Discord, the chat platform where 18-year-old Payton Gendron kept his diary, confirmed 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.
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.
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. “Our deepest sympathies are with the victims and their families," the company said."Hate has no place on Discord and we are committed to combating violence and extremism.”
“I think this is an example of one of those places where we’ve done a lot of work, but there is obviously still work to be done,” Shear said. 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. Gendron wrote that he originally planned his attack for March 15, the three-year anniversary of Tarrant’s attack.
Gendron, in the diary, said he specifically targeted a store with a predominantly Black clientele, researching spots in Rochester, Syracuse and on Long Island before settling on Buffalo. Prosecutors say he showed up Saturday wearing body armor and armed with an AR-15-style rifle as a helmet-mounted camera streamed to the internet.
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