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Simfin

online safety and digital citizenship specialist

Young People News

16 January 2023

But assertions that Tate’s rise is a product of today’s young men and their views are wrong. In fact, Tate repeatedly failed to build a personal brand until TikTok gave him the means to saturate news feeds.

Archives of his website show that his business and his pitch to young men was the same four years ago as it is today. As far back as 2019, his website promised courses that would “have your girlfriend obey every command”.

So if Tate’s ambitions and pitch to young men have stayed the same, what changed? The answer lies in how Tate learned to game TikTok’s algorithm, allowing his content to flood millions of news feeds.

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04 January 2023

The clamour for the drink should not be laughed away as the obvious result of scarcity created by a cynical branded content deal between two of the best-known social media influencers – Logan Paul and KSI. Instead, it should be viewed as a wakeup call for parents that monetising misogyny – rather than athleticism, good looks or video game prowess – is only a step removed.

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21 December 2022

Since the release of the Roomba, it has been nothing short of a helping hand at home, vacuuming up your home for you when you’re too busy to do so yourself. It’s a convenient little device that can be left alone to complete its tasks without too much intervention. So what happens when your little vacuum helper begins leaking private images of you?

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14 December 2022

You’ve probably noticed that more people are “commissioning” portraits of themselves. Most of those pictures were generated, not painted, by an AI photo editor called Lensa. The app, owned by developer Prisma Labs, topped Apple’s App Store charts after it introduced its new ‘Magic Avatars’ AI art maker, and its results have exploded around the internet.

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27 November 2022

The encouragement of self-harm will be criminalised in an update to the Online Safety Bill, the government has said.

Content that encourages someone to physically harm will be targeted in a new offence, making it illegal.

The government said the changes had been influenced by the case of Molly Russell - the 14-year-old who ended her life in November 2017.

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