Category Archives: Online abuse

Tech bosses face jail if they hamper Ofcom investigations from next year

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Overhaul of online safety bill reduces grace period for criminal prosecution of senior managers from two years to two months

Tech bosses face the threat of prosecution and up to two years in jail if they hamper investigations by the communications watchdog from next year, under a wide-ranging overhaul of a landmark online safety bill.

The government has reduced a grace period for criminal prosecution of senior managers by 22 months from two years to just two months, meaning tech bosses could be charged with offences from early next year.

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Erin Molan, Nyadol Nyuon tell inquiry defamation bill not ‘useful’ for most online trolling victims

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Problems of cost and ‘unmanageable’ volume of abuse cited as eSafety commissioner says proposed bill should be renamed

High-profile victims of online trolling, including Erin Molan and Nyadol Nyuon, have said an “anti-trolling” bill that overhauls defamation law for online comments will be “almost impossible” to uptake and not “useful” to most people in Australia due to the cost and effort involved.

The bill will make the owners of social media pages and groups not liable for user comments on those groups or pages, and would shift the liability burden to social media platforms if they do not attempt to facilitate the unmasking of anonymous commenters for someone seeking to bring defamation proceedings.

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Internet scams to be included in UK online safety bill

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Platforms to be required to protect users from pre-paid fraudulent adverts as well as user-generated scams

Measures to protect people from internet scams will now be included in proposed online safety laws, the government has said.

Under a previous draft of the online safety bill, platforms which host user-generated content would have a “duty of care” to protect users from fraud by other users.

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Viewers of online abuse at high risk of contacting children directly, study finds

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Darknet survey finds 42% sought contact after watching sexual abuse online, with escalating porn habits driving users to illegal material

The largest ever survey on the thoughts and behaviours of people who watch child sexual abuse material (CSAM) online has found significant evidence that those who watch illegal material are at high risk of going on to contact or abuse a child directly.

Nearly half (42%) of respondents to the survey, the first of its kind, said they had sought direct contact with children through online platforms after viewing CSAM, and 58% reported feeling afraid that viewing CSAM might lead to them committing abuse in person.

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Reviled, harassed, abused: Narenda Modi’s most trenchant critic speaks out

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The Indian journalist Rana Ayyub speaks about the campaign to silence her that has led to charges of sedition and ‘defaming Hindus’

When I talked to the journalist Rana Ayyub in her Mumbai home last Wednesday she was calmer than she was when I had spoken to her three days earlier. But that is not saying much. Last Sunday her words were jumbled, her voice on edge. She said she had not slept. That she could not eat or keep food down. That she had had thoughts of self-harm.

“I was on a plane yesterday and I said to my brother, ‘Can you feel me sitting next to me?’ And he said, ‘Have you completely lost it?’ And I said, ‘No, I’m just not sure I’m sitting next to you. I feel like I’m in a dream.’ And afterwards, I spoke to my psychiatrist and she said, ‘You’re dissociating. You’ve had a traumatic experience –that’s your brain shutting down.’”

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Greta stands with Sami and Navalny on trial again: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

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A roundup of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Myanmar to Mexico

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UK government’s Covid advisers enduring ‘tidal waves of abuse’

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Exclusive: Guardian survey shows level of intimidation, including death threats, against scientific and medical advisers

The “appalling” scale of abuse, intimidation and threatening behaviour directed at the UK government’s scientific and medical advisers has been laid bare in a Guardian survey of experts working on the pandemic.

Dozens of UK advisers described incidents ranging from coordinated online attacks to death threats and acts of intimidation, such as photos being taken of their homes and shared online and suspicious packages arriving in the post, some containing items with messages scrawled on them.

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Rachel Riley awarded £10,000 damages over ex-Corbyn aide’s tweet

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Judge says TV presenter proved Laura Murray’s post had caused serious harm to her reputation

The television presenter Rachel Riley has been awarded £10,000 in damages by a high court judge after suing a former aide to Jeremy Corbyn for libel.

Riley, 35, the numbers expert on the Channel 4 show Countdown, sued Laura Murray over a tweet posted more than two years ago.

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‘There was a bounty on my head’: the chilling rise of the death threat

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From MPs to GPs, reality TV contestants and even teachers, it seems that anyone in public life can be made to fear for their survival. What’s behind the abuse – and how can it be stopped?

When Jon Burke went into local politics in 2014 he never imagined there would come a time when he considered carrying a rolling pin hidden inside his raincoat when he left the house – “just in case someone jumped out of a car at me with a wrench”. But his mind turned to raiding his kitchen drawers for protection last September, after Hackney council officials called him to say they had received a handwritten letter that threatened to burn down his house while he was sleeping and hurt not just him, but his wife and children.

His crime? Trying to make Hackney a better, safer place – in his eyes – to walk or ride a bike, via the introduction of low traffic neighbourhoods. As the London borough’s cabinet member for transport, Burke found himself at the centre of a row that had become part of the culture wars in which four wheels were pitted against two. The anonymous letter writer made clear they were a car driver: “You fucking cunts ride a bicycle,” they observed.

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Meghan target of coordinated Twitter hate campaign, report finds

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Analysis identifies 83 accounts behind 70% of tweets abusing Duchess and Duke of Sussex

The Duchess of Sussex, who has said she avoids social media for “my own self-preservation”, has been the subject of a coordinated hate and misinformation campaign on Twitter, according to a new report.

Both she and Prince Harry, who are advocates for healthier social media, have been targeted on the platform, with Meghan receiving about 80% of the abuse, according to the Twitter analytics provider Bot Sentinel.

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Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen calls for urgent external regulation

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Ex-employee tells UK MPs Mark Zuckerberg ‘has unilateral control over 3bn people’ due to his position

Mark Zuckerberg “has unilateral control over 3 billion people” due to his unassailable position at the top of Facebook, the whistleblower Frances Haugen told MPs as she called for urgent external regulation to rein in the tech company’s management and reduce the harm being done to society.

Haugen, a former Facebook employee who released tens of thousands of damaging documents about its inner workings, travelled to London from the US for a parliamentary hearing and gave qualified backing to UK government proposals to regulate social media platforms and make them take some responsibility for content on their sites.

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How do we talk to teens about sex in a world of porn?

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Teenage boys’ easy access to violent sexual images is creating a crisis for them – and for women, argues the anti-porn campaigner

Violence against women is never far from the news, but currently it is high on the agenda – and porn features again and again as a factor. From the murder of Sarah Everard to the paltry sentence handed down to Sam Pybus, the latest man to use the so-called “rough sex defence”, it seems the world is riven with misogyny.

Sarah’s killer Wayne Couzens was attracted to “brutal sexual pornography”, the court heard during his trial. Pybus – who was sentenced to four years and eight months last month for manslaughter after strangling a vulnerable woman during sex – was also known to use violent porn. Tackling porn culture is clearly a key part of tackling sexual violence towards women. I have campaigned to end the sex trade for decades, and am well aware of its role in the sexual exploitation of women.

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Twitter trials warnings about ‘intense’ conversations

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Users urged to ‘look out for each other’ and ‘remember the human’ as platform tries to limit abuse

Twitter users poised to dive into a heated online debate will be warned they are about to enter an “intense” conversation, under a safety trial.

The social media platform is testing a feature that drops a notice under a potentially contentious exchange, stating: “Heads up. Conversations like this can be intense.” Another prompt, which appears to be aimed at people making a reply, goes to greater lengths to calm down users and urges the tweeter to “look out for each other”, “remember the human” and note that “diverse perspectives have value”.

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Online child abuse survey finds third of viewers attempt contact with children

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Largest major survey of its kind finds 70% of respondents first saw child sexual abuse material when they were under 18

The largest major survey of people who watch online child sexual abuse has found that one-third of respondents attempted to directly contact a child as a result of the illegal images they watched online.

The survey, by Protect Children, a Finnish human rights group, was posted on the “dark web” so users would find it while actively searching for illegal content of children. The analysis was based on more than 5,000 people who responded initially to the survey about why and how they watched children being abused online, although 10,000 responses have been received so far.

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Sage members sent suspicious packages throughout pandemic, says leading scientist

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Prof Calum Semple and others advising government on Covid-19 response have been targeted by anti-vaxxers

Members of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) have been sent suspicious packages and hate mail throughout the pandemic, one of the UK’s leading virologists has revealed.

Prof Calum Semple, a member of Sage and the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag), said the incidents of abuse included one “particularly nasty” experience when he was targeted by anti-vaxxers.

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Bollywood’s Kareena Kapoor subject to online abuse over baby’s name

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Supporters say attacks over choice of name similar to 17th-century Muslim Mughal emperor rooted in prejudice against inter-faith marriage

Bollywood star Kareena Kapoor has received abuse online from extremists over her new baby’s name.

Kapoor has been attacked on social media for calling her second son Jehangir, the imperial name of the 17th-century Mughal emperor, which means “conqueror of the world”. Kapoor, a Hindu, and her husband, Saif Ali Khan, a Muslim and also a Bollywood star, have faced abuse for their marriage.

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‘Imperially nostalgic racists’ target Empireland author with hate mail

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Sathnam Sanghera speaks out against ‘vicious’ abuse he is receiving over his bestselling book: ‘Empire has been weaponised by the right wing, ever since Black Lives Matter’

Sathnam Sanghera’s Empireland, a journey through Britain’s imperial past, has been a bestseller since it was pubished last month, acclaimed by critics as “unflinching … moving and stimulating” (the Guardian), and “excellent” and “balanced” (the Sunday Times). And yet, from the British public the author has received handwritten hate mail, and thousands of abusive tweets from “imperially nostalgic racists”, as he succinctly replied, some of them verging, he says, on death threats.

Related: Empireland by Sathnam Sanghera and Slave Empire by Padraic X Scanlan – review

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UK’s first football hate crime officer turns focus on social media

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Stuart Ward of West Midlands police aims to stamp out racist abuse in grounds and online to bring back community spirit

Since starting his role as the UK’s first football hate crime officer earlier this month, PC Stuart Ward has been busier than expected, considering football fans are banned from stadiums as part of the coronavirus lockdown.

Instead of jibes from the stands, players are now fielding more abuse on social media – just the other week, in Ward’s biggest case to date, West Midlands police arrested a man suspected of racially abusing West Bromwich Albion footballer Romaine Sawyers online.

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Rise in child abuse online threatens to overwhelm UK police, officers warn

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Exclusive: Sheer quantity of abusive material hindering detection while Facebook move to greater encryption is a further blow

The vast, and growing, volume of child abuse material being created and shared online is threatening to overwhelm police efforts to tackle it, senior officers have told the Guardian.

And the situation is likely to worsen, National Crime Agency (NCA) child abuse lead Rob Jones warned, if social media sites such as Facebook press ahead with further encryption of messaging services.

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TikTok to tackle grooming with safeguards for young users

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NSPCC welcomes changes as it says abusers are taking advantage of pandemic to target children online

Children on TikTok will face “groundbreaking” new restrictions in an attempt to prevent grooming on the platform, the video-sharing company has announced, with particularly strict new rules for users under 16.

The platform, which has a lower age limit of 13, said users under 16 would no longer be able to receive comments from strangers, have their videos used for “duets” or mark their posts as available to be downloaded.

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