Elon Musk has been criticized after graphic images of the bloodied victims shot to death in the Texas mall massacre circulated on Twitter and remained online for hours.
Within minutes of Mauricio Garcia, 33, fatally shooting eight victims at the Allen Premium Outlets mall before being killed by a police officer, gruesome videos and images of the dead began going viral on Twitter.
A 10-second graphic video circulated on Saturday showing several dead bodies propped up against a planter and a white wall with the retailer H&M’s sign. At least one of the victims, lifeless and bloodied, appears to be a young child.
The unusually graphic nature of the content — some of which is still online — drew condemnation from Twitter users, who pointed to Musk’s decision to undermine Twitter’s content moderation team amid layoffs since he bought the social media platform in October.
“This family doesn’t deserve to see the dead relatives scattered on Twitter for all to see,” said veteran photojournalist Pat Holloway, 64. The New York Times.
Elon Musk has been criticized after graphic images of the bloodied victims shot to death in the Texas mall massacre circulated on Twitter and remained online for hours. Pictured: muzzled bodies of some of the victims who were shot dead during Saturday’s massacre
Shoppers leave as law enforcement responds to a shooting at the Allen Premium Outlets in the Dallas area on Saturday
Video widely shared on social media showed Garcia lying on the ground after being shot. DailyMail.com muzzled the image
Holloway had tweeted Musk demanding that he do something about the graphic content, including a photo of Garcia’s dead body, which went viral on the site.
“There is nothing virtuous or ethical about displaying easily identifiable dead children and adults whose families may not yet know they are dead,” wrote Emily Bell, a professor and the director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University. .
“It’s highly unethical — it robs victims and their families of privacy and dignity in death. It only serves Musk’s click farm.”
In the past, Twitter has worked to remove videos and images of such horrifying content, but Musk’s decision to curtail the site’s moderation practices caused it to go viral instead.
The company has faced questions about its ability and willingness to moderate harmful and illegal content since Musk cut half of Twitter’s 7,500 employees.
An email request for comment about the viral mass shooting videos to Twitter, which no longer has a communications team, returned an automatic response with a poop emoji.
Shoppers, including a pregnant woman, rush out of the mall after the shooting in Allen, Texas, on Saturday
Elon Musk (pictured Saturday at the Miami Grand Prix) has been criticized after graphic images of the bloodied victims who were shot to death in the Texas mall massacre circulated on Twitter and remained online for hours
Some Twitter users said people and politicians needed to see videos like this to understand the magnitude and horrific nature of gun violence.
But some have drawn a distinction between traditional news organizations — where editors must be bound by ethics — as compared to social media sites like Twitter that are not bound by such standards.
“I understand where people on social media are coming from wanting to spread these images in hopes that this will bring about a change,” UCLA professor Sarah T. Roberts, who focuses on content moderation, told the Times.
‘Unfortunately, social media as a company is not set up for that. It is intended to take advantage of the dissemination of these images.”
It comes as officials investigate whether gunman Garcia had an interest in white supremacist ideology.
A law enforcement official said federal agents had been reviewing social media accounts and believed Garcia had expressed an interest in neo-Nazi views and had a patch on his chest that read RWDS — an acronym for Right Wing Death Squad, which is popular among extremists and white supremacist groups.
Further, law enforcement officials said investigators searched a home connected to Garcia and a Dallas motel near a highway where Garcia was staying, where they found multiple weapons, including an AR-15-style rifle and a handgun.