Social Networks

There has been a “dramatic increase” in the censorship of Palestinian political speech on social media over the past two weeks, during the period of intense fighting between Israel and militants in Gaza.Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have all been used by Palestinians to share information from, among a variety of areas, the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah where families face eviction.However the report from 7amleh, The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media, shared exclusively with The Independent, argues that social media companies’ moderation attempts and codes of conduct have resulted in numerous citizens’ accounts being taken down.It comes in the context of huge criticism surrounding the Israeli government’s military decisions, which include displacing 52,000 Palestinians via air strikes, causing the deaths of numerous children, bombing the Associated Press and Al Jazeera building, and, on social media, the bizarrely flippant tone of its Twitter account.Overnight, Israel and Hamas have since entered a “mutual and simultaneous” truce, after Israel’s security cabinet agreed to put an end to heavy bombardment which has killed more than 230 Palestinians.Twelve people have been killed In Israel, including two children and a soldier. The Israeli military said 4,340 rockets were fired at Israel by…

Streamer QTCinderella recently discussed some of the unwanted sexualization women on Twitch are subjected to. Surprisingly, the streamer revealed that she spends $2500 per month to have sexualized posts of herself removed from websites like Tumblr. According to the streamer, these are innocuous photos that have been doctored. QTCinderella says that figure is more than she brings in each month in ad revenue. The streamer was quick to point out that she thinks it's a small number of her viewers that do things like this. A video of the moment was shared by Pogger's Clips and can be found at the top of this page."If someone doesn’t wanna be sexualized, why do you have to sexualize her? Like why?" the streamer asked.The streamer's question highlights some of the issues that tend to plague women in gaming. A recent survey conducted by Lenovo and Reach3 Insights found that 77% of women gamers polled dealt with harassment related to their gender. That figure comes from a single survey of 900 women, but QTCinderella's stream further solidifies that reality.QTCinderella's thoughts on the topic were prompted while discussing a photo Ludwig Ahgren recently shared to Twitter. In the photo, Ludwig's butt is displayed in…

Russian internet watchdog Roskomnadzor has decided not to block Twitter after the US company deleted over 90% of the material the state organ had objected to, the organ said in a press release on May 15. Roskomnadzor said it had “positively assessed” Twitter’s efforts to comply with Russian law, which prohibits the publication material including child pornography, drug use and instructions on how to commit suicide that it accused Twitter of hosting. After the initial warning that the service could be blocked, Roskomnadzor narrowed the bandwidth available to Twitter in Russia from March 10 after the company refused to comply. Although that had little effect on the speed that short text messages can be transmitted, it did slow the download of pictures and video, users reported. The watchdog had threatened to fully block the site on May 15 if Twitter had not made substantial progress in deleting the offending posts. The state censor has now decided that such a move is unnecessary and the US company has largely complied with the requests. According to RKN, over 91% of the posts have been removed. The agency will thus return normal service to Twitter on computers, but it will continue to slow…

Earlier this month, we got some information about how WhatsApp’s chat migration and sync feature might work across multiple devices. Now, details of how the messaging platform could further improve the feature have emerged. WABetaInfo — a website dedicated to hunting for new WhatsApp features — reports that the Facebook-owned service might soon let users transfer their chats to a different phone number. Currently, if you want to restore a backup of your WhatsApp chats, your phone needs to have the same number and operating system as your older device. While chat migration from Android to iOS is already in testing, WhatsApp may also be looking to enable users to move their messages to a new phone number. A screenshot from WhatsApp’s iOS-Android migration tool shows an option to transfer chats to a different phone number. It also shows that you won’t be able to migrate chat history at any time. You can only start the process when you link a new Android phone to your WhatsApp account. Along with your chats, WhatsApp will also migrate media files to the alternate phone number. The process to change your WhatsApp phone number should begin before you start migrating your chat history.…

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - FEBRUARY 21: (L-R) Jimin, Jungkook, RM, J-Hope, V, Jin, and SUGA of the K-pop ... boy band BTS visit the "Today" Show at Rockefeller Plaza on February 21, 2020 in New York City. (Photo by Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images) Getty Images BTS released the music video for their new single “Butter” tonight, and as is typical for the Korean pop septet, they appear to have shattered the YouTube premiere record once again. The hotly anticipated new music video drew at least an estimated 3.89 million concurrent viewers to its midnight EST premiere, according to the view counter at various points throughout the video. YouTube will likely release the official premiere numbers within the next few days. BTS 'Butter' premiere YouTube It’s not difficult to see why the “Butter” premiere drew such a massive audience. In the lead-up to the premiere, BTS described the single as “a summer song that is somewhat soft and charismatic.” The video certainly lives up to that description. It opens with striking black-and-white shots of the group in suits before cutting to several other dazzling locations with soft, full-color lighting. The band members pow-wow in a gymnasium, show up to a…

SINGAPORE -- YouTube's Taiwan-born co-founder is betting on the island for his next venture, lauding its abundance of tech talent to rival the U.S.Steve Chen said in an interview that he planned to launch a global internet startup from Taiwan, where he has now moved. He said the island had plenty of "very high-quality engineers and product managers" even compared to Silicon Valley in the U.S., where he lived for 20 years.Chen also said he believed YouTube would see off any threat from Asian rivals such as China's TikTok, telling Nikkei Asia that only an "unforeseen technological leap" might end its dominance in the video sharing space.Chen launched YouTube in early 2005 with former colleagues from online payments company PayPal. Their venture enjoyed instant success and the company was sold to Google in October 2006 in a deal worth $1.65 billion. Chen left Google in 2011 and since has been primarily investing in and advising startups.Speaking to Nikkei about aspects of Asia's tech scene, Chen said platforms such as TikTok, the short-video app owned by Chinese internet technology company ByteDance, were "definitely serving a need for content creators and viewers."There is "value for any destination that attracts new content and…

Migrating your WhatsApp chats from one phone to another can be hard if the ideal conditions are not met. Currently, if you want to restore your chats from a fresh WhatsApp install, you need to have a previous backup on your device or cloud service of choice, and it needs to be from both the same phone number and the same platform (Android backups can be restored on Android only and iOS backups can be restored on iOS only). In the case of the latter, it was teased a few weeks ago that WhatsApp was working to allow chat migration from iOS to Android and vice versa, but chat history was still tied to your phone number. Now, WhatsApp might let you transfer your chat history to a different phone number as well.This was teased on WABetaInfo, a site dedicated to exploring unreleased WhatsApp features, and they uncovered new screenshots of the iOS-Android migration tool, including one with a “Transfer to a different number?” link that would, presumably, take you to a similar tool that would migrate your chats and tie them to your new phone number. This is especially useful if you’re making a move to a new smartphone…

An investigation has been launched in response to a Snapchat post showing three Colorado high school students reenacting the murder of George Floyd, Denver Post reports.“Yesterday, we were made aware of a highly-offensive photo taken on school grounds and posted to social media that did not reflect our school’s high standards of respect, character and inclusivity,” Mead High School Principal Rachael Ayers wrote.The photo shows one student in blackface lying on the ground with another kneeling on his neck, and someone else placing a knee on the other person’s back. A spokesperson for the school district said details about its investigation cannot be disclosed.Don Haddad, superintendent for the St. Vrain Valley school district, strongly condemned the “disgusting and disturbing” photo, while promising that this matter will be addressed immediately and accordingly. Floyd’s death created a watershed moment in U.S. history where Americans were forced to reckon with the ongoing reality of systematic racism and police brutality disproportionately impacting Black people.The video of a helpless Floyd repeatedly saying that he couldn’t breathe as convicted former officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds galvanized people around the world to take to the streets in the middle of a pandemic to protest under one simple statement:…

A man who sent videos of his parents’ dogs licking his erect penis told a court he did it because he was “bored”.Ashley Scott Dennis, 30, was sentenced in the Adelaide Magistrates Court on Thursday after previously pleading guilty to one count of bestiality.The court heard the man filmed the video in two segments showing the two border collies licking his genitalia and sent the footage on Snapchat to a female he was courting last year.Dennis was arrested by police for unrelated charges on January 8, 2020 when officers became aware he was in contact with the woman via the social media application.The court heard officers later found the footage as well as 147 other images depicting bestiality, animal sex toys and selfies masturbating on his mobile phone.The videos were filmed in a work office space inside a shed at his parent’s property in Armagh, in the state’s Mid-North, where an opened jar of peanut butter was also found by officers.During his sentencing, Chief Magistrate Mary-Louise Hribal said Dennis used the condiment to entice the animals to lick his penis.“You admitted to having a dog lick your penis on one occasion around 12 to 18 months prior (to being arrested)…

Join us as Shack Air flies the Fly-by-Wire Airbus A320 from Eindhoven to Islay, an island off the coast of the UK where Lagavulin Whisky is made. After a lovely and relaxing bush flight around Alaska's Kodiak Island last week, Shack Air is heading to Europe today to ferry passengers from Eindhoven in the Netherlands to a small island off the coast of the UK. Sporting a newly painted Airbus A320, Shack Air will take on a more technical challenge to try and fly this airliner safely and efficiently. Pilot Jan has yet to land the A320, but that shouldn't be too hard, right? The A32Nx project by the Fly-by-Wire team is one of the most popular freeware add-ons for Microsoft Flight Simulator and has been widely lauded as one of the very best. As a sharp contrast to the VR flight we took in a small bush plane, the Airbus will require following procedures precisely, and we'll be complying with all the proper checklists and requirements to get this bird safely to its destination. That destination is the island of Islay, near Lagavulin, where a world-famous whisky is made. That seems like a great objective, doesn't it? Charts by…