cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/3320637

YouTube and Reddit are sued for allegedly enabling the racist mass shooting in Buffalo that left 10 dead::The complementary lawsuits claim that the massacre in 2022 was made possible by tech giants, a local gun shop, and the gunman’s parents.

    • Druid
      link
      fedilink
      English
      82 years ago

      As a European, it’s amazing to see how many (probably) US citizens cling to their guns and downvote every single comment suggesting it might make sense to ban them. Like, dude, what do you need a glock for? Like seriously?

    • @jimbolauski@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      22 years ago

      Reddit has edited content, that IMO opens them up this. Once they start removing legal but undesirable content they are tacitly approving the content they haven’t removed.

    • Nobsi
      link
      fedilink
      English
      152 years ago

      TD literally was a breeding ground for incel hardcore altright racists and nothing was done about it.

        • Nobsi
          link
          fedilink
          English
          162 years ago

          Yes. In 2020. After raiding other subs.
          Not because they broke any laws or were racist. Just TOS shit.
          If you then claim that reddit did anything to combat the alttight uprising i have a bridge to sell you.

          • Ann Archy
            link
            fedilink
            English
            22 years ago

            I think they tried to allow for almost any uprising on every side. It’s good for business. And what’s good for business is good for their Chinese investors.

        • Nobsi
          link
          fedilink
          English
          112 years ago

          The donald. The breeding ground for the disgusting republicans we have now.

          • Ann Archy
            link
            fedilink
            English
            7
            edit-2
            2 years ago

            It was more like a localized colony or infestation. The NRA, the Church, and FOX are the mother hives. You’ve got to get the nest, otherwise you’ll be running around stomping them out everywhere without ever getting rid of them.

    • @Zithero@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      152 years ago

      Reddit worked very hard to protect all anti-nazi imagery and stop people from posting anti-nazi sentiment. I’d like for someone to acknowledge that they silence anyone who posts anti-nazi shit and who speaks about killing Nazis.

      Many are here because of that.

      • Grayox
        link
        fedilink
        English
        92 years ago

        Got banned for posting anti-nazi memes comparing 45 and his supporters to Hitlet and his. It gets scary drawing parallels between the beer hall putsch and jan. 6…

        • Ann Archy
          link
          fedilink
          English
          32 years ago

          Nothing like a drunk angry mob when you stage failed coups!

      • Ann Archy
        link
        fedilink
        English
        52 years ago

        It could be the killing part not the nazi part that they silenced you.

        • tryptaminev 🇵🇸 🇺🇦 🇪🇺
          link
          fedilink
          English
          02 years ago

          They also censor content that is just outspoken again nazism and linking the current fascism in the american right to the fascists in history. Meanwhile on /r/conservative fake news and conspiracy theories about the election, the raid on Mar a Lago, racist conspiracies around BLM and violence from cops, and every other topic of republicans and democrats is a okay for reddit

  • @EmperorHenry@discuss.tchncs.de
    link
    fedilink
    English
    102 years ago

    Stop blaming websites for crazy people doing crazy things.

    When the Joker movie came out in 2019, everyone on CNN was saying it was going to cause mass shootings, because of that one lunatic that shot up a movie theater during a screening of “the dark knight”

    The idiots who write the material for the talking heads just want to stir things up so they can get eyeballs on the screen.

    I bet the outlets that were giving live coverage of the shooting showed ads every 5 minutes…like they did with that one really bad shooting.

    • @DarthBueller@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      192 years ago

      Seriously. I spend a little too much time watching a short that is clearly designed to get me worked up about stereotypical communication difficulties between men & women from a “women, am I rite?” perspective, suddenly I’m getting Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan. I spend a little too much time watching a video about certain Ukrainian war equipment or a Slo Mo Guys video involving guns (wood stock hunting guns, I felt like it was the early 80s all over again before everyone decided they needed assault weapons), suddenly I’m getting served tacticool idiots with kitted-out murder machines. Or I watch a Bart Erhman video (secular New Testament scholar with a large lay audience) and suddenly I get served muslim da’wah/apologetics videos and Catholic catechism ads.

    • @Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      82 years ago

      If you look at anything even remotely related to “men’s interests” YouTube will begin showing you alt right fascist bull shit.

      Or if you don’t. Youtube shorts recommends Rogan constantly.

    • Throwaway
      link
      fedilink
      English
      22 years ago

      I watch a lot of model trains stuff, I don’t get alt-right fascist stuff. At worst I get shit like ShoeOnHead who seems reasonable enough.

        • Throwaway
          link
          fedilink
          English
          -42 years ago

          No? Have you ever watched her, or did you just see out of context clips?

          Unless by antifeminist and alt right, you mean disagree with stalin, and isnt a women supremacist.

          Guessing from the witch in your username, you’re just upset shes doesn’t think women are superior.

  • Zengen
    link
    fedilink
    English
    372 years ago

    I mean lookingbat the details for the basis of the suit. They think they can sue someone for teaching a criminal how to do something. They think they can sue the makers of body armor for selling a guy who was not a criminal at the time of purchase, an unregulated commercial product. They think they can sue YouTube for providing motive for whatever he did.

    In the law world theres a word for this. Its called a shakedown. This is grieving family’s who are vindictive. They dont care who pays, but somebody has to pay in their eyes. Sadly on the merits this case will die in court pretty fast and nobody is gonna see a dollar unless alphabet and spez’s lawyers decide they are feeling charitable. Which they won’t because settling would cause implications of guilt in the public eye.

  • AutoTL;DRB
    link
    fedilink
    English
    132 years ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    YouTube, Reddit and a body armor manufacturer were among the businesses that helped enable the gunman who killed 10 Black people in a racist attack at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket, according to a pair of lawsuits announced Wednesday.

    The complementary lawsuits filed by Everytown Law in state court in Buffalo claim that the massacre at Tops supermarket in May 2022 was made possible by a host of companies and individuals, from tech giants to a local gun shop to the gunman’s parents.

    The lawsuit claims Mean LLC manufactured an easily removable gun lock, offering a way to circumvent New York laws prohibiting assault weapons and large-capacity magazines.

    YouTube, named with parent companies Alphabet Inc. and Google, is accused of contributing to the gunman’s radicalization and helping him acquire information to plan the attack.

    “We aim to change the corporate and individual calculus so that every company and every parent recognizes they have a role to play in preventing future gun violence,” said Eric Tirschwell, executive director of Everytown Law.

    Last month, victims’ relatives filed a lawsuit claiming tech and social media giants such as Facebook, Amazon and Google bear responsibility for radicalizing Gendron.


    The original article contains 592 words, the summary contains 192 words. Saved 68%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • Echo71Niner
    link
    fedilink
    212 years ago

    Reddit enables more than just racist, it’s a nasty cesspool the like of 4chan, riddled with bots, the CEO himself is a POS.

    • Arotrios
      link
      fedilink
      72 years ago

      Agreed. Spez’s support of The_Donald was the beginning of the end (although as he was a mod of jailbait before it was banned, it was clear that Trump wasn’t the genesis of Spez’s sickness), and now there’s nothing left of the communities that made it great. There’s hasn’t been anything rewarding about contributing there since about 2014.

    • 👁️👄👁️
      link
      fedilink
      English
      202 years ago

      It’s a fucked up website but if you think it’s remotely as bad as 4chan then I’ve assumed you’ve never been to /pol/. Reddit doesn’t allow the n word.

        • @lightnsfw@reddthat.com
          link
          fedilink
          English
          22 years ago

          It’s literally rule 1…

          Rule 1 Remember the human. Reddit is a place for creating community and belonging, not for attacking marginalized or vulnerable groups of people. Everyone has a right to use Reddit free of harassment, bullying, and threats of violence. Communities and users that incite violence or that promote hate based on identity or vulnerability will be banned.

            • @lightnsfw@reddthat.com
              link
              fedilink
              English
              12 years ago

              Not sure what subs you’re on but I can’t remember the last time I saw that word outside of the r/4chan mod bot saying the comment was removed for it and they were quarantined.

              Considering I got permabanned for saying if we wanted to find out if the brazen bull was a real thing we could test it on child molesters the rule is very much enforced. That’s way less bad than the nword.

          • @cubedsteaks@lemmy.today
            link
            fedilink
            English
            2
            edit-2
            2 years ago

            lol even mods don’t follow rules on reddit and there are private subs where people do whatever the hell they want.

        • 👁️👄👁️
          link
          fedilink
          English
          12 years ago

          I went on /pol and did Ctrl f + n word, got 7 results. Can’t say reddit is even slightly that bad. I’m sure it still gets said, but it’s very much looked down upon. Where in 4chan it’s just a normal word, and so is the f slur.

          • sour
            link
            fedilink
            2
            edit-2
            2 years ago

            just a normal word

            how and why

            ._.

            and they make fun of reddit when they’re not the right people to make fun of reddit

  • @Candelestine@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    41
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    Good. Civil court is where they’re most vulnerable, this is called tort law.

    In criminal cases, the defendant is innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt by a jury of their peers. In a civil lawsuit, the defendant is only innocent until a judge, or jury, depending thinks they’re 51% likely to be guilty, what they call the preponderance of evidence.

    In other words, “probably” is good enough when you sue someone. It is not good enough if the state is trying to throw you in prison. This makes it more efficient to process the 99% of civil court cases, which are usually just dumb shit, like which of these two arguing neighbors needs to pay for having a tree on their property line cut down or something. It also results in our civil system being a very effective weapon though, as a lot of wealthier and more powerful people know pretty well.

    edit for italics

    edit2: If anyone doubts me you can just google “tort” and read all about our American system on wikipedia, or any number of other places.

    edit3: juries in civil too.

    • roguetrick
      link
      fedilink
      142 years ago

      I don’t really know why you emphasized judge. Jury trials are very common in civil cases. This will be a pretrial dismissal or summary judgement without a jury, however. There’s nothing to discover or evidence to review that’s contested.

      • @Candelestine@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        62 years ago

        True, jury trials are common in civil. They’re just not the majority, and I’m trying to draw a simplified picture I suppose. It’ll edit it again.

  • @skymtf@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    link
    fedilink
    English
    232 years ago

    I feel like our problem isn’t that social media companies are not liable but that they are too big, like imagine this happening on mastodon. Generally I feel like mastodon would not allow this unless the instance was specificlly facist like the KF instance

    • @mob@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      112 years ago

      I dont think the Fediverse is a good example of not allowing certain activities.

  • @anthoniix@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    120
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    I think the root of the problem is the Republican party. If you look at the language the shooter used in his manifesto, it’s very very similar. There are things social media platforms can do to mitigate extremism, but people like this will continue to feel emboldened by the GOP.

  • @Pratai@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    522 years ago

    They should be suing the Conservative Party. That’s the enabler of gun violence.

      • @Pratai@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        English
        42 years ago

        Quit being obtuse. You know as well as I do that conservatives ENABLE the gun violence we see every day. It’s baked right into the bullshit policy they enact, the laws they block, and the gun manufacturers that pay them their salaries.

      • @assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        222 years ago

        “The conservative party enables gun violence” and “conservatives commit the most gun violence” are completely separate and independent statements. The person you’re replying to is saying the former, not the latter.

        In other words, they aren’t saying that Republicans commit the majority of gun violence, but that the policies championed and implemented by Republicans are responsible for gun violence occurring.

        And whether or not Republicans like it, they admit this all the time, although not the way you’d think. The GOP likes to say that mental health is the driver of gun violence and mass shootings, but simultaneously, the GOP votes against improved mental healthcare and even slashes funding for it.

        • R0cket_M00se
          link
          fedilink
          English
          -402 years ago

          Go take a political litmus test of every gang member in the US and see how many are conservatives.

          Active shooters make a drop in the pale comparatively, they’re just the ones the media focuses on because it’s the narrative they prefer.

          • @Annies_Boobs@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            152 years ago

            You really don’t see why the media would focus on a random mass killing instead of 2 scumbags shooting at each other over drugs? Weird.

            • R0cket_M00se
              link
              fedilink
              English
              -72 years ago

              2? More like thousands. If guns are the problem, then guns are the problem. We don’t need to focus on specific gun crime when those crimes are once again a drop in the bucket.

              That’s why it’s weird.

              • @Honytawk@lemmy.zip
                link
                fedilink
                English
                22 years ago

                Guns are indeed the problem. As every other developed nation shows.

                Why people still claim the US is developed beats me, they belong in the same line as Brazil and Mexico (no offence Brazilians and Mexicans)

          • @Pratai@lemmy.ca
            link
            fedilink
            English
            52 years ago

            Learn the difference between the concept of one who enables the crime, and one who commits the crime.

            If you’re having a hard time understanding how our law handles such a thing:

            Read up on a guy named Charles Manson. Then delete your dumb shit.

          • @LillyPip@lemmy.ca
            link
            fedilink
            English
            22 years ago

            No u.

            Here, I’ll give you a head start:

            University of Maryland Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice

            our analysis shows that right-wing actors are significantly more violent than left-wing actors
            the probability of a violent act of extremism in the United States being committed by a left-wing extremist was found to be 0.33, 0.61 by a right-wing extremist, and 0.62 by an Islamist extremist.

            You’ll notice that’s double the incidents from the right vs the left.

            Military Times, which no one could reasonably claim has any liberal bias

            But terrorism carried out by right-wing actors eclipsed that of leftist movements in the 1990s … Now, government agencies and scholars across the political spectrum agree that far-right movements have caused most of the political violence in the U.S. over the past few years – and present the most dangerous threat today.

            West Point Combating Terrorism Center – and again, West Point can hardly be called liberal

            Accelerationist ideology, conspiracy theories, disinformation, and far-right extremist narratives have played a key role in the prioritization of critical infrastructure as a target for the violent far-right. The intersections of these ideologies and narratives have led to complex attacks on power grids and the targeting of telecommunications systems by far-right extremists. The increased focus and attacks on critical infrastructure by far-right extremists has the potential to wreak extensive, multifaceted societal disruption and damage, impacting communications, the economy, mobility, and basic human necessities.

            Can you provide legitimate, unbiased sources for your claims? Because all the data says you’re being lied to.

            • @LazyM11@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              12 years ago

              I live in LA def ain’t conservatives out here shooting it up. I can just go see if in real life stay to your online life

              • @LillyPip@lemmy.ca
                link
                fedilink
                English
                1
                edit-2
                2 years ago

                Mhm. Your anecdotal ‘feels’ outweigh actual data, sounds about right(wing).

                How about you at least try to back up what you say with anything at all beyond ‘I believe it’s true’? Because nobody outside your bubble is going to take that seriously.

                I’m from a city roughly the size and makeup of LA, so you can keep your ‘online life’ comment to yourself.

                e-side note: real people are behind these usernames, you know. Not NPCs or drones, but actual people with lives sharing similarities to your own in varying degrees. People aren’t black and white caricatures, and treating them as though they’re hypothetical characters in fake worlds further detaches you from them and can lead to a distorted worldview.

                It’s important keep remembering that, because bad actors have been working hard to take advantage of the tendency we all have towards this.