A Teenager, a Manifesto and Ten Dead in Buffalo
On May 14, 2022, an 18-year-old opened fire at a supermarket in a majority-Black Buffalo neighborhood, killing 10 people. A New York attorney general's report later concluded that fringe online platforms had radicalized him and that livestreaming had been weaponized to broadcast the attack.
The gunman drove hours to reach the Tops Friendly Markets store on Jefferson Avenue, in a historically Black neighborhood on Buffalo's East Side. In minutes he killed 10 people, all of them Black, and wounded three others, according to NBC News. The attacker, Payton Gendron, was 18. He wore body armor and mounted a camera to broadcast the assault live.
Gendron had circulated a lengthy manifesto steeped in the “great replacement,” a racist conspiracy theory that claims elites are deliberately using immigration to diminish white populations. Investigators and news organizations traced his beliefs not to people he knew but to what he had read and watched online during pandemic isolation, according to NPR.
A report on the platforms
On October 18, 2022, New York Attorney General Letitia James and Governor Kathy Hochul released a report on the role of online platforms in the shooting. Investigators reviewed thousands of pages of documents and social media content to examine how the shooter used the internet to plan, prepare and publicize the attack, according to the office of the attorney general.
“The tragic shooting in Buffalo exposed the real dangers of unmoderated online platforms that have become breeding grounds for white supremacy,” James said in a statement reported by Forbes. Governor Hochul said that “for too long, hate and division have been spreading rampant on online platforms — and as we saw in my hometown of Buffalo, the consequences are devastating,” according to the attorney general's office.
Fringe sites and a weaponized livestream
The report concluded that fringe online platforms, most notably the anonymous imageboard 4chan, had radicalized the shooter, and that livestreaming platforms such as Twitch had been weaponized to publicize the attack and encourage copycat violence, according to NPR. By his own account, the shooter was drawn into racist and antisemitic content on virtually unmoderated sites that operate outside the mainstream internet, the office of the attorney general found.
Twitch removed the shooter's broadcast in under two minutes, but a clip recorded by a viewer spread to other sites, according to ABC News. The report described that response as insufficient given how quickly such footage circulates.
What the report asked for
The report urged tighter rules on livestreaming, including verification requirements and delays, and changes to the federal law known as Section 230 to require platforms to take reasonable steps against unlawful violent content, according to the attorney general's office. It also recommended new liability for creating and distributing homicide videos.
Gendron pleaded guilty to state charges, including domestic terrorism motivated by hate, and in February 2023 was sentenced to life in prison without parole, according to public court records summarized by Wikipedia. Federal proceedings, in which prosecutors have said they will seek the death penalty, remain pending.