Live-streamed Murder on Big Tech Platforms Is Commonplace, When Will App Stores Act?

This week yet another mass murder was live-streamed on a big tech platform. This time it was Amazon-owned Twitch, a live-streaming service primarily used by video game content.

On Wednesday, a heavily armed man with a head-mounted camera live-streamed his shooting rampage in Halle, Germany, on Twitch for more than 35 minutes. Two people were killed and two others injured in the attack, which took place outside a synagogue and in a kebab shop.

Twitch said on Twitter that only five people had watched the live stream of the shooting. But 2,200 people viewed a recording of the attack, which stayed up for 30 minutes before it was flagged and removed.

Last year, a Twitch live stream from a gaming tournament in Jacksonville, Fla., captured part of a shooting in which three people, including the gunman, died. In June, Twitch sued users who had posted footage of an attack in March involving mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.

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Live-streamed murder is becoming commonplace on Big Tech platforms, yet these platforms never face any consequences for this. Contrast this with Gab, which was no platformed by dozens of service providers including hosts, app stores, payment processing and more.

In November of 2018 Gab faced what would become a months-long smear campaign and one of the most coordinated no-platforming efforts in internet history. This followed after a mass shooter, who will not be named, allegedly took the lives of eleven innocent people and also happened to have an account on Gab as well as other social networks.

Gab cooperated fully with law enforcement, as is our policy to do so especially in emergency situations. We have always strongly condemned violence and have a zero tolerance policy for threats of violence on our site. We have a good relationship with law enforcement and work proactively to take swift action against unlawful content.

Yet Gab was severely punished by the Big Tech cabal. Twitch, Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat all remain on both app stores. They are all still able to process payments. Why is this?

I think the answer is simple. Gab is a US company that promotes and protects US values. We are a threat to the incumbent big tech platform cabal, which collude together to ensure their oligopoly.

This became even more evident this week after a censorship-free Instagram-clone was booted from the Apple App Store after climbing the ranks to become one of the top five free apps in the store.

No one in the press is calling out this hypocrisy. There are no cries for Twitch, Facebook, or any other Big Tech platform to be removed from app stores. It’s on us, The People, to call out this hypocrisy and to continue building alternatives to Silicon Valley products.

People are waking up to this and it won’t be long before the balkanization of the internet accelerates. There will be the corporate safe space internet where ironically mass murders roam free to live-stream their horrific acts to the world, and there will be the free speech internet where law and order balance the uniquely American speech rights that will be exported to the world by US companies brave enough to build and not back down to the cancel culture outrage mob.

Gab plans to lead this effort and build the free speech internet, one day at a time.