Buffalo shooter let some see plans
Accused gunman invited group to view private, online diary on Discord
Shortly before he opened fire, the white gunman accused of killing 10 Black people at a Buffalo, N.Y., supermarket allowed a small group of people to see his detailed plans for the attack, which he had been chronicling for months in a private, online diary.
Discord, the chat platform where 18-year-old Payton Gendron kept the diary, confirmed Wednesday that an invitation to access his private writings was sent to the group about a half-hour before Saturday’s attack at Tops Friendly Market, which he livestreamed on another online service. Some of them accepted.
Gendron’s diary and its racist, anti-Semitic entries dated to last November included step-by-step descriptions of his assault plans, a detailed account of a reconnaissance trip he made to Buffalo in March, and maps of the store that he drew by hand.
“What we know at this time is that a private, invite-only server was created by the suspect to serve as a personal diary chat log,” a Discord spokesperson said in a written statement. “Approximately 30 minutes prior to the attack, however, a small group of people were invited to and joined the server. Before that, our records indicate no other people saw the diary chat log in this private server.”
It wasn’t clear if any of the people who accessed Gendron’s diary or saw his livestream did anything to alert the authorities or attempt to stop the attack. Discord said it removed Gendron’s diary as soon as the platform became aware of it, in accordance with the company’s policies against violent extremism.
Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia said Monday that investigators were working to obtain, verify and review Gendron’s online postings.
Copies of his Discord diary — essentially a transcript of his postings to his private chat log — briefly surfaced elsewhere online after the shooting, along with a 180-page screed attributed to him. Both were laced with white supremacist beliefs echoing a baseless extremist conspiracy theory about a plot to diminish the influence of white people.
President Joe Biden, visiting Buffalo on Tuesday, repudiated such beliefs, saying: “Now’s the time for people of all races, from every background, to speak up as a majority ... and reject white supremacy.”
Gendron was arraigned over the weekend on a murder charge; a not guilty plea was entered on his behalf and he remains jailed under a suicide watch. He is scheduled to appear in court in Buffalo again Thursday.
Tech companies like Discord and Twitch, which authorities say Gendron
used to livestream the supermarket attack, are under scrutiny for their role as vectors of hate speech.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Wednesday authorized the state’s attorney general, Letitia James, to investigate social media platforms used by Gendron to determine if they have “civil or criminal liability for their role in promoting, facilitating, or providing a platform to plan and promote violence.”
Discord said it planned to cooperate with James’ probe and is continuing to assist law enforcement in the ongoing investigation into the shooting.
Messages seeking comment were left with Twitch. Attempts to reach representatives of two other tech platforms James is investigating, 8kun and 4chan, were unsuccessful. Gendron wrote in his diary that those boards were where he started reading up on the racist ideologies that set him on a path to killing nonwhite, non-Christian people.
When reached for comment, Ron Watkins, the longtime administrator of 8kun and its predecessor, 8chan, said he resigned from the organization last year and has “no idea what’s going on with that.”
Gendron wrote in his Discord diary that he started reading 4chan a few months into the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and that he was heavily influenced by Brenton Tarrant, who killed 51 people in a shooting rampage at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019.