Group items tagged

"The Register reports that security firm Zscaler was first to spot the app, which presents itself as a normal video playing app, albeit for playing videos of an adult nature. Apparently once it has silently snapped photos of its victim it will display a message on screen demanding that they pay $500 . Otherwise, well... do you want people knowing you've used the app?"

"Social media giant TikTok has announced it will actively ban videos that encourage tanning and add educational content to its platform after alarm from Australian medical experts over the platform's sharing of pro-tanning material. In September, Melanoma Institute Australia co-medical directors Prof Georgina Long and Prof Richard Scolyer, speaking at the National Press Club, took issue with the video-sharing app for its popular #sunburnchallenge hashtag."

"That's because Facebook cracks down on my son, the Bach lover, but seems to allow rampant copyright violations on their reels. These endlessly scrolling videos earn billions of dollars for Silicon Valley-because of their addictive interface. But the apps need an equally endless source of video clips. This forces them to recycle copyrighted material. I'm referring to movie clips, extracts from old TV series, sports highlights, comedy routines, bits of talk show interviews, filmed music performances, and other snippets culled from various entertainment sources."

"The Auschwitz museum has called a new trend, where users of video-sharing app TikTok role-play as Holocaust victims, "hurtful and offensive," but added that it did not want to shame young people involved. The museum at the site of the former Nazi death camp was responding to the point of view videos."

"Hakitzu"

"The verdict against Haneen Hossam, Mowada al-Adham and three others came after they had posted footage on the video-sharing app TikTok. The ruling, which can be appealed, included a fine of 300,000 Egyptian pounds (£14,600) for each defendant."

"Ring is effectively building the largest corporate-owned, civilian-installed surveillance network that the US has ever seen. An estimated 400,000 Ring devices were sold in December 2019 alone, and that was before the across-the-board boom in online retail sales during the pandemic. Amazon is cagey about how many Ring cameras are active at any one point in time, but estimates drawn from Amazon's sales data place yearly sales in the hundreds of millions. The always-on video surveillance network extends even further when you consider the millions of users on Ring's affiliated crime reporting app, Neighbors, which allows people to upload content from Ring and non-Ring devices."

"Britain is expected to announce a ban on the Chinese owned video-sharing app TikTok on government mobile phones imminently, bringing the UK inline with the US and European Commission and reflecting deteriorating relations with Beijing."

"Do screens destroy kids' executive functioning? In short: no. Some types of screen use (in particular, non-educational, 'fantastical' shows) may have short-term impacts on attention, memory, or inhibition. But these effects don't seem to be long-term, unless screen use is excessive and interfering with other important activities. And some screens (educational apps, certain video games) may actually improve executive functioning skills. "

"If someone sees the police approaching, they can press a button on their phone to start recording. Footage is uploaded in real time to the cloud using military-grade encryption, so that if the phone is damaged or confiscated during an interaction with police, the footage is preserved."

"The girl, 14, opened her phone to show an explicit image of herself. "It's a shock when you see it," said Adib, a gynaecologist in the southern Spanish town of Almendralejo and a mother of four daughters. "The image is completely realistic … If I didn't know my daughter's body, I would have thought that image was real." It was a deepfake, one of dozens of nude images of schoolgirls in Almendralejo that had been generated by artificial intelligence (AI) and which had been circulating in the town for weeks in a WhatsApp group set up by other schoolchildren."

"The app, using Solid's decentralized technology, allows Berners-Lee to access all of his data seamlessly-his calendar, his music library, videos, chat, research. It's like a mashup of Google Drive, Microsoft Outlook, Slack, Spotify, and WhatsApp."

"Egyptian police on Tuesday arrested a Tiktok star who has been sentenced to 10 years imprisonment for her posts on social media. Haneen Hossam, a 20-year-old Cairo University student who became an influencer on video sharing app Tiktok, was sentenced in absentia on Sunday alongside four others."

"Four U.S. senators today urged the Federal Trade Commission to investigate claims that the very popular video app TikTok, which is owned by a company tied to China's military and government, violated a consent decree to protect children's privacy."

"If you open any social media app, you're likely to eventually come across videos of people discussing trauma. The hashtag TraumaTok has billions of views... Technology Reporter Ariel Bogle investigates how trauma took over the internet, and what effect it's having on our mental health."

"TikTok has been fined £12.7m for illegally processing the data of 1.4 million children under 13 who were using its platform without parental consent, Britain's data watchdog said. The information commissioner said the China-owned video app had done "very little, if anything" to check who was using the platform and remove underage users, despite internal warnings the firm was flouting its own terms and conditions."

"Nearly half of three to four year-olds (48 per cent) were reported by their parent or guardian in the Ofcom survey to have used apps or sites to send messages or make video or voice calls. Those who did mainly used WhatsApp (25 per cent) and Facetime (19 per cent). "It's likely that children of this age were receiving help with these communication activities as they are still developing basic reading and writing skills," said Ofcom. The disclosures prompted a warning by Dame Rachel de Souza, the children's commissioner, that young children should not have internet-enabled phones because of the risk of them accessing harmful content."