Almost a year after a racially-motivated mass shooting at a Buffalo, New York, grocery store, several victims’ loved ones filed a lawsuit against social media companies
Gendron had livestreamed the attack on Twitch, which was taken down within two minutes, but later uploaded to 4Chan and circulated on Facebook. The lawsuit accuses the online platforms of proliferating Gendron’s hate sentiment by allowing the broadcast recording to spread across platforms quickly.
“While Facebook eventually turned off banner advertising for searches related to the Buffalo shooting, the murder video continued to circulate on Facebook,” the suit also alleges. “Facebook’s algorithms continued to recommend it.” The suit also alleges that Gendron became addicted to social media as a teenager because of “the dangerously defective and unreasonably dangerous algorithms powering Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat.” It adds, he “quickly became a problematic user” and that he “accessed his social media accounts multiple times per hour and at all hours of the night.”
In its allegations, the suit specifies that social media algorithms are designed to take advantage of teenagers whose brains are still developing and “maintain their engagement through increasingly extreme and psychologically discordant content.”Gendron’s parents, Vintage Firearms, the gun dealer that Gendron bought a weapon from, and RMA Armament, where he purchased body armor before the attack, were also listed as defendants.
Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act protects social media platforms from legal accountability over content posted by users, and could potentially pose a challenge for the suit. Section 230 is currently facing
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