The government announced today that it would add an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill requiring platforms to "remove this content no more than 48 hours after it is flagged to them." Platforms that do not do so would potentially face fines of 10 percent of "qualifying worldwide income" or have their services blocked in the UK. The amendment follows outrage over the Elon Musk-owned chatbot Grok's willingness to generate nude or sexualized images of people, mainly women and girls, which forced a climbdown
The European Union has opened a formal investigation into Shein after French regulators found listings for "child-like sex dolls" on the retail platform last year. The investigation will assess whether the systems Shein is using to curb illegal product sales are compliant with the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA), according to the European Commission, including "content which could constitute child sexual abuse material."
Now platforms have three hours to remove content requested by authorities. Previously, they had a 36-hour window to take down such content. Under India's IT rules, authorities can order the removal of content deemed illegal under any of its laws, including those related to national security and public order. India's new rules require labelling of AI content It will also be mandatory for platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and YouTube to clearly label what the government calls "synthetically generated information."
On the veranda of her family's home, with her laptop balanced on a mud slab built into the wall, Monsumi Murmu works from one of the few places where the mobile signal holds. The familiar sounds of domestic life come from inside the house: clinking utensils, footsteps, voices. On her screen a very different scene plays: a woman is pinned down by a group of men, the camera shakes, there is shouting and the sound of breathing.
"Bound by Honor," billed as a "top series" on ReelShort, opens with a young woman being drugged and coerced into marriage. In "Divorced at the Wedding Day," a "popular" pick on DramaBox, a pregnant widow is whipped and pushed onto broken glass at an engagement party before being locked up in a crate. ReelShort and Disney-backed DramaBox are the market leaders in the rising category of micro dramas, made-for-mobile soaps that feature fast-paced action and wild plots.
When WIRED attempted to post a link on Facebook, we received a message that read: "Posts that look like spam according to our Community Guidelines are blocked on Facebook and can't be edited." Hours later, however, that message was updated to read: "Your content couldn't be shared, because this link goes against our Community Standards." The message linked to Meta's Community Standards homepage rather than a specific part of those rules.
The European Commission, the bloc's governing body, said on Monday that it had opened a formal investigation into X over the spread of illegal images, including possible child sexual abuse material, generated by Grok on the platform. The Commission said it would also extend an ongoing investigation into X's recommendation algorithm, with the regulator previously fining the social media platform $140 million over its "deceptive" blue checkmarks.
After the week-long Twitter backlash which received over 50,000 tweets under the hashtag #FBrape, Facebook agreed to update its policies, releasing a statement acknowledging that its systems to monitor and remove gender-based hate speech had failed. The backlash prompted 15 major advertisers, including Nissan and Nationwide, to suspend their Facebook marketing campaigns, and highlighted some of the issues brands potentially face when it comes to online advertising.
After months of negotiations, TikTok finalized a deal with several US-based investors days before the next deadline, after which TikTok would have allegedly been banned in the US. Today, TikTok was finally divested from ByteDance, which retains a 20% stake, while the other 80% is split between Oracle, Silver Lake, MGX and others. Each of those three companies gets a 15% stake.
Your YouTube Shorts feed might soon be filled with a lot more AI-generated content from your favorite creators - including AI-generated versions of the creators themselves. In his annual letter released today, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan says that sometime this year, creators will be able to make Shorts using their "own likeness." Mohan didn't share further details about these likenesses. "We'll have more to share soon, including the launch date and how the feature will work," according to YouTube spokesperson Boot Bullwinkle.
OpenAI has added age prediction features to ChatGPT, meant to identify and bolster protections for underage users. These age detection plans were announced in December alongside updated guidelines for interacting with teens, and follow a rise in similar age-gating efforts from online platforms, including Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and Roblox. ChatGPT's age prediction model works by examining behavioral and account-level signals, including a user's stated age, how old the account is, when the user is active, and usage patterns over time.
The case being reviewed isn't exactly one of an everyday user. Instead, the case involves a high-profile Instagram user who repeatedly violated Meta's Community Standards by posting visual threats of violence against a female journalist, anti-gay slurs against politicians, content depicting a sex act, allegations of misconduct against minorities, and more. The account had not accumulated enough strikes to be automatically disabled, but Meta made the decision to permanently ban the account.
According to XCreators, the initiative is designed to encourage creators to produce high-quality, original content that sparks conversation, breaks news and shapes culture. The winning article must be original, a minimum of 1,000 words and will be primarily judged based on Verified Home Timeline impressions. The official announcement states that content that violates X's policies or is hateful, fraudulent, or manipulative will not be taken into consideration, and that only users in the United States are eligible.
In the past, the degree of graphic or descriptive detail was not considered a significant factor in determining advertiser friendliness, even for some dramatized material, Consequently, such uploads typically received a yellow dollar icon, which restricted their ability to be fully monetized. With this week's update, our guidelines are becoming more permissive, and creators will be able to earn more ad revenue.
Unlike most people, fainting at work is a rite of passage; she moderates videos on social media that have been reported for violating the terms of service. That means watching everything from horrible porn to horrible politics to horrible accidents and everything in between, a non-stop diet of videos with titles such as fetus in blender or strangulation but she doesn't die.
