How social media turns online arguments between teens into real-world violence

what about the prior year of numerous riots, arsons, and murders by BLM and Antifa?

Um, the BLM movement rioted, arsoned, and murdered exactly zero times.

The FBI has been clear that the violence last year was a result of right-wing agitators pretending they were antifa and BLM.

Sorry, you didn't expect those of us who aren't too stupid to look out of the right-wing bubble to pretend that your comments weren't complete and utter inanity do you?

The deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol in January exposed the power of social media to influence real-world behavior and incite violence. 

Wow - what about the prior year of numerous riots, arsons, and murders by BLM and Antifa? All driven by social media.

No reputable journalist would casually use the phrase 'the dangers of unregulated free speech'.

That's the sort of thing you would expect to read on a website run by the Chinese or Russian government.

The persistent scare stories pushed out on once reputable media outlets regarding Web 2.0 are starting to look sinister.

The internet should operate under the same laws as the rest of society. In the United States, that is the first amendment.

Taking individual examples of bad things happening, blaming a technology rather than the individuals concerned, and using that as an excuse to ban it, is a back-handed way of imposing a level of state censorship that most developed countries have not had for centuries.

Censorship is toxic to a civilised society. State censorship, more than anything else, is the mark of a dictatorship. And all a dictatorship deserves is to be overthrown by any necessary means.

It's the same old, same old way of bullying and fight provocation - now with the internet. Bear in mind that online looks can be decieving. This is how cops nail child predator perverts, by staging phony chats and staging rendevous for arrest stings.

As if, such never occurred previous to 'social media'. Trip with social media, one can choose not to plug-in to begin with or participate. Avoidance.

The article does not cite actual numbers. Presents anecdotal accounts. The framework is confined by immediate geography and such is not addressed in any meaningful or factual sense. Hartford, the sample is 'dozens' of youth in the age range 12-18. A large difference between a 12 year old and 18 year old.

Hartford has a population of 121,000. There is no reference to race and ethnicity or socio-economic status of the targeted group. All of which does not reflect the demographics of the population at large in the USA. It is the 238th ranked city by population in the USA. The poverty rate is almost 30%. It is one of the poorest cities in the US. Almost 25% of the population has failed to graduate from high school.

The article and its assumptions certainly do not apply to Japan nor the population of the USA at large. It is specific to Hartford and based on a very small sample of the population.