Technology

TikTok ‘directs child accounts to pornographic content within a few clicks’
Posted on Friday October 03, 2025

Despite platform’s limits on adult content, study finds it not only accessible but often suggestedTikTok has directed children’s accounts to pornographic content within a small number of clicks, according to a report by a campaign group.Global Witness set up fake accounts using a 13-year-old’s birth date and turned on the video app’s “restricted mode”, which limits exposure to “sexually suggestive” content. Continue reading...

Tesla sued by family of California teenager killed in fiery Cybertruck crash
Posted on Friday October 03, 2025

Lawsuit alleges the design of the vehicle’s door handles is at fault for Krysta Tsukahara’s deathTesla is being sued by the parents of a teenager killed in a crash involving one of its Cybertruck pickups last fall. The incident involved four passengers who were in the vehicle when it hit a tree and caught on fire in a quiet Bay Area town in California, according to court documents.Only one of the crash victims survived. Continue reading...

‘Cancel Netflix’: Elon Musk leads rightwing backlash over trans character in kids’ show
Posted on Thursday October 02, 2025

Resurfaced clip from Dead End: Paranormal Park led Musk to encourage his followers to cancel their subscriptionsElon Musk, the multibillionaire and self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist”, has in recent days trained his attention on getting people to cancel their Netflix subscriptions in protest of what he claims is the company’s “woke bias” and inclusion of LGBTQ+ characters.Musk, the richest person in the world with a net worth of approximately $500bn, has repeatedly encouraged his 227 million followers on X, the platform he controls, to cancel their Netflix subscriptions. In the past three days alone, he has posted or reposted calls to cancel Netflix for its content at least 26 times. Continue reading...

Some believe AI can spark their child’s imagination through personalized stories and generative images. Scientists are wary of its effect on creativityJosh was at the end of his rope when he turned to ChatGPT for help with a parenting quandary. The 40-year-old father of two had been listening to his “super loquacious” four-year-old talk about Thomas the Tank Engine for 45 minutes, and he was feeling overwhelmed.“He was not done telling the story that he wanted to tell, and I needed to do my chores, so I let him have the phone,” recalled Josh, who lives in north-west Ohio. “I thought he would finish the story and the phone would turn off.” Continue reading...

Kido nursery hackers say they have deleted stolen data
Posted on Thursday October 02, 2025

Experts say attempting to extort children lost Radiant group credibility in hacking world, which made it take actionCybercriminals who stole pictures and the private information of thousands of nursery children have deleted the data after a backlash against the hack.A gang calling themselves Radiant have removed details of children at the UK-based Kido nursery chain from a website it had set up to extort victims. Continue reading...

Elon Musk becomes first person with net worth of $500bn
Posted on Thursday October 02, 2025

Tesla owner’s wealth temporarily crosses half-trillion-dollar mark before retreating to $499bnBusiness live – latest updatesElon Musk has become the first person to reach a net worth of $500bn (£372bn), bringing the Tesla chief executive halfway to trillionaire status.Musk’s wealth temporarily crossed the half-trillion mark on Wednesday before retreating to $499bn, according to the Forbes billionaires list. Continue reading...

UK government resumes row with Apple by demanding access to British users’ data
Posted on Wednesday October 01, 2025

New access order by Home Office would seek access to the tech company’s encrypted cloud backupsThe UK government has renewed its confrontation with Apple over access to customer data by demanding a backdoor into the tech company’s cloud storage service – targeting British users only.The Home Office had previously sought access to data on Apple’s advanced data protection (ADP) service uploaded by any user around the world, triggering a clash with the White House. Continue reading...

A critique of pure stupidity: understanding Trump 2.0
Posted on Thursday October 02, 2025

If the first term of Donald Trump provoked anxiety over the fate of objective knowledge, the second has led to claims we live in a world-historical age of stupid, accelerated by big tech. But might there be a way out?The first and second Trump administrations have provoked markedly different critical reactions. The shock of 2016 and its aftermath saw a wave of liberal anxiety about the fate of objective knowledge, not only in the US but also in Britain, where the Brexit referendum that year had been won by a campaign that misrepresented key facts and figures. A rich lexicon soon arose to describe this epistemic breakdown. Oxford Dictionaries declared “post-truth” their 2016 word of the year; Merriam-Webster’s was “surreal”. The scourge of “fake news”, pumped out by online bots and Russian troll farms, suggested that the authority of professional journalism had been fatally damaged by the rise of social media. And when presidential counsellor Kellyanne Conway coined the phrase “alternative facts” a few days after Trump’s inauguration in early 2017, the mendacity of the incoming administration appeared to be all but official.The truth panic had the unwelcome side-effect of emboldening those it sought to oppose. “Fake” was one of Trump’s favourite slap-downs, especially to news outlets that reported unwelcome facts about him and his associates. A booming Maga media further amplified the president’s lies and denials. The tools of liberal expertise appeared powerless to hold such brazen duplicity to account. A touchstone of the moment was the German-born writer and philosopher Hannah Arendt, who observed in her 1951 book The Origins of Totalitarianism that “the ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction … no longer exists”. Continue reading...