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Social Media Giants, Gun Dealer Among Defendants in Buffalo Massacre Lawsuit
"The Buffalo shooter was radicalized by social media," said one of the plaintiffs in the suit. "Rather than stop the spread of hate, those platforms made money off it."
May 12, 2023
Groups representing survivors and loved ones of victims of last May's racist massacre at the Tops Friendly supermarket in Buffalo, New York on Friday sued numerous social media and streaming companies, a gun dealer, a body armor manufacturer, and the shooter's parents for the wrongful deaths of 10 Black people murdered in the attack.
The
lawsuit—announced during a Friday morning press conference—was filed in the New York State Supreme Court in Buffalo by the Social Media Victims Law Center, The law office of John V. Elmore, and the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence on behalf of massacre survivor Latisha Rogers and three victims' families. Rogers worked at the supermarket and called 911 during confessed killer Payton Gendron's murderous rampage.
Named as defendants in the suit are the owners of several social media platforms and streaming services; RMA Armaments, an Iowa-based body armor maker; Vintage Firearms, a New York-based gun store; MEAN LLC, a Georgia-based firearms accessory manufacturer; and Gendron's parents.
"Social media companies must be held responsible for perpetuating hate and violence."
The social media and streaming services named in the filing include: Meta, Facebook's parent company; Alphabet, which owns Google; Snap, which operates Snapchat; Discord; Reddit; Amazon, operator of the Twitch live-streaming service; as well as the message board website 4chan.
"The Buffalo shooter was radicalized by social media. Rather than stop the spread of hate, those platforms made money off it," Giffords Law Center tweeted. "We're helping bring this lawsuit because social media companies must be held responsible for perpetuating hate and violence."
\u201cNEW: One year after the Buffalo shooting, we\u2019re suing the social media companies that radicalized the shooter and the gun company that illegally armed him on behalf of survivors whose loved ones were killed at the supermarket. https://t.co/GiIj1O2WgN\u201d— GIFFORDS (@GIFFORDS) 1683903375
"Payton Gendron has pled guilty to these murders, and is no longer a danger to society," Elmore said in a statement. "However, the social media platforms that radicalized him, and the companies that armed him, must still be held accountable for their actions. Our goal, on behalf of our clients, is to make this community and our nation safer and prevent other mass shootings."
As ABC Newsreports:
The lawsuit alleges the social media platforms aided in rapidly spreading Gendron's hate via copies of his livestream of the shooting across multiple platforms where it became known as the "murder video" and viewed by more than 3 million people.
Gendron used Amazon's Twitch to livestream the first two minutes of the rampage before it was taken down by the operators of the popular gaming platform, the lawsuit states.
Despite it being taken down, the video was downloaded to 4chan, according to the suit.
In a statement, Matthew Bergman, founding attorney of the Social Media Victims Law Center, said that Gendron "was motivated to commit his heinous crime by racist, antisemitic, and white supremacist propaganda fed to him by social media companies."
\u201cHeartshattering. Leandra Elliot the daughter of Andre Mackneil, will experience her 1st Mother\u2019s Day without her father. \n\nShe found out she was pregnant when she was burying her father. @WGRZ\u201d— Robert Hackford (@Robert Hackford) 1683900678
"These posts led him down a rabbit hole of increasingly radical sites, where he was indoctrinated in white supremacist replacement theory and violent accelerationism," Bergman added. "This horrible crime was neither an accident nor coincidence, but rather the foreseeable result of social media companies' intentional decision to maximize user engagement over public safety."
The lawsuits come as Buffalo prepares to commemorate the first anniversary of the massacre on May 14.
"I'm hoping that something will come out of it," plaintiff Barbara Massey Mapps, sister of victim Katherine "Kat" Massey, said of the suit in an interview with ABC News.
"These big companies only know one thing, money. So, you've got to hurt them."
"Every day or every few days, all you hear about is a mass shooting," Mapps added. "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. How many people do you want to see dead?"
Responding to the lawsuit, a Snap spokesperson said: "We have a zero-tolerance policy for hate speech and discrimination of any kind. We deliberately designed Snapchat differently than traditional social media platforms and don't allow unvetted content to go viral or be algorithmically promoted. Instead, we vet all content before it can reach a large audience, which helps protect against the discovery of potentially harmful or dangerous content."
\u201c@NewYorkStateAG Mean Arms makes and sells a magazine lock, known as the MA Lock, that can easily be removed so that detachable magazines, including high-capacity magazines that hold more than ten rounds of ammunition, can be inserted into a rifle.\u201d— Everytown (@Everytown) 1683828967
Last December, the city of Buffalo
sued several gun manufacturers and distributors for "endangering the safety and health of the public."
Friday's lawsuit follows another filed on Thursday by New York Attorney General Leticia James, a Democrat, against MEAN, accusing the company of helping Gendron evade the state's ban on high-capacity assault-style rifles.
"The racist mass shooting at the Tops grocery store in Buffalo was one of the darkest days in the history of our state and our nation," James said in a statement. "We lost 10 innocent lives because a hate-fueled individual was able to make an AR-15 even deadlier through a simple change at home."
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Alleged Pentagon Leaker Jack "OG" Teixeira Arrested by FBI
"I would definitely not call him a whistleblower," said a teenage member who frequented the Discord gaming platform where Teixeira allegedly shared classified Pentagon documents.
Apr 13, 2023
Update (3:00 pm):
Jack Teixeira, the Air National Guard member suspected of leaking hundreds of classified Pentagon documents to members of an online forum, was arrested Thursday in Dighton, Massachusetts after The New York Times reported on his alleged identity.
CNN aired footage of Teixeira, who was known as "OG" in the online chat group, being apprehended by the FBI.
\u201cMedia: @joshscampbell reports that Jack Teixeira, 21, a #Mass. National Guard airman, appears under arrest in Dighton in connection with the leak of the Pentagon documents. Teixeira "had talked about being a gun enthusiast," hence the extensively armed operation to apprehend him.\u201d— Porter Anderson (@Porter Anderson) 1681411167
In a press briefing, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland confirmed that Teixeira had been arrested "in connection with an investigation into alleged unauthorized removal, retention, and transmission of classified national defense information."
Earlier:
The person behind a leak of hundreds of classified Pentagon documents related to the war in Ukraine is reportedly a racist young gun enthusiast who spent several months sharing the information with members of an online forum on Discord, a platform that's popular in the gaming community, according to interviews The Washington Post and investigative journalism collective Bellingcat conducted with another member of the forum.
The New York Times reported Thursday that the alleged leaker's name is Jack Teixeira and that he served as a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard. Teixeira is reportedly 21 years old.
Aric Toler of Bellingcat interviewed a teenage member of the private Discord server that Teixeira frequented, known as "Thug Shaker Central," on Sunday, and the Post published a report based on the source's story on Wednesday, a week after the Times first reported that the documents had been leaked.
The teenage member said Teixeira was in his early-to-mid 20s and was seen as a leader of the forum, where he was known as OG. The Post viewed a video of the man identified as OG at a shooting range, where he yelled "a series of racial and antisemitic slurs into the camera" before firing several rounds of ammunition at a target. The newspaper reported it had verified details shared by the teenage source with other members of Thug Shaker Central.
The members did not confirm to the Times that Teixeira and OG were one and the same, but the newspaper reported that "a trail of digital evidence compiled by the Times leads to Airman Teixeira."
According to the teenage member, OG worked at an unnamed "military base" where he was one of thousands of entry- and low-level government employees who had access to classified documents like the ones he allegedly shared with about 25 members of Thug Shaker Central.
OG told the other members that he worked in a secure facility on the base where cellphones and other electronic devices were prohibited to prevent leaks.
The teenage member told the Post that OG frequently knew about major news events before they happened, saying, "Only someone with this kind of high clearance" would have that information.
Late last year, Teixeira began sharing several documents per week on the server, annotating some to translate abbreviations used in the intelligence community, such as "NOFORN" for information that could not be shared with foreign nationals.
The group contained people from "just about every walk of life," according to the teenage member, including people from Asia and South America as well as Ukrainian and Russian citizens. The source told the Post that members from the "Eastern Bloc and those post-Soviet countries" showed interest in the documents.
The classified documents included charts of battlefields in Ukraine, which has been under attack by Russian forces since Russia's invasion in February 2022, and "highly classified satellite images of the aftermath of Russian missile strikes on Ukrainian electrical facilities," according to the Post. OG also shared documents that showed the possible path of North Korean ballistic nuclear missiles that could reach the U.S. and photographs of the object that the Biden administration identified as a Chinese spy balloon in February.
OG reportedly "had a dark view of the government" and spoke frequently with other members of the Discord server about "government overreach" and his opposition to law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
The teenage member was adamant, however, that Teixeira did not leak the documents as a political act.
"I would definitely not call him a whistleblower. I would not call OG a whistleblower in the slightest," he told the Post, adding that OG "seemed very confused and lost as to what to do" when he spoke to him following the Times' reporting on the leaks.
Shortly before the Timesreported on the documents on April 6, OG logged into the Discord server and was "frantic, which is unusual for him," the member said.
Josh Marshall, founder of Talking Points Memo, expressed skepticism about OG's identity.
"If he is [who he claims to be] there seem to be so many breadcrumbs it's hard to believe everyone involved won't be arrested in a matter of days," he tweeted.
\u201c2/ won\u2019t be arrested in a matter of days. It\u2019s certainly possible that this is a young contractor or someone in the military running their own digital cargo cult with a bunch of impressionable teens. But I\u2019m skeptical.\u201d— Josh Marshall (@Josh Marshall) 1681358506
On Thursday, CNNreported that the Pentagon has begun limiting access to highly classified documents, which roughly 1.25 million federal employees and contractors have previously had clearance to access.
Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, a spokesperson for the Pentagon, told News Nation on Wednesday that the federal government is considering "mitigation measures in terms of what we can do to prevent potential additional unauthorized leaks."
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