LAS VEGAS

Why Did Facebook Promote Fake News About the Las Vegas Massacre?

Tech giants aren’t doing enough to police their platforms.

Is Facebook having a Frankenstein moment when it comes to news aggregation—has it created something it can’t fully control? The company’s executives might tell you that it has, but this is absolutely not the case.

The reality is that Facebook needs to hire humans to edit and review the content it promotes as news—and it needs to hire a lot of them.

Facebook argues that it has just too much content to moderate and that new algorithms and artificial intelligence are what we need to stop the spread of false stories. Clearly, they are not. Shortly after the massacre in Las Vegas, a story from 4chan, a popular alt-right message board, blaming an innocent man for the shooting was being displayed on Google’s top stories module and the Facebook trends box and safety check page.

The companies defended themselves by blaming their algorithms and said that the fake news was only featured for a short time. We have to stop accepting these insufficient excuses. One man’s reputation and safety were put in jeopardy because Facebook and Google neglected to adequately monitor the content being promoted on their news platforms. And while these tech giants are deflecting blame, they continue to generate massive advertising revenue from their news services.

Facebook and Google could signal their seriousness in tackling fake news by creating an executive position responsible for preventing it. Facebook ads were recently used to target people using hateful words such as “Jew haters.” In response, Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said she could not imagine that Facebook would ever have been “used this way.” But imagining possible harm is the exact job responsibility of a chief risk officer, a common position in the highly regulated finance industry. It’s time for Facebook, Google, and other major tech firms to start employing chief risk officers, given the impact that these companies have on society.

Facebook Co-Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg says he is sorry for how Facebook has been used for nefarious purposes and that he will try harder to make sure that his platform doesn’t continue to hurt people. But there are no legal checks to ensure he makes good on promises. Earlier in the year, after a man uploaded a video to Facebook of himself murdering another person, Zuckerberg said that the company would do “all we can” to prevent such instances from reoccurring. These apologies humanize the company, but it’s important to remember that Facebook is a corporation, and corporations do not just get to apologize and say they will do better. The public, and our elected officials, need to hold them accountable.

As Facebook and Google lead us into a new world of digital communication and information, we need to make sure that we as a people participate in this process. Our elected officials must step up and force social media companies to effectively govern and manage their potentially dangerous platforms.

Jennifer Grygiel is an assistant professor of communications (social media) at the S.I. Newhouse School at Syracuse University. Follow them on Twitter.

What does Las Vegas want Trump to do in wake of shooting?

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Trump comes to Las Vegas as pressure grows to discuss gun laws

In the aftermath of the country's deadliest gun attack in modern times, many in the US are looking to the president for answers. But as he visits Las Vegas, will he provide them?

On Sunday night, as the horror unfolded at the Route 91 country music festival, Bob and Heidi were serving pizzas.

They'd travelled from their home state of Arkansas to work at the concert, when they heard the sound of bullets.

As they took shelter in the food stand, with the heat of the pizza oven behind them, they helped people leave the venue to safety.

Image caption Bob and Heidi from Arkansas

Still shaken by what happened, they, like so many people here in Las Vegas, are trying to work out what, if anything, could have been done to prevent the atrocity.

"It's not the guns, it's more the people who own the guns," says Bob, who thinks there should be better checks on the mental health of buyers.

His calls for tougher restrictions on those with mental illness is at odds with what President Trump has done in the White House so far.

Earlier this year, and to little fanfare, the president rolled back an Obama-era regulation which had restricted people with serious mental illnesses from owning a gun.

It's a move his supporters I've met here are at odds with.

"It's not the gun doing it, it's the mind of the individual," says Crystal, a Trump voter from Branson, Missouri.

Image caption Crystal and Terry from Missouri

"Everybody should have the right to carry a weapon, but that doesn't justify somebody going crazy," she says, pointing out that she carries a firearm when she's back home.

"I carry a gun, and I haven't shot anybody," she adds.

Crystal does believes the constitutional right to bear arms should come with some conditions.

Before she received a permit for her weapon she was required to take a "conceal and carry course", which taught her how to use the gun safely.

But the law in her home state changed at the start of this year - in Missouri you no longer require a permit to own a gun.

She believes this should be reversed, and also that if someone wants a gun they must be trained in how to use it responsibly.

Her husband Terry, who also voted for Donald Trump, suggests another area where there should be tighter restrictions.

Police say they found what are known as "bump-stock" modifications on 12 rifles in Stephen Paddock's room. These legal devices allow people to modify a semi-automatic gun, turning into an automatic weapon, which can fire multiple rounds at a time.

Semi-automatic weapons, such as the AK-47 and Colt AR-15, are also legal. It was these kinds of weapons that were used in the massacres at Sandy Hook, Newtown and Orlando, and it appears these kinds of weapons were modified for Sunday's shooting.

Terry argues these, and any sort of automatic weapon, which allows the firing of multiple rounds at once, should be banned.

"I believe in gun rights, but does a person really need an assault rifle?" he asks, incredulously.

Image caption Diane Quast

The same question is also on the mind of Diane Quast, from Tennessee, who is outside the Mandalay Bay hotel where the attack took place.

As she stared out past the yellow police tape which has closed the surrounding roads, she could see the two broken windows on the 32nd floor, from where Paddock carried out his murderous rampage.

"I definitely support gun control," she said. "I am truly hoping that in the wake of this tragedy, something will come of it."

In the wake of every recent mass shooting, she has hoped politicians would heed the calls of millions like her and restrict access to firearms.

But just as there are many people like Diane, there are many who feel the real issue has nothing to do with legislating gun ownership.

"I don't think President Trump needs to say anything about gun control," says Bob, from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Image caption Bob and Anne from central Pennsylvania

"I don't believe gun control is going to stop these kinds of attacks. They need to have better security screening when you enter hotels."

More than 20 firearms were found in Stephen Paddock's hotel suite. Reports say he carried them up to his room in at least 10 suitcases.

Bob argues that metal detectors at the entrance of the hotel would have prevented this from ever happening.

It's a view a few people I've met here have echoed. In cities like Mumbai and Jerusalem you have to go through airport style security checks to enter many hotels and public buildings. In India the changes came in after the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks which left 174 people dead.

Now as every vehicle enters a large hotel in a major Indian city, it is scanned for bombs underneath, and the back of the car is checked for weapons.

As I leave the Vegas strip, Denise Murphy and Quanetta Suggs from Indiana remind me how conflicted this nation is when it comes to guns.

"The president just needs to make it harder for people to purchase guns. Full stop," says Denise. "Everyone should not be able to get their hands on one."

Image caption Denise Murphy and Quanetta Suggs, both from Indiana

Everyone I've met in Vegas agrees Paddock should never have been allowed to access so many weapons or indeed modify them. But a solution is harder to pin down.

President Trump's words in the wake of the shooting will provide some comfort to many who are hurting in the wake of this tragedy.

But the greater challenge for his presidency is to heal the deep divisions over firearms, which have plagued this nation for generations.

This isn't the first time the country has grappled with this issue in the wake of a mass shooting, and it's probably not the last.

FBI searches for motive in Las Vegas massacre, looks to gunman's girlfriend for answers

Authorities investigating the Las Vegas massacre turned Wednesday to the shooter’s girlfriend, hoping for more answers about the gunman and what may have sparked the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

Investigators have spent the days since Sunday’s attack — which killed 58 people and injured hundreds more — struggling to explain why 64-year-old Stephen Paddock holed up in a high-rise hotel overlooking the Las Vegas Strip and opened fire on concertgoers at a country music festival far below.

What they have found so far has been chilling evidence of extensive preparations, as Paddock turned his two-room suite in the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino into an armed fortress. He brought in 23 guns along with “bump” stocks that can allow them to more quickly fire bullets, police said. The gunman also placed cameras so that he could monitor the arrival of police officers, who eventually breached his room and found that he killed himself before they arrived.

But a motive has remained elusive. Police hoped they could learn more from Paddock’s girlfriend, Marilou Danley, who was in the Philippines when the shooting occurred.

Danley arrived late Tuesday night at Los Angeles International Airport and was met by FBI agents, according to a person familiar with the investigation. She is considered a critical witness in trying to decipher Paddock’s motive.

[Details emerge in the life of Marliou Danley]

While investigators have described her as a “person of interest,” they have not suggested that she is considered an accomplice or involved in any way.

The FBI had planned to speak with Danley on Wednesday at the bureau’s Los Angeles field office, according to authorities. Agents have essentially two critical questions for Danley: Did she have any idea what motivated him, and did she have any knowledge of what was about to take place and not alert authorities? That was deemed to be the case with Noor Salman, the wife of the Orlando gunman who killed 49 people last year. Salman was later arrested and charged with aiding and abetting terrorism and obstructing justice.

There were no immediate, obvious indications that Danley would fit the same bill, a person familiar with the case said, though they stressed that the investigation was still early. Investigators still have to run down any potential leads Danley may provide.

Given how little has emerged in Paddock’s past that could foreshadow the attack, the “best lead is through this girlfriend,” said Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.).

“They don’t know a lot about who the girlfriend is and why she left the country a week prior to the shooting,” said Heller, who has been briefed by authorities. “She is someone they need to have this discussion with to better under­stand the shooting and what his thought process was.”

FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe said Wednesday morning that he is surprised they have not found evidence pointing to the gunman’s motive yet.

“There’s all kinds of things that surprise us in each one of these events,” McCabe told CNBC. “This individual and this attack didn’t leave the sort of immediately accessible thumbprints that you find on some mass casualty attacks….We look for actual indicators of affiliation, of motive, of intent, and so far we’re not there. We don’t have those sort of indicators.”

McCabe said agents have been reconstructing “the life, the behavior, the pattern of activity of this individual and anyone and everyone who may have crossed his path in the days and the weeks leading up to this horrific event.”

He said so far investigators have not had any problems accessing the gunman’s computer electronic devices.

Amid a backdrop of anguish and questions, President Trump on Wednesday headed to Las Vegas to address law enforcement officials in Las Vegas as well as survivors of Sunday’s massacre.

“We’re going to pay our respects and see the police who really have done a fantastic job,” Trump said to reporters before he left Washington for Nevada. “It’s a very, very sad day for me, personally.”

During his visit in Las Vegas, Trump declined to speak about gun violence in America. He also said that authorities have not identified a motive yet.

“Not yet,” Trump said during remarks to reporters. “We’re looking. I can tell you, it’s a very sick man. He was a very demented person. We haven’t seen that yet, but you will know very soon if we find something. We’re looking very, very hard.”

[The lives lost in Las Vegas]

Piece by piece, investigators have put together a profile of Paddock — a retired accountant — making meticulous preparations for the moment when he smashed a plate-glass window in the 32nd floor of his hotel room and opened fire with a weapon, apparently modified to spew bullets with the split-second speed of an automatic rifle.

As he fired round after round during an 11-minute stretch from a suite at the Mandalay Bay, Paddock used multiple video cameras to keep an eye out for police storming his hotel room, according to Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo.

“It was preplanned, extensively, and I’m pretty sure that he evaluated everything that he did in his actions, which is troublesome,” Lombardo said Tuesday.

Paddock hid one camera in the peephole of his suite and two more in the hall, at least one of them disguised on a service cart, authorities said. At one point, he shot numerous rounds through the door, wounding a security guard.

Paddock eventually put a gun in his own mouth and pulled the trigger as SWAT officers closed in. They found him with blood pooling behind his head and around the empty shell casings that littered the carpet, a handgun near his body.

Once police entered the suite, they found that Paddock had brought 23 guns inside since he checked into the hotel on Thursday. Police also found another 26 guns at two other properties in Nevada and a large collection of ammunition and a chemical that can be used to make bombs.

Many of Paddock’s guns were purchased in recent years. Between October 2016 and Sept. 28, the day Paddock checked into the Mandalay Bay, Paddock bought 33 guns, the “majority of them rifles,” Jill A. Snyder, the special agent in charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in San Francisco, said Wednesday in an interview with “CBS This Morning.”

Paddock also had substantial ammunition in the room, with clips containing between 60 and 100 rounds, Snyder said. During a news briefing a day earlier, Snyder said Paddock had purchased shotguns, handguns and rifles in Nevada, Utah, California and Texas. She also said that inside Paddock’s suite, authorities found a dozen “bump” stocks that can enable guns to fire bullets at a more rapid clip.

Included in the cache of guns found in his room: An AR-15-type rifle with a high-capacity magazine, another AR-15-type rifle with a magnification scope commonly used for hunting and a bipod stand to help steady it, according to law enforcement officials and experts who reviewed images of the weapons posted online.

Community leaders light 59 candles during a vigil at Mountain Crest Park on Tuesday in Las Vegas, NV. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)

Until carrying out the massacre Sunday night, Paddock had no criminal history himself. Despite repeated claims by the Islamic State to the contrary, he also had no ties to international terrorism groups, authorities said. He had done some government work, spent three years working for a defense contractor and had twice been divorced. Paddock was known to gamble routinely and extensively.

Some public officials seemed to suggest Paddock’s mind was troubled, though there were no immediate indications that he had been diagnosed with a mental illness or was anything other than fully aware of what he was doing.

“A normal person would not cause this type of harm to innocent people,” said Rep. Ruben Kihuen (D-Nev.). “Clearly, there was something wrong with this man.”

[I feel … frustrated. Readers respond to the latest mass shooting.]

Neighbors in several states where Paddock owned homes in retirement communities described him as surly, unfriendly and standoffish. Paddock was the son of a bank robber who was once on the FBI’s most-wanted list and whom authorities described at the time as a “psychopath,” but Paddock’s brother said their father was not involved in their lives when they were children.

Relatives say the roots of Paddock’s loner lifestyle might have been planted on July 28, 1960. On that day, when Paddock was 7, a neighbor from across the street took him swimming. The neighbor told a local newspaper at the time that she knew authorities were coming for his father, and she wanted to spare the young boy from the trauma of seeing his father taken away. From that point on, Paddock’s family was never the same.

People close to the investigation also said that in the weeks before the attack, Paddock transferred a large amount of money — close to $100,000 — to someone in the Philippines, possibly his girlfriend. The significance of that development was not immediately clear, though investigators said they were interested in probing Paddock’s finances and his avid interest in high-stakes gambling.

Danley’s sister, interviewed by Australia’s Channel 7, suggested that Paddock had arranged Danley’s trip to visit her homeland to keep her from undermining the attack plans.

“I know she doesn’t know anything as well like us,” said the sister, whose identity was shielded by the channel. “She was sent away. She was away so that she would not be there to interfere with what he’s planning.”

According to court records, Danley appears to have been living with Paddock as early as August 2013, while she was still married to another man, named Geary Danley. Geary and Marilou Danley were married in Las Vegas in 1990. According to court records, they jointly filed for divorce on Feb. 25, 2015, and the divorce was finalized the next day.

[Frantic switchboard calls, geometry of fire, led police to killer on Mandalay Bay’s 32nd floor]

At his home in Orlando, Eric Paddock, Stephen Paddock’s brother, said he also doubts Danley had any prior knowledge of the incident and speculated that Stephen might have been trying to quietly ensure her financial security. Stephen Paddock loved and doted on his girlfriend, whom he had met when she was a hostess at a casino, Eric Paddock said. The couple often gambled side by side.

“He manipulated her to be as far away from here and safe when he committed this,” Eric Paddock said. “The people he loved he took care of, and as he was descending into hell he took care of her.”

Coroner John Fudenberg on Tuesday evening clarified that Paddock was among the 59 counted as slain; previously, authorities had said he wasn’t. More than 500 people were wounded in the attack or injured in the rush to flee.

Janet Marchal hugs her children during a vigil at Mountain Crest Park on Tuesday. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)

Undersheriff Kevin C. Mc­Mahill, speaking after Fudenberg at a news briefing, warned that the number of dead and injured could fluctuate as the investigation progresses.

Hospitals across the region continued to treat patients from the scene, many of them seriously injured. Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center said that as of Tuesday, it had 59 patients from the rampage, 31 of them still in critical condition. University Medical Center said it had 64 patients from the attack, 12 of them critical.

Lynh Bui and Tim Craig in Las Vegas; Barbara Liston in Orlando; Ally Gravina in Reno, Nev.; William Dauber in Los Angeles; and Brian Murphy, Devlin Barrett, Alex Horton, Wesley Lowery, Julie Tate, Jessica Contrera, Sandhya Somashekhar, Aaron C. Davis, William Wan and Sari Horwitz in Washington contributed to this report, which will be updated throughout the day.