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”
Penis Prager
I see you’re a person of culture as well… I know this reference.
There is a good reason for that, and that is that Penis Prager is a bigger payoff for Google.
yeah but the hypocrisy is so blatant
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
Ah, to be based on selective history and tradition.
Big tech says no.
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.
I don’t really know what their goal is here. Surely they’re not stupid enough to think they could actually win this?
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.
Hell they’ll even take ad money to promote Jan 6th conspiracies
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.
The algorithm is tailored to you. This says more about you. I never get recommended Rogan.
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.
Also, Youtube and Reddit and moderated.
and we all know what reddit mods do.
What if it isn’t algorithms but upvotes? What if Lemmy is next?
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.
Do ISPs actively encourage you to watch extremist content? Do they push that content toward people who are at risk of radicalization to get extra money?
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the isps don’t encourage people to see content that makes them mad
I agree that his parents are culpable.
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?
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.
Great analogy
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
I think just the poster should suffice, we should leave the platforms out of it. If anything, it helps to out the assholes who would post stuff that enables this.
Blocking a user and removing content from a platform should be relatively easy and fast which should prevent organized crimes. Sueing someone afterwords takes way more resources and time.
But a platform can remove content without getting sued. Why sue them too? Because if you don’t sue their asses they don’t care.
Of course moderation takes time and can’t be perfect and this should be considered when suing the platform owners. And yes this could help the assholes, but I think you can report such behavior to the fbi or someone.
Change mail (private) to moderated public notice board (not private). The owner of the public notice board should probably be sued for allowing the content to stay up.
Is the postal service intentionally increasing mail to people interested in attacks by people messaging that attacks are necessary? If the postal service is doing that to increase the total postal volume, then yes, we should.
If youtube is still pushing racist and alt right content on to people, then they can get fucked. Why should we let some recommender system controlled by a private corporation have this much influence American culture and politics??
I sub to primarily leftist content and their YouTube shorts algorithm insists on recommending the most vile far right content on the planet. It is to the point that I’m convinced YouTube is intentionally trying to shift people far right
It could be that pushing videos on the other side of the political spectrum gets interactions in the form of people sharing/commenting on it. Even if you disagree, going “Why does YouTube recommend this, this is awful” is still a share.
The algorithm prioritises interactions above all else, and fewer things get people interacting more than being wrong, or them disagreeing vehemently.
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This is happening on my FB video feed. I watch a funny chick called Charlotte Dobre and she does funny reaction videos. I honestly love her, but all my algorithm shows me for recommendations are these cop brutality videos with comments praising the cops, and right wing crap that praises Abbotts wall and desantis dictatorship. It drives me nuts, and no matter howany pages I block I always get more right wing recommended crap videos
Wow I am so surprised by this. I watch mainly tech and gardening YouTube and my shorts have been extremely applicable to me.
Even when I use a new computer like at work the shorts are mostly pop culture.
Didn’t make shorts any less annoying though
I wonder if this differs from country to country? Or is it different in Europe vs US? I get maths, engineering, music. Nothing too awful. But there is clearly a fully conscious and malicious push to the right going on on all large platforms. It seems Europe is trying to step in and limit that shit from big US platforms before it’s too late. Then we have censorship looming on the other side of the picture.
I’m in UK and I often get YouTube shorts made by/for US alt right. These include Ben Shapiro, Tucker, Tate and Jordan Peterson - also people complaining about Bud Light. I always dislike this content and alot of the Tate stuff needs reporting.
I’m left wing and very rarely get left wing content. I don’t remember ever being shown any extreme left wing content.
The left wing UK content I get is MPs is Westminster’s making speeches, the UK right wing content is manufactured publicity made by the Tories.
Additionally being in Scotland and liking music seems to cause Google to serve you YouTube shorts of Scottish marching bands. Google doesn’t seem to realise flute (not traditional bagpipe/kilt bands) in Scotland are mostly hate groups. These orange bands are the group that became the KKK in America. They just aren’t recognised as a hate group in the UK because they support monarchy, unionism and are actively courted/involved with both Tories and Labour. Despite playing music encouraging the death of other religious groups and using their marches as intimidation.
True that. I also never see anything really left wing. But then I really try to avoid political stuff on Youtube. I don’t want to see video content that makes me angry.
I’ve noticed that my punk music recommendations always seem to quickly get politically innocuous. It’s like the punk always gets gradually filtered out of my recommendations again, while the math, jazz, world music, metal, botany, craft, etc. remains.
I never really take the effort to dislike anything. Not giving it any time or effort maybe makes a difference? Interesting fact about the Scottish marching bands. Makes me concerned that as a person obsessed with international folk music I might accidentally like something nationalistic. Especially in the Balkans it quickly gets complicated and genocide-y.
I recently started to get a few right wing channels starting to show up but I promptly clicked not interested and blocked them with a Firefox extension
If you ever go on YouTube not logged into your account (or in a provate browser), the default stuff on the homepage are: one lo-fi stream, Mr. Beast latest video, and the rest is all right wing feaemonger stuff.
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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!
Yes?
Lmao you should read up
No u.
Here, I’ll give you a head start:
University of Maryland Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice
our analysis shows that right-wing actors are significantly more violent than left-wing actors
the probability of a violent act of extremism in the United States being committed by a left-wing extremist was found to be 0.33, 0.61 by a right-wing extremist, and 0.62 by an Islamist extremist.You’ll notice that’s double the incidents from the right vs the left.
Military Times, which no one could reasonably claim has any liberal bias
But terrorism carried out by right-wing actors eclipsed that of leftist movements in the 1990s … Now, government agencies and scholars across the political spectrum agree that far-right movements have caused most of the political violence in the U.S. over the past few years – and present the most dangerous threat today.
West Point Combating Terrorism Center – and again, West Point can hardly be called liberal
Accelerationist ideology, conspiracy theories, disinformation, and far-right extremist narratives have played a key role in the prioritization of critical infrastructure as a target for the violent far-right. The intersections of these ideologies and narratives have led to complex attacks on power grids and the targeting of telecommunications systems by far-right extremists. The increased focus and attacks on critical infrastructure by far-right extremists has the potential to wreak extensive, multifaceted societal disruption and damage, impacting communications, the economy, mobility, and basic human necessities.
Can you provide legitimate, unbiased sources for your claims? Because all the data says you’re being lied to.
I live in LA def ain’t conservatives out here shooting it up. I can just go see if in real life stay to your online life
Mhm. Your anecdotal ‘feels’ outweigh actual data, sounds about right(wing).
How about you at least try to back up what you say with anything at all beyond ‘I believe it’s true’? Because nobody outside your bubble is going to take that seriously.
I’m from a city roughly the size and makeup of LA, so you can keep your ‘online life’ comment to yourself.
e-side note: real people are behind these usernames, you know. Not NPCs or drones, but actual people with lives sharing similarities to your own in varying degrees. People aren’t black and white caricatures, and treating them as though they’re hypothetical characters in fake worlds further detaches you from them and can lead to a distorted worldview.
It’s important keep remembering that, because bad actors have been working hard to take advantage of the tendency we all have towards this.
“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.
Learn what ENABLE means. Then come back and learn fit your dumb shit.
Most shootings happen with legally bought guns, but okay.
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Quit being obtuse. You know as well as I do that conservatives ENABLE the gun violence we see every day. It’s baked right into the bullshit policy they enact, the laws they block, and the gun manufacturers that pay them their salaries.
I challenge you to be more ignorant. Please. I want to see if it’s possible.
They should sue Facebook too. Facebook is rife with Nazis. And they’re fine with it.
Considering the Facebook algorithm will introduce you to neo-nazis, that would actually make sense.
Have the been any legal cases on these algorithms?
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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.
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.
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.
Feels good to be reading this somewhere other than reddit
If you look at anything even remotely related to “men’s interests” YouTube will begin showing you alt right fascist bull shit.
I watch a lot of model trains stuff, I don’t get alt-right fascist stuff. At worst I get shit like ShoeOnHead who seems reasonable enough.
She is an anti-feminist and basically alt right entry point.
No? Have you ever watched her, or did you just see out of context clips?
Unless by antifeminist and alt right, you mean disagree with stalin, and isnt a women supremacist.
Guessing from the witch in your username, you’re just upset shes doesn’t think women are superior.
If you look at anything even remotely related to “men’s interests” YouTube will begin showing you alt right fascist bull shit.
Or if you don’t. Youtube shorts recommends Rogan constantly.
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.
This is grieving family’s who are vindictive.
I’d blame it on the lawyers.
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
The family’s lawyer is getting paid either way.
Yeah some families are vindictive but ALL lawyers are ready to press a case like this as long as they think they can win.
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.
A former Australian PM recently won a case against Google arguing that the YouTube platform enabled journalist FriendlyJordies to make fun of him, and he won a $750 million settlement.
Also, not a former Australian prime minister. He was the deputy premier of New South Wales.
YouTube may end up being protected by Safe Harbor laws though:
715 thousand. Not millions
Changed it. What’s a zero here or a zero there between politicians though…
True
sadly… this case will die in court
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.
nailed it
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.
How is this a “shakedown”?
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.
There’s no blackmail or extortion of money, it’s a litigation suit on companies to be held liable. That’s not defined as a shakedown.
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.
You have klan members in Congress, supreme court, churches and every police department, but sure, YT and Reddit is the problem.
There can be two problems.
The two problems can have disproportionate sizes. Drumming up hysteria about reddit and yt is basically a distraction when you have people in public life endorsing the fringe ideas floating on these platforms.
There can also be two solutions.
Did you want to personally rubber stamp each of them?
Yes.
It’s been the Republican playbook for decades. Get the populace riled up about Satan or Gays or AIDS or now trans people and you can rob them blind while saying it was them.
At the very least, they shouldn’t be promoting this content. There’s a difference between hosting content and actively suggesting it to users.
Reddit, youtube, and tiktok are quickly becoming the new, “video games cause violence” cry from reactionaries. Hell you see people here claiming tiktok is going to make all the kids have 2 second attention spans. It’s all just scapegoats for other systematic failures in culture, education, and social saftey nets, but those are hard to fix. Easier to just blame the platform and not make any real changes.
it’s not republicans that are suing over this…
Fair enough! I should’ve said, and have corrected it to, reactionaries.
Probably because it’s Republicans making the content and doing the shootings.
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Cool, now do the other 500.
It’s all just scapegoats for other systematic failures in culture, education, and social saftey nets, but those are hard to fix. Easier to just blame the platform and not make any real changes.
You mean like blaming guns?
Will be dismissed on section 230 grounds.
Their content promotion algorithms are not protected by section 230. Those algorithms are the real problem, pushing more and more radical content onto vulnerable minds. (The alt-right YouTube pipeline is pretty well documented. Reddit, I think, less so. But they still promote “similar content”)
Section 230 requires "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230#:~:text=good faith removal or moderation of third-party material Selection of click-bait algorithms is a choice. At least, they could select out promotion of murder and maiming without a sled ride.
I feel like our problem isn’t that social media companies are not liable but that they are too big, like imagine this happening on mastodon. Generally I feel like mastodon would not allow this unless the instance was specificlly facist like the KF instance
I dont think the Fediverse is a good example of not allowing certain activities.
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’
