Boulder (CO) – A gunman opens a King Super grocery store and health workers run out A [+]
Texas authorities on Wednesday identified Salvador Ramos, the 18-year-old gunman who shot at Rob Elementary School, Uvalde. On Tuesday, Ramos posted annoying pictures online before his silly shooting. He has already killed at least 19 children and two teachers.
The report claims that there is an annoying picture on an Instagram account linked to Ramos. The account has since been removed.
New York Attorney General Letitia James made the announcement last week about her investigation into social media companies. His office was investigating another mass shooter who used an online platform to organize, propagate and stream a massacre at a Buffalo grocery store, which killed 10 people. James has announced that his office will investigate Twitch. 4chan. 8chan. Discord, and any other site used by the shooter to extend the attack.
Many people wonder if any warning signs have been missed.
“It’s impossible to stop threatening people online,” said William V. Pelfrey, Jr., PhD, professor at the Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs at Virginia Commonwealth University.
He suggested, however, that social media companies have a moral obligation to remove any threatening messages.
“It simply came to our notice then. Direct threats, such as “I want to shoot the president” and “I want to die”, are often flagged by law enforcement officials. Pelfrey says indirect threats can be difficult to identify and are rarely addressed. “Many social media companies have to make a decision – to protect the rights of individuals in order to protect their security. When we consider the value of compromising freedom of speech and the number of deaths in Buffalo or other areas where extremists have found their motivation to attack others, this seems like a terrible idea.
Anti-social network
The United States is still embroiled in an “extraordinary war,” as President Joe Biden called it. This means that platforms for once friendly discussions have become “antisocial networks” and people find themselves in echo chambers to support their views.
Anthony Sillard (professor at the Lewis Business School in Rome and author of “Social Media”) says that social media has contributed to the growing ethnic and cultural divide in America. Digital Age: Free Living in the Art of Living.
The activities of extremists can be broadcast live on social media.
Silard said one aspect of the Buffalo shooting was important to understand how it happened. The shooter brought his thought community with him via live streaming. The shooter was ready and waiting to broadcast horrific images of innocent victims before Twitch could stop it in just two minutes. Yet, millions of people have seen them succeed.
Sillard said the shooter was less isolated because his thinking was at hand and believed he could be supported by his group’s hate-mongering ideology. This is an important fact for legislators to remember about social media and tragedy.
There is a lack of empathy and sympathy
Social media has reduced the level of empathy of many Americans. You can easily “speak your mind” to someone through social media, based solely on what they post on Facebook or their tweets. It is possible for people with similar interests to engage in heated arguments that can be counterproductive.
This is always a common occurrence with email, posting to newsgroups and online forums. However, in the age of social media, it has increased dramatically.
Social media is a big reason why it is so harmful for a healthy society. It hurts empathy. Sillard says town hall meetings were a good medium for cross-island discussions because people need to be open to listening to each other, even when their opinions differ. Online conversations mean empathy is no longer a possibility. The authors blame social media for the decline in empathy, and a meta-analysis that included seventy-two different studies from 1979 to 2009.
Social media has largely failed in this regard, while it can sometimes be used to provoke the masses, as in the case of mass shootings.
Facebook and other social media platforms have promised that their services will help people take care of each other and allow them to express themselves more authentically online. Silard said nothing of the sort happened. Pew research shows that most people now speak less for fear of retaliation. Why? They realized that there were many more opinions that they could not face on social media. “
