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 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.
They’re just throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks hoping to get some money. Suing google for delivering search results? It shows how ridiculous blaming tools is. The only person liable here is the shooter.
Well, maybe. I want to be up-front that I haven’t read the actual lawsuit, but it seems from the article that the claim is that youtube and reddit both have an algorithm that helped radicalize him:
I’d say that case is worth pursuing. It’s long been known that social media companies tune their algorithms to increase engagement, and that pissed off people are more likely to engage. This results in algorithms that output content that makes people angry, by design, and that’s a choice these companies make, not “delivering search results”.
On the very specific point of liability, while the shooter is the specific person that pulled the trigger, is there no liability for those that radicalised the person into turning into a shooter? If I was selling foodstuffs that poisoned people I’d be held to account by various regulatory bodies, yet pushing out material to poison people’s minds goes for the most part unpunished. If a preacher at a local religious centre was advocating terrorism, they’d face charges.
The UK government has a whole ream of context about this: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/97976/prevent-strategy-review.pdf
Google’s “common carrier” type of defence takes you only so far, as it’s not a purely neutral party in terms, as it “recommends”, not merely “delivers results”, as @joe points out. That recommendation should come with some editorial responsibility.
This is more akin to if you sold a fatty food in a supermarket and someone died from being overweight.
Radicalizing someone to do this isn’t a crime. Freedom of speech isn’t absolute but unless someone gives them actual orders it would still be protected.
Don’t apply UK’s lack of freedom of speech in American courts.
🙄
Specific text: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/373
Oh pretending you were always talking about US when BOTH of your previous links are from the UK? Come on bro…
And you’re citing a law and not considering how it’s applied for the last couple centuries or even years. In very broad terms, you can’t just claim they said something inflamatory and that person did something. For the most part they need to be rather specific for that law to apply.
“Someone should do something about that mosque” isn’t the same as saying “Someone should blow up that specific mosque”. And almost every time this comes up the radicalization knows how to avoid going over the line. But if I posted a message that said “someone should blow up that mosque” It would be myself that would get in trouble, not lemmy, or Youtube or where ever I posted it.
The problem is “Solicit, command, induce, or otherwise endeavor to persuade” That’s usually far more specific than you seem to think. It’s part of the way organized crime was able to survive so long, until RICO cases were made, and those cases basically bypass this by saying there’s a (Criminal) “enterprise”.
The other problem you have is complaining about the “Algorithm” but not understanding that itself would likely be a defense in that it’s designed to promote retention, not radicalization, but that would even assume it’ll get to court, which in this case it’ll almost certainly not. The fact they’re not going after a specific person probably means they’re targeting a vague “radicalization” which hey, you have a good point in your first link. The radicalization would be illegal under UK law. But if he did in the US, he likely would not be in jail.
But then again we don’t jail people for teaching dogs to do the nazi salute, so yeah, strange. We have different laws here that I still don’t think you understand.
No. It’s actually more akin to someone designing a supermarket that made it near impossible for a fat person to find healthy food and heavily discounted fatty foods and someone died from being overweight.