For the nearly 20% percent of Americans who experience severe online harassment, there’s a new company launching in the latest batch of Y Combinator called Tall Poppy that’s giving them the tools to fight back. Co-founded by Leigh Honeywell and Logan Dean, Tall Poppy grew out of the work that Honeywell, a security specialist, had […]
View More Tall Poppy aims to make online harassment protection an employee benefitCategory: Abuse
‘Captain Spirit’ is a flawed, admirable game about escapism and abuse
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This review contains mild spoilers for the ending of the 2-3 hour demo of The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit.
Games that address the hard truths of reality, like child abuse, are a rarity — to say the least.
So it’s truly a shame when games which take this admirable risk often feel this anxiety to suddenly veer into the fantastical. And its a dissonance that almost always comes at the expense of the real-world themes the story sets out to explore.
Perhaps no studio and series encapsulates this more than DONTNOD’s narrative adventure game Life is Strange, and by extension, its free 2-3 hour spinoff The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit. A precursor demo to Life is Strange 2, Captain Spirit tells a story set in the same universe but only tangentially related to the sequel. Read more…
More about Entertainment, Abuse, Square Enix, Indie Games, and Life Is Strange
Twitter commits to taking on the bots and the abusers (yet again)
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In a new blog post on Tuesday, Twitter committed to continue dealing with problems that have long plagued the website: spam and harassment.
We do not value fake engagement. Taking bigger steps to improvehttps://t.co/A4b8IREWTc
— jack (@jack) June 26, 2018
Since the 2016 election, malicious bot and troll accounts have hounded users across Twitter with fake news and abusive comments. In an effort to combat this issue, the company announced that new users will be required to confirm either an email address or phone number. The company added that there would be exceptions for legitimate users whose safety would be jeopardized without anonymity. Read more…
More about Twitter, Harassment, Abuse, Bots, and Spam
View More Twitter commits to taking on the bots and the abusers (yet again)Twitter acquires anti-abuse technology provider Smyte
Twitter this morning announced it has agreed to buy San Francisco-based technology company Smyte, which describes itself as “trust and safety as a service.” Founded in 2014 by former Google and Instagram engineers, Smyte offers tools to stop online abuse, harassment, and spam, and protect user accounts. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but this […]
View More Twitter acquires anti-abuse technology provider SmyteTwitter replaces its gun emoji with a water gun
Twitter has now followed Apple’s lead in changing its pistol emoji to a harmless, bright green water gun. And in doing so, the company that has struggled to handle the abuse, hate speech and harassment taking place across its platform, has removed one of the means for online abusers to troll their victims. The change […]
View More Twitter replaces its gun emoji with a water gunTwitter will publicize rules around abuse to test if behavior changes
As part of Twitter’s efforts to rid its platform of abuse and hate, the company is teaming up with researchers Susan Benesch, a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, and J. Nathan Matias, a post-doc research associate at Princeton University, to study online abuse. Today, Twitter is […]
View More Twitter will publicize rules around abuse to test if behavior changesFacebook tries to prove it cares with ‘Fighting Abuse @ Scale’ conference
Desperate to show it takes thwarting misinformation, fraud and spam seriously, Facebook just revealed that it’s hosting a private “Fighting Abuse @Scale” invite-only conference in San Francisco on April 25th. Speakers from Facebook, Airbnb, Google, Microsoft and LinkedIn will discuss how to stop fake news, prevent counterfeit account creation, use honeypots to disrupt adversarial infrastructure and how machine […]
View More Facebook tries to prove it cares with ‘Fighting Abuse @ Scale’ conferenceGymnast Mattie Larson said she purposely hurt herself to avoid Larry Nassar
Former gymnast Mattie Larson was so desperate to avoid Larry Nassar, the USA Gymnastics physician who pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting multiple women, she tried to give herself a concussion so she wouldn’t have to see him.
During her testi…
Twitter today starts enforcing new rules around violence and hate
Twitter today says it will begin to enforce new rules related to how it handles hateful conduct and abusive behavior taking place on its platform. The changes are a part of the company’s broader agenda to craft new policies focused on reducing the amount of abuse, hate speech, violence and harassment. Specifically, Twitter explains that in addition to threatening violence or physical… Read More
This website will generate apologies for men accused of sexual harassment
Are you a celebrity who’s sexually harassed a bunch of people and are now in need of an apology to subdue an angry mob? Look no further than the Celebrity Perv Apology Generator.
The desktop app packages all the usual elements of several recent non-apologies that have come up when other fellow perverts’ dark pasts have come to light. In what might be described as a more honest… Read More
Twitter posts a new version of its rules with updated sections on abuse, spam, violence and more
Twitter today published a new version of its rules, in an effort to further clarify its policies about abuse, spam, self-harm and other topics, as well as to better explain how it determines the appropriate action – like suspending an abuser’s account, for example. The company says the updated documentation doesn’t represent changes to the “fundamentals” of its… Read More
Maybe don’t brag about violating your roommate’s stuff on Instagram
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If you’re rubbing used tampons onto your college roommate’s backpack, contaminating her eating utensils, spitting into and poisoning her lotions, and abusing her toothbrush, you’re a terrible person, but also, don’t post about it on social media.
Brianna Brochu, 18, was charged Wednesday with “criminal mischief” for allegedly doing all of the above and more to her unsuspecting roommate at the University of Hartford in Connecticut—which was discovered because she bragged about it on Instagram.
Chenel Rowe, who goes by Jazzy on social media, posted and livestreamed a video this week detailing the terror she endured as Brochu’s roommate since the end of August. Before knowing about the poisoning and tampering, Rowe had already made arrangements to move out. She had been having throat pain and other ailments since moving into her dorm. While she was moving out, she discovered the Instagram post and other evidence that her belongings had been contaminated. Read more…
More about Instagram, Crime, College, Abuse, and Bullying
View More Maybe don’t brag about violating your roommate’s stuff on Instagram