YouTube to Twitter, Tech Firms Delete Mass Shooters’ Accounts, But it’s Not Enough
Mass shooting events like the one that happened July 4 near Chicago typically set off an-all-too-common chain of procedures at tech companies: unearth the attacker’s online presence, capture possibly incriminating posts and quickly shut their accounts.
As frequent as this protocol has become, the companies are still not fast enough to prevent a dangerous knock-on effect of the violence. Social media users themselves swiftly find, circulate and discuss the shooter’s posts, in some cases creating a glorification and amplification of murder that could inspire other shootings and that the technology industry—for all its engineering might—remains ill-equipped to contain.
The man prosecutors say sprayed bullets into a parade in Highland Park had a sizable online presence that internet companies urgently scrubbed, deactivating nearly a dozen of his profiles, according to a review of his accounts by Bloomberg News. Within 48 hours, companies including YouTube, Discord, Spotify and even PayPal permanently suspended the accounts of the accused gunman, Robert Crimo III, all but removing his trace on the open web. But since the mass shooting, which transformed a holiday celebration into a national tragedy, internet trolls and curious onlookers have passed around archives of Crimo’s accounts and picked apart his postings.
“Bloodthirsty trolls and admirers have their own copies of Crimo's work, which they will endlessly obsess over and dissect,” said Emerson Brooking, a resident senior fellow for the Atlantic Council who studies digital platforms. Regular people, too, become curious about a shooter’s motivation in the aftermath of an unthinkable tragedy. “Eventually, these trolls are going to try to smuggle his ideas back into the
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