Meta backs new system to stop intimate images of young people from being posted online
- Meta, owners of Facebook and Instagram, have announced that they are founding members of ‘Take It Down’.
- Take It Down is a new platform which has been created to proactively prevent young people’s images from spreading online.
- Meta have supported the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) in the development Take It Down.
- Young people can use Take It Down to submit a case that will actively look for their intimate images on participating apps.
- The service assigns a unique numerical hash value to the image or video being reported directly to the user’s device.
- Hashing works by turning images and videos into a coded form that can no longer be viewed.
- Once the hash is submitted to NCMEC, companies can use those hashes to find copies of the image, take them down and prevent them from being posted on the participating apps in the future.
- For more on this story, please visit Meta’s website.
Snapchat launches an AI chatbot and apologises for what it might say
- Snapchat has announced that it is launching ‘My AI’, an OpenAI chatbot.
- My AI is an experimental feature that is initially available for $3.99 a month for Snapchat+ subscribers and will be expanded for all users in the future.
- My AI will appear as a regular Snap user profile, which would indicate that it is being advertised as more of a virtual friend rather than an all-purpose writing machine.
- When it rolls out the bot will be pinned to the top of the app’s chat section.
- Snap’s CEO Evan Spiegel has said, “While my AI is designed to avoid biased, incorrect, harmful, or misleading information, mistakes may occur”.
- For more on this story, please visit Engadget’s website.
Feminism in schools Belfast conference ‘needs more men’
- To mark International Women’s Day, a conference will be held at Queen’s University Belfast with a focus on “challenging sexism.”
- The free event on Saturday 11th March will feature a range of panel discussions and small workshops for all young people and adults.
- Due to the nature of the theme, organisers are calling for more men to get involved as “men must be part of the solution.”
- All men and boys are invited, not only those with years of experience to share their wisdom, but also those who would like to help build a generation of “young men who are confident, healthy, respectful and safe – and safe for girls to be around.”
- Sessions will cover a range of topics some of which include consent, healthy relationships, bystander intervention, feminism, careers and peacebuilding.
- There will also be a specific session for those who work with boys and young men to challenge the misogyny of Andrew Tate and others like him in the classroom.
- For more on this story, please visit the Belfast Telegraph website.
