It’s the teachers fault. We should arm them. It’s the parents’ fault. They should teach their children to defend themselves. It’s the fence’s fault. She was not adequate. It’s the fault of the windows. They weren’t tinted. It’s the fault of the people holding the guns. They have mental health issues.
Not once, on the side of the tripe of guns Americans, it was said whose fault it was for real if children died. It’s the guns’ fault. Or rather, it’s the fault of the NRA-funded senators who block all bills to control possession.
How come an 18-year-old guy can go to the store and buy two AR-15s and some ammo? He can’t, in several states, buy alcohol, but an assault rifle, yes?
The inaction of the platforms
The worst, he can take a picture with it and post it on Facebook. We agree, it’s not Facebook’s fault if there are killings. But it would be really naïve to think that social media cannot play a role in preventing these tragedies.
In a press briefing, Governor Abbott revealed that the killer, whom I refuse to name, wrote three messages on the platform before committing his massacre.
Thirty minutes before, he wrote that he was going to shoot his grandmother. Then he wrote that he did. Fifteen minutes before arriving at Robb Elementary School, he wrote that he was going to shoot a school.
Meta, which owns Facebook, will clarify that these were in fact private messages. Nevertheless. Thirty minutes passed between the moment the young man published his intentions and the moment he killed 19 children and two teachers.
Mode of operation
This is not an isolated case. During the Christchurch shooting, the killer broadcast his actions live for almost 17 minutes on Facebook. The author of the Buffalo massacre published a 180-page manifesto on social media. Even at home, during the attack on the Quebec mosque or the events in Dawson, there were traces on social media.
If these platforms had lingered there, they might have been able to save lives.
I spoke with Paul Laurier, who is interested in the phenomenon of mass killers, and more specifically in the signals they send before taking action. What he taught me is disturbing.
Since Colombine, in 1999, we know that these guys correspond to a profile and that they act in a certain way online.
The police know it, the governments know it and so do the platforms.
Yet Facebook does nothing.
Using algorithms, we can know that I want a striped sweater and offer me ads to that effect.
We can also detect in a few seconds a photo that violates the rules of the community.
Facebook can do all that, but I’m going to be made to believe that we can’t detect posts like those made by several mass killers before going to kill innocent people?
Paul Laurier assures me that it is. The technology is there.
There is no legislation to go with it.
And that, we solve that with courage and political will.