But the address Barriss used was old, leading police to to a person who wasn’t involved in the video game or the dispute.īarriss pled guilty to making multiple false emergency calls across the U.S. The call was make by a California man named Tyler Barriss, who authorities said was recruited by another gamer to make the call. In 2017, an innocent man was fatally shot by Wichita police responding to a hoax call reporting a kidnapping and shooting. Swatting can lead to injuries and deaths - sometimes of people unconnected to whatever online feud provoked the action. Such threats can range from online harassment campaigns to “swatting” - the highly dangerous practice of making fake crime reports to police in order to provoke an armed law enforcement response at an opponent’s home. Gamers warn that the move could create a black market in desirable names or even spark dangerous threats to force their surrender. But there’s still a potential for serious blowback, as some gamers have been known to go to extreme lengths to obtain coveted usernames. Margolin suggests that network effects - that is, the fact that users and their friends are already on Discord, making it difficult to leave - will most likely outweigh the current outrage, whose impact is difficult to assess. In a commercial sense, he said, “there’s this tension between what would be appealing to a larger market and what are the main users.” Social platforms tend to be heavily used by a small group and very lightly used by a much larger group, said Drew Margolin, a Cornell University professor of communications. That might not be far from the truth, experts suggest. In the Reddit thread, complaints range from “don’t fix what isn’t broken” to accusations that the changes are mostly designed to attract new and often younger users who might be put off by the complexity of the existing system. Many also don’t appreciate changes being thrust upon them. Some gamers take their usernames extremely seriously, viewing them as unique and personal extensions of their identity, not to mention pillars of their online reputations.
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