Q&A
MTA's efforts to remove subway surfing videos from social media platforms
2:28:21
ยท
117 sec
Jeremy Feigelson from MTA details the agency's efforts to remove subway surfing videos from social media platforms, particularly TikTok and Instagram. The process involves daily checks, flagging videos, requesting removal, and collaboration with social media companies.
- MTA has successfully removed about 11,000 videos
- Social media companies apply 'hashing' to prevent reposting of removed videos
- MTA is pushing for automated detection and removal of subway surfing videos
- Challenges include distinguishing between user-posted videos and news coverage
Rita Joseph
2:28:21
Was MTA allowed to scrub the social medias?
2:28:25
Is what's the what's the communication with social media platforms?
2:28:28
Are you allowed to scrub them once these videos are posted?
2:28:31
What is the partnership between social media platform, MTA, NYPD, New York City Public Schools?
Jeremy Feigelson
2:28:37
The social media companies here can scrub and do at our request.
2:28:40
We have a daily process where our safety team is checking, the social media platforms with the main focus on TikTok and Instagram because that's those are the 2 where we think most of the social media behavior sort of focuses and congregates.
2:28:54
So our team, checks those platforms on a daily basis.
2:28:57
If we flag a video, that shows this dangerous behavior or celebrates it, we ask that it be taken down.
2:29:03
And the companies have been very responsive.
2:29:05
We we're up to about 11,000 videos have been removed.
2:29:08
We don't stop there.
2:29:09
We also ask that it not only be taken down, but that the companies apply, what's called a hashing.
2:29:13
It's like a digital fingerprint that allows them to spot that video if someone attempts to post it again.
2:29:18
So once it's down, the hope is it's down forever and it's not gonna keep popping up.
2:29:23
And we, have also asked that they, not just stop at removing the videos, but also add safety messaging of their own.
2:29:30
I can tell you, Trevor, that this morning when I went on TikTok and entered subway surfing as my search term, I got the safety message back instead of seeing any videos.
2:29:39
And we think that's a good approach.
2:29:41
It's not a perfect approach because the kids will keep working around it and looking for other ways to tag their videos to avoid blocks like that, but it's a good step.
2:29:49
And the next piece, where we've been pressing the social media companies to do better is to detect and block these videos in an automated way so that we're not dependent on the efforts of human beings at the MTA.
2:30:00
These companies, as Chief Kemper said, have awesome technology, and we'd like to see it deployed, so that they can spot, detect, and remove these videos, without the human intervention.
2:30:11
Anything we can do to reduce the presence of videos, reduce the glorification of the behavior, we hope will reduce the behavior itself.