French court convicts 11 of harassing teenager who posted anti-Islam videos

Posted on July 7, 2021 by Admin

Case involving Mila, who was sent more than 100,000 abusive messages, has fuelled debate about free speech.

A French court has convicted 11 people for harassing a teenager online over her anti-Islam videos in a case that has led to a fierce debate about free speech and the right to insult religions.

The prosecutions were part of a judicial fightback against trolling and online abuse after the girl, known as Mila, had to change schools and accept police protection because of death threats.

‘It is obscene’: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie pens blistering essay against social media sanctimony

Posted on June 16, 2021 by Admin

The novelist describes helping two writers who went on to insult her online, and condemns era of ‘angels jostling to out-angel one another’

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has written a detailed essay about the conduct of young people on social media “who are choking on sanctimony and lacking in compassion”, who she says are part of a generation “so terrified of having the wrong opinions that they have robbed themselves of the opportunity to think and to learn and to grow”.

Titled It Is Obscene, the essay was published by the Nigerian novelist and feminist on her website on Tuesday night. It attracted so much attention that her website temporarily crashed.

Facebook to suspend Trump’s account for two years

Posted on June 4, 2021 by Admin

Decision follows oversight board recommendation over ex-president’s post on Capitol attack

Facebook is suspending Donald Trump’s account for two years, the company has announced in a highly anticipated decision that follows months of debate over the former president’s future on social media.

“Given the gravity of the circumstances that led to Mr Trump’s suspension, we believe his actions constituted a severe violation of our rules which merit the highest penalty available under the new enforcement protocols. We are suspending his accounts for two years, effective from the date of the initial suspension on January 7 this year,” Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice-president of global affairs, said in a statement on Friday.

EU cites ‘anti-vaccine campaign’ as reason to toughen social media code

Posted on May 26, 2021 by Admin

European Commission proposes more factchecking and algorithm changes to tackle disinformation

A “massive anti-vaccination campaign” has been cited by the European Commission as a reason for social media platforms to intensify their factchecking and revise the internal algorithms that can amplify disinformation.

Under a revised code of practice proposed by Brussels, companies such as Facebook, Google and Twitter would need to show why particular material is disseminated and prove that false information is being blocked.

Spanish aid volunteer abused online for hugging Senegalese migrant

Posted on May 20, 2021 by Admin

Luna Reyes targeted by far-right supporters after footage of gesture goes viral

The image captured the raw humanity of the moment: a Red Cross volunteer tenderly consoling a Senegalese man moments after he stepped foot in Spain’s north African enclave of Ceuta.

Hours after the footage went viral, however, Luna Reyes set her social media accounts to private after she was targeted by a torrent of abuse from supporters of Spain’s far-right Vox party and others incensed by the unprecedented arrival of 8,000 migrants in Ceuta.

Lucky review – spirited Ghanaian romcom captures the social media age

Posted on May 3, 2021 by Admin

An idling student enlists the help of a wideboy friend in pursuit of a hot date in a comedy that veers between likable and laddish

Here is a vibrant, idiosyncratic portrait of Ghanaian youth, bursting with wisecracks and a boyish restlessness. There is an amateurish shakiness to the visuals, but the film overcomes this with a lot of charm and an innate understanding of its young subjects.

Footballers and clubs to boycott social media in mass protest over racist abuse

Posted on April 24, 2021 by Admin

Professionals and teams from top English leagues will log off Twitter, Facebook and Instagram for the whole of next weekend

The world of English professional football will unite for an unprecedented four-day boycott of social media next weekend to protest at the continued abuse and racism aimed at players.

Clubs in the English Premier League, English Football League, Women’s Super League and Women’s Championship will switch off their Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts in response to “the ongoing and sustained discriminatory abuse” of footballers, and their despair over a lack of action from the tech companies.

Shadow and Bone star Jessie Mei Li: ‘Fans find out everything’

Posted on April 20, 2021 by Admin

The actor is about to hit the TV big time as a girl with special powers in Netflix’s new young adult fantasy. And the internet is in a frenzy

Jessie Mei Li currently inhabits a weird stratum of celebrity. At 25 years old, her biggest screen credit to date has been a single episode of the Channel 5 docudrama Banged Up Abroad. She hasn’t worked for a year. And yet, at the same time, a growing portion of the internet has become borderline hysterical about her.

Search for her name and you’ll get the idea. There are tweets declaring things like “Jessie Mei Li you have my whole heart” and “I believe in Jessie Mei Li supremacy”. There are more than a dozen Jessie Mei Li stan accounts on Instagram – fan-based accounts dedicated to a particular celebrity – many of them shrieking their obsession in frenzied all-caps captions several times a day. Tumblr, as you might expect, is an almighty mess.

Facebook and fear in Manila: Maria Ressa’s fight for facts

Posted on April 18, 2021 by Admin

Ex-CNN reporter and founder of the news site Rappler on life under the relentless social media assault of the Duterte regime

As terrible as the events were that played out on Capitol Hill on 6 January, Maria Ressa admits to feeling “a small amount of relief” about them. An ex-CNN bureau chief, and now the founder of her own news organisation, Rappler, she had spent the past two years sounding a warning about what she’d seen happen in her native country, the Philippines.

There, a Facebook-fuelled tsunami of lies had assisted an authoritarian into power. And she had seen where that had led: to opponents of the state being killed in their homes or turning up dead in ditches. As a Filipino American with a foot in both countries – she calls herself “the first of the CNN hybrids” – she was perfectly positioned to warn America about what happens when a populist president is allowed to spread out-of-control lies across a vast, unregulated tech platform. “A lie told a million times becomes a fact,” she repeated again and again.

‘In this world, social media is everything’: how Dubai became the planet’s influencer capital

Posted on April 17, 2021 by Admin

Once a small port on the edge of a desert, Dubai is now a magnet for reality stars and a jet set crowd looking to beat the vaccine queue. But do the filtered images tell the whole story?

On the electric blue tarmac of a helipad on the edge of Palm Jumeirah, an artificial island on the Dubai coastline, Busra Duran stands on tiptoes. Wearing multicoloured trainers and a pink tulle minidress, the 28-year-old Turkish influencer is posing for photos in front of a red helicopter. Her husband, Gökhan Gündüz, snaps away as she models her pink sunglasses in the shadow of the Atlantis, a blush-coloured hotel with green pointed rooftops which resembles the fake castles of Disneyland’s Magic Kingdom.

‘Gündüz, 29, wears a striped T-shirt with the word “positive” emblazoned around the collar. Duran skips over to check the photos he’s taken, before they discuss her Instagram shots from the ride. Duran approached the helicopter company to request this free 12-minute tour, the shortest available, and they were happy to oblige. “It was amazing,” she says, flatly, sounding unconvinced. The trip is one of a whole roster of experiences Duran has set up for the benefit of her 608,000 Instagram followers. In a few days, the couple have arranged to play golf – another free gift – and Duran often poses for pictures at restaurants in exchange for a meal. Her glittering Dubai lifestyle is displayed on her Instagram: one day she’ll be perching on the side of a bubble bath in an upmarket hotel reading a copy of Gulf News; the next in a red swimsuit beside a pool, a glass of rosé in one hand and a copy of a Paulo Coelho novel in front of her.