Reddit Bans Two SubReddits: r/Watchpeopledie and r/Gore

Reddit has banned two subreddits, r/Watchpeopledie and r/Gore, after they began to circulate footage of Friday’s terrorist attack in New Zealand.

r/Watchpeopledie was famous for hosting real-life video clips and GIFs of people meeting their demise. The subreddit had more than 300,000 subscribers. But on Friday, both r/Watchpeopledie and r/Gore were shut down for violating Reddit’s content policy against “glorifying or encouraging violence.”

Reddit made the decision as all the major internet companies have been trying to prevent footage of Friday’s shootings from spreading over social media. The killings, which took the lives of 49 people, were initially live-streamed over Facebook before the video began circulating to other platforms.

The terrorist attacks on two New Zealand mosques, with the deaths of 49 people, was live streamed on Facebook and spread across numerous social media platforms before being removed.

The terrorist live-streamed the violent attack via a head-mounted camera. That footage was soon posted to Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, and more.

In a statement posted to Twitter, Facebook said it was alerted to the stream shortly after it started; it was deleted, as was the shooter’s Facebook and Instagram accounts. Facebook is also removing content that praises or supports the terrorist or the shootings, it said.

Different versions of the video remain on YouTube as of writing, PCMag can confirm, and numerous links remain on Twitter. YouTube tweeted that it’s “working vigilantly to remove any violent footage.”

During the attack, the terrorist reportedly told people to “subscribe to PewDiePie,” a YouTuber whose real name is Felix Kjellberg. Kjellberg has come under fire for uttering racial slurs during livestreams and has garnered support from right-wing political parties.

Instagram Will Use Artificial Intelligence To Detect bullying In Photos

Although the majority of photos shared on Instagram are positive and bring people joy, occasionally a photo is shared that is unkind or unwelcome,” Adam Mosseri, the new head of Instagram, said in a press release. “We are now using machine learning technology to proactively detect bullying in photos and their captions and send them to our Community Operations team to review.”

Instagram’s parent company, Facebook, also introduced its own anti-bullying tools this month. Those features allow users to remove “troll comments” from their feeds, with the options to delete or hide comments in “bulk” and report comments on behalf of the victim. Facebook has hired thousands of people to look over content that may run afoul of its rules.

Instagram’s New IGTV Competing With You Tube

 

Video will be available through Instagram or a new app called IGTV. The initiative comes as parent company Facebook struggles to attract teens.  Instagram Chief Executive Kevin Systrom said he hopes IGTV will become as a hub of creativity for relative unknowns who turn into internet sensations with fervent followings among teens and young adults.

YouTube now has 1.8 billion users.Instagram, which Facebook bought for $1 billion six years ago, now has 1 billion users, up from 800 million nine months ago.More importantly, 72% of U.S. children ages 13 to 17 use Instagram, second to YouTube at 85%, according to the Pew Research Center. Only 51% of kids in that group now use Facebook, down from 71% from a similar Pew survey in 2014-15.

 

Reddit has More Traffic Than Facebook

Google is still the most visited site, followed by YouTube, Reddit, and Facebook, with Amazon rounding out the top five.

On average, Reddit users spend 15 minutes and 10 seconds on it everyday, a figure substantially higher than its competitors. Google users spend 7 minutes 16 seconds, YouTube 8 minutes 31 seconds, Facebook 10 minutes 50 seconds and Amazon 7 minutes 37 seconds on the sites each day.

Digital Attention Crisis

 

A new group called the Center for Humane Technology wants to reverse the trend of “the digital attention crisis” among young people.

The initial group of experts includes former Google ethicist Tristan Harris; former Facebook operations manager Sandy Parakilas; former Apple and Google communications executive Lynn Fox; former Facebook executive Dave Morin; Facebook “like” button creator Justin Rosenstein; early Facebook investor Roger McNamee; and technologist Renee DiResta.

Nonprofit media watchdog group Common Sense Media  is on an anti-tech addiction lobbying effort called The Truth About Tech. The ad campaign in 55,000 American public schools will aim to educate students, parents and teachers about the dangers of technology and social media induced depression.

“The Truth About Tech campaign isn’t anti-tech, Common Sense founder and CEO Jim Steyer told Observer in an email. “It’s for tech that’s for kids. But there’s plenty of evidence that tech is changing the nature of our interpersonal relationships, and it’s time for a national conversation about that—among families, schools, and the industry.”

Parents and mental health experts have called on tech companies to reduce marketing to children. YouTube Kids and Facebook’s Messenger Kids have come under increased scrutiny in recent weeks.

Common Sense found that the average teenager uses online media nine hours per day, while tweens are exposed up to six hours a day.

Like this:

The US President’s personal Twitter account (@realDonaldTrump) seemingly disappeared on Thursday, leading some to speculate he had finally been suspended after months of complaints from other users. For around two hours, clicking on the account saw the: “Sorry, that page doesn’t exist!” error message, but the account has since been restored.

Trump’s personal account, which has more than 41.7 million followers, is separate from his official @POTUS account, which is transferred to each President of the United States. The latter does not seem to have been affected.

In a tweet, confirming the temporay deactivation, the official Twitter Government account explained: “Earlier today @realdonaldtrump’s account was inadvertently deactivated due to human error by a Twitter employee. The account was down for 11 minutes, and has since been restored. We are continuing to investigate and are taking steps to prevent this from happening again.”

It later followed up with: “Through our investigation we have learned that this was done by a Twitter customer support employee who did this on the employee’s last day. We are conducting a full internal review.”

Survey Reveals That Your Boss Really Doesn’t Approve of Facebook Friends With Co Workers

 

The surprising result of a survey of 1,006 employees and 307 senior managers conducted by staffing company OfficeTeam. Survey respondents were asked how appropriate it was to connect with co-workers on various social media platforms. It turns out that bosses and their employees have very different answers to this question.

When it comes to Facebook, 77 percent of employees thought it was either “very appropriate” or “somewhat appropriate” to be Facebook friends with your work colleagues, but only 49 percent of senior managers agreed. That disagreement carries over to other social media platforms. Sixty-one percent of employees thought it was fine to follow a co-worker on Twitter, but only 34 percent of bosses agreed. With Instagram, 56 percent of employees, but only 30 percent of bosses thought following a co-worker was appropriate. Interestingly, the one social platform bosses and employees seem to almost agree about is Snapchat, with 34 percent of employees thinking it was fine to connect with colleagues, and 26 percent of bosses thinking so too.

LinkedIn was not included in the OfficeTeam survey, but because it’s a professional networking tool, few bosses will object to you connecting with coworkers there.