Our Blog

Facebook has announced that it is updating its hate speech policies to explicitly ban Holocaust denial.The site had previously allowed such content to be posted on the site, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg saying that he found it “deeply offensive” but that his company would continue to host it.“I don’t believe that our platform should take that down because I think there are things that different people get wrong. I don’t think that they’re intentionally getting it wrong,” he said.The social media giant will now “prohibit any content that denies or distorts the Holocaust”.It comes as the company has been criticised for allowing its algorithm to promote Holocaust denial.Read more“We’ve long taken down posts that praise hate crimes or mass murder, including the Holocaust. But with rising antisemitism, we’re expanding our policy to prohibit any content that denies or distorts the Holocaust as well. If people search for the Holocaust on Facebook, we’ll start directing you to authoritative sources to get accurate information,” he wrote.“I’ve struggled with the tension between standing for free expression and the harm caused by minimising or denying the horror of the Holocaust. My own thinking has evolved as I’ve seen data showing an increase in antisemitic violence, as have our wider policies on hate speech.“Drawing the right lines between what is and isn’t acceptable speech isn’t straightforward, but with the current state of the world, I believe this is the right balance.”Facebook says that it has worked with a number of groups fighting antisemitism, including the World Jewish Congress and the American Jewish Committee, the Community Security Trust, and the Simon Wiesenthal Centre. Previously, Facebook had used Holocaust denial as an example of how the company protects free speech.Mr Zuckerberg had said that posts that are false will be downgraded in the algorithm if they are spotted by Facebook’s fact checkers, and users would be banned entirely if they advocated violence against a particular group.“These issues are very challenging but I believe that often the best way to fight offensive bad speech is with good speech,” he said in 2018.As well as now cracking down on Holocaust denial, Facebook had recently removed a network of QAnon accounts.

An advanced artificial intelligence was able to post to Reddit and interact with other users for more than a week before anyone realised it was a bot. The AI posed as a human user under the username ‘thegentlemetre’, posting to Q&A forums AskReddit and AskScience on subjects ranging from suicide to “hot milfs”. Some of the posts received hundreds of upvotes, including one about homeless people living in elevator shafts.In one AskReddit thread that asked users what scared them more than dying, the bot appeared to philosophise on the nature of living.It concluded: “As for what scares me more than dying, I must say that nothing really scares me. I guess I could be scared of the uncertainty of fear itself.”It was only found out when one Reddit user noted the output and length of thegentlemetre’s posts. “How does this user post so many large, deep posts so rapidly,” the user asked. Software engineer Philip Winston investigated the suspicious activity and concluded that the bot used the GPT-3 language model developed by OpenAI, an artificial intelligence startup co-founded by Elon Musk.Watch moreMr Winston noted that the written content of the posts was convincing, however the frequency at which they were published suggested that it was beyond human capability.“The quality was incredibly good, no machine could have written these even a few years ago,” the engineer wrote in a blog post detailing his investigation.GPT-3 generates text using an algorithm fed by vast amounts of human-created content, including Wikipedia.

End-to-end encryption lets users use messaging services without the owners of those services being able to access the conversations.Government representatives, including Home Secretary Priti Patel, US Attorney General Bill Barr, and others, said they are concerned that “encryption is applied in a way that wholly precludes any legal access to content”.The governments say they “support strong encryption, which plays a crucial role in protecting personal data, privacy, intellectual property, trade secrets and cyber security.”However, with regards to certain crimes, such as child exploitation, the government should be allowed access to private channels.This access would:”Embed the safety of the public in system designs, thereby enabling companies to act against illegal content and activity effectively with no reduction to safety, and facilitating the investigation and prosecution of offences and safeguarding the vulnerable;”Enable law enforcement access to content in a readable and usable format where an authorisation is lawfully issued, is necessary and proportionate, and is subject to strong safeguards and oversight; and”Engage in consultation with governments and other stakeholders to facilitate legal access in a way that is substantive and genuinely influences design decisions.”WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal are all end-to-end encrypted, while other platforms like Facebook Messenger, Twitter, Instagram, and text messages are not.However if end-to-end encryption is ‘broken’, by allowing a backdoor for law enforcement agencies as these governments have suggested, it could allow malicious individuals the ability to access private conversations.Read moreMany large technology companies, advocacy groups, and the general public have criticised the use of backdoors.Earlier this year, when Zoom said that its free video calling service would not be end-to-end encrypted so it could work better with law enforcement, over 19,000 internet users signed a petition from Mozilla and the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) to Zoom in protest. Zoom eventually reversed the decision.“We reiterate that data protection, respect for privacy and the importance of encryption as technology changes and global Internet standards are developed remain at the forefront of each state’s legal framework”, the governments’ statement concludes.“However, we challenge the assertion that public safety cannot be protected without compromising privacy or cyber security”.

Apple has removed the “Beats by Dre” page from its website ahead of the upcoming launch of the iPhone 12.However, despite the removal of the page, Apple is still selling Beats products in its online store.It comes as Apple is launching new audio hardware, according to rumours.The smartphone giant had recently removed third-party audio products – from speakers made by Sonos to headphones from Bose – from its store.Read moreApple had previously stopped selling Fitbits through its online store ahead of the launch of the Apple Watch in 2014.Apple is supposedly going to announce an over-ear headphone version of its AirPods as well as a cheaper, smaller version of the HomePod.It has been rumoured to be called something similar to ‘AirPods Studio’.Competing rumours, however, have suggested that Apple could wait until another event in November to reveal at least some of those products.The new handset is set to come with a more rectangular body similar to the iPad Pro and Air, as well as a new A14 Bionic chip, a LiDAR sensor so that it can more accurately estimate depth, and 5G connectivity.Wired headphone wearers can now tweak the sound output on their headphones to increase the midrange so voices are easier to hear or emphasise high frequencies.