A Mass Shooting Streamed on Twitch Renews Calls for Social Media Controls

A racially-motivated mass shooting at a Buffalo grocery store over the weekend, which left at least 10 people dead, has rekindled calls for social media platforms to do more to wipe out hate speech and and act more quickly to handle violent broadcasts. 

The man identified by police as the shooter livestreamed the attack on Amazon-owned Twitch. Although the platform said it removed the stream in less than two minutes after the violence started, that was enough time for other users to recirculate the clips on Facebook, Twitter and Streamable, a video site owned by Hopin, according to The New York Times. The 18-year-old suspect also said he found inspiration on the internet forum 4chan and from the gunman behind the 2019 mass shootings at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, which the murderer streamed on Facebook.