Category Archives: Internet

Brazil lifts ban on X after Elon Musk complies with court demands

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Social platform was blocked after tech billionaire failed to name local representatives and pay fines

Brazilians are set to regain access to X after a supreme court judge lifted a ban introduced nearly six weeks ago as a result of Elon Musk’s failure to comply with the South American country’s laws.

X was blocked in Brazil, where it had more than 22 million users, at the end of August in what was the culmination of a months-long arm wrestle between the network’s billionaire owner and the Brazilian supreme court.

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‘Fear of missing out’ keeping girls and young women online despite sexism

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Almost half of girls aged 11 to 21 in Girlguiding survey say sexism and misogyny makes them feel less safe

Girls and young women are seeing more unwanted sexual images and suffering more cyberstalking online, but still don’t want to take a break from social media because of a fear of missing out, a survey for Girlguiding has found.

“Fomo” is keeping more than half of 11- to 21-year-olds on apps such as TikTok, Snapchat and WhatsApp despite nearly one in five saying they have been being stalked online and more than a third saying they are seeing sexual images they didn’t wish to see, the survey of more than 2,000 girls and young women found.

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Elon Musk backs down in his fight with Brazilian judges to restore X

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The platform agrees to appoint a legal representative in Brazil, pays fines and takes down user accounts that the court had ordered removed

Elon Musk fought the law. The law appears to have won.

X, Musk’s social media platform, has backed down in its fight with the Brazilian judiciary, after complying with court orders that had blocked users in the country from accessing X.

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Sausage rolls and Oasis: ‘Britishcore’ Tiktok trend drives interest in UK culture

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From crummy pubs to a ‘cheeky Tesco run’, some of the most mundane aspects of British life are going viral

Think of British cultural exports in the 21st century and you might reach for the familiar examples: James Bond, Downton Abbey, Adele.

But in the algorithm-driven universe of TikTok where a trend known as “Britishcore” is one of the most in demand movements of the moment, it’s the mundane aspects of life in the UK which are going viral.

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Elon Musk’s Starlink backtracks to comply with Brazil’s ban on X

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After judge freezes assets of billionaire’s internet service provider, company flip-flops to block social media platform

Elon Musk’s satellite-based internet service provider Starlink backtracked late on Tuesday and said it would accept and enforce a Brazilian supreme court justice’s order to block the billionaire’s social media platform, X, formerly Twitter.

Previously, Starlink informally told the telecommunications regulator Anatel that it would not comply until Justice Alexandre de Moraes reversed course. Now, Starlink has said in a statement posted on X that it will heed de Moraes’s order despite him having frozen the company’s assets.

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Brazilian court orders suspension of Elon Musk’s X after it missed deadline

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Social media platform to be blocked by ISPs because it did not appoint legal representative in allotted time

The Brazilian supreme court has ordered that X be suspended in the country after the social media platform failed to meet a deadline to appoint a legal representative in the country.

Late on Friday afternoon, Justice Alexandre de Moraes – who has been engaged in a dispute with X’s owner, Elon Musk, since April – ordered the “immediate, complete and total suspension of X’s operations” in the country, “until all court orders … are complied with, fines are duly paid, and a new legal representative for the company is appointed in the country”.

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‘World’s largest’ piracy ring Fmovies shut down by police in Vietnam

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Major film studio group Ace spearheaded takedown of piracy operation that garnered billions of site visits yearly

An international anti-piracy coalition including major Hollywood studios has claimed victory over Fmovies, a large illegal streaming operation based in Vietnam.

The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (Ace), whose governing members include Netflix, Apple TV+, Amazon and the Walt Disney Studios, announced on Thursday that it worked with Hanoi police to shut down Fmovies and affiliated sites. The illegal consortium, with sites including Bflixz, Flixtorz, Movies7 and Myflixer in addition to Fmovies, constituted “the largest pirate streaming operation in the world”, according to Ace, with more than 6.7bn visits between January 2023 and June 2024.

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Telegram founder arrest part of cybercrime inquiry, say prosecutors

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Investigation into Pavel Durov relates to app’s alleged failure to stop spread of child sexual abuse material

Pavel Durov, the Russian-born billionaire co-founder of the Telegram messaging app, was arrested in France in connection with an investigation into criminal activity on the platform and a lack of cooperation with law enforcement, prosecutors announced on Monday.

Durov, who has French citizenship, was detained at Le Bourget airport, just outside Paris, on Saturday evening after arriving from Azerbaijan on his private jet. His surprise arrest has sparked debate over free speech worldwide and led to an outcry in Moscow.

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How west Africa’s online fraudsters moved into sextortion

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With ‘hustle kingdoms’ teaching young people the tricks of the trade, there has been a surge in blackmailing crimes

In the late 90s and early 2000s, as internet connectivity began penetrating west Africa, young people soon realised that individuals in North America and Europe with access to more money than them and potentially susceptible to blackmail were now reachable by the click of a button.

Along came the “Nigerian prince” letters, a famous scamming technique employed by online fraudsters – known as Yahoo boys in Nigeria, Sakwa boys of Ghana and the brouteurs of Ivory Coast – preying on unsuspecting targets across the web. The emails typically involved someone pretending to be Nigerian royalty and asking for money, a claim so outlandish that victims presumed it couldn’t be a lie.

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Man charged in Pakistan for alleged role in spreading false claims before UK riots

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Web developer in Lahore charged with cyberterrorism, after riots thought to have been fuelled by false reports online

Police in Pakistan have charged a man with cyberterrorism for his alleged role in spreading misinformation thought to have led to widespread rioting in the UK, a senior investigator has said.

The suspect was identified as Farhan Asif, 32, a freelance web developer, said Imran Kishwar, the deputy inspector general of investigations in Lahore.

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Pakistan businesses reeling from slow internet blame testing for firewall

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Government denies new cybersecurity measures responsible for up to 40% drop in internet speeds across the country

For the free online tech skill classes advertised, there were hundreds of Facebook “likes” and in the end 1,500 people signed up. But on the first day last week, only a handful of those registered managed to log in to the live session. The internet was working at a snail’s speed.

“We received hundreds of complaints,” says the course tutor, Wardah Noor, founder of the IT training firm XWave, based in Layyah, in the Pakistani province of Punjab.

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Public approves response to riots but Starmer’s appeal fades, new poll shows

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Most think Labour handled unrest well and agree with pursuit of those inciting racial hatred online

Voters have given broad approval to the government’s handling of the social unrest that broke out this summer, including its pursuit of those inciting racial hatred and violence online, according to the latest Opinium poll for the Observer.

However, the significant boost Keir Starmer enjoyed in his personal approval ratings immediately after his election win has dissipated, falling back to the levels he recorded during the election campaign.

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Elon Musk says X will pull operations from Brazil after ‘censorship orders’

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Judge Alexandre de Moraes had ordered X to block certain accounts as he investigated fake news and hate messages

Elon Musk announced on Saturday that the social media platform X would close its operations in Brazil “effective immediately” due to what it called “censorship orders” from the Brazilian judge Alexandre de Moraes.

X claims Moraes secretly threatened one of its legal representatives in the South American country with arrest if it did not comply with legal orders to take down some content from its platform. Brazil’s supreme court, where Moraes has a seat, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Kim Dotcom to be extradited from New Zealand to US

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Justice minister signs extradition order for Megaupload founder 12 years after FBI-ordered raid over filesharing site

Kim Dotcom, who is facing criminal charges relating to the defunct filesharing website Megaupload, is to be extradited to the US, the New Zealand justice minister says, which could end more than a decade of legal wrangling.

German-born Dotcom has New Zealand residency and has been fighting extradition to the US since 2012 after an FBI-ordered raid on his Auckland mansion. The high court in New Zealand first approved his extradition in 2017, with an appeal court reaffirming the finding the year after. In 2020, the country’s supreme court again affirmed the finding but opened the door for a fresh round of judicial review.

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Familiar vitriol, and Musk the enabler: key takeaways from Trump’s X interview

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After a 45-minute delay, the former president ran through his greatest hits – and biggest lies – to a fawning Elon Musk

Donald Trump returned to the social media platform that skyrocketed his career for a live discussion with Elon Musk. The former president unleashed familiar rambling, vitriolic talking points to a sympathetic Musk.

Here are key takeaways from the event.

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Trump rehashes vitriol and falsehoods in rambling talk with Musk – as it happened

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This blog is now closed. You can read our on that interview story here.

In addition to this live blogger, conservative commentator Glenn Beck is among those unable to listen to Donald Trump’s interview with Elon Musk:

The interview was supposed to start five minutes ago, but instead, all we are seeing is a gray box with the words “Details not available”.

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Elon Musk’s X suffers tech failures at start of Donald Trump interview

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Musk blames cyber-attack as conversation is delayed, resembling glitchy launch of Ron DeSantis’s campaign

As a high-profile conversation between Donald Trump and Elon Musk was about to begin, users of X, formerly Twitter, were confronted with the message: “This Space is not available.”

Spaces, X’s livestreaming audio feature, was the chosen forum for the dialogue, but it wasn’t working. Clicking on the link to the broadcast, hosted by Trump’s dormant @RealDonaldTrump account, froze the site and rendered it unusable. Tweeters said they couldn’t dial in; some said their browsers had crashed.

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Jess Phillips calls X a ‘place of misery’ as she vows to scale back use

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Labour minister says she removed social media platform’s app from her mobile phone when Elon Musk took over

A government minister said she has scaled back her use of social media platform X, arguing it had become “a bit despotic” and was “a place of misery now”.

Jess Phillips, the minister for safeguarding and violence against women and girls, said although she had previously been “massively addicted to Twitter”, referencing the former name of X, she had removed the app from her phone after Elon Musk took over the company in October 2022.

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Nicolás Maduro blocks X for 10 days in Venezuela amid spat with Elon Musk

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President accuses social network’s owner of using it to ‘incite hatred’ after country’s disputed election

President Nicolás Maduro said he had ordered a 10-day block on access to X in Venezuela, accusing the owner, Elon Musk, of using the social network to promote hatred after the country’s disputed presidential election.

Associated Press (AP) journalists in Caracas found that by Thursday night posts had stopped loading on X on two private telephone services and the state-owned Movilnet.

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Labour needs X to get its message out however much it may wish it didn’t

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The Elon Musk-owned platform remains a vital tool for politicians despite misinformation about disorder in Britain

When Keir Starmer was running to be Labour leader in 2020, his aides seriously considered whether they should leave Twitter for good.

A number of those who remain close to Starmer as prime minister were then enthusiastic about moving off the platform. The party was still feeling wounded by the brutal election campaign and by the bitterness of the way it had been conducted on social media.

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