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.
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”
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.
I’m sorry I put my gloom on you.
There is a good reason for that, and that is that Penis Prager is a bigger payoff for Google.
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.
Everytown Law is about to get a lesson on how Section 230 works.
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
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?
This is so so stupid. We should also sue the ISPs then, they enabled the use of YouTube and Reddit. And the phone provider for enabling communications. This is such a dangerous slippery slope to put any blame on the platforms.
I think the thing isn’t just providing access to the content, but using algorithms to promote how likely it is for deranged people to view more and more content that fuel their motives for hateful acts instead of trying to reduce how often that content is seen, all because they make more money if they watch more content, wether it is harmful or not.
This.
I don’t know about Reddit, but YouTube 100% drives engagement by feeding users increasingly flammable and hateful content.
Yeah, the difference is in whether or not the company is choosing what to put in front of a viewer’s eyes.
For the most part an ISP just shows people what they request. If someone gets bomb making directions from YouTube it would be insane to sue AT&T because AT&T delivered the appropriate packets when someone went to YouTube.
On the other end of the spectrum is something like Fox News. They hire every host, give them timeslots, have the opportunity to vet guests, accept advertising money to run against their content, and so on.
Section 512 of the DMCA treats “online service providers” like YouTube and Reddit as if they’re just ISPs, merely hosting content that is generated by users. OTOH, YouTube and Reddit use ML systems to decide what the users are shown. In the case of YouTube, the push to suggest content to users is pretty strong. You could argue they’re much closer to the Fox News side of things than to the ISP side these days. There’s no human making the decisions on what content should be shown, but does that matter?
Yep. I often fall asleep to long YouTube videos that are science or history related. The algorithm is the reason why I wake up at 3am to Joe Rogan. It’s like a terrible autocomplete.
Absolutely. I saw a Google ad the other day from maybe PragerU that was about climate change not being real, while I was searching for an old article that was more optimistic about outcomes. They actually said by the ad that they were showing it as a suggested thing, and thankfully you could report it, which I did immediately. It pissed me off a ton.
A friend recently shared a similar suggested video/ad they got on YouTube, which was saying “Ukrainians are terrorists”. PragerU or TPUSA.
I can see the argument for allowing these ads to exist as a freedom of speech thing, fine. But actively promoting these ads is very different. The lawsuit would have merits on this. I’d prefer if this content was actively minimized, but at the very least it shouldn’t be promoted.
If you were head of a psychiatric ward and had an employee you knew was telling patients “Boy, I sure wish someone would kill as many black people as they could”, you would absolutely share responsibility when on of them did exactly that.
If you were deliberately pairing that employee with patients who had shown violent behaviour on the basis of “they both seem to like violence”, you would absolutely share responsibility for that violence.
This isn’t a matter of “there’s just so much content, however can we check it all?”.
Reddit has hosted multiple extremist and dangerous communities, claiming “we’re just the platform!” while handing over the very predictable post histories of mass shooters week after week.
YouTube has built an algorithm and monetisation system that is deliberately designed to lure people down rabbit holes then done nothing to stop it luring people towards domestic terrorism.
It’s a lawsuit against companies worth billions. They’re not being executed. There are grounds to accuse them of knowingly profiting from the grooming of terrorists and if they want to prove that’s not the case, they can do it in court.
I think to blame/sue the company that is nearest to the user should work fine. (following is hyperbolical) If you don’t do it that way, then yes it would be slippery because the big bang would need to be sued. But that makes no sense.
So if an attack is planned via mail you think we should sue the postal service? The phone company if it’s done over the phone?
No, because these things should be private. Social media however needs some kind of moderation. edit: also go blame the user too, but that should be a given
If my buddies and spend a month plotting a crimer in my cousin’s spare room, the cousin would be complicit since he knowingly allowed us to use his property for a criminal conspiracy. The USPS doesn’t know what i am sending in the mail since they are a common carrier.
THen why not just give up, and never hold youtube accountable for their actions
They should be suing the Conservative Party. That’s the enabler of gun violence.
hm yes, let’s look at who commits the most gun violence in the US, surely it is conservatives!
Go take a political litmus test of every gang member in the US and see how many are conservatives.
Active shooters make a drop in the pale comparatively, they’re just the ones the media focuses on because it’s the narrative they prefer.
“The conservative party enables gun violence” and “conservatives commit the most gun violence” are completely separate and independent statements. The person you’re replying to is saying the former, not the latter.
In other words, they aren’t saying that Republicans commit the majority of gun violence, but that the policies championed and implemented by Republicans are responsible for gun violence occurring.
And whether or not Republicans like it, they admit this all the time, although not the way you’d think. The GOP likes to say that mental health is the driver of gun violence and mass shootings, but simultaneously, the GOP votes against improved mental healthcare and even slashes funding for it.
Ah yes, the conservative party makes all those gangbangers get illegal guns and shoot each other up.
brilliant comment.
