ByTechVista

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  • Parents outraged as Meta uses photos of schoolgirls in ads targeting man

    Exclusive: Instagram pictures of girls as young as 13 were posted to promote Threads site ‘as bait’, campaigner says Meta has used back-to-school pictures of schoolgirls to advertise one of its social media platforms to a 37-year-old man, in a move parents described as “outrageous” and “upsetting”. The man noticed that posts encouraging him to…

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  • ‘I love you too!’ My family’s creepy, unsettling week with an AI toy

    The cuddly chatbot Grem is designed to ‘learn’ your child’s personality, while every conversation they have is recorded, then transcribed by a third party. It wasn’t long before I wanted this experiment to be over … ‘I’m going to throw that thing into a river!” my wife says as she comes down the stairs looking…

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  • Snapchat allows drug dealers to operate openly on platform, finds Danish study

    Social media platform accused of failing to filter out obvious usernames such as ‘coke’, ‘weed’ and ‘molly’ Snapchat has been accused by a Danish research organisation of leaving an “overwhelming number” of drug dealers to openly operate on Snapchat, making it easy for children to buy substances including cocaine, opioids and MDMA. The social media…

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  • Roblox to extend age checks in attempt to curb adults talking with children

    Company says changes to gaming platform will root out ‘bad actors’ after child safety concerns over unsupervised interaction The gaming website Roblox is to limit adult strangers from talking to children by the end of this year in an effort to root out “bad actors”. The fast-growing platform which has more than 110 million users…

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  • Parents could get alerts if children show acute distress while using ChatGPT

    OpenAI to roll out new protection measures after facing a law suit on behalf of teenager who took his own life Parents could be alerted if their teenagers show acute distress while talking with ChatGPT, amid child safety concerns as more young people turn to AI chatbots for support and advice. The alerts are part…

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  • Privacy at a cost: the dark web’s main browser helps pedophile networks flourish, experts say

    The Tor network’s privacy architecture creates a safe haven for predators to share child sexual abuse material Millions of child predators are forming sprawling online communities on the dark web using the Tor network, where criminal behavior escalates through the sharing of child sexual abuse material, grooming strategies and normalization of exploitation, experts say. Despite…

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  • Social media still pushing suicide-related content to teens despite new UK safety laws

    Researchers who set up dummy accounts as 15-year-old girl were bombarded with self-harm and depression posts Social media platforms are still pushing depression, suicide and self-harm-related content to teenagers, despite new online safety laws intended to protect children. The Molly Rose Foundation opened dummy accounts posing as a 15-year-old girl, and then engaged with suicide,…

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  • UK traffic to popular porn sites slumps after age checks introduced

    Figures from digital data company show effect of strict rules brought in last month under Online Safety Act British visits to popular pornography sites have slumped following the introduction of strict age checks last month, data shows. Daily visits to Pornhub, the UK’s most used porn site, fell from 3.6m on 24 July, the day…

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  • FBI and NSPCC alarmed at ‘shocking’ rise in online sextortion of children

    Snapchat logged about 20,000 cases last year of adults grooming children online, more than other social media platforms combined Tech companies including Snapchat and Facebook reported more than 9,600 cases of adults grooming children online in the UK in just six months last year – the equivalent of about 400 a week. Law enforcement agencies,…

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  • How will Australia’s under-16s social media ban be enforced, and which platforms will be exempt?

    No prescribed avenue for social media companies to check users’ ages, but options include facial estimation technology and matching photos with ID Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Australians using a range of social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat and X will need to have their age checked…

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