Elon Musk’s silence on how he’d moderate the Buffalo shooting livestream is deafening

Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

On May 14th, social media platforms were forced to deal with a livestream video of a white supremacist terror attack. The man who has been the nation's loudest commentator on moderation had nothing to say.

Any restriction on speech beyond what the law says is censorship. The video of the attack in Buffalo should have remained on the platform since it is not illegal to show graphic violence. Musk found no need to comment on the debate because platforms were criticized for being too slow to remove them.

The details of the shooting in Buffalo, New York are still painful to report. A group of people were killed in a supermarket on a Saturday afternoon in Buffalo. A man who was livestreaming the violence on the video game site planned to do more before he was stopped by police.

The Buffalo shooter was radicalized online. He copied large parts of the New Zealand terrorist's manifesto into one of his own. He was motivated by the theory that white people are being dispossessed from their positions of power through immigration and interracial marriage. He wrote that he had learned of the theory through 4chan, the online message board that spawned QAnon and has been linked to many other acts of white supremacist terrorism.

He was also a descendant of mass shooters who use extreme, graphic violence to spread their message of hate on social media and hope to amplify their message of hate. While the original stream was taken down on other platforms in a matter of minutes, the video was still circulating for a long time.

Despite his large presence in Buffalo, Musk remained silent as America was reeling from the news. In the wake of his acquisition deal, the company whose moderation policy he has relentlessly critiqued was forced to make real-time decisions over whether videos of the shooting should be allowed to circulate.

A sympathetic reader might say that his focus has been elsewhere. There is a lot that could distract him with the stock markets wobbling and the Twitter acquisition deal on hold. It would be fair to say that he was occupied elsewhere if he had stopped using his phone completely over the weekend.

Within hours of the shooting, Musk had posted a number of messages, some of them even touching on moderation. He shared a newsletter from Matt Taibbi on corporate after he explained to users how to access the chronological feed. On the next day, he wrote about the importance of open-source code. He trolled Parag Agrawal in a conversation on Monday. There was no comment on Buffalo found by watchers.

Been hitting refresh all day waiting for Elon’s take on the Buffalo shooter’s manifesto and video being shared on Twitter. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch.

— Dare Obasanjo (@Carnage4Life) May 15, 2022

Would Musk have ordered the removal of the videos? There is no answer that can satisfy both a common understanding of moral decency and his stated position on moderation and free speech. The Buffalo shooter's video will be shared by police departments, government agencies, and other organizations investigating the crime. For millions of social media users to view and share a video of a massacre for their own morbid curiosity is unconscionable, and every platform will have content policies that block or heavily restrict it.

Musk has shown no understanding of the range of speech that is legal but dangerous or that there is any difference between it.

There is a time for that discussion. When the national conversation is focused on this act of terrorism, Musk has a chance to commit to his vision of laissez-faire content moderation and accept the consequences or recognize that there are limits.

The free speech advocate has become silent.