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Simfin

online safety and digital citizenship specialist

 Tagged with social media


19 October 2022

TikTok is raising its minimum age for livestreaming from 16 to 18 from next month.

A BBC News investigation found hundreds of accounts going live from Syrian refugee camps, with children begging for donations.

Some were receiving up to $1,000 (£900) an hour - but when they withdrew the cash, TikTok had taken up to 70%.

In future, only adults would be able to "send virtual gifts or access monetisation features", TikTok said.

 

It is unclear how TikTok will enforce these age restrictions, however.

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11 October 2022

One in three children lie about their age to access adult content on social media, according to research commissioned by the regulator, Ofcom.

Many social media sites, such as Instagram, do not permit under-13s to sign up, while accounts for under-18s have limited functionality.

But researchers found children were faking their ages to skirt the rules.

Ofcom says this increases the risk of children seeing content which may be inappropriate or harmful.

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17 August 2022

 

The cookbook author known as the Meal Prep King will no longer be published by Penguin Random House after he posted a misogynistic video on social media.

John Clark, whose book The Meal Prep King Plan was a Sunday Times bestseller, repeatedly referred to women as “f*****g scruffy c***s” during an Instagram live on Monday night, according to a clip shared on social media.

 

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02 August 2022

Manchester United's Cristiano Ronaldo and Harry Maguire have received the most Twitter abuse of any Premier League players, a new report has found.

Ofcom analysis of 2.3 million tweets in the first half of last season found nearly 60,000 abusive posts, affecting seven in 10 top-flight players.

Half of that abuse was directed at just 12 individuals - eight from United.

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21 July 2022

More teenagers are turning away from traditional media outlets and getting their news from social media, new research from Ofcom has shown.

The number of people consuming news content on TikTok has increased from 800,000 in 2020 to 3.9 million in 2022.

For the first time, Instagram is the most popular news source among younger people - used by 29% of teens in 2022 - with TikTok and YouTube close behind.

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19 July 2022

On Monday (18 July), a report was released by Bot Sentinel, a non-partisan website that uses AI to track and fight disinformation and targeted harrassment.

“We believe Twitter users should be able to engage in healthy online discourse without inauthentic accounts, toxic trolls, foreign countries, and organised groups manipulating the conversation,” their website reads.

The software studied more than 14,000 hashtags such as “#AmberHeardIsAnAbuser” and “#AmberHeardIsALiar”.

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