Controversial gaming vlogger, 29, is owner of second most popular channel by subscribers
The gaming vlogger Felix Kjellberg, AKA PewDiePie, has surpassed 100 million subscribers on YouTube.
Kjellberg, the owner of the channel with the second highest number of subscribers on the video sharing site, built a legion of young fans with his “let’s play” game commentaries, but he has also attracted controversy.
Continue reading...Australia’s PM flies into Biarritz, where he will have talks with world leaders – and a chat with Donald Trump
Scott Morrison will try to push countries further on taking action against terrorist and violent extremist material on social media during a series of meetings on the sidelines of the G7 summit.
Australia’s prime minister arrived in the French surfing town of Biarritz on Saturday night (early Sunday AEST) for the high-powered international forum.
Continue reading...As the crisis-hit video site struggles to stem the flow of extreme content, the CEO talks about her role as the internet’s gatekeeper
In YouTube’s fashionable central London “space”, where good-looking young people mill around and help themselves to the well-stocked free kitchen, there is a noticeboard that asks staff and visitors: What could we do better? On one of the sticky notes, someone has written “Nothing!!” It would be reassuring for the executives who run the video site if that were true, although not many would agree that it is. Susan Wojcicki, YouTube’s CEO, who is in town for a three-week tour of Europe, is one of the most impressive and powerful women in tech – and also one of the most beleaguered.
We meet in one of the studios, where YouTubers with more than 10,000 subscribers can make videos, and sit on sofas in a set with a faux brick-wall backdrop, which gives a slightly unnerving sense of fake cosiness. Wojcicki (pronounced “Wo-jisky”) seems friendly but businesslike; chatty, but is careful about what she says. There is a lot to talk about: sexism in tech, the power of social media, being a working parent of five – and especially the crises that have engulfed the company she runs, particularly this year.
Continue reading...Senator says bill aims to tackle features that ‘capture attention by using psychological tricks’
Autoplaying videos on YouTube, Facebook’s infinite newsfeed and Snapstreaks could be banned in the US under a proposed new bill.
The Social Media Addiction Reduction Technology (Smart) Act takes aim at techniques and features that, according to its author, Republican Senator Josh Hawley, are created to encourage and deepen addictive behaviours.
Continue reading...Books by James Williams and Carles Boix offer fascinating takes on how we can combat anger and distraction online
We’re having problems with the internet and big tech, principally Alphabet (Google/YouTube), Amazon, Apple and Facebook. The government has taken note.
Related: 'Facebook is dangerous': tech giant faces criticism from Congress over Libra currency
Continue reading...Russian lake that has sparked social media frenzy is full of metal oxides from coal ash
A Russian energy company has warned Instagram users not to swim in a mesmerising turquoise lake nicknamed the “Siberian Maldives” because it is actually an ash dump filled with harmful metal oxides.
But despite warnings that the artificial pond contains dangerous calcium salts and other metal oxides, it has remained a popular site for selfies, wedding parties and scantily clad photoshoots.
Continue reading...They started out as a joke – doctored videos of celebrities doing unlikely things, from a Nicolas Cage cameo in Friends to Mark Zuckerberg boasting about ‘stolen’ data. But as the technology improves, could deepfakes swing an election?
Continue reading...Marissa Fuchs posted photos of disbelief, but marketers were sent itinerary months before
A public proposal is a risky thing to attempt. For every couple whose love for each other is perfectly in tune, there is a partner who has woefully misjudged their lover’s desire for public attention, grand romantic gestures, or simply marriage full stop.
So Gabriel Grossman might have been taking a huge risk when he and his girlfriend, the Instagram influencer Marissa Casey Fuchs, embarked on not just a public proposal, but a 48-hour-long surprise holiday scavenger hunt, exhaustively documented by the couple on their respective Instagram accounts. What if she’d said no? Or decided that this precious moment was too personal to be shared with her audience of 193,000 people?
Continue reading...New Zealand PM will reportedly urge nations to enforce laws banning extremist material and set rules for reporting on terrorism
Details have emerged of a plan by New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern and French president Emmanuel Macron to eliminate terrorist and violent content online.
Ardern and Macron will meet in Paris this week on the sidelines of a meeting of digital ministers from the Group of 7 nations to discuss the plan – named the “Christchurch Call” – and urge other leaders to sign up.
Continue reading...Police’s top child protection officer says fines would be ‘drop in the ocean’ to tech firms
A public boycott of social media may be the only way to force companies to protect children from abuse, the country’s leading child protection police officer has said.
Simon Bailey, the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead on child protection, said tech companies had abdicated their duty to safeguard children and were only paying attention due to fear of reputational damage.
Continue reading...Research says malign actors online tried to craft individual narrative for each EU state
Around half of all Europeans could have been exposed to disinformation promoted by social media accounts linked to Russia before the European elections, an analysis suggests.
Evidence of 6,700 so-called “bad actors” posting enough content to reach up to 241 million users was discovered by researchers examining the scale of the threat.
Continue reading...Netherlands-based crowdfunded news site posts public apology for misleading more than 45,000 donors about New York office
A Netherlands-based crowdfunded news site which raised $2.6m ahead of “launching in the US” has apologized and said it “screwed up”, after announcing its headquarters will actually be in Amsterdam.
In December 2018, the Correspondent, a planned English-language version of the Dutch De Correspondent, raised $2.6m from more than 45,000 donors in a widely publicized fundraising campaign. In March, however, it said it would not after all open a newsroom in New York.
Continue reading...One of the world’s foremost authorities on child mental health today warns that technology is threatening child development by disrupting the crucial learning relationship between adults and children.
Peter Fonagy, professor of Contemporary Psychoanalysis and Developmental Science at UCL, who has published more than 500 scientific papers and 19 books, warns that the digital world is reducing contact time between the generations – a development with potentially damaging consequences.
Continue reading...The video, widely shared on China’s Twitter-like Weibo, shows the parked EV emit smoke and burst into flames seconds later
Tesla has sent a team to investigate a video on Chinese social media which showed a parked Tesla Model S car exploding, the latest in a string of fire incidents involving the company’s cars.
The video, time stamped Sunday evening and widely shared on China’s Twitter-like Weibo, shows the parked EV emit smoke and burst into flames seconds later. A video purportedly of the aftermath showed a line of three cars completely destroyed.
Continue reading...President Sisi is playing cat and mouse with us, shutting down our websites and blocking our social media but we won’t give in
As the world watches the peaceful revolution that is changing Sudan in awe and amazement, it is clear that in Egypt, Sudan’s neighbour to the north, President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi is getting nervous. On the same day as the protests in Khartoum reached a head, several of us who oppose Sisi’s autocratic rule launched an online petition to declare any result from Tuesday’s referendum on proposed constitutional amendments “void”.
Among the amendments Sisi is trying to force on the Egyptian people is a provision that could allow him to remain in power until 2030. The amendments would also increase the control of the military, which would be given powers to police the political sphere in Egypt. They would also give Sisi control over the appointment of judges and the public prosecutor.
Continue reading...Thousands having difficulty accessing social networks, says tracking site
Facebook was inaccessible to some users on Sunday, according to Downdetector, a website that monitors outages.
The site showed there had been more than 7,700 incidents of people reporting issues with Facebook at its peak.
Continue reading...Algorithmic features have sent suggestions to wish happy birthday to those who’ve died
Facebook has promised to use artificial intelligence to stop suggesting users invite their dead friends to parties.
The site’s freshly emotionally intelligent AI is part of a rash of changes to how Facebook handles “memorialised” accounts – pages whose owner has been reported deceased, but that are kept on the social network in their memory.
Continue reading...Not responding to notification could cost companies 4% of their revenue under EU law
Internet companies will be fined up to 4% of their revenue if they fail to remove terrorist content within one hour of being notified by authorities, under legislation approved by MEPs.
The civil liberties committee approved the move by 35 to one, with abstentions, but removed an obligation on companies to monitor uploaded content or use automated tools.
Continue reading...Firms are not doing enough to combat potential interference, minister said after report found foreign meddling is ‘very likely’
The world’s major social media companies are not doing enough to help Canada combat potential foreign meddling in this October’s elections and the government might have to regulate them, the cabinet minister in charge of ensuring a fair vote has said.
The democratic institutions minister, Karina Gould, spoke shortly after Canada’s electronic signals spy agency said it was very likely that foreign actors will try to meddle in the election.
Continue reading...It feels urgent, with elections approaching in several democracies, to focus on lessons from 2016, when the Brexit referendum and the US presidential election were both marred in ways still coming to light. Among several valuable reports, a recent study for the European parliament’s Panel for the Future of Science and Technology usefully encapsulates the challenges without unremitting alarmism and pessimism. It is clear-eyed about both the benefits and dangers to democracies of technologies that are in the handheld devices of most voters.
Against a backdrop of increasing polarisation, “new digital technologies have taken centre stage in political processes – both as a source of information and a campaigning platform”, says the study, Polarisation and the use of technology in political campaigns and communication. “Such new and relatively unregulated platforms create new opportunities for nefarious actors to deliberately push false content and distort information flows for political gain.” But artificial intelligence will also offer new opportunities for better accountability and transparency.
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