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Simfin

online safety and digital citizenship specialist

 Tagged with abuse


30 October 2024

Chatbot versions of the teenagers Molly Russell and Brianna Ghey have been found on Character.ai - a platform which allows users to create digital versions of people.

Molly Russell took her life at the age of 14 after viewing suicide material online while Brianna Ghey, 16, was murdered by two teenagers in 2023.

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25 October 2024

A man from Northern Ireland has been given a life sentence with a minimum of 20 years in jail for the extreme online sexual abuse of children and the manslaughter of a 12-year-old girl, who was one of his victims.

Alexander McCartney from County Armagh admitted 185 charges - including more than 50 blackmail offences.

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14 October 2024

'Beyond inflated key user metrics, our in-game research revealed an X-rated paedophile hellscape, exposing children to grooming, pornography, violent content and extremely abusive speech.
Roblox is compromising child safety in order to report growth to investors, per our interview with a former senior product designer: “If you’re limiting users’ engagement, it’s hurting your metrics…in a lot of cases, the leadership doesn’t want that.”'

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02 September 2024

When Andrew Kaung, an analyst on user safety at TikTok, looked at the TikTok content, he was alarmed to find how some teenage boys were being shown posts featuring violence and pornography, and promoting misogynistic views, he tells BBC Panorama. He says, in general, teenage girls were recommended very different content based on their interests.

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17 August 2024

Performers working in the games industry have spoken of their distress at being asked to work on explicit content without notice, including a scene featuring a sexual assault.

Sex scenes are common in modern games - and are often made by filming human actors who are then digitised into game characters.

They describe feeling "shaken" and "upset" after acting them out.

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01 August 2024

SWGFL's Synthetic Media Hub is designed to help you and your communities understand synthetic media and the various forms of support available to guide parents, young people, and your communities through the essential online safety and digital literacy skills needed to address, identify and respond to synthetic content.

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