Inaction speaks louder than words | This Week in Business
Brendan Sinclair
Managing Editor
Friday 20th May 2022
Content warning: Article contains references to terror attack, mass shooting and racism
You probably saw the news last weekend about a white supremacist shooting 13 people and killing ten at a Buffalo supermarket in a predominantly Black neighborhood.
The horrifying details are numerous, but for the purposes of this site, two of the key reported facts are that the shooting was livestreamed on Twitch and planned on Discord.
QUOTE | "This terror attack again revealed the depths and dangers of these platforms that spread and promote hate without consequence. The fact that an individual can post detailed plans to commit such an act of hate without consequence, and then stream it for the world to see is bone-chilling and unfathomable." - New York Attorney General Letitia James, announcing that her office will be investigating the role Twitch and Discord (and 4chan and 8chan) played in the planning and streaming of the shooting.
James is mostly right, because social media platforms have long turned a blind eye to hatred because the moral outrage over an accelerating drumbeat of hate crimes pales in comparison to those sweet, sweet hatred-juiced engagement metrics. And the fact a shooting like this could happen is indeed bone-chilling.
I'll take issue with "unfathomable" though, because this one was real easy to fathom for anyone who remembers 2019, when a gunman livestreamed the massacre of 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, telling his viewers to "subscribe to PewDiePie" before committing mass murder.
On the one hand, it's no surprise these young men were gamers because everybody games, as the industry likes to say, and young men have long been a key demographic for the
Read more on gamesindustry.biz
