The violence should disappear immediately from the supermarket. After a right-wing extremist terrorist killed 22 people in a Walmart in El Paso a week ago on Saturday, the company has directed its employees to immediately remove demo stations and advertisements for violent games, such as shooters, from retail space. Walmart wants to continue selling weapons.
Although the supermarket giant has not been selling assault rifles since 2015, since the Parkland school massacre it has only been selling weapons to shooters under the age of 21. Nevertheless, Walmart is still one of the largest weapons dealers in the United States.
Callaghan OHare / REUTERS
Mourning in El Paso: What are the right consequences?
The group's approach is symptomatic of the debates after the El Paso attack. Instead of tackling the root causes of the problem, there are cosmetic changes that are primarily intended to demonstrate the will to act.
A crime scene turned supermarket that banishes games instead of weapons. A president who now calls for unity, but otherwise openly incites against migrants and encourages racists. A debate that will be shortened to the (unequivocally problematic) 8chan forum, although this is only part of the worrying climate in which hatred and racism have become socially acceptable - and not just in the "dark depths of the Internet" (Trump) Find.
Under the Trump administration, budgets for prevention projects against extremism have been cut in recent years, and the White House has also refrained from prioritizing the fight against domestic terrorism. Instead, the US president is currently campaigning for greater control over social networks - to counteract alleged discrimination against conservative voices. In the future this could mean more freedom for radical positions.
El Paso is also being used as a template for unpopular measures that were planned anyway - such as the increasing monitoring of social networks. New analysis tools are designed to detect alleged assassins online before they strike - whether that can work, but is highly controversial. And, for example, the FBI has released a tender for a social media tool that seeks to crawl profiles, networks, contact details, locations and relationships of target individuals.
It would be more appropriate and probably more successful, potential acquirers first of all to escape the easy access to weapons. According to The New York Times, the US is at the forefront in terms of weapons per capita and mass shootings.
"We live in a country where you can win an AR-15 rifle in a raffle, and where religious communities hold ceremonies to honor their firearms, wearing crowns of 5.56mm bullets," writes an ex-Marine his essay on the overrated role of video games as a terrorist coach. "We have a much, much bigger problem than shoot-bang video games, and we have to tackle it."
However, there is no political will to impose stricter weapons controls - rightly called for after every attack - to finally tackle and limit the power of the US arms lobby NRA. The hope for radical reforms such as a ban on assault rifles should remain an illusion.
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Strange digital world: And then is internet curfew
In the past few days, I fought a brutal jet lag after traveling to Los Angeles. At one o'clock in the morning I was awake again and wanted to scroll around a little on my phone against insomnia: read Twitter, check Facebook - the usual distraction, until the eyes get tired (and then you still can not fall asleep).
However, in the apartment in which I am currently living temporarily, an Internet lock is set up: Between one o'clock in the morning and six o'clock in the morning, the WLAN is switched off automatically. After getting upset about it, the bottom line is not so bad: I managed to read three books in just one week.
App of the Week: "Journey "
tested by Tobias Kirchner
Annapurna Interacitve
"Journey" is a special multiplayer game. Actually, you steer a lonely figure across a huge desert. In the game, which was particularly successful on Sony's Playstation 3, but one meets again and again to other players who are also traveling in this world. But there is no communication via chats possible.
This results in a kind of interaction and experience unusual for video games. Other pluses of "Journey" are the beautifully designed world and the great soundtrack.
For 5.49 euros Annapurna Interactive: iOS
Foreign Link: Three tips from other media
- Phreaking (English, eight minutes of reading)
Calling in an elevator or listening in on guests - at Defcon in Las Vegas, security researcher Will Caruana gave a talk on Elevator Phone Phreaking. "Wired" has written down how Caruana dials into the telephone systems of elevators - and tried it out for himself. - "Lovoo users can be located" (German, four minutes of reading)
The locations of users of the dating app can be tracked down to 30 or 50 meters in many cases, warns the Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR): So could be created using the data of the app motion profiles of Lovoo users. - "TikTok is fueling India's hate speech epidemic" (English, seven minutes of reading)
A video app ignites the hatred between India's box: 48,000 videos were removed from TikTok within five months for instigating hatred and violence. In rural areas in India, the gap between the castes is also being intensified digitally: hate messages via app sometimes even lead to killings, according to Wired.
I wish you a nice week
Sonja Peteranderl
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