"TikTok moderators have struggled to assess content related to the Israel-Gaza conflict because the platform removed an internal tool for flagging videos in a foreign language, the Guardian has been told.
The change has meant moderators in Europe cannot flag that they do not understand foreign-language videos, for example, in Arabic and Hebrew, which are understood to be appearing more frequently in video queues.
The Guardian was told that moderators hired to work in English previously had access to a button to state that a video or post was not in their language.
Internal documents seen by the Guardian show the button was called "not my language", or "foreign language"."
"Facebook has blocked and in some cases banned users who tried to share a Guardian article about the site incorrectly blocking an image of Aboriginal men in chains.
On Saturday, Guardian Australia reported that Facebook had apologised for incorrectly preventing an Australian user from sharing the photo from the 1890s."
"If there is nowhere to hide, how can disagreements safely ferment in political life, at work, in relationships? By definition, change disturbs something or annoys someone. And, moving to paranoia, or full awareness, the age-old question arises: who will guard us from the guardians?"
"It comes as a Guardian investigation reveals the human stories behind scams that originate on Meta's platforms, with a nationwide estimate released this week predicting the tech firm's failure to stamp out fraud will cost UK households £250m during 2023.
With someone in the UK said to fall victim to a purchase scam starting on either Facebook or Instagram every seven minutes, the Guardian asked people who had been defrauded on these sites as well as its WhatsApp platform to get in touch.
One Facebook user told us she was defrauded of her life savings and got pulled into debt, losing a total of £70,000, after being duped by an investment scam. While some people lost large amounts of money, a stream of unsuspecting online shoppers reported being conned out of smaller amounts when they placed orders with bogus online shops advertised on Facebook and Instagram."
"Instagram has been used to promote sexual violence and exploitation by people advertising themselves as "pimps", a Guardian investigation has found.
For the past year, the Guardian has been tracking Instagram accounts hosting content that advocates such activity as well as those that encourage violence against the women under the control of a pimp - someone who makes money from selling others for sex.
The accounts identified often use hashtags as well as code phrases commonly associated with sex work to make it easier for buyers to locate them."
"UK's electronic eavesdropping and security agency, GCHQ, has been secretly gathering intelligence from the world's biggest internet companies through a covertly run operation set up by America's top spy agency, documents obtained by the Guardian reveal."
The Home Office, which funded the creation of the £1.25m facility seven years ago
So famed has central London's surveillance network become that figures released yesterday revealed that more than 6,000 officials from 30 countries have come to learn lessons from the centre.
Dean Ingledew, the council's director of community protection, said that to safeguard privacy a team of amateur auditors regularly comes to the control room, unannounced, to inspect the tapes
Defending the searching gaze of London's cameras, Ingledew said that people who do not look as though they are doing anything wrong will be left alone.
Tesco is building up its assault on telephone and broadband firms with plans for hundreds of new in-store telecoms outlets and discounted packages of internet and landline services.
Bosses announced a five-year deal with Cable & Wireless for it to supply Tesco with wholesale broadband services
It now plans to double its number of phone shops to 200 by the end of 2010
"TikTok faces questions over safeguards for child users after a Guardian investigation found that moderators were being told to allow under-13s to stay on the platform if they claimed their parents were overseeing their accounts."
"The UK is not Russia. For all that the many civil liberty campaigners will complain, as is their role, the independence of the judiciary remains strong. The laws relating to freedom of association, expression and right to privacy are well defended in parliament and outside.
But the technology, the means by which the state might insert itself into our lives, is developing apace. The checks and balances are not. The Guardian has revealed that the government is legislating, without fanfare, to allow the police and the National Crime Agency to run facial recognition searches across the UK's driving licence records. When the police have an image, they will be able to identify the person, it is hoped, through the photographic images the state holds for the purposes of ensuring that the roads are safe.
Searching those digital images would have taken more man-hours than could have been justified in the old analogue world. It is now a matter of pushing a button, thanks to the wonders of artificial intelligence systems that are able to match biometric measurements in a flash."
"David Davis MP, a former shadow home secretary, told the Guardian he has established that police will be able to access the health records of patients when investigating serious crimes even if they had opted out of the new database, which will hold the entire population's medical data in a single repository for the first time from May."
"There is no quick technical fix that will protect children - it needs education, responsible parenting and more resources for enforcing the laws that already exist.
Dr Martyn Thomas
Institution of Engineering and Technology"
"Facebook enables advertisers to promote content to nearly 900,000 people interested in "vaccine controversies", the Guardian has found.
Other groups of people that advertisers can pay to reach on Facebook include those interested in "Dr Tenpenny on Vaccines", which refers to anti-vaccine activist Sherri Tenpenny, and "informed consent", which is language that anti-vaccine propagandists have adopted to fight vaccination laws."
"The standards by which the internet is controlled need to be open and subject to the workings of impartial judiciaries. But the task cannot and will not be left to the advertising companies that at present control most of the content - and whose own judgments are themselves almost wholly opaque and arbitrary."
""Robots are a great educational tool for children. It inspires them to learn about science and engineering," Sharkey told the Guardian in March. "But there are significant dangers in having robots mind our children. They do not have the sensitivity or understanding needed for childcare." "
"Xiao Long, or "Little Dragon", is not your typical employee - she's a robot at China's first fully automated, human-free bank branch.
As guardian of the bank, she talks to customers, takes bank cards and checks accounts (she comes complete with a PIN pad) and can answer basic questions. After a quick initial chat with Xiao Long, customers pass through electronic gates where their faces and ID cards are scanned. On future visits, facial recognition alone is enough to open the gates and call up customer information."