K-pop star Chaeyoung apologises for wearing swastika logo

Member of girl group Twice says she ‘didn’t correctly recognise the meaning’ of symbol on Sid Vicious T-shirt she wore

Chaeyoung, a member of Twice – one of the most globally successful K-pop groups – has apologised after wearing a T-shirt featuring a swastika.

The 23-year-old’s T-shirt featured an image of Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious wearing a swastika logo. She posted a photo of herself wearing it on her Instagram account to her 8.6 million followers, but soon deleted it, replacing it with an apology. “I didn’t correctly recognise the meaning of the tilted swastika in the T-shirt I wore,” she wrote. “I deeply apologise for not thoroughly reviewing it, causing concern. I will pay absolute attention in the future to prevent any situation similar from happening again.”

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Meta-funded online tool lets people remove their explicit images from the internet

Take It Down allows anyone to anonymously generate a digital fingerprint of the image they want deleted, without uploading it

“Once you send that photo, you can’t take it back,” goes the warning to teenagers, often ignoring the reality that many teens send explicit images of themselves under duress, or without understanding the consequences.

A new online tool aims to give some control back to teens, or people who were once teens, and take down explicit images and videos of themselves from the internet.

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Child abuse image offences in UK have soared, NSPCC report shows

Charity says police recording has improved but online grooming has risen and tech firms are failing to act

Police have recorded a surge in child abuse image offences in the UK, with more than 30,000 reported in the most recent year, according to a report from the NSPCC.

That is an increase of more than 66% on figures from five years ago, when police forces across the country recorded 18,574 such offences.

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Facebook and Instagram to get paid verification as Twitter charges for two-factor SMS authentication

Mark Zuckerberg follows Elon Musk’s lead in introducing fee for blue ticks, as Twitter gets set to charge for 2FA via SMS

Facebook and Instagram users will soon need to pay to be verified on the social media platforms, as Meta follows in the footsteps of rival platform Twitter.

Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, announced in a Facebook post on Sunday that the service would first roll out in Australia and New Zealand later this week.

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Social platforms set advertising rules on Indigenous voice for Australia’s first referendum in digital age

Warren Mundine, a leading critic of voice to parliament, is concerned advertising from main referendum campaigns may be removed by platforms

Major online platforms are setting their transparency and misinformation rules for Australia’s first referendum in the digital age, as Warren Mundine, a prominent member of the no campaign, calls for advertising about the Indigenous voice to parliament referendum to run unrestricted.

Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat will require all paid ads for the voice referendum to carry authorisation messages like those at elections, and will fact-check ads and remove those rated as false.

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‘Reckless’: Fury among rights groups as Facebook lifts Trump ban

Civil rights groups voice anger at ‘unethical’ decision, while others say the public has an interest in hearing directly from candidates for political office

The news that Meta will allow Donald Trump back on Facebook and Instagram following a two-year ban has been met with fury and indignation among civil rights and online safety advocates.

The former US president will be allowed to return to the platforms “in coming weeks” but “with new guardrails in place to deter repeat offences”, Meta’s president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, wrote in a blogpost explaining the decision on Wednesday.

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Trump’s Facebook and Instagram ban to be lifted, Meta announces

Ex-president to be allowed back ‘in coming weeks … with new guardrails in place’ after ban that followed January 6 attack

In a highly anticipated decision, Meta has said it will allow Donald Trump back on Facebook and Instagram following a two-year ban from the platforms over his online behavior during the 6 January insurrection.

Meta will allow Trump to return “in coming weeks” but “with new guardrails in place to deter repeat offenses”, Meta’s president of global affairs Nick Clegg wrote in a blogpost explaining the decision.

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Seattle public schools sue social media platforms for youth ‘mental health crisis’

Lawsuit accuses companies behind TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube of harming young people’s mental health

Seattle’s public schools district has filed a lawsuit in the US against multiple major social media companies, accusing them of harming young people’s mental health across the country.

The lawsuit which was filed on Friday with a US district court accused the social media companies behind TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube of creating a “mental health crisis among America’s youth”.

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Meta dealt blow by EU ruling that could result in data use ‘opt-in’

Irish regulator fines Facebook owner €390m after EU rejects argument for use of data to drive personalised ads

The business model of Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta empire has been dealt a blow following a ruling that its legal justification for targeting users with personalised ads broke EU data laws.

Campaigners said the move could force the Facebook and Instagram owner to ask users to “opt in” to having their data used for targeted ads.

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Kanye West’s Instagram and Twitter accounts locked over antisemitic posts

The rapper has also drawn heavy criticism for donning a ‘white lives matter’ T-shirt during Paris fashion week

Kanye West has now had both his Instagram and Twitter accounts locked after antisemitic posts over the weekend.

Twitter locked his account Sunday after it removed one of West’s tweets saying he was going “death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE” because it violated the service’s policies against hate speech.

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Social media firms ‘monetising misery’, says Molly Russell’s father after inquest

Coroner finds harmful online content likely to have contributed to Molly’s death ‘in a more than minimal way’

Molly Russell’s father has accused the world’s biggest social media firms of “monetising misery” after an inquest ruled that harmful online content contributed to the 14-year-old’s death.

Ian Russell accused Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, of guiding his daughter on a “demented trail of life-sucking content”, after the landmark ruling raised the regulatory pressure on social media companies.

In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org.

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Nick Clegg to decide on Trump’s 2023 return to Instagram and Facebook

Meta’s president of global affairs said it would be a decision ‘I oversee’ after the ex-president’s accounts were suspended in 2021

Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, is charged with deciding whether Donald Trump will be allowed to return to Facebook and Instagram in 2023, Clegg said on Thursday.

Speaking at an event held in Washington by news organization Semafor, Clegg said the company was seriously debating whether Trump’s accounts should be reinstated and said it was a decision that “I oversee and I drive”.

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Instagram owner Meta fined €405m over handling of teens’ data

Penalty follows investigation into Instagram setting that allowed teenagers to set up accounts that displayed contact details

Instagram owner Meta has been fined €405m (£349m) by the Irish data watchdog for letting teenagers set up accounts that publicly displayed their phone numbers and email addresses.

The Data Protection Commission confirmed the penalty after a two-year investigation into potential breaches of the European Union’s general data protection regulation (GDPR).

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Priti Patel urges Meta to give up on end-to-end encryption plans

UK home secretary hits out at Facebook’s owner over move that could hinder child abuse investigations

Priti Patel has hit out at Facebook’s plans to encrypt direct messages, even as the company is facing criticism in the US for failing to protect the privacy of women seeking abortions.

The UK home secretary has urged Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, as well as WhatsApp, to give up on its intentions to apply “end-to-end encryption” to direct messages sent from Messenger and Instagram.

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‘Dangerous misogynist’ Andrew Tate booted from Instagram and Facebook

The self-described sexist was removed for violating Meta’s policies on ‘dangerous organizations and individuals’

Controversial online influencer and self-described misogynist Andrew Tate has been banned from Meta platforms Instagram and Facebook.

The former kickboxer and reality TV star was removed for violating Meta policies “on dangerous organizations and individuals”, the company confirmed by email.

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Instagram and Facebook suspend Robert Kennedy Jr’s anti-vaccine group

Critics calls move ‘too late too little’ after group repeatedly violated policies on Covid-19 misinformation

Instagram and Facebook have suspended a prominent anti-vaccine group led by Robert Kennedy Jr for repeatedly violating rules prohibiting misinformation about Covid-19.

The non-profit, Children’s Health Defense (CHD), is one of the most influential anti-vaccine organizations active on social media, where it has spread misleading claims about vaccines and other pandemic-related public health measures.

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Saudi woman given 34-year prison sentence for using Twitter

Salma al-Shehab, a Leeds University student, was charged with following and retweeting dissidents and activists

A Saudi student at Leeds University who had returned home to the kingdom for a holiday has been sentenced to 34 years in prison for having a Twitter account and for following and retweeting dissidents and activists.

The sentencing by Saudi’s special terrorist court was handed down weeks after the US president Joe Biden’s visit to Saudi Arabia, which human rights activists had warned could embolden the kingdom to escalate its crackdown on dissidents and other pro-democracy activists.

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Wagatha Christie: big-budget drama joins race to bring libel trial to screen

Poldark creator among writers and film-makers lining up to reconstruct spat between Rebekah Vardy and Coleen Rooney

A big-budget drama featuring major characters in the Wagatha Christie case is to join the slew of documentaries already in production, as the race to bring to the small screen the rancorous details of the high court battle that ended on Friday hots up.

The row between two high-profile footballers’ wives, which ended last week when the judge ruled in favour of Coleen Rooney, is to be turned into television serial by one of Britain’s leading screenwriters. Debbie Horsfield, who adapted Poldark for the 2015-19 BBC series, is to write a drama chronicling the notorious public row between Rebekah Vardy, wife of leading Leicester goal scorer Jamie Vardy, and Coleen Rooney, wife of Wayne, the renowned former England player and, until last month, manager of Derby County.

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The Vardy Effect: Going to court to deny something a rock could see is true

Rebekah Vardy probably isn’t buzzing at the ruling, a character assassination that has left her well and truly stung by libel

Oscar Wilde, Barbra Streisand, and now – Rebekah Vardy. When news broke that Vardy had lost her libel case against Coleen Rooney, she joined this heady roster of celebrities who have launched brain-bogglingly misguided and self-wounding legal cases. Like Wilde – who sued the Marquess of Queensberry for revealing his homosexuality – Vardy went to court to deny something that a rock could see was true: she’d passed on private stories about Rooney to the press. And like Streisand – who sued a website for featuring an image of her house, thereby drawing the world’s attention to it – she believed going to court was the best way to control her image. She was wrong.

Vardy traded private details of her husband’s colleagues and their wives in the hope of currying positive coverage in the media. And because of that, Mrs Justice Steyn delivered a verdict that was even more of a character assassination than Vardy’s own memorable description of Rooney to a Daily Mail journalist: “Arguing with Coleen Rooney would be as pointless as arguing with a pigeon: you can tell it that you are right and it is wrong, but it’s still going to shit in your hair.” Well, Rebekah, you’re covered in shit now.

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Facebook and Instagram removing posts with mentions of abortion pills

In light of the supreme court’s verdict, memes and status updates on social media on how to access the medicines have exploded

Facebook and Instagram have begun removing posts related to abortion pills, as posts about such medication spiked following the supreme court’s ruling stripping away constitutional protections for abortions.

Memes and status updates explaining how people can obtain abortion pills in the mail have exploded across social platforms in recent days.

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