Motivated by financial gains, lawsuit claims Meta designated the event as a “terrorist attack” and began removing copies of videos and documents pertaining to the shooting and links to them on other sites, a company spokesperson told CNN days after the shooting. We regularly work with law enforcement, other platforms, and civil society to share intelligence and best practices,” wrote YouTube spokesperson José Castañeda.ĭiscord issued a statement after the shooting denouncing White supremacy, as did Twitch, which said they “have a zero-tolerance policy against violence of any kind, and we use several mechanisms to detect, escalate, and remove violence on Twitch.” Through the years, YouTube has invested in technology, teams, and policies to identify and remove extremist content. “We have the deepest sympathies for the victims and families of the horrific attack at Tops grocery store in Buffalo last year. Google, the owner of YouTube, provided a statement to CNN in response to the lawsuit. Instead, we vet all content before it can reach a large audience, which helps protect against the discovery of potentially harmful or dangerous content.” We deliberately designed Snapchat differently than traditional social media platforms and don’t allow unvetted content to go viral or be algorithmically promoted. In a statement to CNN, Snapchat, which is owned by Snap, said, “We have a zero-tolerance policy for hate speech and discrimination of any kind. The lawsuit also identifies Gendron’s parents, Paul and Pamela Gendron the gun store from which Gendron purchased the firearm he used in the shooting, a weapons manufacturer and a body armor supplier, as defendants.ĬNN has reached out to the social media companies and other defendants listed in the lawsuit for comment. “Their actions in fighting for positive changes on gun reform, fighting White supremacy, fighting to reign in social media so hate speech can’t be spread by technology companies through social media – the families have been nothing short of courageous,” he told CNN’s Victor Blackwell on “CNN This Morning.”įiled in State Supreme Court in Erie County, the lawsuit names multiple social media platforms or their parent company, collectively identified as “Social Media Defendants,” including Meta (Facebook), Snap, YouTube, Discord, Alphabet, 4chan and Amazon. Speaking to CNN Sunday, Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown commended some of the victims’ families and survivors for tackling extremism on social media platforms. Derek Gee/The Buffalo News/APīuffalo grocery store mass shooter apologizes for racist attack and receives sentence of life in prison Payton Gendron listens during his sentencing hearing on Wednesday. The filing comes two days before the one-year mark of the fatal grocery store shooting that took place in a predominately Black neighborhood. The plaintiffs are seeking monetary relief from all of the defendants to be determined at trial. The plaintiffs are asking that the social media platforms change the way they recommend content and provide warnings when content poses “a clear and present danger of radicalization and violence to the public.” Our goal, on behalf of our clients, is to make this community and our nation safer and prevent other mass shootings.” “However, the social media platforms that radicalized him, and the companies that armed him, must still be held accountable for their actions. “Payton Gendron has pled guilty to these murders and is no longer a danger to society,” Elmore said in statement from the Social Media Victims Law Center. The lawsuit claims the social media companies “profit from the racist, antisemitic, and violent material displayed on their platforms to maximize user engagement,” including the time Gendron spent on their platforms viewing that material. Elmore told CNN that this is a “lurking danger.” John Elmore is one of the attorneys who filed the suit on behalf of the families of three victims of the mass shooting – Heyward Patterson, Katherine “Kat” Massey and Andre Mackniel, and assistant store manager Latisha Rogers who survived the shooting. The lawsuit alleges that the then 18-year-old Payton Gendron “was not raised by a racist family” and “had no personal history of negative interactions with Black people.” Gendron was motivated to carry out the attack at Tops Friendly Market “by racist, antisemitic, and white supremacist propaganda recommended and fed to him by the social media companies whose products he used,” according to the lawsuit. A wrongful death lawsuit filed against several social media companies Friday alleges that social media lent to the radicalization of the gunman who shot and killed 10 people at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, last May.
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