this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2024
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I really don’t like cases like this, nor do I like how much the legal system seems to be pushing “guilty by proxy” rulings for a lot of school shooting cases.
It just feels very very very dangerous and ’going to be bad’ to set this precedent where when someone commits an atrocity, essentially every person and thing they interacted with can be held accountable with nearly the same weight as if they had committed the crime themselves.
Obviously some basic civil responsibility is needed. If someone says “I am going to blow up XYZ school here is how”, and you hear that, yeah, that’s on you to report it. But it feels like we’re quickly slipping into a point where you have to start reporting a vast amount of people to the police en masse if they say anything even vaguely questionable simply to avoid potential fallout of being associated with someone committing a crime.
It makes me really worried. I really think the internet has made it easy to be able to ‘justifiably’ accuse almost anyone or any business of a crime if a person with enough power / the state needs them put away for a time.
I dunno about social media companies but I quite agree that the party who got the gunman the gun should share the punishment for the crime.
Firearms should be titled and insured, and the owner should have an imposed duty to secure, and the owner ought to face criminal penalty if the firearm titled to them was used by someone else to commit a crime, either they handed a killer a loaded gun or they inadequately secured a firearm which was then stolen to be used in committing a crime, either way they failed their responsibility to society as a firearm owner and must face consequences for it.
If you lend your brother, who you know is on antidepressants, a long extension cord he tells you is for his back patio - and he hangs himself with it, are you ready to be accused of being culpable for your brothers death?
Knowingly manipulating people into suicide is a crime and people have already been found guilty of doing it.
So the answer is obvious. If you knowingly encourage a vulnerable person to commit suicide, and your intent can be proved, you can and should be held accountable for manslaughter.
That's what social media companies are doing. They aren't loaning you extremist ideas to help you. That's a terrible analogy. They're intentionally serving extreme content to drive you into more and more upsetting spaces, while pretending that there aren't any consequences for doing so.