Twitch livestream was a factor in Buffalo mass shooting

Ten people were killed at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket over the weekend in a mass shooting. Three more people were wounded in Saturday’s massacre and are expected to survive. Eleven of the 13 people shot were Black, and the murders are being investigated as a hate crime and racially motivated violent extremism.

This most recent gun-violence event in the U.S. has a connection to streaming media because the shooter livestreamed his attack on Amazon-owned Twitch.

An 18-year-old white man arrested and identified by police as the shooter appears to have cited the ability to livestream as one motivator, and he chose Twitch in part because it was freely available. The New York Times cited a document that looked to be posted to the forum 4chan and messaging platform Discord by the gunman before the attack.

The alleged shooter Payton S. Gendron was arraigned on first-degree murder charges and plead not guilty, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Live footage of what authorities said was a racist attack was live streamed on Amazon-owned Twitch from a camera mounted to the shooter’s helmet. Twitch, a popular site for gamers, confirmed to several news outlets that it reacted quickly and removed the video within two minutes of violence starting. However, clips of the violence managed to make it to other social media platforms.

Axios reported that it was able to watch part of the video that was posted to Facebook before noon on Sunday before it was taken down a few hours later. The New York Times reported that a clip from the original video was posted on the site Streamable and viewed more than 3 million times before it was removed.

According to the New York Times, a 180-page online document linked to Gendron said that he was inspired in part by a gunman who in 2019 murdered 51 people at two mosques in Christchurh, New Zealand, an attack which was broadcast live on Facebook.

“I think that livestreaming this attack gives me some motivation in the way that I know that some people will be cheering for me,” stated the online document believed to be written by Gendron, who also appears to have been motivated by racist conspiracy theories found online during the pandemic.

Twitch VP of trust and safety Angela Hession called the platform’s action a “very strong response time considering the challenges of live content moderation, and shows good progress,” in a statement provided to the NYT. Twitch is also working with other social platforms and non-profit Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism to prevent spread of the video.

On Saturday the GIFCT said the video, as well as in image form, along with the identified manifesto had been added to the GIFCT hash-sharing database, which allows other members to identify whether it had also been shared on their platforms and “address it in accordance with their respective platform policies.”

New York Governor Kathy Hochul criticized social media platforms for allowing video of the attack to circulate online and for their role in influencing racist beliefs, calling on social media executives to ensure “that everything is being done that they can to make sure this information is not spread.”

Twitch is largely known for its popularity around gaming with viewers watching other players, but the platform has also expanded to include other kinds of user-created content such as music, talk shows, and sports among other categories.

The platform first added native mobile livestreaming within its app back in 2016 as a way to encourage content outside of gameplay.