Internet firm cites ‘increasingly challenging business and legal environment’ as reason for exit
Yahoo has announced its withdrawal from the Chinese market in the latest retreat by foreign technology firms responding to Beijing’s tightening control over the industry.
“In recognition of the increasingly challenging business and legal environment in China, Yahoo’s suite of services will no longer be accessible from mainland China as of November 1,” the company said on Tuesday.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...LightBasin hackers were able to obtain subscriber information and call metadata, says CrowdStrike
At least 13 phone companies around the world have been compromised since 2019 by sophisticated hackers who are believed to come from China, a cybersecurity expert group has said.
The roaming hackers – known as LightBasin – were able to “search and find” individual mobile phones and “target accordingly”, according to CrowdStrike, a group regularly cited by western intelligence.
Continue reading...Failure to ensure women have equal access to the internet hampering developing economies and fuelling gender inequality
A failure to ensure women have equal access to the internet has cost low-income countries $1tn (£730bn) over the past decade and could mean an additional loss of $500bn by 2025 if governments don’t take action, according to new research.
Last year, governments in 32 countries, including India, Egypt and Nigeria, lost an estimated $126bn in gross domestic product because women were unable to contribute to the digital economy.
Continue reading...Demand for capacity grows on back of hit Netflix shows, online games and more
The breakout success of the South Korean drama Squid Game has prompted a local broadband provider to launch legal action to force the maker, Netflix, to help pay for the huge surge in traffic, the latest flashpoint in the argument over who should carry the burden of the spiralling costs of data fuelled by the global streaming boom.
From Netflix’s latest global sensation and livestreamed Premier League football matches on Amazon Prime Video, to bandwidth-busting traffic when hit online games such as Fortnite or Call of Duty are updated, the demand for internet capacity has undergone unprecedented growth in recent years.
Continue reading...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”.
Continue reading...When Chris Stedman’s friend Alex took his own life, he left him a final puzzle to solve. Unread charts Stedman’s journey down a rabbit hole of grief and realisation
“When someone dies, there are always questions that will be left unanswered. But what happens when you lose someone and they leave you a trail to follow after they are gone?”
Chris Stedman is explaining the central conceit of his podcast Unread. The four-part series sees the writer and podcaster memorialise his friend Alex, who took his own life in late 2019, via narration, voice notes and testimonies from mutual friends. It also follows Stedman’s quest to better understand his friend’s life, digging into parts of his history that he didn’t know existed. Bringing together an affecting story and a compelling mystery, Unread garnered critical acclaim from the likes of Vulture, and has been among the podcast highlights of the year since its release in July.
Continue reading...As emails loom omnipresent in our connected lives, is the quest for an empty inbox a noble pursuit or an unwinnable war?
Last week, I asked my Twitter followers about their email inboxes.
Author Mohammed Massoud Morsi likened his to a “Kalashnikov on semi-automatic…Nudge, Nudge, Nudge. Nudge. Nudge, Nudge.” Human rights lawyer Diana Sayed replied that hers functions as a to-do list that is emptied on the regular. And when editor Caitlin Chang revealed that her inbox is sitting at over 1,000 and counting (she says she only ever reads the ones at the top, as they’re probably the most important), someone’s response to her was, “I threw up a little in my mouth”.
Continue reading...Company suspended former president’s account in January following the attack on the US Capitol
Donald Trump has asked a federal judge in Florida to force social media giant Twitter to restore his account, which the company suspended in January following the attack that month on the US Capitol in Washington DC.
Trump’s use of the platform was a signature mark of his run for the presidency in 2016 and one he continued to use in office. He wielded it to attack enemies and dominate news cycles.
Continue reading...The request follows the former president suing Twitter, Facebook and Google in July accusing them of censoring conservative voices
Donald Trump, the former US president, has asked a federal judge in Florida to force Twitter to reinstate his account.
In July Trump sued Twitter, Facebook and Google, as well as their chief executives, alleging they unlawfully silence conservative viewpoints.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...When the ‘subscription social network’ OnlyFans announced it would be banning the sexually explicit content that made it a billion-dollar business, sex workers were up in arms – and many observers wondered how the move could make financial sense. Then it had second thoughts. So what does this tech saga tell us about where pornography fits into the future of the internet – and is it just another example of the sex industry treating women as disposable?
This episode includes discussion of sex and pornography. It first aired on Today in Focus.
OnlyFans bills itself as a wide-ranging ‘subscription social network’ where content creators of any kind can charge their followers to view their output – but in reality its hugely successful business is largely based around sex. That emphasis only grew during the pandemic, with more and more users spending their free time online – and more people wondering about a new source of income. With the company valued at about $1bn (£720m), and celebrities like Cardi B and Bella Thorne signing up, it was hard to see it doing anything other than more of the same.
Continue reading...Household names may have unwittingly helped spread fake news, investigation reveals
Dozens of the world’s biggest brands, including Nike, Amazon, Ted Baker and Asos, have been advertising on websites that spread Covid-19 misinformation and conspiracy theories, it has emerged. The companies, as well as an NHS service, are among a string of household names whose ads appear to have helped fund websites that host false and outlandish claims, for example that powerful people secretly engineered the pandemic, or that vaccines have caused thousands of deaths.
Analysis of nearly 60 sites, performed by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and shared with the Observer, found that ads were placed through the “opaque” digital advertising market, which is forecast to be worth more than $455bn (£387bn) this year.
Continue reading...Exclusive: privacy concerns ‘must not delay use of neuralMatch algorithm to protect victims of abuse’
Child protection experts from across the world have called on Apple to implement new scanning technologies urgently to detect images of child abuse.
In August, Apple announced plans to use a tool called neuralMatch to scan photos being uploaded to iCloud online storage and compare them to a database of known images of child abuse.
Continue reading...Cressida Dick calls for more action to stop online radicalisation and questions push towards end-to-end encryption
The UK most senior police officer has accused technology firms of failing to identify, monitor and report the activity of terrorists, in a plea for improved access to social media platforms.
Dame Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan police commissioner, also questioned the push to expand end-to-end encryption in a speech to law enforcement officials on Monday.
Continue reading...Populists and nationalists are spreading anti-Muslim, anti-feminist messages – but also backing the Communist party line
In the early days of the 2016 US election campaign, Fang Kecheng, a former journalist at the liberal-leaning Chinese newspaper Southern Weekly and then a PhD student at the University of Pennsylvania, began fact-checking Donald Trump’s statements on refugees and Muslims on Chinese social media, hoping to provide additional context to the reporting of the presidential candidate back home in China. But his effort was quickly met with fierce criticism on the Chinese internet.
Some accused him of being a “white left” – a popular insult for idealistic, leftwing and western-oriented liberals; others labelled him a “virgin”, a “bleeding heart” and a “white lotus” – demeaning phrases that describe do-gooders who care about the underprivileged - as he tried to defend women’s rights.
Continue reading...Sergei Ryabkov’s claim of interference in Duma vote believed to be reference to anti-Putin apps on Apple and Google
The Russian foreign ministry has summoned the US ambassador, John Sullivan, to complain about alleged interference by “American digital giants” in Russia’s upcoming parliamentary election.
According to a ministry statement on Friday, the deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, claimed Russia “possesses irrefutable evidence of the violation of Russian legislation by American digital giants in the context of the preparation and conduct of elections to the state Duma”.
Continue reading...Vast range of new regulations prompt fears of a return to tight social control of pre-reform days
On the second floor of a nondescript concrete building in north-east Beijing, the Youyou internet cafe is less than half full. Quiet and dark, the cafe’s customers are all adults, sitting in brown sofas in front of screens set up for hours of comfortable online gaming.
Minors aren’t allowed in, and a poster on the glass entrance reads: “The whole society together cares about the healthy growth of underage teens.” Under new regulations from the Chinese government, minors are limited to just a few hours of gaming a week, with tech platforms ordered to enforce it. The intervention is just one of a recent rush of directives from Beijing aimed at reshaping society.
Continue reading...The author on why he’s chosen to release his next book on the online platform – and why he hopes digital won’t see off the medium he loves most
Out of the gloom Salman Rushdie floats into view, his familiar face with short beard and glasses hovering on screen in front of a library that should win any competition for the most impressive Zoom bookshelf backdrop.
From his New York apartment he is here to share three things: he has made a deal to publish his next work of fiction as a serialised novella on Substack; he intends to fulfil a long held, once thwarted desire to be a film critic; and he still doesn’t have the courage to write poetry.
Continue reading...Some of site’s largest subreddits switch to private, saying Reddit is failing to tackle misinformation
Reddit has been hit by a user rebellion over the online discussion forum’s failure to tackle misinformation related to Covid and vaccines.
More than 135 Reddit communities, or subreddits, have “gone dark”, which blocks non-members from reading or joining the page, in protest at the site’s refusal to limit discussions that propagate misleading theories about the pandemic. The protest covers many of the site’s largest subreddits, including r/Futurology and r/TIFU, which have more than 10 million subscribers each.
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