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.

13 points

This is the best summary I could come up with:


YouTube, Reddit and a body armor manufacturer were among the businesses that helped enable the gunman who killed 10 Black people in a racist attack at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket, according to a pair of lawsuits announced Wednesday.

The complementary lawsuits filed by Everytown Law in state court in Buffalo claim that the massacre at Tops supermarket in May 2022 was made possible by a host of companies and individuals, from tech giants to a local gun shop to the gunman’s parents.

The lawsuit claims Mean LLC manufactured an easily removable gun lock, offering a way to circumvent New York laws prohibiting assault weapons and large-capacity magazines.

YouTube, named with parent companies Alphabet Inc. and Google, is accused of contributing to the gunman’s radicalization and helping him acquire information to plan the attack.

“We aim to change the corporate and individual calculus so that every company and every parent recognizes they have a role to play in preventing future gun violence,” said Eric Tirschwell, executive director of Everytown Law.

Last month, victims’ relatives filed a lawsuit claiming tech and social media giants such as Facebook, Amazon and Google bear responsibility for radicalizing Gendron.


The original article contains 592 words, the summary contains 192 words. Saved 68%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

permalink
report
reply
43 points
*

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.

permalink
report
reply
14 points

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.

permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points

True, jury trials are common in civil. They’re just not the majority, and I’m trying to draw a simplified picture I suppose. It’ll edit it again.

permalink
report
parent
reply
95 points

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

permalink
report
reply
51 points

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

permalink
report
parent
reply
55 points

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?

permalink
report
parent
reply
14 points
*
spoiler

sadfasfasdfsa

permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points

Ah, to be based on selective history and tradition.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

Big tech says no.

permalink
report
parent
reply
10 points

This isn’t the first time they’ve forgotten how various laws work. And they keep losing. Kinda makes you wonder if it’s intentional or not.

permalink
report
parent
reply
4 points

I don’t really know what their goal is here. Surely they’re not stupid enough to think they could actually win this?

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point
Deleted by creator
permalink
report
reply
21 points

Reddit enables more than just racist, it’s a nasty cesspool the like of 4chan, riddled with bots, the CEO himself is a POS.

permalink
report
reply
13 points

… I mean you’re preaching to the choir.

permalink
report
parent
reply
20 points

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.

permalink
report
parent
reply
13 points
Deleted by creator
permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

It’s literally rule 1…

Rule 1 Remember the human. Reddit is a place for creating community and belonging, not for attacking marginalized or vulnerable groups of people. Everyone has a right to use Reddit free of harassment, bullying, and threats of violence. Communities and users that incite violence or that promote hate based on identity or vulnerability will be banned.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

I went on /pol and did Ctrl f + n word, got 7 results. Can’t say reddit is even slightly that bad. I’m sure it still gets said, but it’s very much looked down upon. Where in 4chan it’s just a normal word, and so is the f slur.

permalink
report
parent
reply
0 points
Removed by mod
permalink
report
parent
reply
7 points

Agreed. Spez’s support of The_Donald was the beginning of the end (although as he was a mod of jailbait before it was banned, it was clear that Trump wasn’t the genesis of Spez’s sickness), and now there’s nothing left of the communities that made it great. There’s hasn’t been anything rewarding about contributing there since about 2014.

permalink
report
parent
reply

Technology

!technology@lemmy.world

Create post

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


Community stats

  • 18K

    Monthly active users

  • 11K

    Posts

  • 505K

    Comments