Ofcom concerned TikTok’s age verification is ineffective, leaving some exposed to posts on suicide, self-harm and pornography
TikTok is under formal investigation over concerns it has failed to protect children from harmful content, the UK’s online regulator, Ofcom, has announced.
The social media platform’s approach to checking the ages of users has sparked “particular concerns” at the watchdog, almost a year after measures to protect children from the worst of online content came into effect under the Online Safety Act.
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Psychologist Candice Odgers has studied adolescent mental health for 25 years. She fears the current debate around smartphones obscures some of the biggest issues facing teenagers – from the impact of Covid to the health of their adult caregivers
The quickest way to make being online safer for children and teens would be to kick all adult men off the internet, the Canadian psychologist Candice Odgers believes. Men are the biggest perpetrators of sextortion and most likely to spread misinformation, she says.
Odgers is not recommending this as a policy for governments to adopt: “That would be crazy, right? It would be unfair.” But she is on a drive to puncture the prevailing narrative that the best way to address online harms is a social media ban for teenagers.
The first tweets from the public appeared on July 15, 2006, several months after a soft launch. It was rebranded as X after being acquired by Elon Musk.
This week, the Coalition for Independent Technology Research (CITR) won a key battle in its fight to reverse a visa-restriction policy that the Trump administration had used to attempt to revoke green cards and deport non-US citizens who work on misinformation, disinformation, fact-checking, content moderation, compliance, and trust and safety.
In an opinion published Tuesday, US District Judge James Boasberg granted a preliminary injunction blocking the State Department from enforcing the policy until the CITR’s lawsuit is resolved.
On its face, the policy does not require visa denials or deportations. Instead, it authorizes immigration investigations into individuals suspected of helping foreign adversaries attempt to manipulate public opinion by suppressing US speech.
All the young people the Guardian spoke to disagreed with aspects of the government’s proposed block
Sixteen- and 17-year-olds in Britain are to be encouraged to observe a midnight to 6am social media curfew but will be able to opt out by changing their account settings.
From next spring, they will be urged to refrain from using certain apps, with the block being switched on by default. But the curfew will not be mandatory and can be overridden.
A comunidade foi criada por David Polgar, um advogado e ativista do uso responsável da tecnologia. A All Tech Is Human procura quem queira juntar-se à iniciativa e criar um futuro melhor.
Anthony Albanese has promised “the strongest possible protection” for Australian creatives against misuse of their work by artificial intelligence models, warning it would be “theft” if writers, artists and musicians didn’t have control of their work or receive payment for its use.
Amid growing community concern about large energy-intensive datacentres, the federal government will also set strict new rules for the facilities, including where they can be built, that they shouldn’t compete for land with housing, their power and water use, and that they don’t increase electricity prices for consumers.
A new genus and species of lambeosaurine hadrosaurid dinosaur has been identified in southern Alberta, Canada, dating back 77 million years to the Campanian age of the Cretaceous period.
The strange grin of the Happy-Face spider has been spotted far from the Hawaiian Islands, its only previously known home, much to scientists’ surprise.
In a recent paper published in Evolutionary Systematics, researchers from the Forest Research Institute and the Regional Museum of Natural History have found a spider bearing the unmistakable grin in Uttarakhand, India’s Montane mountains.
The researchers call it the Himalayan Happy-Face spider, Theridion himalayan, named for the unexpected combination of its highly recognizable markings and strange new location.
Finding the Happy-Face Spider
As with many scientific discoveries, the Himalayan Happy-Face Spider was discovered entirely by accident; the researchers, Ashirwad Tripathy and Devi Priyadarshini, were initially focused on the region’s ants.
“So, one fine day, when he shared this image from the underside of a Daphniphyllum leaf, I froze in shock because I had seen the Hawaiian spider during my master’s program itself, and I knew instantly we had a jackpot because of its striking resemblance,” said Priyadarshini, a researcher with the Regional Museum of Natural History in Bhubaneswar, and the co-author of a new study deatiling the discovery.
“I asked him to send all morphs that he found, and that led to the discovery in the next few months, from October 2023 onwards.”
According to Priyadarshini, she has always been interested in high-altitude spiders because the significant differences in landscape and vegetation in these regions compared with low-altitude plains offer “a gateway to look at other polymorphic species from this region.”
Examples of mature male (left) and female (right) Himalayan Smiley-Face spiders. Credit: Devi Priyadarshini and Ashirwad Tripathy
Himalayan Spider Species
According to Tripathy, this discovery may only be the beginning for the documentation of Himalayan Happy-Face spiders, as more variations may be identified in future surveys.
“The name Himalayana was decided as the species name because we both wanted to pay our respects to the mighty Himalaya mountain ranges, which have been standing tall not just guarding our country but also holding a plethora of biodiversity within them, said co-author Ashirwad Tripathy, of the Forest Research Institute in Dehradun. “Since this spider was the first polymorphic from this region, we decided to make it an ode to the amazing mountain ranges.”
So far, the species has been found in three locations around Uttarakhand, including Makku, Tala, and Mandal, yielding 32 distinct color variations. In their investigation, the researchers conducted a DNA analysis of the new species, discovering that it differed by approximately 8.5% from the previously known Hawaiian Happy-Face spider. This indicates that the Himalayan version evolved independently.
Mysterious Markings
While the markings are fascinating, perhaps partially due to a certain amount of pareidolia in humans, the researchers are uncertain exactly why the spiders evolved to feature them. Notably, other creatures in the region bear similar colorful body markings.
“The reason behind the expression of polymorphism is also very complex and unique,” Priyadarshini explained. “These patterns definitely help them survive better in the wild, which is understood prima facie, but why do they resort to such patterns on their back, and what functional role in their life cycle does it exactly serve is yet to be deciphered. This is definitely indicative of a deeper genetic mystery.”
One strange connection between the Hawaiian and Himalayan varieties was their shared propensity to cling to ginger plants. This is especially notable because ginger is not native to Hawaii, suggesting an evolutionary connection between the species.
“How did the spiders choose an invasive species and ginger exactly?” Priyadarshini asks, noting this adds an unusual layer to the mystery, especially “if T. himalayana is an elder cousin of T. grallator, although discovered 125 years later!”
“Although this sounds like a tall claim now, it will be our further scope of work to establish any missing links,” Priyadarshini adds.
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.
Does intelligent life exist elsewhere in the universe? The question has captivated us for centuries, but despite decades of searching it remains frustratingly unanswered. Every so often a curious signal appears — fossilized structures in a meteorite, say, or an unusual gas in an exoplanet’s atmosphere — and for a moment it seems possible that we are not alone before the excitement gives way to a…
TikTok's For You Page (FYP) is the default home screen for users of the video-sharing platform. It's a personalized, algorithmically driven content feed, but the approach differs from other social media in that TikTok's algorithm relies heavily on implicit signals—such as how long users watch particular videos—as well as explicit signals such as likes or follows. And generally, that algorithm does remarkably well at predicting which videos will interest particular users.
But some users have voiced concerns that TikTok's almighty algorithm doesn't seem to incorporate negative feedback very well. Even when they don't watch a suggested video or click the "not interested" feature, they keep seeing those videos on their FYP. Northeastern University computer scientists put those suspicions to the test. According to their recent paper, the engagement signals do have an effect, but only temporarily. Then the algorithm gradually relapses unless a user consistently gives the same feedback over and over again.
The research group specializes in "algorithm audits," co-author Piotr Sapiezynski told Ars, to better understand online platforms: "how they work, how they fail, when they fail, how they harm individuals and societies." In this case, he and his co-authors wanted to take a closer look at user agency after hearing multiple anecdotal reports from TikTok users that their negative feedback—responding to prompts by indicating they aren't interested or want to see less of a certain kind of video—doesn't seem to remove those posts from their FYP. "On the other hand, it's unclear why the platforms would offer it, if it doesn't work," said Sapiezynski.