While many are rightfully concerned about the growing influence of video-based social media platform TikTok and the Chinese government’s ability to harvest incredible amounts of user data from it, China’s largest social media and video game studio, Tencent, has quietly been acquiring a commanding stake in the most popular video game companies around the world, and no one has seemed to notice.
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New reports claim that Mexican cartels are now turning to online video games to recruit potential new scouts for the southern border.
According to the Daily Caller, the Mexican cyber police claim that there have already been at least 30 confirmed cases of attempted recruitments on video games. Cartels are targeting gamers and bribing them with cash payments, using a careful assortment of letters and numbers to spell out key words without facing bans for using the words directly. For example, they will use “n4arc0” instead of “narcos,” “c4rt3ls,” instead of “cartels,” and “zic4ri0s” instead of “sicarios.” Such recruiters also wait for confirmation that the gamers are alone, without their parents nearby, before approaching them.
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