There are lessons for the NYPD after the chaos in Union Square

Days after Union Square erupted in social media influencer-fueled chaos, one lesson is emerging for the NYPD: Pay more attention to non-traditional social media platforms.

“These are wake up calls,” said Desmond Upton Patton, University of Pennsylvania professor of policy, communications, and psychiatry, who researches the impact of social media. “We really need to understand social media and the digital [world] … as real life.”

His assessment is part of a continuing post mortem following Friday’s violence, when the nation’s largest and best-funded police department was caught off guard – when thousands of people descended on Union Square, ahead of a planned giveaway of gaming swag.

As crowds of mostly young people grew, some began hurling rocks, bottles and fireworks at one another, police said. Nearby subway stops were temporarily shut down. At least four civilians and two officers were transported away by Emergency Medical Services.

The participants were drawn by a post earlier in the week on the social media site Twitch—with promises of free, highly coveted PlayStation 5s. The invitation came from Kai Cenat, a 21-year-old streamer and Bronx resident with more than 6 million followers. His post, on a site less familiar than Facebook, Instagram or X, the former Twitter, eluded the attention of police until the day of the event.

NYPD arrested more than 65 people, including 30 minors, and charged Cenat with inciting a riot.

In the aftermath, some social media, policing and crowd-control experts are describing the chaos as an “outlier” or “anomaly.” At once, the experts say there are lessons to be learned, with an eye toward averting future chaos. That includes, for some, requiring social media sites to better monitor posts for potential trouble – and to alert the authorities.

Here’s more on the questions being asked – and some answers.

What did the police know, and how did they respond?

Around 12:30 p.m on Friday, the NYPD’s entertainment unit and intelligence division saw Cenat’s post announcing the giveaway, NYPD Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey said in a press conference.

Shortly after 1 p.m., officers responded to a “large disorderly” group outside Union Square Park, a police spokesperson said. The crowd totaled some 300 people by 1:30 p.m.

“But this event grew exponentially, rapidly, fast,” Maddrey said. He later added, “We went from 300 kids, to a couple thousand kids, in minutes. Minutes.”

These are wake up calls. We really need to understand social media and the digital [world] … as real life.

Desmond Upton Patton, University of Pennsylvania professor

As crowds grew, the NYPD ramped up its response to level-four, the highest stage of mobilization, deploying several hundred officers.

"This is the power of social media," Maddrey said of the event’s rapid escalation.

Should police have known about the event sooner?

Not necessarily. Cenat announced his giveaway on Twitch earlier in the week. But he didn’t obtain a permit for the event or alert police beforehand, Maddrey said.

As the largest and best-funded police department in the country, the NYPD has a trove of tools to track and investigate potential threats, including technology that trawls social media for potential threats.

But Friday’s mayhem? “This just seems to be a complete outlier,” said Brian Higgins, adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice specializing in crowd control.

“It feels like an anomaly,” said Patton, the University of Pennsylvania professor.

Higgins said police receive dozens, and sometimes, hundreds of potential threats every day. Figuring out which will turn violent, is a tricky calculation, several of the experts said.

Police social-media monitoring tools tend to target potential mass shootings and terrorist attacks, or overtly negative language and suspect individuals or groups. But a social media influencer announcing a PS5 giveaway wouldn’t necessarily trigger any alarms. Similar events haven't caused the level of ruckus on display on Friday, the experts said.

But such chaos is hardly unheard of–as seen from streaming videos of Black Friday shoppers tussling over discounted big-screen TVs. Over the years, fatal violence has accompanied giveaways abroad for items ranging from free food to shoes.

Adam Scott Wandt, vice chair of technology at John Jay’s department of public management, said he doesn’t fault the NYPD for not knowing about the event sooner.

But he said, “Law enforcement needs to learn lessons.”

What can be done to avoid future chaos?

Friday’s chaos should urge police to give more credence to the importance of non-traditional social media platforms, like Twitch, said Wandt and other policing and social media experts. Some, like Higgins, say police should adjust their algorithms trawling social media to flag giveaways, specifically for high-ticket items.

But Higgins, Patton, and others say it remains unclear how to prevent such events, while balancing concerns about excessive surveillance. And civil rights watchdogs caution against police ramping up social media monitoring, especially given concerns about over-policing of Black and brown residents.

Rachel Levinson-Waldman, managing director of the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security program, said she doubted the ability of social media monitoring to prevent an event such as Friday’s—especially given that Cenat didn’t appear to anticipate the forthcoming violence. She pointed to concerns about police incorrectly flagging potential threats.

“Given the volume of social media data out there, that needle in the haystack is minuscule,” she said.

When asked about how the department would adjust its response in the future, Maddrey said at Friday press conference that its entertainment unit should reach out to influencers to help quell the crowds they generate.

An NYPD spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request if the department reached out to Cenat prior to the event’s start time on Friday.

What’s Twitch’s responsibility?

Andrew Bergman, founding attorney of the Seattle-based Social Media Victims Law Center, points a finger at a lack of regulation from Twitch and other social media platforms.

“It's a testimony to how dangerous these platforms are,” he said of Friday’s event at Union Square. “That even in the absence of a call to violence, this totally unregulated and totally unmitigated live-streaming functionality can give rise to many adverse situations.”

Bergman represents the families of the victims of a mass shooting in Buffalo last spring in their lawsuit against Twitch, the platform the gunman used to broadcast a livestream of the massacre.

He added, “Fortunately, no one was killed here. But it could have gone a different way.”

Bergman said social media platforms have a duty to take reasonable steps to mitigate unwanted violence spread on or caused by their platform. Like, for example, by ramped up screening of streamers, and adding a lag time between live filming and broadcast, pointing to livestreams of mass shootings that went on for several minutes before being shut down.

Wandt also said Twitch is consistently the worst platform in terms of alerting authorities of potential issues in a timely manner.

Representatives at Twitch did not immediately respond to a request for comment.