Benjamin Burroughs In The News

U.S.A. Today
It's now a weekly, if not daily, occurrence: A video is posted on Facebook or Twitter showing a white person calling police on black people for minor violations or nothing at all, a new form of social media shaming that's exposed the everyday racism black Americans face and brought swift repercussions for the perpetrators.
The New York Times
President Trump on Thursday began the next leg of a listening tour he promised after last month’s school shooting in Parkland, Fla., eliciting heated opinions at the White House from critics of violent video games and from game makers who reject any connection to mass shootings, but offering no concrete views of his own.
Associated Press
In the wake of the Florida school shooting, President Donald Trump is reviving an old debate over whether violent video games can trigger violent behavior. There's just one problem: Roughly two decades of research has repeatedly failed to uncover any such link.
Arizona Daily Sun
Because virtual-reality headsets and games are relatively new, there hasn't been much research into the effects of immersion in violent virtual worlds. But experts say that such gaming hyperrealism is unlikely to make much of a difference.
The Daily Iowan
Local residents may need to invest in a subscription to an online streaming service — Iowa City’s last video-rental store, Family Video, officially closed last weekend.
Las Vegas Review Journal
When North Las Vegan Makenna Gott married her husband, Kyle, in 2013, she knew she was marrying YouTube, too.
Marketplace
Toymaker Mattel wants to get kids’ attention, and it’s going online to do it. The company announced this week it will spend at least $10 million on advertising this year on Google’s YouTube Kids platform. It’s the company’s biggest ad buy online to date.
Washington Post
Leaked documents on how Facebook deals with violent, explicit and harassing content, as published in the Guardian, further exposes the challenges the social network faces in policing the posts of its nearly 2 billion users. It also shows that its censorship problem may not be solvable any time soon. The Guardian’s report illustrated how stressful and fast-paced the environment is for Facebook’s content moderators. They often only have 10 seconds to review something, and the guidelines that govern what is acceptable on the site are not always consistent.