This slice of the thread is not about people, but about FCC chairman Carr.
The right went bananas when the Biden administration suggested to social media companies that they shouldn't spread misinformation. Now, the government suggested 'suspend that guy right there' and that guy gets suspended.
Speaking of administrations suggesting things to social media....
A Discord spokesperson said last week that an internal investigation has “not found or received any evidence that the suspect planned this incident on Discord or promoted violence on Discord.” Messages “about weapon retrieval and planning details,” the spokesperson stressed, “were not Discord messages, and likely took place on a phone-number based messaging platform.”
That did not stop Kentucky Republican Rep. James Comer, chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, from sending letters Wednesday to the chief executive officers of Discord — and other online gaming and social platforms Steam, Twitch and Reddit — requesting them to testify at an Oct 8. committee hearing on online radicalization.
“In the wake of this tragedy, and amid other acts of politically motivated violence, Congress has a duty to oversee the online platforms that radicals have used to advance political violence,” Comer said in a
statement. He called on the CEOs of Discord and other networks to “explain what actions they will take to ensure their platforms are not exploited for nefarious purposes.”
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In 2017, just two years after Discord was founded, white supremacists used the site to plan the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va. [Discord then started a content moderation system.]
But in 2022, Discord made the news again: Payton Gendron, an 18-year-old white supremacist who
killed 10 people in a Buffalo, N.Y., supermarket, used the platform for more than a year and a half to plan his attack.
Still, while Discord is a platform extremists use to communicate, it is not the only one and extremists do not make up the bulk of its users, said Brian Levin, the founder of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism and professor emeritus at California State University, San Bernardino.
Rather than scrutinize Discord and other social platforms, Levin said, Congress would be better served examining the evolving nature of extremism.
“Discord is just the latest device, much like the cell phone,” Levin said. “If you target a platform, young people and extremists will find a new place to go.”
