Videos of livestreamed shooting in Indiana linger online

In May, a man livestreamed himself on Facebook from within a grocery store in Fort Wayne, Indiana, asking viewers who he should shoot while blurting racial slurs at passerbys, and eventually firing at a Black woman and other shoppers. The suspect, identified as Richard Klaff, was arrested for attempted murder.

In the two days after the attack, ISD researchers found over 40 video versions/clips from the livestream on X and Facebook, generating over 9 million views in total. The spread of these videos highlight crucial gaps in social media platforms’ policy enforcement, especially when violent content lacks an explicit connection to terrorism or a specific violent extremist ideology.

Investigation co-author, Moustafa Ayad, spoke to the Washington Post about our findings, and how our analysis of the suspect’s “social media footprint did not seem to indicate that he was linked to any extremist groups.”

“While there is no ideological link here, that was an aspect of it that was relatively novel and shocking,” Moustafa said. The “gamification” of these attacks, he said, is “troubling to say the least.”

Both Meta, formerly Facebook, and X, formerly Twitter, were founding members of the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT), a non-profit created in response to the livestreamed Christchurch mosque shootings in 2019.