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.
The article doesn’t really expand on the Reddit point: apart from the weapon trading forum, it’s about the shooter being a participant in PoliticalCompassMemes which is a right wing subreddit. After the shooting the Reddit admins made a weak threat towards the mods of PCM, prompting the mods to sticky a “stop being so racist or we’ll get deleted” post with loads of examples of the type of racist dog whistles the users needed to stop using in the post itself.
I don’t imagine they’ll have much success against Reddit in this lawsuit, but Reddit is aware of PCM and its role and it continues to thrive to this day.
Who would be the right one to sue? Reddit is hosting it, but they are using admins to keep discussion civil and legal; the admins of PCM are most likely not employed by Reddit, but are they responsible for users egging each other on? At what point is a mod responsible for users using “free speech” to instigate a crime? They should have picked a few posts and users and held them accountable instead of going for the platform. People will keep radicalizing themselves in social media bubbles, in particular when those bubbles are not visible to the public. Muting discussion on a platform will just make them go elsewhere or create their own. The better approach would be to expose them to different views and critique of what they are saying.
They’re just throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks hoping to get some money. Suing google for delivering search results? It shows how ridiculous blaming tools is. The only person liable here is the shooter.
The only person liable here is the shooter.
On the very specific point of liability, while the shooter is the specific person that pulled the trigger, is there no liability for those that radicalised the person into turning into a shooter? If I was selling foodstuffs that poisoned people I’d be held to account by various regulatory bodies, yet pushing out material to poison people’s minds goes for the most part unpunished. If a preacher at a local religious centre was advocating terrorism, they’d face charges.
The UK government has a whole ream of context about this: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/97976/prevent-strategy-review.pdf
Google’s “common carrier” type of defence takes you only so far, as it’s not a purely neutral party in terms, as it “recommends”, not merely “delivers results”, as @joe points out. That recommendation should come with some editorial responsibility.
This is more akin to if you sold a fatty food in a supermarket and someone died from being overweight.
Radicalizing someone to do this isn’t a crime. Freedom of speech isn’t absolute but unless someone gives them actual orders it would still be protected.
Don’t apply UK’s lack of freedom of speech in American courts.
This is more akin to if you sold a fatty food in a supermarket and someone died from being overweight.
No. It’s actually more akin to someone designing a supermarket that made it near impossible for a fat person to find healthy food and heavily discounted fatty foods and someone died from being overweight.
