Former boss of collapsed crypto-exchange says he has duty to try to recoup investors’ lost money
Sam Bankman-Fried, the former boss of the failed crypto-exchange FTX, has said he hopes to start a new business to help pay back the victims of his old firm’s collapse.
Speaking to the BBC from the Bahamas, he said he would “give anything” to be able to begin a new venture in order to recoup his users’ lost investments.
Continue reading...EU-funded survey of people aged 16-19 finds one in four have trolled someone – while UK least ‘cyberdeviant’ of nine countries
Risky and criminal online behaviour is in danger of becoming normalised among a generation of young people across Europe, according to EU-funded research that found one in four 16- to 19-year-olds have trolled someone online and one in three have engaged in digital piracy.
An EU-funded study found evidence of widespread criminal, risky and delinquent behaviour among the 16-19 age group in nine European countries including the UK.
Continue reading...The French president had flagged concerns over the platform’s content moderation just a day before
Emmanuel Macron said he had a “clear and honest” discussion with Elon Musk about Twitter’s content moderation policies, just a day after the French president had flagged his concerns on the issue.
“Transparent user policies, significant reinforcement of content moderation and protection of freedom of speech: efforts have to be made by Twitter to comply with European regulations,” Macron said in a tweet after his meeting with Musk on Friday afternoon.
Continue reading...Government websites and email still offline, leading to delays in payments and services across the country
One month after a cyber-attack brought down government servers and websites in Vanuatu, frustrated officials were still using private Gmail accounts, personal laptops, pen and paper, and typewriters to run the government of the prime minister, Ishmael Kalsakau, who came into office just a few days after the crash.
The malware attack on state networks has caused delays in communication and coordination in the Pacific island nation of 314,000 people and 80 islands.
Continue reading...Activity indicates ‘first major failure’ to stop government interference under ownership of Elon Musk
Twitter has been flooded with nuisance posts designed to obscure news of the coronavirus lockdown protests in China, in an apparent state-directed attempt to suppress footage of the demonstrations.
Chinese bot accounts – not operated by humans – are being used to flood the social networking service with adverts for sex workers, pornography and gambling when users search for a major city in the country, such as Shanghai or Beijing, using Chinese script.
Continue reading...Critics say telecoms firms such as BT – which made £1.9bn profit last year – can afford to keep customers on benefits connected
BT has warned that the telecoms industry cannot afford an estimated potential loss of up to £2bn annually providing low-cost broadband to millions of the UK’s most financially pressured households, but critics have said they have an obligation to do so.
Marc Allera, the chief executive of BT’s consumer division, which includes the mobile company EE, said the industry needed government support to help cover the ongoing cost of providing cheap tariffs, the same way households have been helped with energy bills.
Continue reading...Online scams such as banking and credit card fraud are the most prevalent cyberthreat, say Interpol
Police and investigators fear organised gangs of fraudsters are expanding across sub-Saharan Africa, exploiting new opportunities as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and the global economic crisis to make huge sums with little risk of being caught.
The growth will have a direct impact on the rest of the world, where many victims of “hugely lucrative” fraud live, senior police officials have said.
Continue reading...Nonconsensual explicit images to be tackled in bill returning to parliament next month
Nonconsensual “deepfake” pornography and “downblousing” will be made illegal when the online safety bill returns to parliament in December, the government has announced.
Explicit images taken without someone’s consent, through hidden cameras or surreptitious photography, will be criminalised, including so-called downblousing pictures. A previous law banning “upskirt” voyeurism left a loophole that failed to tackle images that weren’t taken with the intent of photographing the victim’s genitals or buttocks.
Continue reading...Speaking of Trump and lawyers, another of his former top White House officials is going to South Carolina’s high court to stop a subpoena from a Georgia prosecutor looking into meddling in the state’s 2020 election, Politico reports:
The appeal to South Carolina’s supreme court by Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff for his final months in the White House, is the latest development in his lengthy battle to resist the summons from Fanni Willis. She’s the district attorney in Fulton county, which contains most of Atlanta, and has empaneled a special grand jury to look into attempts by Trump’s allies to interfere in Joe Biden’s election victory in the state.
Continue reading...‘The people have spoken,’ says site’s owner, having acknowledged during online poll that automated bots were voting too
Elon Musk has reinstated Donald Trump’s Twitter account after users on the social media platform voted by a slim majority to lift a ban on the former US president.
Trump’s account was suspended in 2021 after the January 6 Capitol riot, for violating Twitter guidelines and because of the risk of “further incitement of violence”.
Continue reading...Social media giant ill-equipped to deal with traffic spikes after cuts imposed by Elon Musk, according to former employee
Twitter stands a 50% chance of a major outage that could take the site offline during the World Cup, according to a recently departed employee with knowledge of how the company responds to large-scale events.
The former employee, who was granted anonymity because of the sensitivity of what was discussed, has knowledge of the workings of Twitter Command Centre, the platform’s team of troubleshooters who monitor the site for issues such as traffic spikes and data centre outages.
Continue reading...Users on gamer-focused platform manage to respond to posts despite government blocking all comments
The UK Treasury has opened an account on Discord to a torrent of abuse from users of the gamer-focused chat app – abuse they managed to send despite the government blocking all comments on the service.
As Twitter’s future looks increasingly uncertain, prominent users are preparing alternatives, directing followers to Facebook and Instagram accounts, handing out their Mastodon addresses, and setting up servers on chat apps such as Discord.
Continue reading...Before Elon Musk took over the badge was granted to celebrities and journalists verified by the platform to prevent impersonation
Twitter’s relaunched premium service – which grants blue check verification labels to anyone willing to pay $8 a month – was unavailable on Friday after the social media platform was flooded by a wave of impostor accounts approved by Twitter.
The latest move caps a chaotic start for the new subscription service, one of the first major changes made by Elon Musk after taking over the company two weeks ago.
Continue reading...Founder Sam Bankman-Fried races to find funds to fill multibillion-dollar hole in exchange
The Bahamas securities regulator has frozen the assets of the Bahamas subsidiary of FTX, as the world’s second largest cryptocurrency exchange struggles for survival.
The Securities Commission of the Bahamas said on Thursday it had frozen the assets of FTX Digital Markets and related parties, as well appointing a liquidator for the unit.
Continue reading...Guardia Civil first to be convicted after alleging video showed a Moroccan migrant raping a woman
A police officer who deliberately posted a misleading video clip of a sexual assault to try to stir up hatred against migrant children has become the first person in Spain to be handed a jail sentence for using social media to publish and spread fake news.
A court in Barcelona on Tuesday convicted the Guardia Civil officer of an offence against fundamental rights and public freedoms and sentenced him to 15 months in prison and a fine of €1,620 (£1,410).
Continue reading...Ramon Abbas, described by FBI as one of world’s most prolific money launderers, sentenced to 11 years
A social media influencer who called himself Ray Hushpuppi and flaunted a lavish lifestyle fuelled by his efforts to launder millions of stolen dollars has been sentenced in Los Angeles to more than 11 years in federal prison.
Ramon Abbas, 40, also was ordered by a federal judge to pay $1.7m in restitution to two fraud victims, according to a statement from the US Department of Justice.
Continue reading...Attendees say they are unable to visit Human Rights Watch and other sites needed during climate talks
Attendees at the Cop27 climate meeting have found that the conference internet connection blocks access to the global rights organisation Human Rights Watch (HRW) as well as other key news websites needed for information during the talks.
HRW is due to lead a panel discussion at Cop27 along with Amnesty International, whose website is accessible on the conference wifi. The list of blocked sites also includes the blogging platform Medium, Egypt’s lone independent news outlet, Mada Masr, and the Qatari news outlet Al Jazeera.
Continue reading...Platform’s new owner tells video-makers he’s planning ‘creator monetization for all forms of content’
The anarchic behaviour of YouTubers draws huge online audiences and has turned stars such as MrBeast and Logan Paul into the best-paid entertainers of the internet age. Now Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, wants a piece of this lucrative action and will attempt to lure video creators on to the social media platform.
In a series of messages, Musk engaged with video-makers, saying he was planning “creator monetization for all forms of content”, and that his company could “beat” the 55% cut of advertising revenue that YouTube gives its top entertainers.
Continue reading...Social media firm sets deadline for workers to name person to represent them at job consultations amid layoffs
Twitter staff who face losing their jobs in the UK have been given three days to nominate a representative for a formal consultation about their employment.
An email sent to staff from Twitter’s HR department on Saturday said they had until 9am on Tuesday to nominate any current employee. Staff can nominate themselves.
Continue reading...As anger builds, Dorsey says ‘I own the responsibility for why everyone is in this situation – I grew the company too quickly’
Former Twitter chief executive officer Jack Dorsey has gone on the platform recently acquired by billionaire Elon Musk to apologize for the state of the site, which has laid off thousands of workers.
On Saturday Dorsey published a series of tweets in response to the layoffs across Twitter’s workforce, which began on Friday. As many as half of the company’s 7,500 staffers could be axed since Musk acquired the company for $44bn last week.
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