Tumbler Ridge conspiracy complaint puts focus on messaging and social media firms

Social media and other companies must be held accountable to report conversations about causing harm after an FBI complaint detailed extensive online conversations involving the Tumbler Ridge shooter as she planned her deadly attack, NDP Leader David Eby said on Wednesday. 

The complaint against James Bryant, a resident of Bellingham, Wash., alleges conspiracy to murder as Bryant and killer Jesse Van Rootselaar spent months discussing tactics, locations and weaponry for the attack on the Discord messaging platform before they attempted to livestream the murders on Twitch.

The FBI said Van Rootselaar communicated online with Bryant, even sending photos on the chat website Discord showing what she was wearing for the attack. 

Heidi Tworek, professor of international history and public policy at the University of B.C., said on Wednesday that the latest developments from the tragedy reveal a “long-standing and broader phenomena of platforms being used for co-ordination of violence.”

Emily Laidlaw, a Canada Research Chair in cybersecurity law at the University of Calgary, said regulating private messaging platforms is “controversial” due to concerns that it would undermine privacy.

“There are some obligations when it comes to child exploitation material for certain types of platforms, but for problematic content like precisely the Tumbler Ridge scenario, there’s no mandatory reporting,” said Laidlaw. 

“Clearly what we saw here was a failure, and something should have been reported to the police,” she added. 

Mike Harrington, special agent in charge with the FBI in Seattle, told a news conference on Tuesday that Van Rootselaar met Bryant after being “randomly matched” about three years ago on the now-defunct Omegle messaging app.

Van Rootselaar was about 15 at the time, while Bryant was about 27, and the app that enabled conversations with strangers was closed down not long afterwards over lawsuits about child safety.

Megan Kay, senior communications manager with Twitch, said it’s co-operating with law enforcement but declined to go into details.

Eby said government lawyers will be looking at the Bryant complaint and legal obligations to report wrongdoing need to be placed on tech companies “because they will not and have not done the right thing.”

The B.C. government is already suing artificial intelligence firm OpenAI over its alleged role in helping Van Rootselaar plan the Feb. 10 attack that claimed the lives of eight victims, including six children. 

“While the police investigation continues, and I’m glad it’s holding people accountable who were involved, and while that continues, we need Ottawa to step up and impose minimum regulation,” said Eby, speaking Wednesday in his role as the premier at an unrelated B.C. election campaign news conference in Surrey.

“And yes, not just on OpenAI. But on all of the social media companies, on all the AI companies, that if you become aware of a conversation between users about causing harm, violence against children or anybody, that you should have an obligation to report that to police, just like anybody who overheard a conversation applauding violence in their community would naturally call 911.”

Tworek said social media platforms don’t have a blanket mandatory reporting duty to law enforcement for different types of harmful user content.

She said that’s due to concerns about overreporting and potential policing of vulnerable groups and individuals.

There are many cases where someone might say words like ‘I’m going to kill them,’ but they mean it rhetorically, said Tworek.

“The question is, what are the mechanisms within the companies? How are they approaching trust and safety?” said Tworek. “It depends on the individual platforms.”

Twitch was used to livestream a mass shooting in Buffalo, N.Y., on May 14, 2022, leaving 10 people dead and three others injured. 

David Tindall, a professor in the department of sociology at the University of British Columbia, said evolving technology helps people share common interests to communicate, while it also allows bad actors to collaborate. 

“Some of the functions on these platforms allows them to do it in privacy,” said Tindall. “In sociology, there’s a term for this that is called dark networks.”

Acting U.S. Attorney Neil Floyd told the news conference on Tuesday in Seattle that the chats were provided by Discord to the FBI after it obtained subpoenas and search warrants.

Discord did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Tworek said Discord functions as a space to allow users to create different communities, like a hybrid app between Slack and Reddit. 

Discord was initially built for gamers, but it’s now used for many different purposes. Tworek, who is also a Canada Research Chair, said some professors used the platform for their classes.

Discord’s website says it collects certain information from users, including content users created. 

“We generally do not store the contents of video or voice calls or channels. If we were to change that in the future (for example, to facilitate content moderation), we would disclose that to you in advance. We also don’t store streaming content when you share your screen, but we do retain the thumbnail cover image for the stream for a short period of time,” it said. 

Federal Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree said Wednesday that the information in the FBI complaint was “rather outrageous and seriously worrisome.”

“It speaks to broader issues around the use of social media, the use of collaboration online, issues that I think we’re trying to address through Bill C34,” he told reporters in Ottawa, referring to proposed online safety legislation.

Asked whether Discord should be covered by the legislation, Anandasangaree said the law would establish an independent body to make such decisions.

— With files by Ashley Joannou in Vancouver and David Baxter in Ottawa

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 7, 2026.