Amazon’s Twitch, Discord, 4chan face New York AG probe after Buffalo shooting | Hacker News Reader

Amazon’s Twitch, Discord, 4chan face New York AG probe after Buffalo shooting

cnbc.com

35 pointsserverlessmom42 comments

Why does reddit get a pass? The shooter was posting on reddit until the day of the shooting. He posted about tactical gear and ammo, which were actually relevant to the execution of the attack.

Who said there's any pass? From the AG press release:

> Specifically, the investigations will focus on those platforms that may have been used to stream, promote, or plan the event, including but not limited to Twitch (owned by Amazon), 4chan, 8chan, and Discord.

Sure, but why isn't it being called out explicitly?

Twitch was used to stream the event, 4chan/8chan/Discord were likely used to promote the event, and reddit was likely used to plan it. His post history suggests he used the site to obtain tactical gear [0], so it probably played a more important role than Twitch (a streaming site which is interchangeable with its competitors).

https://camas.unddit.com/#{%22author%22:%22Jimbo-boiii%22,%2...

The answer is probably shockingly simple: because the AG’s office likely wasn’t aware of the Reddit behavior when they issued the press release.

If we are to believe the shooter's manifesto; he heavily used Reddit and was a relatively new user of 4chan, which he initially browsed due to boredom when he heard about it having a board about firearms (something he obsessively posted about on Reddit) called '/k/' and a board about the outdoors called '/out/.' He then found a board about politics called '/pol/' which lead him to discover full fledged hardcore neo-nazi websites which promote violence, sites which he lists. These being; "The Daily Stormer," "World Truth Videos," and "Daily Archives." After this point he says he started agreeing with these distorted world views.

I believe the concern is that by focusing only on the platforms he used to "stream, promote, or plan the event" the probe is effectively neutered and won't lead to real change. It appears that the three neo-nazi websites he discovered through messages on the /pol/ board of 4chan are the most culpable in his radicalization, but these three key sites that hold this culpability are not mentioned as being targets of the probe. Also in his manifesto the 8chan link appears to go to a real working website called 8chan, but it is not the url of the actual 8chan website according to a quick google search.

This leads to even more questions too, like why did they not mention if they would also probe police conduct when they allowed him to have firearms. Despite him making a shooting threat that was investigated prior?

> why did they not mention if they would also probe police conduct when they allowed him to have firearms

The NRA has lobbyists and 4chan doesn’t.

He was a reddit user for a long time pre-radicalizatiin. Then he went to /pol/ and became radicalized sometime after. He had to leave reddit to find the material that radicalized him.

Just another naked grab for power and assault on the 1st Amendment by authoritarians in government.

The Buffalo murderer was flagged to police long before the attack for making violent threats. He was involuntarily held in a mental facility briefly as a result. Yet there are demands for "greater surveillance powers" for the government. It's sickening to see our so-called "leaders" exploit this tragedy to further carve way our freedoms, but unfortunately that is par for the course.

America seems to have a blase culture about actually preventing these mass-shootings after they occur outside of virtue-signaling (see the popular Onion trope "No Way to Prevent This") but at the same time one could have the concern of certain entities unfairly targeting certain otherwise benign platforms that may have been used by individuals encouraging certain criminal acts with liability thus leading to concerns like the stripping of Section 230 publisher protections and the resulting chilling effects on free-speech.

>America seems to have a blase culture about actually preventing these mass-shootings after they occur outside of virtue-signaling

The truth is that people value the freedoms that allow these shootings more than they value preventing them.

It's simply not acceptable to say that you're okay with people dying sometimes but people make these decisions constantly when there's not someone publicly pleading to think of the children.

Guns is the example here but that's just where Europeans see a big discrepancy in conclusion but the same decisions are made everywhere. Americans just have a slightly different position but that slight difference is magnified because the vast majority of other positions are very similar.

I remember before Trump came and there were Islamist attacks across the world and praying was considered enough. (Besides worrying about victimized muslims). These actions seem excessive to me.

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