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Facebook took hours to remove livestream of Library of Congress bomb threat suspect

It's not the first time Facebook has scrambled to prevent a disturbing live stream from spreading.

Bill Clark via Getty Images

It took Facebook several hours to pull down a livestream from a man suspected of making a bomb threat at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. According to Politico, the unidentified man, who approached the Library of Congress in a pickup truck and told police he had a bomb in the car, streamed live on Facebook for multiple hours as police negotiated with him. The video "circulated widely" before Facebook finally took it down.

On Twitter, Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone confirmed the company had taken down the stream and the man's profile and said it is "continuing to investigate" the matter. The man later surrendered, US Capitol Police confirmed.

It's not the first time Facebook has had to scramble to prevent a disturbing live stream from spreading. In 2019, the company raced to pull down more than a million copies of a live stream recorded by a mass shooter in New Zealand, in an effort that took multiple days.