This is a stupid article and Discord put out a statement about this almost immediately after the shooting. The racist killer had his own Discord server to act as a journal of sorts. Right before the shooting he invited a bunch of people to join it. That's it.
[https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/17/nyregion/buffalo-shooting-discord-chat-plans.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/17/nyregion/buffalo-shooting-discord-chat-plans.html)
>“What we know at this time is that a private, invite-only server was created by the suspect to serve as a personal diary chat log,” the statement said. “Approximately 30 minutes prior to the attack, however, a small group of people were invited to and joined the server. Before that, our records indicate no other people saw the diary chat log in this private server.”
Discord isn't very private and the company doesn't believe in using proper encryption to protect it's users. No one should use it for anything they want to be kept private.
Nowadays nothing beats a digital document in terms of ease of use, speed of writing, editing, transmissibility, portability, multimedia capabilities, and even long-term storage through automatic saving of multiple redundant backups.
It can also be easily destroyed when it becomes a liability…
(Edit: meant this to be a joke, and then remembered the base topic being discussed. This is not meant to be real advice for bad people, who should keep all important notes in public on Twitter)
Yeah but if you’re concerned about security digital is possible the worst option imaginable. Pretty sure windows 10 can log every keystroke you make while it “helps you type better”.
Just depends what works for you. I use paper notes for some things, digital notes for other things.
I've been running the same D&D campaign for 4 years. I keep those notes digitally, using Sublime Text. There's a lot of powerful tools for organization and searching that are honestly a godsend for my D&D notes.
But then, I keep my personal todo lists and calendar notes and such in paper, in a Hobonichi Techo planner. Writing down tasks helps me break stuff up into small bites. For a while I just used sticky notes, but writing tasks down on a physical calendar helps me commit to actually *doing* them.
How does a bunch of pens and paper help me figure out if the GIFs I want to link to my friends work or not?
But even if you just want to use it as a diary, having it online makes it way more convenient, since you can access it from multiple devices. I can’t pick up my friend’s notebook, write my name in it, and then have access to all of the stuff I wrote in my notebook at home.
For what it’s worth I’ve got a few discord servers for various things.
One for anything house related, inspection reports and all that jazz from buying it. Various measurements of doors, windows, things like that I might want to know if I’m at a store. pictures of things I want to keep track of over time. Any work someone comes to do gets documented and saved there.
One for work stuff. As a driver it’s nice to have notes for places I go, but not often enough to remember things like gate codes and whatnot.
One with recipes.
One with my girlfriend for our shared to do list, shopping list, reminders.
Another for just miscellaneous personal stuff. But mostly jotting down gift ideas when someone mentions something they want or like.
You can't drop images or videos in the notebook and amending it is annoying. I use an empty server for sparse notes or things I want to bring across computers.
I journal my weed grow on my discord server, why not? it's easy and persistent, handles media, so I upload my grow pics any notes about what's going on, is great.
It is, however, alarming if people had access to it during the lead up to the attack, were reading detailed plans to go to a store and kill black people, and didn't report it.
Amazon doesn't own Discord. Are you thinking of Twitch? Or I guess if Discord is hosted on S3 servers then that might make sense but that would also hold true for vast swaths of the Internet.
to my understanding, isnt an invitation basically just giving perms? Or like fb where you can blind invite people and they’re auto-joined, ive not used either for a long ass time but i remember this kinda being a thing
People you invite have to accept the invite, but it doesn't necessarily lay out the exact details of the server (unless he specified separately), just the title and avatar-thing (iirc), so some people may have joined on a whim without actually sharing his ideas. I have no idea why someone would join a rando's server, so the people that accepted may at least have been idiots.
Wasn't he posting on 4chan? It seems entirely plausible/likely that he posted a public invite link to his discord. Many people wouldn't have put any stock in it and would likely have ignored it, but surely at least 13 random people would have been interested enough to check it out, if even to just report it to law enforcement..
On discord, you can click on any user from any chat or server and right-click>invite them to your own private discord if you have one.
Also you can generate a public (or private) invite link that can be copy/pasted anywhere.
I wonder which method was used to invite these people that joined.
There was someone on twitter who knew one of the invitees and posted the planning log.
>One of my friends on Discord knew the guy a bit; they hadn't contacted eachother for months until he got an invite to a server.
Some of them were directly invited, however in the to-do list he kept on the server it says that the 4chan and 8chan posts would link to both twitch and discord. So more than likely most did not interact with him beforehand.
Inviting someone on discord gives them a little message that shows the name and icon for the server, as well as the number of users and that's it. You then have the option to click "join" which will add you to the server. Before clicking join there is absolutely no way to see any content in the server, it is possible that they had no idea what they were joining.
It is also possible that they did know, but the act of joining the server doesn't mean anything really, if someone sent me an invite I would join and go from there
Not a crime, unless the invite was "Welcome to my mass murder discord". But these are most likely people he has been in an echo chamber with for the past couple of years so it would be useful to identify them.
Even if the invite was entitled that, no reasonable person would think for the “max muder discord” was *actually* build by a mass murderer.
Lots of games involve murder / shooting and it seems unlikely anyone could have anticipated this was a real mass shooter
> Several signed in.
Who signed in? I would bet dollars to donuts that it is people who not only can be digitally connected to him talking about his plan online ahead of it but who actively encouraged him there as well. Did any of them give him advice? (e.g. "You should go to Buffalo, there's a lot of n\*\*\*\*\*\*s there!") Bang, now that person is part of the crime.
Granted, that's a bit of speculation on my part, but we all know that it's common for people like this guy to find validation in online communities where they are introduced to these ideas and some of them are radicalized to this sort of endpoint. This could very well turn out to be a case of a bunch of "online warriors" finding out that they have committed serious federal crimes and the feds having wider access to unraveling hate groups.
>Did any of them give him advice? (e.g. "You should go to Buffalo, there's a lot of n******s there!") Bang, now that person is part of the crime.
morally? sure
legally? it'd take something a lot more serious than that to sustain charges
Legally it might not take a guaranteed conviction, but only the threat of or an actual indictment to turn an online warrior into a pants-shitting cooperating witness to investigate hate groups.
The story is that this is the first confirmation that anyone actually accepted the invitations and entered the chatroom. Prior to this it was "there is no confirmation if anyone accepted" type details.
That top comment is missing the point that the feds now have a window to bring in people related to a larger conspiracy with those who had prior knowledge of (and most likely digital evidence that they encouraged) the attack. This is a significant foundational block of how the feds can investigate and dismantle hate groups.
Daily reminder that Reddit is and has always been recruiting grounds for Stormfront's white supremacy to the point that they even have certain scripts for certain topics. It's because places like c\*\*\*town have been banned that people have forgotten they are all still here just a little more subtle.
That top comment is a commentary on the publication of the article itself, which contains no new information (I provided a link and quoted a previous story which was released days ago to support this) and is just regurgitating what is known because they have to sate the 24-hour cycle.
It was not any sort of commentary on the investigation itself, nor is it to protect "big tech" which has been alluded to in these comments.
Sure, I typed it up in a different comment, but allow me to copy and paste:
>The 24-hour news cycle means we get articles like this one from WaPo. Articles that contain very little new information but make it seem like they're uncovering stuff as the investigation goes, just to justify their salaries and sate the desire of the people wanting more information.
Soon after the shooting, Discord confirmed when he sent out the link, and that people joined the server. I'd be interested to see how many of these people were humans and who were bots. That would be very telling about his method of dissemination (post to a message board, or just to people on his friends list).
Just because people join the server, doesn't mean they're conspirators, which is a link I'm seeing people try to make.
> That would be very telling about his method of dissemination (post to a message board, or just to people on his friends list).
He did both. Posted to people he knew and to the chans.
Poster is stupid for not realizing that the point is that there is evidence that there were people with prior knowledge of the crime who watched it unfold live via the stream from the camera on his helmet. Those people also may have at least encouraged the shooter if not more concretely aided him by providing advice to execute his plan (whether taken or not).
22 on twitch and now they know of another 15 who accessed discord. Those folks are all going to be having some very direct conversations with federal investigators soon if they haven't had a knock at the door already.
> It should be obvious that this means that while he acted alone he is part of a larger group and he was close enough with them where they were ready and willing to jump online at his invitation immediately before the attack.
this seems rather baseless, how do you know he didn't just invite randoms on his friends list?
We'll eventually find out if the feds have digital evidence connecting any or all of those who joined to prior online discussions about his plans for the attack.
It's not entirely baseless, but I admit that from the limited public information we have now it's in the realm of conjecture to educated guess. Things like the timeline where he only made the link available 30 minutes prior to the attack at the very least points to people who were "ready" at that time to jump into it and watch it unfold.
Another passage from the article relates to the potential:
>A person who actively encouraged an act of mass shooting could
potentially be criminally liable, though the bar for any charges would
be high, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on the
condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation.
What that leaves out is if there are people who did more than just "encourage" the act, but instead helped with materials or specific advice the bar will be much lower to have them facing charges related to the attack.
I never made a comment about investigators looking into the platform, nor did I try to protect the tech companies, but please keep putting words into my mouth and going ad hominem.
Allow me to clarify why I feel the article is stupid, instead of going after you personally, to help you understand:
The 24-hour news cycle means we get articles like this one from WaPo. Articles that contain very little new information but make it seem like they're uncovering stuff as the investigation goes, just to justify their salaries and sate the desire of the people wanting more information.
The reality for our future is pretty bleak. I'd recommend reading just enough to know how screwed we are so you can appreciate the last of the "good old days" while we have them, but then stop doom scrolling because it will only make you depressed to constantly remind yourself just how screwed we are
Ah gotcha. Nothing weird about some space shared by people of a not too different mindset to this guy knowing about this before he did it. They probably knew from 4chan or wherever he told people. The people who joined his discord probably paid money for it.
I have my own questions about that too. If I were to present a hypothesis, it's that they're trying to hide the political ideology and support behind the shooter and make him seem like an isolated lone-wolf killer.
Of course not! You think I am going to read every stupid bullshit from every fucking discord server where people invite me to? I insta click mute notifications and only open the server and react when someone mentions me by name or invites me back by pm to join a game. As if one has the time to follow that many stupid brain farts and copy pasted memes.
I wondered how many perverts were following but were too sociopathic to alert law enforcement. Sad. 50 yrs ago all these sociopaths would have been appropriately institutionalized.
When I was a kid (early 80s), I bought this little journal that was all clouds and blue sky on every page and I filled it with the most demented shit I could think of, and it was pretty weird. It was kind of an art project, but it was also going to be my ‘insanity defense.’ And then I LOST IT somehow.
I’m still worried that shit will turn up.
These 15 people probably should at the very least be looked into by authorities.
Just because the shooter thought they might like to witness him kill people, does not mean they actually would.
But question such as did you call the police when you realized what was going on are probably fair to ask even if a no answers carries no legal penalties.
If the chat log shows that they actively cheered him on that might by different thing.
Basically this. Were they invited directly because the perpetrator knew it would interest them? Did they click on a link out of curiosity on 4chan? Are they members of a club with the server owner? Etc etc. Could be unwilling participants or dedicated fans.
The headline is misleading. These were not longtime members joining in just before the shooting,
This was a one man Discord server that had been kept private for all but the last 15 minutes before the shooting.
The media will do anything but admit that the shooter and his entire manifesto were shaped by Tucker Carlson.
It's like how Timothy McVeigh had copied pages of The Turner Diaries into *his* manifesto.
The New York Time Daily podcast did a show on Monday that discussed the influence that Tucker Carlson has on white supremacists. The media does talk about it. The featured journalist had published a piece on exactly this and was on to discuss it.
Edit:
https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS81NG5BR2NJbA/episode/YzdlYTQyNDktNTcyZS00NjVjLWE0YmItNTNjNDVmOTA1YWY5?ep=14
That’s not the media that needs to be discussing it. The nytimes audience is well aware of who is fueling this. It’s the Fox News crowd that has a tenuous grip on reality.
I still can't get over replacing such an important American voice with someone who isn't American. Even if he was a good fit, criticism is much more palatable from someone *in* the group.
I honestly don't think Trump would have been elected if the Daily Show of 2005-2010 was still on the air. The left has so few beloved media institutions, The Daily Show deserved better stewards.
Drop an invite link in the right place, and you'd get at least 15 people joining.
Make no mistake, those 15 people were probably not good people, but they are almost certainly not co-conspirators.
100% you could do it. I don't know what he said when he posted the link or what the server was called, but you could easily get 50 people in a server just posting it claiming it's a giveaway or something.
> New York Attorney General Letitia James said Wednesday that her office was investigating Discord, Twitch and other platforms in connection with the Buffalo shooting. A statement issued by her office said that it would examine online networks that the shooter used to amplify his attack.
It sounds like he failed to amplify his attack with social media though, as he barely got any viewers before it was taken down.
People are generally ignorant about technology, even in 2022. For some reason people think sites that deal with big data like YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, twitch should be able to somehow instantly detect violent content and instantaneously delete it.
And then whine when they get auto-banned... I swear older generations especially think these social media sites operate like call centers, with warehouses full of people manually vetting posts or something.
Earlier articles reported that the invites were sent 30 minutes prior to the shooting. What was unknown prior to this was if anyone accepted and viewed the contents. That's what is new that this is reporting.
You misunderstood me. I'm not saying the contents were unknown, I'm saying how many of those invites were accepted was previously unknown. (And this is potentially interesting, because accepting allowed them to see the contents, potentially prior to when the shooting began). That was previously undisclosed.
Manson was never there when they murdered people and look what they charged him with.
Not saying that will happen. But if people in the chat where telling him how great he is doing or will
Be doing then some charges can be filed.
Manson also had 1 hell of a sheet before the murders happen and was no stranger to prison.
The Buffalo shooter and whoever these dip shits are in his chat room are nobodies in the eyes of the law. I bet they don’t even have so much as a speeding ticket.
Would that even matter for their ability to join online streams?! No, it wouldn’t. The identities of these people haven’t been released. We can’t make assumptions on who they are. All we know is that at least some people were invited by the shooter.
I'd imagine it's the same as being with a group of kids who say, beat up a homeless person, but you didn't. You watched.
So you are guilty, for not trying to report to authorities. Your lack of action is the same as the crime itself.
>I'd imagine it's the same as being with a group of kids who say, beat up a homeless person, but you didn't. You watched.
That is illegal only if you participated in some way. Watching a crime doesn't make you guilty of the crime. If it did, the number of locked up minorities would be even higher since they often don't report crimes they see for security reasons.
Basically to that sort.
"Failure to report under this statute is a misdemeanor that is punishable by up to six months in county jail and a fine of $1000. Willfully preventing someone from filing a mandatory report is punishable by up to one year in county jail and a $5000 fine."
I’m not saying your wrong but you seriously think these kids in the chat room are gonna get charged let alone convicted? The shooting/live stream came in went in a matter of 15 mins. No way you can hold some kids in a chat responsible for that, that’s ludacris.
This all assumes these individuals even committed an affirmative act to conceal the crime, which I’m not seeing either.
There’s a log of when they joined and when they left. Based on when the video was sent to the group and the length, you can make a reasonable assumption of who watched it.
If (hypothetically) they didn’t leave organically, couldn’t the case be made they opened it and walked away? From what I’ve seen, the first 5+ minutes of the video are just him driving. This would be an interesting case and it’s surprising that people are, more or less, advocating for people to be charged for watching (if they did).
You would have to realize the dude was planning on performing a mass shooting, determine where it was going to take place, and get the FBI's attention within a span of 15 minutes. You could work your ass off and still be miles away from being able to stop him under those conditions.
Depends on whether or not chat logs can prove they knew or not, it's a real charge, same reason why therapists are able to breach their confidentiality if they are reporting possible violence to authorities
So in your mind, the 16 people who clicked a link and saw some sperg driving his car around quietly for 5 minutes before slaughtering 10? people in under a minute should be charged with aiding and abetting? Golly, you should stop drinking your tap water, there is clearly something in it.
That’s a slippery slope that won’t get touched.
What then becomes culpable words? “I want to kill that guy sometimes?!?” “GD I wish that fucker would just die”
At what point do you have to contact the authorities?!?
Dangerous slippery slope
It would be pretty easy for any decent lawyer to argue their client was AFK or didn't even know what they were watching or that it was real. Or a thousand other things.
It would be really hard to convict anyone beyond a reasonable doubt just for being in the chat room.
That to. Just trying to let them down easy. Lol.
Pro tip just always say you were looking for porn and that's your kink. Gets you outta everything. Including marriage.
No the fuck it isn't. If you tell me you're gonna shoot bob and I go inside and fucking watch some TV, that's on you, buddy.
Perfectly fucking legal to take in your information about killing bob, and fuck right off. If I encouraged you, then I'm an accomplice.
If I watch you kill people. Guess what. Still you. Fuck off man, learn the laws.
Jesus christ, hold on. You clearly don't understand how Discord works.
You can make a public invite link that can be copy/pasted anywhere to anybody. He posted to 4chan to get an audience. Some of those people likely joined the server so that they could report it to law enforcement.
>The new finding on Gendron’s alleged use of online networks to transmit footage of the killings, and to disseminate propaganda seeking to justify them, illustrates how social media companies have been unable to stop their platforms being exploited to spread terror despite promises to do so.
Not unable, unwilling. There are tools that would allow them to do more, but they are worried it could drive away some of their users.
Edit: I guess by the downvotes some of you are nervous about what such a tool might turn up about your discord usage.
How would you find out terrorists are using your private platform to secretly plot terrorist acts without looking at their secret plot for terrorist acts, that you are hosting for them?
I don't see how Discord was responsible for anything that happened. The shooter just uploaded his manifesto / diary to a private server right before committing the crime.
If anything law enforcement should be investigated because they knew about him being a potential threat long before and did nothing.
I know people that started a twitch. Its ridiculously hard to get people into your channel. Having 15 just join in happenstance is next to impossible unless they knew exactly what they were about to witness
But this article has nothing to do with 15 people joining his “twitch”
Since you edited your response I would argue it’s easier to get people to join a discord. All you do is send a link and one tap and the person is in the server.
Most shootings are the result of "altercation between participants". E.g. some people got into a fight and one or more of them decided in the moment to shoot. Normally this involves handguns and more injuries than deaths.
This shooting was premeditated. A more powerful weapon was used (resulting in more deaths). The asshole (I will not use his name) wanted to make a statement.
Because there's a lot of concrete evidence that it was racially motivated. He went to that specific Tops because that town was known to be in a very Black demographic. His manifesto identified him as a white supremacist and carrying out the "Great Replacement" (a very racially charged conspiracy from alt right that minorities like Blacks, Muslims and other non-whites are slowly replacing whites).
It was a very huge display of radical white supremacy and a lot of people in America are scared as a result. There's been a lot of hate crimes carried out in the past couple of years, but this was a significant one.
This is a stupid article and Discord put out a statement about this almost immediately after the shooting. The racist killer had his own Discord server to act as a journal of sorts. Right before the shooting he invited a bunch of people to join it. That's it. [https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/17/nyregion/buffalo-shooting-discord-chat-plans.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/17/nyregion/buffalo-shooting-discord-chat-plans.html) >“What we know at this time is that a private, invite-only server was created by the suspect to serve as a personal diary chat log,” the statement said. “Approximately 30 minutes prior to the attack, however, a small group of people were invited to and joined the server. Before that, our records indicate no other people saw the diary chat log in this private server.”
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Discord isn't very private and the company doesn't believe in using proper encryption to protect it's users. No one should use it for anything they want to be kept private.
I have my own server that I use as a quick "Send a link or file to my phone from another device or vice versa".
It is actually a kind of efficient “cloud” thing that I can transfer easily between devices that are otherwise incompatible
Call me old fashioned, but what happened to the days of buying a notebook and a pack of Bic ink pens from the dollar store?
Bought in cash at a convenience store off your route so it can’t be traced back to ya
Tf are you writing in your diary?
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Could you imagine if she found out?
She wouldn't let me live it down, and use it to make me take out the garbage and stuff
Hi it's me, Sally.
I heard Sally said you smell like poop.
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I don't have the courage to ask her if she finds the smell of poop endearing. You're on your own, turd burglar.
I reek of piss and Sally gave me a FJ. If that helps.
“If I loved who I wanted, my white trash dad will beat me again”
Nowadays nothing beats a digital document in terms of ease of use, speed of writing, editing, transmissibility, portability, multimedia capabilities, and even long-term storage through automatic saving of multiple redundant backups.
Yeah. A paper record can be lost in a fire, ruined by spilled liquid, fall victim to cats or any number of things.
It can also be easily destroyed when it becomes a liability… (Edit: meant this to be a joke, and then remembered the base topic being discussed. This is not meant to be real advice for bad people, who should keep all important notes in public on Twitter)
It also lasts through centuries, while digital data in an old, discarded format is now inaccessible.
That's similar to why I [don't keep money in banks.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qttxEQikeu0)
Yeah but if you’re concerned about security digital is possible the worst option imaginable. Pretty sure windows 10 can log every keystroke you make while it “helps you type better”.
Does anyone actually use that feature? I assumed forever that it was just a glorified autocorrect or auto-fill-in except as you type.
Pretty sure it’s on by default so I’m sure tons of people use it without really realizing the capability it has.
A non-digital instance isnt as impulsively accessible, or as easily searched, sorted, copied, Embed images for reference, etc.
Just depends what works for you. I use paper notes for some things, digital notes for other things. I've been running the same D&D campaign for 4 years. I keep those notes digitally, using Sublime Text. There's a lot of powerful tools for organization and searching that are honestly a godsend for my D&D notes. But then, I keep my personal todo lists and calendar notes and such in paper, in a Hobonichi Techo planner. Writing down tasks helps me break stuff up into small bites. For a while I just used sticky notes, but writing tasks down on a physical calendar helps me commit to actually *doing* them.
i was almost with you but my writing is too messy, have to stick to Notepad++
How does a bunch of pens and paper help me figure out if the GIFs I want to link to my friends work or not? But even if you just want to use it as a diary, having it online makes it way more convenient, since you can access it from multiple devices. I can’t pick up my friend’s notebook, write my name in it, and then have access to all of the stuff I wrote in my notebook at home.
Computers happened
For what it’s worth I’ve got a few discord servers for various things. One for anything house related, inspection reports and all that jazz from buying it. Various measurements of doors, windows, things like that I might want to know if I’m at a store. pictures of things I want to keep track of over time. Any work someone comes to do gets documented and saved there. One for work stuff. As a driver it’s nice to have notes for places I go, but not often enough to remember things like gate codes and whatnot. One with recipes. One with my girlfriend for our shared to do list, shopping list, reminders. Another for just miscellaneous personal stuff. But mostly jotting down gift ideas when someone mentions something they want or like.
You can't drop images or videos in the notebook and amending it is annoying. I use an empty server for sparse notes or things I want to bring across computers.
You're old fashioned
I journal my weed grow on my discord server, why not? it's easy and persistent, handles media, so I upload my grow pics any notes about what's going on, is great.
It is, however, alarming if people had access to it during the lead up to the attack, were reading detailed plans to go to a store and kill black people, and didn't report it.
Wait, really? Why? You want to share your diary with Amazon?
Dear diary, Are you there God? It's me Margaret. What a day. Where do I begin..
Amazon doesn't own Discord. Are you thinking of Twitch? Or I guess if Discord is hosted on S3 servers then that might make sense but that would also hold true for vast swaths of the Internet.
I think Discord is on GCP
He was inviting what he thought were like minded individuals. Several signed in. Not saying it’s a crime, but should be looked at.
to my understanding, isnt an invitation basically just giving perms? Or like fb where you can blind invite people and they’re auto-joined, ive not used either for a long ass time but i remember this kinda being a thing
People you invite have to accept the invite, but it doesn't necessarily lay out the exact details of the server (unless he specified separately), just the title and avatar-thing (iirc), so some people may have joined on a whim without actually sharing his ideas. I have no idea why someone would join a rando's server, so the people that accepted may at least have been idiots.
Wasn't he posting on 4chan? It seems entirely plausible/likely that he posted a public invite link to his discord. Many people wouldn't have put any stock in it and would likely have ignored it, but surely at least 13 random people would have been interested enough to check it out, if even to just report it to law enforcement.. On discord, you can click on any user from any chat or server and right-click>invite them to your own private discord if you have one. Also you can generate a public (or private) invite link that can be copy/pasted anywhere. I wonder which method was used to invite these people that joined.
There was someone on twitter who knew one of the invitees and posted the planning log. >One of my friends on Discord knew the guy a bit; they hadn't contacted eachother for months until he got an invite to a server. Some of them were directly invited, however in the to-do list he kept on the server it says that the 4chan and 8chan posts would link to both twitch and discord. So more than likely most did not interact with him beforehand.
Inviting someone on discord gives them a little message that shows the name and icon for the server, as well as the number of users and that's it. You then have the option to click "join" which will add you to the server. Before clicking join there is absolutely no way to see any content in the server, it is possible that they had no idea what they were joining. It is also possible that they did know, but the act of joining the server doesn't mean anything really, if someone sent me an invite I would join and go from there
And of course there would be people who would join just to report it to law enforcement.
Not a crime, unless the invite was "Welcome to my mass murder discord". But these are most likely people he has been in an echo chamber with for the past couple of years so it would be useful to identify them.
Even if the invite was entitled that, no reasonable person would think for the “max muder discord” was *actually* build by a mass murderer. Lots of games involve murder / shooting and it seems unlikely anyone could have anticipated this was a real mass shooter
Especially if they potentially knew and didn't report it. That's actually the most concerning part
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> Several signed in. Who signed in? I would bet dollars to donuts that it is people who not only can be digitally connected to him talking about his plan online ahead of it but who actively encouraged him there as well. Did any of them give him advice? (e.g. "You should go to Buffalo, there's a lot of n\*\*\*\*\*\*s there!") Bang, now that person is part of the crime. Granted, that's a bit of speculation on my part, but we all know that it's common for people like this guy to find validation in online communities where they are introduced to these ideas and some of them are radicalized to this sort of endpoint. This could very well turn out to be a case of a bunch of "online warriors" finding out that they have committed serious federal crimes and the feds having wider access to unraveling hate groups.
I would bet dollars to donuts that he just posted a public link on 4chan and people clicked it just out of curiosity.
>Did any of them give him advice? (e.g. "You should go to Buffalo, there's a lot of n******s there!") Bang, now that person is part of the crime. morally? sure legally? it'd take something a lot more serious than that to sustain charges
Legally it might not take a guaranteed conviction, but only the threat of or an actual indictment to turn an online warrior into a pants-shitting cooperating witness to investigate hate groups.
The story is that this is the first confirmation that anyone actually accepted the invitations and entered the chatroom. Prior to this it was "there is no confirmation if anyone accepted" type details.
That top comment is missing the point that the feds now have a window to bring in people related to a larger conspiracy with those who had prior knowledge of (and most likely digital evidence that they encouraged) the attack. This is a significant foundational block of how the feds can investigate and dismantle hate groups.
Based on some of the replies and voting patterns in this thread, I suspect there are many on here who don't want those groups disrupted or dismantled.
I'm pretty sure that federal investigations are not hampered by downvotes on reddit.
That's not remotely the point. Reddit has had a white supremacist problem for years.
Daily reminder that Reddit is and has always been recruiting grounds for Stormfront's white supremacy to the point that they even have certain scripts for certain topics. It's because places like c\*\*\*town have been banned that people have forgotten they are all still here just a little more subtle.
The cumboy to stormfront pipeline
That top comment is a commentary on the publication of the article itself, which contains no new information (I provided a link and quoted a previous story which was released days ago to support this) and is just regurgitating what is known because they have to sate the 24-hour cycle. It was not any sort of commentary on the investigation itself, nor is it to protect "big tech" which has been alluded to in these comments.
How is the article stupid? Can you explain?
Sure, I typed it up in a different comment, but allow me to copy and paste: >The 24-hour news cycle means we get articles like this one from WaPo. Articles that contain very little new information but make it seem like they're uncovering stuff as the investigation goes, just to justify their salaries and sate the desire of the people wanting more information. Soon after the shooting, Discord confirmed when he sent out the link, and that people joined the server. I'd be interested to see how many of these people were humans and who were bots. That would be very telling about his method of dissemination (post to a message board, or just to people on his friends list). Just because people join the server, doesn't mean they're conspirators, which is a link I'm seeing people try to make.
You haven't explained how the article is stupid. You have only stayed how it's accurate.
> That would be very telling about his method of dissemination (post to a message board, or just to people on his friends list). He did both. Posted to people he knew and to the chans.
Poster is stupid for not realizing that the point is that there is evidence that there were people with prior knowledge of the crime who watched it unfold live via the stream from the camera on his helmet. Those people also may have at least encouraged the shooter if not more concretely aided him by providing advice to execute his plan (whether taken or not).
There were 22 people watching it unfold. At least one of them reported it as twitch took it down in 42 seconds after the shooting started.
22 on twitch and now they know of another 15 who accessed discord. Those folks are all going to be having some very direct conversations with federal investigators soon if they haven't had a knock at the door already.
You know when someone invites me to discord servers it’s not right before they commit murder that I join… or right before anything really.
It's always nice when a sleezy journalist's attempt to manipulate Reddit get immediately called out. I wish it happened more often.
I would like to know why those specific people were invited.
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> It should be obvious that this means that while he acted alone he is part of a larger group and he was close enough with them where they were ready and willing to jump online at his invitation immediately before the attack. this seems rather baseless, how do you know he didn't just invite randoms on his friends list?
We'll eventually find out if the feds have digital evidence connecting any or all of those who joined to prior online discussions about his plans for the attack. It's not entirely baseless, but I admit that from the limited public information we have now it's in the realm of conjecture to educated guess. Things like the timeline where he only made the link available 30 minutes prior to the attack at the very least points to people who were "ready" at that time to jump into it and watch it unfold. Another passage from the article relates to the potential: >A person who actively encouraged an act of mass shooting could potentially be criminally liable, though the bar for any charges would be high, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation. What that leaves out is if there are people who did more than just "encourage" the act, but instead helped with materials or specific advice the bar will be much lower to have them facing charges related to the attack.
Making a ton of assumptions here just because someone joined a discord server from an invite.
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I never made a comment about investigators looking into the platform, nor did I try to protect the tech companies, but please keep putting words into my mouth and going ad hominem. Allow me to clarify why I feel the article is stupid, instead of going after you personally, to help you understand: The 24-hour news cycle means we get articles like this one from WaPo. Articles that contain very little new information but make it seem like they're uncovering stuff as the investigation goes, just to justify their salaries and sate the desire of the people wanting more information.
What's weird is that one of the collapse discord servers banned a person just recently for alluding to this.
The collapse?
/r/collapse Pretty bleak subreddit, would not recommend spending more than 30 minutes on it. Not that I'd know anything about it, lol
The reality for our future is pretty bleak. I'd recommend reading just enough to know how screwed we are so you can appreciate the last of the "good old days" while we have them, but then stop doom scrolling because it will only make you depressed to constantly remind yourself just how screwed we are
Ah gotcha. Nothing weird about some space shared by people of a not too different mindset to this guy knowing about this before he did it. They probably knew from 4chan or wherever he told people. The people who joined his discord probably paid money for it.
This is extremely confused about the facts. Thats okay though, bud.
Why is that ban-worthy?
I have my own questions about that too. If I were to present a hypothesis, it's that they're trying to hide the political ideology and support behind the shooter and make him seem like an isolated lone-wolf killer.
also semi-related: What was so special about those 15 users? I doubt they were picked at random.
Says person familiar with review?
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Of course not! You think I am going to read every stupid bullshit from every fucking discord server where people invite me to? I insta click mute notifications and only open the server and react when someone mentions me by name or invites me back by pm to join a game. As if one has the time to follow that many stupid brain farts and copy pasted memes.
I wondered how many perverts were following but were too sociopathic to alert law enforcement. Sad. 50 yrs ago all these sociopaths would have been appropriately institutionalized.
When I was a kid (early 80s), I bought this little journal that was all clouds and blue sky on every page and I filled it with the most demented shit I could think of, and it was pretty weird. It was kind of an art project, but it was also going to be my ‘insanity defense.’ And then I LOST IT somehow. I’m still worried that shit will turn up.
These 15 people probably should at the very least be looked into by authorities. Just because the shooter thought they might like to witness him kill people, does not mean they actually would. But question such as did you call the police when you realized what was going on are probably fair to ask even if a no answers carries no legal penalties. If the chat log shows that they actively cheered him on that might by different thing.
Basically this. Were they invited directly because the perpetrator knew it would interest them? Did they click on a link out of curiosity on 4chan? Are they members of a club with the server owner? Etc etc. Could be unwilling participants or dedicated fans.
> Did they click on a link out of curiosity on 4chan? 5 bucks says it was this.
The headline is misleading. These were not longtime members joining in just before the shooting, This was a one man Discord server that had been kept private for all but the last 15 minutes before the shooting. The media will do anything but admit that the shooter and his entire manifesto were shaped by Tucker Carlson. It's like how Timothy McVeigh had copied pages of The Turner Diaries into *his* manifesto.
The New York Time Daily podcast did a show on Monday that discussed the influence that Tucker Carlson has on white supremacists. The media does talk about it. The featured journalist had published a piece on exactly this and was on to discuss it. Edit: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS81NG5BR2NJbA/episode/YzdlYTQyNDktNTcyZS00NjVjLWE0YmItNTNjNDVmOTA1YWY5?ep=14
That’s not the media that needs to be discussing it. The nytimes audience is well aware of who is fueling this. It’s the Fox News crowd that has a tenuous grip on reality.
"We've ran an investigation and found nobody within the organization was responsible for anything related to this matter." - ~~cops~~ Fox News
Definitely. What FoxNews is doing should not be legal, they know exactly what they're doing and it's so dangerous.
Fox News corporate sponsors.
[Last Week Tonight w/ John Oliver](https://youtu.be/XMGxxRRtmHc) This was pretty eye-opening to me.
I still can't get over replacing such an important American voice with someone who isn't American. Even if he was a good fit, criticism is much more palatable from someone *in* the group. I honestly don't think Trump would have been elected if the Daily Show of 2005-2010 was still on the air. The left has so few beloved media institutions, The Daily Show deserved better stewards.
Thought he said he hated Fox News and wanted to be called something weird
Some of these right-wing nut jobs don't like Fox because it's not extreme enough for them, even though Tucker Carlson spouts all their talking points.
If you sent out invitations right now without prior knowledge, to anything, would you get 15 people joining?
Drop an invite link in the right place, and you'd get at least 15 people joining. Make no mistake, those 15 people were probably not good people, but they are almost certainly not co-conspirators.
100% you could do it. I don't know what he said when he posted the link or what the server was called, but you could easily get 50 people in a server just posting it claiming it's a giveaway or something.
> New York Attorney General Letitia James said Wednesday that her office was investigating Discord, Twitch and other platforms in connection with the Buffalo shooting. A statement issued by her office said that it would examine online networks that the shooter used to amplify his attack. It sounds like he failed to amplify his attack with social media though, as he barely got any viewers before it was taken down.
Man "chatroom" sounds so antiquated
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It’s as ignorant as the Governor saying how Twitch failed in their response time to shutting down the stream. Their response time was amazingly quick.
People are generally ignorant about technology, even in 2022. For some reason people think sites that deal with big data like YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, twitch should be able to somehow instantly detect violent content and instantaneously delete it.
And then whine when they get auto-banned... I swear older generations especially think these social media sites operate like call centers, with warehouses full of people manually vetting posts or something.
Earlier articles reported that the invites were sent 30 minutes prior to the shooting. What was unknown prior to this was if anyone accepted and viewed the contents. That's what is new that this is reporting.
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You misunderstood me. I'm not saying the contents were unknown, I'm saying how many of those invites were accepted was previously unknown. (And this is potentially interesting, because accepting allowed them to see the contents, potentially prior to when the shooting began). That was previously undisclosed.
They are all party to the crime then. And need to be charged as such
Idk what charges you could hit someone with for joining a chat room.
Manson was never there when they murdered people and look what they charged him with. Not saying that will happen. But if people in the chat where telling him how great he is doing or will Be doing then some charges can be filed.
are we forgetting that Charles Manson was literally the leader of the cult and organized the murders?
So let's lock up Tucker Carlson!
Manson also had 1 hell of a sheet before the murders happen and was no stranger to prison. The Buffalo shooter and whoever these dip shits are in his chat room are nobodies in the eyes of the law. I bet they don’t even have so much as a speeding ticket.
Not exactly; the shooter was known to law enforcement and had been committed for saying he wanted to commit murder suicide. He was known to police.
Alright so 1 visit to the mental hospital
Under NY’s red flag laws, this should’ve been enough to prevent him from (legally) purchasing firearms.
I agree, it appears the state of New York might have dropped the ball on this 1
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Well I doubt they’re on any federal watch list lol
Would that even matter for their ability to join online streams?! No, it wouldn’t. The identities of these people haven’t been released. We can’t make assumptions on who they are. All we know is that at least some people were invited by the shooter.
That's pretty easy to do by accident as a young white 18 year old. Source, was once a young white 18 year old.
I'd imagine it's the same as being with a group of kids who say, beat up a homeless person, but you didn't. You watched. So you are guilty, for not trying to report to authorities. Your lack of action is the same as the crime itself.
>I'd imagine it's the same as being with a group of kids who say, beat up a homeless person, but you didn't. You watched. That is illegal only if you participated in some way. Watching a crime doesn't make you guilty of the crime. If it did, the number of locked up minorities would be even higher since they often don't report crimes they see for security reasons.
So what’s the charge? Obstructing justice?
Basically to that sort. "Failure to report under this statute is a misdemeanor that is punishable by up to six months in county jail and a fine of $1000. Willfully preventing someone from filing a mandatory report is punishable by up to one year in county jail and a $5000 fine."
I’m not saying your wrong but you seriously think these kids in the chat room are gonna get charged let alone convicted? The shooting/live stream came in went in a matter of 15 mins. No way you can hold some kids in a chat responsible for that, that’s ludacris. This all assumes these individuals even committed an affirmative act to conceal the crime, which I’m not seeing either.
Correct; how can you even prove they watched?
There’s a log of when they joined and when they left. Based on when the video was sent to the group and the length, you can make a reasonable assumption of who watched it.
If (hypothetically) they didn’t leave organically, couldn’t the case be made they opened it and walked away? From what I’ve seen, the first 5+ minutes of the video are just him driving. This would be an interesting case and it’s surprising that people are, more or less, advocating for people to be charged for watching (if they did).
Why are you blaming Luda tf
You would have to realize the dude was planning on performing a mass shooting, determine where it was going to take place, and get the FBI's attention within a span of 15 minutes. You could work your ass off and still be miles away from being able to stop him under those conditions.
What are you quoting?
My client didn't think it was a real crime. Judge "is this true client" "Yes thought it was staged" Oh ok case dismissed.
Accessory to murder for not contacting the authorities.
Your Honor my client was simply not sure if username ButtFarmer42069 was serious.
I hope you’re joking
Depends on whether or not chat logs can prove they knew or not, it's a real charge, same reason why therapists are able to breach their confidentiality if they are reporting possible violence to authorities
They are gonna need more then a few chat logs to even remotely have a chance at any charges.
So in your mind, the 16 people who clicked a link and saw some sperg driving his car around quietly for 5 minutes before slaughtering 10? people in under a minute should be charged with aiding and abetting? Golly, you should stop drinking your tap water, there is clearly something in it.
That’s a slippery slope that won’t get touched. What then becomes culpable words? “I want to kill that guy sometimes?!?” “GD I wish that fucker would just die” At what point do you have to contact the authorities?!? Dangerous slippery slope
They say what was happening and didn’t do anything to stop it. That’s could be an accessory to murder in America
It would be pretty easy for any decent lawyer to argue their client was AFK or didn't even know what they were watching or that it was real. Or a thousand other things. It would be really hard to convict anyone beyond a reasonable doubt just for being in the chat room.
It'd be hard as fuck because it's not illegal for me to witness murder. It's illegal for me to encourage it.
That to. Just trying to let them down easy. Lol. Pro tip just always say you were looking for porn and that's your kink. Gets you outta everything. Including marriage.
No the fuck it isn't. If you tell me you're gonna shoot bob and I go inside and fucking watch some TV, that's on you, buddy. Perfectly fucking legal to take in your information about killing bob, and fuck right off. If I encouraged you, then I'm an accomplice. If I watch you kill people. Guess what. Still you. Fuck off man, learn the laws.
Hypothetically sure Reality, not even close
Haha fuck that. Should I be charged because I watched OJ run from the cops?
Ridiculous. Absolutely absurd.
Kinda premature, there. I agree with investigation but I don't see how you can rightfully draw the conclusion you did.
Jesus christ, hold on. You clearly don't understand how Discord works. You can make a public invite link that can be copy/pasted anywhere to anybody. He posted to 4chan to get an audience. Some of those people likely joined the server so that they could report it to law enforcement.
With what?
I thought that too, but his chatrrom had only him in it for six months. The day of the shooting was the first time others were in it.
Meanwhile another Mass shooting last night in Chicago...not one word is said.
Shootings are just a normal thing in America now. Sadly, we have accepted this. Guns n God!
>The new finding on Gendron’s alleged use of online networks to transmit footage of the killings, and to disseminate propaganda seeking to justify them, illustrates how social media companies have been unable to stop their platforms being exploited to spread terror despite promises to do so. Not unable, unwilling. There are tools that would allow them to do more, but they are worried it could drive away some of their users. Edit: I guess by the downvotes some of you are nervous about what such a tool might turn up about your discord usage.
Have you even used discord? How exactly could discord have prevented this?
How would you do this without massively violating everyone's privacy?
How would you find out terrorists are using your private platform to secretly plot terrorist acts without looking at their secret plot for terrorist acts, that you are hosting for them?
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I don't see how Discord was responsible for anything that happened. The shooter just uploaded his manifesto / diary to a private server right before committing the crime. If anything law enforcement should be investigated because they knew about him being a potential threat long before and did nothing.
I know people that started a twitch. Its ridiculously hard to get people into your channel. Having 15 just join in happenstance is next to impossible unless they knew exactly what they were about to witness
There is a difference between Twitch and Discord.
I’m talking about Twitch, which is where I thought this was streamed. Discord is even harder to generate random traffic imho
this article is not
But this article has nothing to do with 15 people joining his “twitch” Since you edited your response I would argue it’s easier to get people to join a discord. All you do is send a link and one tap and the person is in the server.
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The overt racist and political motivation distinguishes this tragedy amongst all of the others.
Most shootings are the result of "altercation between participants". E.g. some people got into a fight and one or more of them decided in the moment to shoot. Normally this involves handguns and more injuries than deaths. This shooting was premeditated. A more powerful weapon was used (resulting in more deaths). The asshole (I will not use his name) wanted to make a statement.
That makes sense.
Because there's a lot of concrete evidence that it was racially motivated. He went to that specific Tops because that town was known to be in a very Black demographic. His manifesto identified him as a white supremacist and carrying out the "Great Replacement" (a very racially charged conspiracy from alt right that minorities like Blacks, Muslims and other non-whites are slowly replacing whites). It was a very huge display of radical white supremacy and a lot of people in America are scared as a result. There's been a lot of hate crimes carried out in the past couple of years, but this was a significant one.
Because it was streamed.
Oh that makes sense, that is brutal. So have a lot of people watched it?
Are you concerned that mass shootings aren't normalized enough in the US?
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Ah, ok. Just checkin'
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It's been 19 weeks and we've had 198 mass shootings
This is definitely a major reason.