Connect with us

News

Malaysia to Hold Meta Platforms Accountable for Harmful Content

Malaysia’s government announced Friday that it will sue Facebook and Instagram’s’ parent company, Meta Platforms, for failing to delete objectionable and damaging content from its social networking platform.

According to the Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission, Facebook has recently been troubled by “a significant volume of undesirable content” concerning sensitive themes such as race, religion, and royalty, as well as defamation, impersonation, online gambling, and scam marketing.

The commission stated that numerous attempts to contact Meta to delete damaging content were futile.

Meta’s response, which has been sluggish and unsatisfactory, has not met the urgency of the matter and has led to increasing public concern and scrutiny,” the organisation said in a statement. “Because Meta has not provided sufficient cooperation, MCMC has no choice but to take definitive steps or legal action against Meta as a measure to ensure people’s physical security and protection.”

meta, malaysia

The commission stated that it will not accept the use of online platforms and telecommunications services for “malicious cyber activities, phishing, or any content that threatens racial stability, social harmony, or defies respect for rulers.” Malaysia has nine ethnic Malay state monarchs, whose position is mostly ceremonial but held in high regard by the Malay majority of the country.

Earlier this month, the government threatened Telegram with legal action because it failed to help with investigations into complaints about content and misuse of the service, including the selling of pornographic materials, drugs, and investment frauds. According to local media, Telegram scams have cost Malaysians 45 million ringgit ($9.6 million) since January 2020.

Telegram first stated that it would not engage in “any form of political censorship,” but later agreed to collaborate with local authorities to combat illegal activity.

The move against online platforms comes at the same time as six critical state elections that must be held by the end of August. While state elections have little bearing on the federal administration, they are closely monitored since they will be the first test of popular support for Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s unity government, which was created following a tumultuous general election in November.

Anwar is up against the Islamic-dominated National Alliance, which received unexpectedly high support from Malays in the November election. The National Alliance is expecting for another strong showing in the six state elections and has been fiercely criticising Anwar’s government on social media.

Meta’s Instagram and its network of pedophiles

Meanwhile, according to a Wall Street Journal exposé, Meta’s Instagram suggestion algorithms have enabled a “vast” network of pedophiles seeking illicit underage sexual content and activities.

The Journal reported in a 2,800-word story that it investigated child pornography on Meta-owned Instagram in partnership with experts at Stanford and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

“Pedophiles have long used the internet, but unlike forums and file-transfer services that cater to people interested in illicit content, Instagram does more than just host these activities.” Its algorithms encourage them,” according to the Journal. “Through recommendation systems that excel at connecting those who share niche interests, Instagram connects paedophiles and guides them to content sellers.”

According to a Meta representative, the firm is “continuously exploring ways to actively defend against this behaviour, and we set up an internal task force to investigate these claims and immediately address them.” Meta admitted that the firm received reports of child sexual abuse in some cases but did not act on them, alleging a software problem that prevented them from being processed (which Meta claims has since been addressed). Furthermore, “we provided updated guidance to our content reviewers to more easily identify and remove predatory accounts,” according to a Meta representative.

“Child exploitation is a heinous crime.” “We fight it aggressively on and off our platforms, and we support law enforcement in their efforts to arrest and prosecute the criminals behind it,” the representative said in a statement. “Predators’ tactics in their pursuit of harming children are constantly changing, which is why we have strict policies and technology in place to prevent them from finding or interacting with teens on our apps, and we hire specialist teams who focus on understanding their evolving behaviours so we can eliminate abusive networks.”

According to Meta, its policy enforcement teams “dismantled 27 abusive networks” between 2020 and 2022, and in January 2023, more than 490,000 accounts were disabled for breaking child-safety standards. According to the business, as of the fourth quarter of 2022, Meta’s technology had eliminated more than 34 million pieces of child sexual exploitation content from Facebook and Instagram, with more than 98% of it discovered before it was reported by users.

According to the Journal, “technical and legal obstacles make determining the full scale of the [paedophile] network [on Instagram] difficult for anyone outside Meta to precisely measure.” The Stanford Internet Observatory research team was cited in the article for identifying 405 sellers of “self-generated” child-sex material (accounts apparently controlled by children themselves) utilising hashtags linked with underage sex. The WSJ piece also quoted data produced by network mapping programme Maltego, which revealed that 112 of those identities had a total of 22,000 unique followers.

According to the Journal, Instagram profiles that seek to sell illicit sex material “generally don’t publish it openly” and frequently link to “off-platform content trading sites.”

According to the study, researchers discovered that Instagram allowed anyone to search “explicit hashtags such as #pedowhore and #preteensex” and then connect them to accounts that advertised child-sex material for sale. According to the Journal, when researchers accessed a single such account, their test accounts “were immediately hit with’suggested for you’ recommendations of purported child-sex-content sellers and buyers, as well as accounts linking to off-platform content trading sites.” Following only a few of these tips was enough to fill a test account with child-sexualizing content.”

Furthermore, certain Instagram accounts “invite buyers to commission specific acts,” with some “menus” listing prices for videos of children harming themselves or “imagery of the minor performing sexual acts with animals,” according to the Journal report, which cites Stanford Internet Observatory researchers’ findings.

“At the right price, children are available for in-person’meet ups,'” according to the Journal.

According to the Journal, Snapchat and TikTok, among other internet sites, do not appear to support networks of paedophiles seeking child-abuse content in the same manner that Instagram does.

The Stanford Internet Observatory team identified 128 accounts on Twitter seeking to sell child-sex-abuse content; according to the researchers, Twitter did not encourage such accounts to the same extent as Instagram, and Twitter also terminated such accounts “far more quickly,” according to the Journal. (An email to Twitter’s press account requesting comment resulted in an autoreply with a faeces emoji.)

 

News

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding, But Still Accounting 48% Search Revenue

Google

Google is so closely associated with its key product that its name is a verb that signifies “search.” However, Google’s dominance in that sector is dwindling.

According to eMarketer, Google will lose control of the US search industry for the first time in decades next year.

Google will remain the dominant search player, accounting for 48% of American search advertising revenue. And, remarkably, Google is still increasing its sales in the field, despite being the dominating player in search since the early days of the George W. Bush administration. However, Amazon is growing at a quicker rate.

google

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

Amazon will hold over a quarter of US search ad dollars next year, rising to 27% by 2026, while Google will fall even more, according to eMarketer.

The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the forecast.

Lest you think you’ll have to switch to Bing or Yahoo, this isn’t the end of Google or anything really near.

Google is the fourth-most valued public firm in the world. Its market worth is $2.1 trillion, trailing just Apple, Microsoft, and the AI chip darling Nvidia. It also maintains its dominance in other industries, such as display advertisements, where it dominates alongside Facebook’s parent firm Meta, and video ads on YouTube.

To put those “other” firms in context, each is worth more than Delta Air Lines’ total market value. So, yeah, Google is not going anywhere.

Nonetheless, Google faces numerous dangers to its operations, particularly from antitrust regulators.

On Monday, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that Google must open up its Google Play Store to competitors, dealing a significant blow to the firm in its long-running battle with Fortnite creator Epic Games. Google announced that it would appeal the verdict.

In August, a federal judge ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly on search. That verdict could lead to the dissolution of the company’s search operation. Another antitrust lawsuit filed last month accuses Google of abusing its dominance in the online advertising business.

Meanwhile, European regulators have compelled Google to follow tough new standards, which have resulted in multiple $1 billion-plus fines.

google

Pixa Bay

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

On top of that, the marketplace is becoming more difficult on its own.

TikTok, the fastest-growing social network, is expanding into the search market. And Amazon has accomplished something few other digital titans have done to date: it has established a habit.

When you want to buy anything, you usually go to Amazon, not Google. Amazon then buys adverts to push companies’ products to the top of your search results, increasing sales and earning Amazon a greater portion of the revenue. According to eMarketer, it is expected to generate $27.8 billion in search revenue in the United States next year, trailing only Google’s $62.9 billion total.

And then there’s AI, the technology that (supposedly) will change everything.

Why search in stilted language for “kendall jenner why bad bunny breakup” or “police moving violation driver rights no stop sign” when you can just ask OpenAI’s ChatGPT, “What’s going on with Kendall Jenner and Bad Bunny?” in “I need help fighting a moving violation involving a stop sign that wasn’t visible.” Google is working on exactly this technology with its Gemini product, but its success is far from guaranteed, especially with Apple collaborating with OpenAI and other businesses rapidly joining the market.

A Google spokeswoman referred to a blog post from last week in which the company unveiled ads in its AI overviews (the AI-generated text that appears at the top of search results). It’s Google’s way of expressing its ability to profit on a changing marketplace while retaining its business, even as its consumers steadily transition to ask-and-answer AI and away from search.

google

Google has long used a single catchphrase to defend itself against opponents who claim it is a monopoly abusing its power: competition is only a click away. Until recently, that seemed comically obtuse. Really? We are going to switch to Bing? Or Duck Duck Go? Give me a break.

But today, it feels more like reality.

Google is in no danger of disappearing. However, every highly dominating company faces some type of reckoning over time. GE, a Dow mainstay for more than a century, was broken up last year and is now a shell of its previous dominance. Sears declared bankruptcy in 2022 and is virtually out of business. US Steel, long the foundation of American manufacturing, is attempting to sell itself to a Japanese corporation.

Could we remember Google in the same way that we remember Yahoo or Ask Jeeves in decades? These next few years could be significant.

SOURCE | CNN

Continue Reading

News

2024 | Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

trump

Washington — Trump Media,  The Supreme Court announced Monday that it will not hear an appeal from social media platform X about a search warrant acquired by prosecutors in the election meddling case against former President Donald Trump.

The justices did not explain their rationale, and there were no recorded dissents.

The firm, which was known as Twitter before being purchased by billionaire Elon Musk, claims a nondisclosure order that prevented it from informing Trump about the warrant obtained by special counsel Jack Smith’s team violated its First Amendment rights.

The business also claims Trump should have had an opportunity to exercise executive privilege. If not reined in, the government may employ similar tactics to intercept additional privileged communications, their lawyers contended.

trump

Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

Two neutral electronic privacy groups also joined in, urging the high court to hear the case on First Amendment grounds.

Prosecutors, however, claim that the corporation never shown that Trump utilized the account for official purposes, therefore executive privilege is not a problem. A lower court also determined that informing Trump could have compromised the current probe.

trump

Trump utilized his Twitter account in the weeks preceding up to his supporters’ attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, to spread false assertions about the election, which prosecutors claim were intended to create doubt in the democratic process.

The indictment describes how Trump used his Twitter account to encourage his followers to travel to Washington on Jan. 6, pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to reject the certification, and falsely claiming that the Capitol crowd, which battered police officers and destroyed glass, was peaceful.

musk trump

Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

That case is now moving forward following the Supreme Court’s verdict in July, which granted Trump full immunity from criminal prosecution as a former president.

The warrant arrived at Twitter amid quick changes implemented by Musk, who bought the company in 2022 and has since cut off most of its workforce, including those dedicated to combating disinformation and hate speech.

He also welcomed back a vast list of previously banned users, including Trump, and endorsed him for the 2024 presidential election.

SOURCE | AP

Continue Reading

News

The Supreme Court Turns Down Biden’s Government Appeal in a Texas Emergency Abortion Matter.

Supreme Court

(VOR News) – A ruling that prohibits emergency abortions that contravene the Supreme Court law in the state of Texas, which has one of the most stringent abortion restrictions in the country, has been upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States. The United States Supreme Court upheld this decision.

The justices did not provide any specifics regarding the underlying reasons for their decision to uphold an order from a lower court that declared hospitals cannot be legally obligated to administer abortions if doing so would violate the law in the state of Texas.

Institutions are not required to perform abortions, as stipulated in the decree. The common populace did not investigate any opposing viewpoints. The decision was made just weeks before a presidential election that brought abortion to the forefront of the political agenda.

This decision follows the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that ended abortion nationwide.

In response to a request from the administration of Vice President Joe Biden to overturn the lower court’s decision, the justices expressed their disapproval.

The government contends that hospitals are obligated to perform abortions in compliance with federal legislation when the health or life of an expectant patient is in an exceedingly precarious condition.

This is the case in regions where the procedure is prohibited. The difficulty hospitals in Texas and other states are experiencing in determining whether or not routine care could be in violation of stringent state laws that prohibit abortion has resulted in an increase in the number of complaints concerning pregnant women who are experiencing medical distress being turned away from emergency rooms.

The administration cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in a case that bore a striking resemblance to the one that was presented to it in Idaho at the beginning of the year. The justices took a limited decision in that case to allow the continuation of emergency abortions without interruption while a lawsuit was still being heard.

In contrast, Texas has been a vocal proponent of the injunction’s continued enforcement. Texas has argued that its circumstances are distinct from those of Idaho, as the state does have an exemption for situations that pose a significant hazard to the health of an expectant patient.

According to the state, the discrepancy is the result of this exemption. The state of Idaho had a provision that safeguarded a woman’s life when the issue was first broached; however, it did not include protection for her health.

Certified medical practitioners are not obligated to wait until a woman’s life is in imminent peril before they are legally permitted to perform an abortion, as determined by the state supreme court.

The state of Texas highlighted this to the Supreme Court.

Nevertheless, medical professionals have criticized the Texas statute as being perilously ambiguous, and a medical board has declined to provide a list of all the disorders that are eligible for an exception. Furthermore, the statute has been criticized for its hazardous ambiguity.

For an extended period, termination of pregnancies has been a standard procedure in medical treatment for individuals who have been experiencing significant issues. It is implemented in this manner to prevent catastrophic outcomes, such as sepsis, organ failure, and other severe scenarios.

Nevertheless, medical professionals and hospitals in Texas and other states with strict abortion laws have noted that it is uncertain whether or not these terminations could be in violation of abortion prohibitions that include the possibility of a prison sentence. This is the case in regions where abortion prohibitions are exceedingly restrictive.

Following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which resulted in restrictions on the rights of women to have abortions in several Republican-ruled states, the Texas case was revisited in 2022.

As per the orders that were disclosed by the administration of Vice President Joe Biden, hospitals are still required to provide abortions in cases that are classified as dire emergency.

As stipulated in a piece of health care legislation, the majority of hospitals are obligated to provide medical assistance to patients who are experiencing medical distress. This is in accordance with the law.

The state of Texas maintained that hospitals should not be obligated to provide abortions throughout the litigation, as doing so would violate the state’s constitutional prohibition on abortions. In its January judgment, the 5th United States Circuit Court of Appeals concurred with the state and acknowledged that the administration had exceeded its authority.

SOURCE: AP

SEE ALSO:

Could Last-Minute Surprises Derail Kamala Harris’ Campaign? “Nostradamus” Explains the US Poll.

Scientists Awarded MicroRNA The Nobel Prize in Medicine.

US Inflation will Comfort a Fed Focused on Labor Markets.

Continue Reading

Trending