BUFFALO, N.Y. — Loved ones of those killed in the 2022 Buffalo grocery store mass shooting filed a wrongful death lawsuit Friday against a number of social media companies alleging they facilitated the teenage killer's white supremacist radicalization by allowing racist propaganda to fester on their platforms.
The lawsuit filed in State Supreme Court in Buffalo also names as defendants a gun dealer and body armor company, as well as the parents of the confessed killer, Payton Gendron.
"I'm hoping that something will come out of it. Everyday or every few days, all you hear about is a mass shooting," Massey's sister, Barbara Massey Mapps, told ABC News of the lawsuit."You've got to start somewhere, in order for them to get the message. These big companies only know one thing, money. So, you've got to hurt them.
Discord was named as a defendant because it was where Gendron"chronicled the progress of his plan" for months and where a half-hour before the attack he announced it to several Discord users he invited into a chat room, according to lawsuit. "Taking full advantage of the incomplete development of Gendron's frontal lobe, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat maintained his product engagement by directing him to increasingly extreme and violent content which, upon information and belief, promoted racism, anti-Semitism, and gun violence," the lawsuit contends.
"After purchasing his murder weapon at Vintage Firearms, Gendron continued to loyally patronize the store, and find camaraderie there," the suit alleges. It adds,"The social media platforms that Gendron encountered are equipped with sophisticated algorithms designed to addict teenage users by taking advantage of their incomplete brain development and maintain their engagement through increasingly extreme and psychologically discordant content."
In February, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case Gonzalez v. Google LLC, which concerns a lawsuit brought by the family of Nohemi Gonzalez, an American woman who was killed in an ISIS terrorist attack in Paris in 2015. The lawsuit against Google alleges that its YouTube recommended ISIS recruitment videos to users.
"We take our responsibility to protect our community extremely seriously, and trust and safety is a major area of investment," Twitch said in its statement, adding it was continuously examining the Buffalo shooting and"sharing those learnings with our peers in the industry to support a safer internet overall."
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