How Tech Giants Gave the NZ Shooter More Firepower

Last Friday, at least 50 people were killed at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. While the perpetrator’s exact path to radicalization is still unknown, one thing has become increasingly clear: This was an attack crafted by the internet and for the internet, representing a new level of super-viral violence. The Christchurch shooter exploited an unwitting ally in the form of giant tech companies, who have proven themselves unable or unwilling to stop the spread of hate speech on their platforms. In doing so, he immediately turned some of America’s most profitable and influential companies into distributors of a lurid white nationalist recruitment video. Joining host Jamilah King are two experts on social media platforms and how they operate, Mother Jones reporters Ali Breland and Pema Levy. Also on the show, our National Affairs Editor, Mark Follman, describes how the rise of a global white supremacist movement combined with the rise of Trumpism, to create a highly combustible fuel for this kind of extreme violence. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices