A marketing campaign for the Independence Day sequel has attracted complaints after users reported it generated potentially distressing images. The widely publicised Independence Day: My Street website asks visitors to type in a street address, and then shows pseudo-news footage of an alien bombing attack using Google Street View-style photography.
The New York Post’s Johnny Oleksinski complained that after typing in 1 World Trade Center, he was “confronted with an upsetting image of a battered downtown New York City that resembles the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The imagery is, indeed, disturbing. While there is an enormous spaceship looming in the distance and a drizzle of laser guns, the science-fiction elements are overwhelmed by chaotic scenes of smoke, ash and rubble familiar to too many people around the world.”
Oleksinski also linked to an Independence Day: My Street rendering of the Café Bonne Bière, one of the sites of the November 2015 terror attacks in Paris. However, some sensitive locations, such as 1912 S Orange Ave, Orlando, the site of the recent Pulse nightclub shooting, appear to have been blocked.
