Unlike other social notworking sites, Twitter is not removing or labelling the pictures as "unusually graphic" images, especially in footage where dead bodies of some victims, including a young child, appear identifiable.
Photojournalist Pat Holloway tweeted to Musk that family members do "not deserve to see the dead relatives spread across Twitter for everybody to see.” It was time the site pulled its socks up, he said.
The gunman, Mauricio Garcia's social media accounts and found he "had expressed an interest in neo-Nazi views" and could be seen wearing "a patch on his chest reading RWDS"—an acronym used by extremists and white supremacists standing for "Right Wing Death Squad."
Musk’s comment on the shooting seems to be that there was no evidence that Garcia was a “nazi white supremacist."
To be fair to Musk, if you ignore Garcia's photos of large Nazi tattoos on his arm and torso, including a swastika and the SS lightning bolt logo, and the small matter of the Nazi-related images and hate-filled rants against women and racial minorities in his exit video posted in the run-up to the massacre, his neighbours said he was quiet and kept to himself.
On Twitter, there's an ongoing debate between users who want to share the images from the shooting to protest gun violence and those like Holloway, who expect Twitter to block such sensitive content. For those who want to share the images, Twitter recommends that users proactively mark them as sensitive. To do that, "navigate to your safety settings and select the 'Mark media you Tweet as containing material that may be sensitive' option," Twitter's policy directs users. Twitter will apply the sensitive media filter on violative images reported by users.
The New York Times noted that Twitter has never completely banned graphic content and has historically allowed newsworthy images to be shared.
Sarah Roberts, a professor at the University of California Los Angeles who studies content moderation, told The Times that Twitter isn't bound by ethics like traditional media outlets that attempt to minimise harm to viewers and family and friends of victims. Roberts warned that, instead, Twitter is designed to profit off engagement with all content on the platform, including graphic content.
