Category Archives: Instagram

Sydney church stabbing: social media pages ‘infamous’ for spreading misinformation taken down

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Premier Chris Minns is alarmed at the ‘wildfire’ of rumour and graphic content online after Wakeley and Bondi stabbings

Social media pages “infamous” for spreading misinformation have been taken down after the Wakeley church stabbing attack, the New South Wales premier, Chris Minns, said on Thursday, while expressing alarm at the “wildfire” of rumour and graphic content still proliferating on tech platforms.

On Monday night YouTube was live broadcasting Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel’s service at the Assyrian Christ the Good Shepherd church. After the stabbing occurred, video clips spread through WhatsApp groups before police had arrived on scene.

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Child sexual abuse content growing online with AI-made images, report says

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More children and families extorted with AI-made photos and videos, says National Center for Missing and Exploited Children

Child sexual exploitation is on the rise online and taking new forms such as images and videos generated by artificial intelligence, according to an annual assessment released on Tuesday by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), a US-based clearinghouse for the reporting of child sexual abuse material.

Reports to the NCMEC of child abuse online rose by more than 12% in 2023 compared with the previous year, surpassing 36.2m reports, the organization said in its annual CyberTipline report. The majority of tips received were related to the circulation of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) such as photos and videos, but there was also an increase in reports of financial sexual extortion, when an online predator lures a child into sending nude images or videos and then demands money.

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Licence to trill: Molly the magpie returned to Queensland carers after special wildlife permit granted

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Juliette Wells and Reece Mortensen are allowed to keep the bird, which had become Instagram famous with their staffy, Peggy, but are forbidden from monetising it

Molly the magpie has been returned to its Gold Coast carers – but they are no longer allowed to make money from its 837,000 Instagram followers.

The department of environment, science and innovation approved a special licence for Juliette Wells and Reece Mortensen, who have cared for it since it fell from the nest in 2020.

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Google blocking links to California news outlets from search results

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Tech giant is protesting proposed law that would require large online platforms to pay ‘journalism usage fee’

Google has temporarily blocked links from local news outlets in California from appearing in search results in response to the advancement of a bill that would require tech companies to pay publications for links that articles share. The change applies only to some people using Google in California, though it is not clear how many.

The California Journalism Preservation Act (CJPA) would require large online platforms to pay a “journalism usage fee” for linking to news sites based in the Golden state. The bill cleared the California assembly in 2023. To become law, it would need to pass in the Senate before being signed by the governor, Gavin Newsom.

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Instagram ads in UK promoting ‘butt lifts’ in Turkey as part of holidays in potential breach of rules

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Watchdog warns cosmetic surgery providers abroad as analysis reveals thousands of Facebook adverts

A post on Instagram shows the back of a woman in tight blue leggings, her lower body taking up most of the frame. The words “Temptingly sexy curves ahead … Ready to turn heads and break hearts?” are written in the caption. It is from a company offering Britons the chance to get a Brazilian butt lift while enjoying a luxury holiday abroad.

The advert is one of thousands on social media promoting cosmetic surgery tourism by companies in Turkey to UK residents, including gastric band operations, hair transplants and Brazilian butt lifts (BBL) – a process that involves fat taken from elsewhere on the body being injected into the buttocks – in a trend that has triggered safety concerns among doctors in Britain.

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Fears grow Meta will block news on Facebook and Instagram as Australian government faces pressure to act

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Publishers and politicians are siding against Meta and urging the government to force the company to pay for news

Meta will either reduce the amount of news people see or block it entirely on Facebook and Instagram, experts and publishers warn, as the government faces pressure to require Meta to show news content and pay for it.

Meta informed publishers nearly a month ago that it would not enter new multimillion-dollar deals for content when the current contracts expire this year. Since then the Albanese government has kicked off a process to potentially designate the tech company under the news media bargaining code (NMBC).

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EU calls on tech firms to outline plans to tackle deepfakes amid election fears

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Move involving companies such as Google, Facebook and X comes after evidence of Russian online interference in polls

The EU is calling on eight major tech companies including Google, Facebook and X to detail how they identify and tackle deepfake material amid concerns about the use of the technology to influence elections.

In a world first, they will be using new laws on artificial intelligence to force companies to root out fake video, imagery and audio.

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Australian news media could seek payment from Meta for content used to train AI

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News media bargaining code could apply to tech companies using massive amounts of online information for generative AI, researchers say

Australian media companies could seek compensation from Meta for its use of online news sources in training generative AI technology, researchers have said.

When Meta announced last week that it would not sign new deals to pay for news in Australia for use on Facebook, it downplayed the value of news to its services, stating that just 3% of Facebook usage in Australia was related to news.

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Instagram and Facebook delete the accounts of Iran’s supreme leader

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Ayatollah Ali Khamenei supported Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel, which Meta said violated its policies

Meta has removed Instagram and Facebook accounts run on behalf of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, following criticism over his support for Hamas after the group’s 7 October attack on Israel that sparked the months-long war still raging in the Gaza Strip, the company confirmed on Friday.

Meta, based in Menlo Park, California, offered no specifics about its reasoning. However, it said it removed the accounts “for repeatedly violating our Dangerous Organizations and Individuals policy”.

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‘It was forced’: grieving parents unfazed by sorry tech CEOs at US Senate hearing

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Many parents held up images of the children who died after falling prey to abusers on apps such as Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat

Mark Zuckerberg apologized to the parents of children who killed themselves after being subjected to online sexual exploitation during a US Senate hearing Wednesday. Evan Spiegel offered condolences to parents whose children obtained deadly illegal drugs via Snapchat. The words were too little, too late for their intended audience, though. The grieving guardians expressed only frustration with the social media CEOs’ responses to their plight and to questions from members of Congress.

“I’m not happy with the answers the CEOs are giving. They can’t give a straight answer. Not even ‘yes’ or ‘no,’” said Tammy Rodriguez, the mother of Selena Rodriguez, who was 11 when she died by suicide three years ago after being solicited for sexually exploitative content by strangers on Instagram and Snapchat.

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Meta censors pro-Palestinian views on a global scale, report claims

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Rights group says Facebook and Instagram routinely engage in ‘six key patterns of undue censorship’ of content supporting Palestine

Meta has engaged in a “systemic and global” censorship of pro-Palestinian content since the outbreak of the Israel-Gaza war on 7 October, according to a new report from Human Rights Watch (HRW).

In a scathing 51-page report, the organization documented and reviewed more than a thousand reported instances of Meta removing content and suspending or permanently banning accounts on Facebook and Instagram. The company exhibited “six key patterns of undue censorship” of content in support of Palestine and Palestinians, including the taking down of posts, stories and comments; disabling accounts; restricting users’ ability to interact with others’ posts; and “shadow banning”, where the visibility and reach of a person’s material is significantly reduced, according to HRW.

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Meta platforms are marketplaces for child predators claims lawsuit

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Facebook and Instagram ‘enabled adults to find, message and groom minors’ for sexual exploitation, alleges state of New Mexico legal filing

Meta has allowed its social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram, to become marketplaces for child predators, the state of New Mexico alleges in a lawsuit filed against the company and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.

The lawsuit claims that Meta “proactively served and directed [children] to egregious, sexually explicit images through recommended users and posts – even where the child has expressed no interest in this content”. It claims Meta “enabled adults to find, message and groom minors, soliciting them to sell pictures or participate in pornographic videos”. The company is also accused of fostering unmoderated user groups devoted to facilitating and selling child sexual exploitation content.

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Meta designed platforms to get children addicted, court documents allege

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Instagram and Facebook parent company also knowingly allowed underage users to hold accounts, unsealed legal complaint says

Instagram and Facebook parent company Meta purposefully engineered its platforms to addict children and knowingly allowed underage users to hold accounts, according to a newly unsealed legal complaint.

The complaint is a key part of a lawsuit filed against Meta by the attorneys general of 33 states in late October and was originally redacted. It alleges the social media company knew – but never disclosed – it had received millions of complaints about underage users on Instagram but only disabled a fraction of those accounts. The large number of underage users was an “open secret” at the company, the suit alleges, citing internal company documents.

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Meta allows ads saying 2020 election was rigged on Facebook and Instagram

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Policy was reportedly introduced quietly in 2022 after the US midterm primary elections, according to the WSJ

Meta is now allowing Facebook and Instagram to run political advertising saying the 2020 election was rigged.

The policy was reportedly introduced quietly in 2022 after the US midterm primary elections, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the decision. The previous policy prevented Republican candidates from running ads arguing during that campaign that the 2020 election, which Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden, was stolen.

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Meta sued by 33 states over claims youth mental health endangered by Instagram

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Complaint filed in California accuses company of knowingly inducing children and teenagers into addictive social media use

The attorneys general of dozens of US states are suing Instagram and its parent company Meta over their impact on young users, accusing them of contributing to a youth mental health crisis through the addictive nature of their social media platforms.

Filed in federal court in Oakland, California, on Tuesday, the lawsuit claims Meta, which also operates Facebook, has repeatedly misled the public about the substantial dangers of its platforms and knowingly induced young children and teenagers into addictive and compulsive social media use.

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Instagram apologises for adding ‘terrorist’ to some Palestinian user profiles

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Parent company Meta says bug caused ‘inappropriate’ auto-translations and was now fixed while employee says it pushed ‘a lot of people over the edge’

Meta has apologised after inserting the word “terrorist” into the profile bios of some Palestinian Instagram users, in what the company says was a bug in auto-translation.

The issue, which was first reported by 404media, affected users with the word “Palestinian” written in English on their profile, the Palestinian flag emoji and the word “alhamdulillah” written in Arabic. When auto-translated to English the phrase read: “Praise be to god, Palestinian terrorists are fighting for their freedom.”

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Indonesia bans e-commerce sales on social media platforms like TikTok

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Government says regulation aimed at protecting small businesses from competition

Indonesia has banned goods transactions on social media platforms as it aims to protect small businesses from e-commerce competition.

Calls had grown in recent months for a regulation governing social media and e-commerce, with offline sellers seeing their livelihoods threatened by the sale of cheaper products on TikTok Shop and other platforms.

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Meta closes nearly 9,000 Facebook and Instagram accounts linked to Chinese ‘Spamouflage’ foreign influence campaign

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Company says users targeted in Australia, UK, US and elsewhere by political spam network across more than 50 platforms

Meta shut down close to 9,000 Facebook and Instagram accounts, groups and pages associated with a Chinese political spam network that had targeted users in Australia and other parts of the world, the company has revealed.

Meta began investigating in 2019 and its research aligned with several research groups, including the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (Aspi), who coined the term Spamouflage.

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Hawaii fires: spread of conspiracy theories reveals tech firms’ failings

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From secret ‘energy weapon’ starting fires to a global cabal razing the town for an experiment – false theories are fast gaining ground

In the aftermath of the devastating wildfires in Maui, misinformation and conspiracy theories have spread online, underscoring the shortcomings of social media firms’ enforcement policies following disasters.

Conspiracy theories including that the fire was started intentionally by a secret “energy weapon” and that a shadowy cabal of global elites set the blazes purposefully to clear the land for their own nefarious uses have gained popularity.

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Teens much more likely to believe online conspiracy claims than adults – US study

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Study shows that 60% of teens between ages 13-17 agreed with four or more conspiracy statements compared with 49% of adults

Teenagers are significantly more likely to believe online conspiracy theories than older generations, a new study has shown, underscoring the broad impacts of gen Z’s relationship with social media.

Findings from Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a non-profit that fights misinformation, showed that 60% of 13-17-year-old Americans surveyed agreed with four or more harmful conspiracy statements – compared with just 49% of adults. For teens who spend four or more hours a day on any single social media platform, the figure was as high as 69%.

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