White House Invites Tech Companies to Discuss Violent Extremism

(Bloomberg) -- The White House wants to discuss violent online extremism with tech companies this week following a string of deadly shootings.

Staff will lead the meeting with unnamed “internet and technology companies” on Friday, spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement Wednesday. The meeting comes after shootings in El Paso, Texas; Dayton, Ohio; and Gilroy, California.

The attacker in El Paso, who killed 22 in a rampage at a Walmart store on Saturday, had posted a manifesto online minutes before the attack began that was laced with words and phrases President Donald Trump himself has used in reference to immigrants and the media.

The El Paso massacre marked the third mass shooting this year linked to the controversial message board 8chan. The House Homeland Security committee is seeking to bring the site’s owner in for testimony over extremism on the platform.

Trump said Monday that he had ordered federal officials to work with social media companies to identify people who may perpetrate mass shootings before they can act. The meeting set for Friday will include “senior administration officials along with representatives of a range of companies,” according to the statement. Twitter Inc. and Facebook Inc. declined to comment on the letter. Google didn’t respond to requests for comment.

During a summit in July with conservative tech critics and trolls, Trump said he would seek another White House event with “representatives of the major social media platforms.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Ben Brody in Washington at btenerellabr@bloomberg.net;Justin Sink in Washington at jsink1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Sara Forden at sforden@bloomberg.net, Molly Schuetz

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