Uvalde shows why online threats need to be taken more seriously
by Casey Newton from The Verge - All Posts on (#5ZWBM)
Photo Illustration by Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images A week ago today, an 18-year-old man walked into an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, and committed the latest in our nation's never-ending series of senseless murders. And in the aftermath of that horror - 19 children dead, two teachers dead, 18 more injured - attention once again turned to what role platforms might have played in enabling the violence.
This question can feel both urgently necessary and also somehow beside the point. Necessary because people (often teenagers) are constantly being arrested after making threats on social media, and the Uvalde case shows once again why those threats must be taken more seriously.
And yet it's also clear that America's gun violence problem will not be solved at the level of platform policy...