1148

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.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] HawlSera@lemm.ee 136 points 1 year ago

Youtube needs to be punished for their hypocrisy.

Average Joe gets a community guidelines strike for "promoting violence" because he said "Dead" instead of "Unalived", but Penis Prager can advocate for beating your gay kids till they turn straight and YouTube just throws it into everyone's playlists without so much as a "Boys will be boys"

[-] theangryseal@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago

Who is going to punish them? The leaders who agree with Prager that you can beat the gay out of your kids aren’t gonna get behind that.

A significant portion of our population is hoping for a way to degay their kids.

Man, I’m gonna be all doom and gloom when I go back to bed here in a few.

For me, it seems hopeless. We’ll all be further radicalized by the thing that I thought for most of my life would bring salvation, our access to the Library of Shitexander. A big old library filled with information, Ricky. Information on the workings of electricity. Information on the life and work of Isaac Newton. Information on how to cannibalize your neighbor. Information on how some grifter talks to god and knows exactly what he wants. We can learn useful skills like, how to hate black people and why we should. We can learn how to kickoff Armageddon, and why nuclear weapons are biblical and mutually assured destruction isn’t only a good thing, it’s what we should strive for.

And because we humans create information, we have arguments about who should decide what kind of information is available. Free speech absolutists will say that anything goes and is fair game. Others will say that some speech is dangerous because it influences hatred and bigotry. Each group has representation and has to compromise in order to keep things from escalating, oh but compromise might escalate things too.

Our species was born from chaos looking for a leader who didn’t exist.

I’m just gonna ride the rock until I’m not riding it any more and hope the people of the future don’t destroy each other and can someday figure out that that god ain’t coming back. What else can we do?

You guys have a good morning. I’m heading back to bed.

load more comments (6 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
[-] anthoniix@lemmy.world 135 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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.

[-] radix@lemmy.world 99 points 1 year ago

Everytown Law is about to get a lesson on how Section 230 works.

[-] hoodatninja@kbin.social 57 points 1 year ago

Pretty sure SCOTUS has a case they’re hearing currently that may very well change the scope of section 230 so I’d maybe reserve your quips until after that shakes out lol

[-] radix@lemmy.world 52 points 1 year ago

The two big cases this year were already decided: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter,_Inc._v._Taamneh and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzalez_v._Google_LLC

Although both dodged the S230 claims, both made it clear that Twitter and Google, respectively, had no liability.

Is there another case I missed?

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[-] reagansrottencorpse@lemmy.world 58 points 1 year ago

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

[-] DarthBueller@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year 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.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[-] primbin@lemmy.one 56 points 1 year ago

If youtube is still pushing racist and alt right content on to people, then they can get fucked. Why should we let some recommender system controlled by a private corporation have this much influence American culture and politics??

[-] sabogato 47 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I sub to primarily leftist content and their YouTube shorts algorithm insists on recommending the most vile far right content on the planet. It is to the point that I'm convinced YouTube is intentionally trying to shift people far right

[-] pachrist@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago

I primarily watch woodworking or baking content on Youtube. I feel like the far right content is super prevalent with Shorts. I'll watch something like a quick tool review, and the next video will be someone asking folks on the street if it's ok to be white. What color you are isn't your decision, but what you do every day is, and being some dumbass white kid accosting black tourists in Times Square for shitty reaction content is just gross.

It doesn't matter how often I say I dislike the content, block channels or whatever, Youtube has just decided it's going to check in from time to time and see if I want to let loose my inner Boomer and rage with Rogan.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (8 replies)
load more comments (6 replies)
[-] Candelestine@lemmy.world 54 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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.

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world 48 points 1 year ago

They should sue Facebook too. Facebook is rife with Nazis. And they're fine with it.

[-] Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago

Considering the Facebook algorithm will introduce you to neo-nazis, that would actually make sense.

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
[-] dingleberry@discuss.tchncs.de 44 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

You have klan members in Congress, supreme court, churches and every police department, but sure, YT and Reddit are the problem.

[-] Hobo@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Reddit, youtube, and tiktok are quickly becoming the new, "video games cause violence" cry from reactionaries. Hell you see people here claiming tiktok is going to make all the kids have 2 second attention spans. It's all just scapegoats for other systematic failures in culture, education, and social saftey nets, but those are hard to fix. Easier to just blame the platform and not make any real changes.

load more comments (10 replies)
load more comments (6 replies)
[-] Zengen@lemmy.world 42 points 1 year 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.

load more comments (22 replies)
[-] WheeGeetheCat@sh.itjust.works 41 points 1 year ago

Feels good to be reading this somewhere other than reddit

[-] Colorcodedresistor@lemm.ee 35 points 1 year ago

They blamed books for copy cat killers, movies and video games for shootings now they want to blame websites...

now they are trying to sue people because of hindsight? this isn't Minority Report. this is 'lets throw allot of torts and other legal bs on the wall and pray something sticks'

[-] VonCesaw@lemmy.world 40 points 1 year ago

Making legal precedent so that they AVOID showing the offending content instead of PROMOTING the offending content is probably the goal

About 30-40 times a day, Youtube shorts shows me videos actively advocating violence, and I know for sure that Google has enough money and resources currently to prevent these videos being shown, considering it AUTOMATICALLY SUBTITLES THEM

[-] derpgon@programming.dev 25 points 1 year ago

I had to manually report a 100k views short showing someone killing a snail with an air gun. It got removed almost instantly.

Sure, it's a snail, and sure, it's an air gun, but exactly this type of videos are breeding grounds for sickos. And no YouTube, the 1mil sub Minecraft channel that said "kill a creep" is not really violent, neither is some who says "fuck" in the first 30 seconds.

Gosh I hate the platform.

load more comments (17 replies)
[-] SitD@feddit.de 34 points 1 year ago

🤔 so if gun violence is a problem... and they've already banned violence... what if one would ban the other thing - oh wait no it's definitely the goofy gamer machinimas 🤭 stop giggling y'all, this is serious. you don't wanna turn into criminals

load more comments (36 replies)
[-] shortwavesurfer@monero.town 30 points 1 year ago

Will be dismissed on section 230 grounds.

[-] Chetzemoka@kbin.social 32 points 1 year ago

Their content promotion algorithms are not protected by section 230. Those algorithms are the real problem, pushing more and more radical content onto vulnerable minds. (The alt-right YouTube pipeline is pretty well documented. Reddit, I think, less so. But they still promote "similar content")

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] sndmn@lemmy.ca 27 points 1 year ago

The gun(s) are the most significant enablers of mass shootings.

[-] snausagesinablanket@lemmy.world 29 points 1 year ago

Complete lack of accessible mental health counseling enters the room.

load more comments (13 replies)
[-] Echo71Niner@kbin.social 26 points 1 year 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.

[-] mojo@lemm.ee 20 points 1 year 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.

load more comments (10 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[-] skymtf 23 points 1 year 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

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] FrankTheHealer@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago

Much as I dislike Reddit, I dont think they are to blame here

[-] Zithero@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year 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.

load more comments (8 replies)
load more comments (11 replies)
[-] LazyM11@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago

Blame everything but the shooter great

[-] MotoAsh@lemmy.world 25 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Nah, this is in addition to. No one is saying the shooter was faultless, so stop pretending anyone said that.

load more comments
view more: next ›
this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
1148 points (100.0% liked)

Technology

60265 readers
2793 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS