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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
If the suggestion algorithms helped radicalize the attacker, by feeding him moreand more racist content, then that is entirely different from a mass shooting scene in a movie.
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.
They literally explained why it was a shakedown. I don’t know what else needs to be said.
The parents of the victims are suing organizations that have no chance of being held liable in the hopes that they get some form of payout. That’s what a shakedown is.
It’s tragic and I get their anger, but this isn’t going to succeed. Any legal team worth its retainer fee will successfully defend this.
The term “shakedown” has been used to describe frivolous lawsuits seeking to strong-arm settlements from defendants for decades. Language is descriptive, not prescriptive.
I don’t think that ordinary non-billionaire humans suing Google is strong-arming by any sense of the imagination. Google has the deep pockets and the top legal team. Google could invent lawsuits about whatever the fuck it wanted to and destroy each and every one of these people until the end of time. PR is the only reason they don’t. Not fear of court imposed sanctions—they’re too slick for that.
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
If they think they can win it’s another matter, what I think is happening here is the lawyer is pushing for the case regardless, because they get paid regardless.
I’m not sure that’s true. Families don’t always have deep pockets. The lawyer is paid a % of the settlement, which is probably more money than the family could just pay out of pocket. But it does mean they need to win, so they pick their cases. I mean if you pay them well in cash they’ll likely take any case. But a lot of personal injury cases and such are paid on a percentage.
Not necessarily, if that was the case I would expect it to be very likely they would win - a lawyer isn’t going to take a case on contingency if they don’t think they will win. More likely the family have a little bit of money saved up and the lawyer is taking advantage of them in their emotional state by encouraging them into a frivilous lawsuit.
Former Australian Deputy Premier won a case against Google in 2022 arguing that the YouTube platform enabled journalist FriendlyJordies to make fun of him, and he won a $715,000 settlement.
Only part I disagree with. It’s a very good thing that this case dies in court. It really does suck for the families, sure, but if these kinds of lawsuits worked it would cause a whole lot more problems than it solves.
Yeah, they should also sue the ISP, the power company, the company who built the criminal’s house and the people who paved the road he used. /s
Oh not wait they are suing ISPs for zeroes and ones that flow through their cables. Strange world we live in. No one would have sued the postal service for a letter they got, or their telco for a call they received before the www.
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.
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.
To be fair, it took waaay too long for anything to be done about it. I feel like they kept it going for so long because it was drawing people to Reddit and improving engagement etc. Even when they did step in, they just quarantined the subreddit.
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.
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…
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
As if killing people is some ultimate evil? WW2 literally happened with the purpose of stopping the Nazis, and the only way was killing them due to their ideology requiring force.
People die every day for no reason, some suffer their entire lives’, some people die due to indirect/direct consequences of greed by corporations. The US has killed millions through geopolitical interference. Yet killing somebody who would have ‘unideal races’ genocided is too far? Sure. As if liberals aren’t ok with killing people as long as they agree with the perpetrator.
Fucking ridiculous. If people feel so strongly to publicly announce wanting to kill you, they are either insane, or you are fucked up. And in this case, I think we know the answer.
That’s their claim, but it’s not like I’m advocating killing a person or anything of value. I’m advocating to kill a Nazi. That’s just being an American Citizen.
Reddit is seriously dogshit. Shitty admins, shitty users and shitty investor interests ruined the site completely. The platform will never turn back. It’s gone fully into the hive-mind/censorship direction, likely because it keeps people on the site and maximises revenue.
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.
tech giants, a local gun shop, and the gunman’s parents.
Can’t help but feel like the last two have the lions share of the responsibility here… Especially the last one. If your kid goes on a killing spree, you did a fucking shit job of parenting.
Hell no, algorithms constantly pushing rage, lies, and instigating violence are causing immense harm all over the world. It’s about time tech giants paid for their disgusting algorithms constantly radicalizing the terminally online.
I don’t disagree completely. With YouTube, I’ve seen people go from normal people that you can have interesting conversations with, to doubting Covid existing, to having opinions about Hunter Biden and thinking Russia was right to invade Ukraine. Scary to see people go down hill like that, and not stupid people either. Anyone can fall victim to this.
But Reddit? It lets you find bubbles of racists and incels, sure, but it’s not doing the algorithm dance like YouTube does. It’s going to be a thin argument for a court case.
The hate was there way before the social media giants, they just group it all together in echo chambers. Before that we had IRC and normies had TV and tabloid newspapers. The hate will still be there when the last gen Z-er turns off TikTok for the last time. Not sure there’s any solution for it. Reduce inequality so people don’t feel constantly like they’ve got a fucked up life and it’s somebody else’s fault? Maybe don’t let kids who aren’t even old enough to drink have guns? Mental health awareness? But none of these are as enticing as “foreigners stole your jobs!”
Having hateful thoughts in your head and having hateful rhetoric spoonfed to you are 2 different things. There’s a reason why there is a surge in hate crimes and far-right rhetoric all over the world. It’s not a coincidence that it happened at the same time big tech gained full control of pretty much everyone’s information sources. IRC is not even remotely commonplace, TV print and radio don’t allow genocidal losers to spread their ideas since they can’t just make an account and post garbage.
As for reddit, how were they able to ban “watchpeopledie” and heavily censor the piracy subreddit? They 100% are responsible for not policing hate subs and allowing them to be easily accessible, they are also using an algorithm (that’s not as “polished” as YouTube’s but still exists and will most likely get worse as they cement full control over their platform’s users).
The solution is to induce financial penalty on these companies that makes it more expensive than the ad revenue they receive from such shitty algorithms. Which is exactly how the piracy subreddit was gutted so much, reddit risks financial harm from legal battles for hosting that content. It is not much different to do the same for hateful rhetoric advocating for murder.
There will always be somebody spoonfeeding it, because there will always be people who want to hear it. From Oswald Mosely, through The Daily Mail, Fox News, hate preachers of all denominations… Often for the same pure simple profit that the social media giants are after rather than ideological hatred.
I’d love to see social media destroyed because it contributes literally nothing to society and makes it worse, but I don’t believe for a second that a US court would hand down a fine that would be more than the cost of actually policing their own platform. I’m not sure any political party would try to make them, because it’s quite apparent that social media platforms have enough sway to throw elections one way or the other. Especially in the US where it hangs on a knife edge anyway. I also don’t think reddit is remotely mainstream enough swing global opinions to the right. That’s the domain of Facebook and Twitter.
From Oswald Mosely, through The Daily Mail, Fox News, hate preachers of all denominations…
Again, not as far reaching, effective, or insidious. Fox news also had to pay dominion voting systems for lying and spreading election fraud propaganda.
Often for the same pure simple profit that the social media giants are after rather than ideological hatred
Highly doubtful
I don’t believe for a second that a US court would hand down a fine
This is a civil suit
I also don’t think reddit is remotely mainstream enough swing global opinions to the right
So? It’s one of many pieces, not the only piece. It’s also the largest site of its kind.
Parents are a funny one… At a point I really don’t think you have control of your kid… they become their own person and their friends play a major influence in their life.
If they have good friends that are better than the parents that can be a good thing.
If they have bad friends that are worse than the parents, well that’s a bad thing.
You can say “well they never should’ve let them associate with those friends!” but I’m immediately suspicious of easy answers, and that’s as easy of an answer as they come.
I think a lot of us saw this in our teen years if we’re being honest. We typically tell ourselves stories that make only the good things cases of “self development” (oh that kid is so much better than his parents) but I’m sure it happens the other way. I don’t think all evil people can be blamed on evil (or even bad) parents (which is terrifying if you think about it).
I think no one holds the shooter blameless, but that’s of more limited value. It’s straightforward to keep the shooter from doing further harm. More complicated is the task of mitigating the chances of radicalization leading to more spree shootings.
It doesn’t even necessarily have to involve limiting speech, but it does suggest that a social media feed really needs to mix it up and avoid a feedback loop of one sided thought and rage.
Algorithms show you what you want. That’s literally what they’re designed to do. There is no difference between your algorithm and the shooter’s, or mine and the shooter’s, and I see 0 of the content he saw.
They are designed to filter out everything but what you interact with the most, and what you interact with the most is going to become skewed as it becomes a closed feedback loop, or a spiral if you will. Over many iterations, what it thinks you want shapes what you think you want.
It will also see what others who want what you want want, and serve you suggestions based on that. Likewise, it will serve what you want to others who want what you want.
At some point it becomes a self-feeding echo chamber, and that is exactly what we see happening.
What if I told you that you can search for and watch videos that aren’t part of your current algorithm, and also that’s how most people interact with the service
How far do you go, do you blame what he ate that day or lack of and was hangery? Just cause you get served videos from whatever source that doesn’t change it from just being what it is, information. If a psycho decides to do something with that information, he’s a psycho criminal. This is perfect to continue further censorship. Getting rid of echo chambers is impossible unless they get rid of the algos all together and people go back to building their own rss feeds but thats not gonna happen and even if all you craft is the same echo chamber what changes, nothing still a psycho. Hard to rationalize the irrational.
I’m torn, on one hand, you are right. On the other, I will say that while we disagreed, my extended family used to get along. Enough time with social media and there’s basically people that can’t stand to talk to each other at all, let alone be in the same room. Folks that grew up together, spent decades hanging out. Same thing for a friend of mine that had been a friend for over a decade. Went down a rabbit hole and frothing at the mouth rage with all sorts of extremist talking points.
While direct responsibility is certainly tricky, social networks have allowed people’s worst inclinations to fester. The neat tendency for them to group “like-minded” folks together while guarding them from “unlike-minded” has really caused deep societal problems.
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.
Lots of stupid, emotionally driven teenagers on the platform who think their opinion is reality, so you have a lot of Tate/Peterson/Rogan riders on the platform. Add in the fact ‘controversial’ (blatantly wrong or insane) content gets lots of comments/engagement, so it is pushed by the algorithm. Then there are just lots of idiots in general who don’t want to consider self-reflection or change their vies, so they will eat up all the ideology that shifts the blame or gives them a chance to ‘get to the top.’ They are victims of modern society. But somehow see every ‘problem’ except for the real one, the one of neoliberal ideologies around capitalism and individualism.
I just wish that I could watch (intentionally or accidentally) a slightly hot-take video once in a blue moon without the algorithm deciding I’m a right-wing nutjob that only wants right-wing nutjob content. How hard would it be to allow users to give active input on what they’re getting? Right now, anything I do (downvoting, “don’t recommend this channel”, reporting hate speech) gives me MORE of the shit I hate.
I dont even use youtube anymore, i just use freetube and select the content i wanna watch by myself. Private frontends are the best. No spyware or bloated webpages or anti-adblock. Freetube even has support for external media players like mpv and vlc and smplayer and others. It even has optional tor and invidious support. Sponsorblock and Dearrow support as well.
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’
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
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.
Dont need to look at a lot, if you remember 2015 youtube suggestions youve got a pretty good idea of how bad the shorts algorithm is. I dont personally use them bur my friend does.
You don’t generally search with YouTube shorts, it presents you with content About 20% is YOUR recommendations (channels you subscribe to) 20% is near-interests (people who do similar content) 20% is whatever is popular at the moment, or whatever a la carte foreign language/low effort content (garena free fire, fortnite) it wants to give you 20% is locational (at home I get anime recommendations due to housemate, at work I get Vegas/Disney vacation or AI garbage) 20% is whatever the algorithm is pushing (channels I have BLOCKED but still appear, tiktok exiles, cooking videos)
I’m a lefty tree hugger who subscribes to frugal living and DIY home maintenance channels… I get right wing Jordan Peterson/ Joe Rogan bullshit in my feed every time I log on.
I actively click not interested…it still comes. I clear my browser history often, it still comes.
You should pause your watch history altogether if you’re getting this kinda shit. Youtube has stopped recommend anything to people altogether who have completely paused their watch history.
How bout instead YT take the fuckong hint when we click “I am not interested in this”? How bout that? Why does a feature which some of us are paying for have to be disabled because YT can’t write a version of their simple algorithm that takes hints?
Your “lefty” content prompts the algorithm to show you opposing content, which is literally what people are clamoring for, because odds are high that you will engage with it, and engagement is the only thing it looks for.
If you only liked Trump shit it’d show you a minority of left-leaning content as well.
Doesn’t help that everyone and their mother has a channel that only shows Joe Rogan clips. I don’t even like this shit YouTube, why can I recognize it from the fucking microphone.
Why do you people insist on this conspiracy theory where you blame the person because you think they are lying? Fuck off. Google’s algorithm is malicious.
Yeah, I am getting pretty real tired of that excuse. It takes active vigilance to try to teach the algorithm that no, I am not a christofascist incel “pAtRiOt” and I do not want those fuckers in my feed
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”
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.
Just ride the rock bud. We’re at least lucky enough to live in a time and place where we can play video games and eat pizza.
I spend too much time listening to and reading about the history of conflict and cults. It’s hard for me to have hope when I see the same thing happening over and over again for thousands of years.
I don’t need hope though because I’m an idiot who can’t change anything.
Good, smart people are out there working for change, seriously working. Maybe they’ll keep things together for a long time.
Maybe you can be one of them.
If not, just ride the rock and enjoy the things you enjoy. Nothing wrong with that.
Add comment