Social media platforms must face lawsuits claiming they enabled Buffalo mass shooter

Several social media companies were ordered by a New York state judge to face four lawsuits seeking to hold them responsible for helping enable the avowed white supremacist who killed 10 Black people in 2022 at a Buffalo, New York grocery store.

Justice Paula Feroleto of the Erie County Supreme Court ruled on Monday that the more than 40 plaintiffs could try to prove that Meta Platforms’ Facebook and Instagram, Reddit, Google’s YouTube and other platforms were designed to addict and radicalize users like the shooter, Payton Gendron.

The plaintiffs included relatives or representatives of people who died in Gendron’s racially motivated mass shooting at Tops Friendly Markets on May 14, 2022, as well as store employees and customers who witnessed it. Gendron was 18 at the time.

… the judge said the plaintiffs could try to prove that the defendants owned them a duty because their platforms were defective and led to injuries.