[mbrock]

Do we really need to have a thread for every news article related to terrorist attacks?

From the guidelines:

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

[bjacobel]

I believe this story is on-topic because it contains an interesting sidebar about how Facebook's feature for letting friends/family know you're safe was activated for Paris, but not for Beirut. That's an issue of privilege/bias in technology, in my opinion.

[mschuster91]

> unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon

Terrorism, war and violence in Europe is definitely a new phenomenon, at least in this scale, I'd say.

As for media reception of said violence, I believe this to be HN-worthy as well...

[arethuza]

"Terrorism, war and violence in Europe is definitely a new phenomenon"

There is a war going on in the Ukraine that has killed over 8000 people, the Madrid train bombings in 2004 killed 191 people, the Northern Ireland Troubles killed 3,530 then there were the wars in the former Yugoslavia which killed over 140,000.

There have been wars and conflicts in Europe pretty much forever - the recent ones aren't on the scale of the terrible wars of the past but to think that Europe has been completely at peace doesn't seem quite right.