The president of the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority on Wednesday demanded the removal of videos of young people surfing on subway trains that have gone viral on social networks.
Janno Lieber’s comments comparing these videos to sharing images of people playing Russian roulette follow the death of a Manhattan teenager in a dangerous stunt as a train crossed the Williamsburg Bridge.
“The right thing to do is not to upload these videos, which obviously have negative consequences,” Mr. Lieber told WNYC radio, urging web giants to take down these videos.
A spokesperson for Meta, Facebook’s parent company, told the New York Post having made contact with the transport regulator of the American metropolis to address the subject of these controversial videos.
According to the MTA, the number of reports of people, often teenagers, surfing or riding off trains has more than quadrupled in the space of a year, from 206 to 928 in 2022.
