YouTube star MrBeast pledged to recreate ‘Squid Game’

  • YouTube star, MrBeast, has pledged to recreate ‘Squid Game’ in real life if his TikTok video reaches 10 million likes.
  • Since being posted on Monday, it has received 15 million likes.
  • ‘Squid Game’ is a dystopian Korean drama where economically challenged individuals compete in childhood games with a deadly twist, where the losers are killed off.
  • MrBeast is one of the most popular YouTube content creators, with over 71 million subscribers.
  • His videos are based on recreating extreme stunts, challenges, and extravagant giveaways.
  • Replicating Squid Game stunts could be dangerous and could drive the attention of children and young people to access inappropriate and extreme content.
  • For more information on Squid Game, check out our blog post.
  • Full story, here.

 

EA says NFTs are part of the future of games industry

  • Game publisher Electronic Arts (EA) has told investors that collectible non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are “an important part of the future of our industry”.
  • NFTs are digital tokens serving as certificates of ownership for virtual or physical assets. For example, owning the original digital image of a viral meme like a collectible.
  • NFTs can contain smart contracts that give artists or original owners a cut of future sales.
  • EA makes the FIFA football games which uses ‘cards’ to collect players and add them to a team and NFTs could increase ‘cards’ value over time.
  • Young people may feel pressured to buy NFTs if they are part of games they play, similarly to lootboxes or may buy NFTs without knowing what they are.
  • While EA claims the idea is still in early discussion stages, other gaming publishers like Ubisoft claim NFTs are “a bad idea”.
  • PC gaming platform Steam has banned blockchain and NFTs from their platform, while Epic Games ‘welcomes the practice’.
  • Full story, here.

Climate misinformation on Facebook ‘increasing substantially’

  • The scale of climate misinformation on Facebook is increasing substantially.
  • A new analysis reveals that an estimated 818,000 climate misinformation posts receive36M views each day.
  • The report was released on Thursday by independent watchdog group, the Real Facebook Oversight Board, and environmental non-profit Stop Funding Heat.
  • Over 195 Facebook pages and groups were analysed, and an estimated 45,000 posts were found to downplay or deny the climate crisis.
  • The study’s release coincides with the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, and it urges governments to seriously consider the role of climate misinformation on social media.
  • Facebook previously stated that it continues to monitor and counteract the spread of misinformation by flagging climate information and referring users to its Climate Change Science Centre.
  • Full story, here.