Today’s Cache | Instagram’s new teen safety accounts
| Photo Credit: REUTERS
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Instagram’s new teen safety accounts
Meta’s Instagram will be moving teenagers to specially calibrated accounts that are private by default, will give young users regular well-being reminders, and provide a dedicated sleep mode at night. The changes are set to come to teen users in the U.S., UK, Canada, and Australia, with EU users getting the update later in the year. If teens attempt to lie about their age and create an adult account, they will be required to verify their age, said Meta. Teens pretending to be grown-ups will also see their accounts adjusted so that they are private by default. While 16 and 17-year-olds will be able to turn off the settings, younger children will need to get permission from their parents.
The new changes come as Meta is facing legal allegations that it knowingly put children at risk on its platforms and apps. However, Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, has said that parents do not regularly use the safety features that the social media company has in place.
Pagers explode in Lebanon and Syria
The near-simultaneous explosion of pagers belonging to Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon and Syria led to nine deaths while thousands were wounded as a result of the blasts, reported multiple news agencies. Hezbollah blamed Israel, but the Israeli military did not comment on the issue. The militant group had been warned not to use cellphones due to the fear that Israel could intercept their communications, and so it instead moved to using pagers. One of those killed because of the exploding pagers was an 8-year-old girl, said reports. However, the explosions did not cause large outbreaks of fire, and mostly injured the person holding the pager and those nearest to them.
Experts and officials are still divided on how the explosions could have been triggered, with some pointing to supply chain interferences while others claimed it was due to a cyberattack and remote activation of the explosives. The make of the pagers has also not yet been entirely verified.
Microsoft flags Russian disinformation
Microsoft’s new research revealed that media reports claiming that Vice President Kamala Harris hit a young girl with a car and left her paralysed in 2011 were false and spread by a Kremlin-aligned troll farm group that it called Storm-1516. The fake news was further featured on a non-existent San Francisco news outlet called KBSF-TV. A number of foreign agents are working to spread false narratives about either or both U.S. presidential candidates, in order to carry out their political agenda. The Russian embassy in Washington has not commented on the findings.
Both Harris and her running mate, Governor Tim Walz, were targeted by Storm-1516, which tried to spread major conspiracies about the two. Harris has said that she will support Ukraine if she becomes the next president of the U.S., which is one possible reason why pro-Kremlin agents are trying to damage her reputation.
Published – September 18, 2024 10:25 am IST