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UK police demand phones from rape victims
The victims of crimes including rape and sexual assault are being told that they must give police access to their phones, emails, messages and photographs, or else "it may not be possible for the investigation or prosecution to continue" (BBC News).
Although the law says that victims of crime cannot be forced to hand over their phones, laptops, tablets or smartwatches, the police are using consent forms to have complainants waive that right, which civil liberties groups say is a violation of privacy and likely to result in fewer people reporting crimes. The use of consent forms follows police and Crown Prosecution Service mishandling of hundreds of cases in which critical social media information showing the innocence of the accused was only disclosed late in prosecution or court proceedings.
Google bans major app developer over ad fraud
Google has banned Chinese app developer DO Global from the Play Store after a Buzzfeed investigation revealed that several of the company's apps abused permissions and used fraudulent techniques to register ad clicks (Gizmodo).
DO Global, which is partially funded by Baidu, has around 100 Play Store apps with over 600 million collective installations. It has also been removed from Google's AdMob monetisation programme and subsidiary-owned apps such as the popular ES File Explorer are being taken down.
SEC gives Elon Musk tighter guidelines about Twitter use
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been given new, stricter guidelines over his use Twitter, in exchange for which he will not be held in contempt of court over his unauthorised and less than entirely accurate posts about projected Tesla production figures (Ars Technica). The new guidelines specifically require him to have a Tesla lawyer review tweets about the company's finances, production and delivery numbers, new lines of business, sales projections and proposed mergers, among other topics.
How a 4chan wannabe galvanised Spain's far-right election upstarts
Echoing the complicated relationship between 4chan and Trump, self-consciously politically incorrect elements of ForoCoches – the world’s largest Spanish-speaking online forum – have found an ally in far-right upstart party Vox (WIRED). The party shocked women in Spain’s south when they won 11 per cent of December’s regional vote after campaigning against “feminazis” and the country’s gender violence bill and gained an unprecedented 24 seats in Sunday's general election.
PewDiePie renounces 'Subscribe to PewDiePie' campaign over terrorist acts
YouTube star Felix 'PewDiePie' Kjellberg has renounced his popular "Subscribe to PewDiePie" grassroots advertising campaign, which was mentioned during last month's deadly, live-streamed terrorist shooting at two New Zealand mosques (The Verge).
Kjellberg, who had been campaigning to overtake Indian streaming rival T-Series, has had his own instances of broadcasting questionable and racist content, but asked fans to cease using the meme in the wake of the shooting and white supremacist adoption of the phrase, saying that “to have my name associated with something so unspeakably vile has affected me in more ways than I’ve let shown.”
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This article was originally published by WIRED UK
