of Violent Content to ensure the safety of our users and prevent the normalization or glorification of violent actions. We also do not allow sharing Violent Content in highly visible places such as profile photos, banners or bio.
I would argue that livestreaming a government firing squad is “excessively gory” and, depending on how it’s packaged, “glorifying” violence, though there’s clearly room to argue otherwise. And I’m sure Elon will claim it’s not. The policy does do a little more of an explanation of what it considers “glorification” as well:
- Glorification of Violence: Glorifying, praising, or celebrating acts of violence where harm occurred, including expressing gratitude or praising that someone experienced physical harm by Violent Entities. This also includes glorifying animal abuse or cruelty.
Again, I would argue the execution counts, because it is clearly celebrating an act of violence. The policy also says that it prohibits violent content “in live video” but again, I expect that to be ignored by Elon’s team.
There is one concrete area of X’s policy that is interesting:
- Moment of Death: We may request the removal of images or videos that were taken at the point of, immediately before, or after an identifiable individual’s death, if we receive a request from their family or an authorized representative.
In theory, Hasan’s family could ask X to remove the video, and then the question is whether Elon would honor that request. And since the policy only says X “may” remove such content, it leaves plenty of wiggle room to say no.
In short, the video will likely be shared on X, and whether or not it violates the company’s policies really depends on a very subjective set of decisions.
YouTube
YouTube is the other most likely choice for streaming the execution. Here, it seems pretty clear that the execution video, on its own, would violate YouTube’s stated policy.
Violent or gory content intended to shock or disgust viewers, or content encouraging others to commit violent acts, are not allowed on YouTube.
That said, YouTube leaves itself an out in saying there’s an exception for “content that is in the public interest.”
In some cases, we may make exceptions for content with educational, documentary, scientific, or artistic context, including content that is in the public’s interest.
Looking through that linked exceptions page, the obvious hook is that YouTube lists “government proceedings” as public-interest material that may get an exception, and you can bet that’s what it would point to. But the same page lists content that’s barred from exceptions no matter the context, including “the act of decapitation.” While this isn’t quite decapitation, it’s still a pretty gruesome public execution.
Meta (Instagram / Facebook)
Zuck has spent the past couple years sucking up to Donald Trump after Trump threatened to put Zuck in jail for life. But Meta’s “Violent and Graphic Content” policy is the clearest of the bunch in ruling out hosting a livestream of the execution. In the list of things that it says “Do not post” is literally:
Live-streams of capital punishments.
The policy does allow still imagery of such content behind a warning screen and limited to adults, but livestreams of capital punishment are banned outright.
I don’t see any exceptions or language that Meta can wiggle out of for this, meaning that if it does allow such a livestream, it would only be either by ignoring its current policies or changing them.
TikTok
TikTok has less detail than the others in its policy, but does say they don’t allow “glorification of violence” among other things.
- Violent and Criminal Behavior: We don’t allow threats, encouragement or glorification of violence, promotion of crime, or instructions on how to commit harmful acts.
Again, the company (now backed by Trump’s investor friends) can probably wriggle around that language and try to claim that the execution isn’t a “glorification” of violence, though it would be wrong.
Truth Social
I guess we need to consider that the Pentagon might try to post it on the president’s personal social media and propaganda site, Truth Social. Truth Social has very unhelpful terms of service and community guidelines, that do say that when you upload content you “represent and warrant” that your content isn’t violent:
your Contributions are not obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, violent, harassing, libelous, slanderous, or otherwise objectionable.
your Contributions do not depict violence, threats of violence or criminal activity.
But that is only the agreement with the user. It says nothing about whether or not the site will take such content down. In the community guidelines, it only notes that you can “report” “content that depicts violence or threat of violence,” but says nothing about whether or not that’s actually allowed.
In short, depending on how much these services want to bend over backwards (or should I say, bow down?) to appease Donald Trump and the bloodthirsty Pete Hegseth, all of them except Meta can make unfortunately credible claims that livestreaming an execution by firing squad doesn’t technically violate their policies. Meta cannot say that. I’d argue that the videos likely do violate YouTube, X, and TikTok’s policies as well, but it very much depends on subjective calls for all three.
Again, as a reminder, in the US, all of these platforms are free to set their own editorial policies, including both what to allow and what not to allow.
Remember, some of the earliest moral panic over how “bad” social media is came from US elected officials losing their minds about terrorist execution videos on YouTube. It’s kind of incredible how far we’ve come: Now the US government itself is planning to stream a gruesome execution of its own, and any platform that pushes back will likely be attacked by the president and his supporters for not being patriotic enough.