Josh Steen watched his close friend Ronnie McNutt kill himself live on Facebook.
Now, he is fighting for answers from the firm and other social media platforms where clips of the suicide are widely available.
“For the last two and a half weeks Ronnie’s image has been one of the most recognisable on the internet and yet these companies claim to have detection software to stop it, so something isn’t right,” he said.
He reported it to Facebook during the livestream, at 22:00 Mississippi time – two hours after the video had started, and half an hour before Ronnie killed himself.
Ronnie Mcnutt Video
Mr McNutt was a 33-year-old army veteran who had seen active service in Iraq, and subsequently dealt with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other mental-health issues.
He had recently broken up with his girlfriend and had been drinking on the night of his death. He was talking about suicide and arguing with people who were trying to comfort him. At some point the police turned up outside his apartment.
More than 200 people were watching the stream when he died, including Mr Steen and several of his friends.
Clips showing his death started going viral the day after his suicide.
“The video was public and his account was public. Whoever took the first clip and uploaded it created a back story about Ronnie,” said Mr Steen.
“None of it was true. But it helped fuel the fire to help it spread,” he added.
On Mr McNutt’s Facebook page, more and more comments were being posted. Many were unpleasant and Mr Steen reported them to the social network as harassment.
But he said Facebook told him nothing could be done because he was not the account holder.
