Charities Call on Youtube to Reconsider Getting Rid of Community Captions
- Charities are calling for YouTube to reconsider getting rid of a tool that helps people with hearing loss watch videos
- Community captions – when users upload subtitles to other people’s videos – are being removed from the platform
- The British Deaf Association and Action on Hearing Loss say YouTube should engage with the deaf community on the decision
- The hashtag #DontRemoveYoutubeCCs trended online this week
- Community captions are when fans of a channel write and upload their own subtitles to a video – either in the original language of the video or in another language, but YouTube says the feature is hardly used and is open to abuse or spam
Facebook Profits From Hate Says Ex Engineer
- A Facebook engineer has quit the firm, saying they “can no longer stomach” being part of an organisation “profiting off hate”
- He is the latest employee to go public with concerns about how the company deals with hate speech
- The engineer added it was “choosing to be on the wrong side of history”
- Facebook responded by saying it had removed millions of hate-related posts. Another of its former engineers has also come to its defence
- White nationalism and the use of the platform by far-right militias were among the things the ex-engineer felt Facebook needed to do more on, as well as regulating other political content
Chinese Embassy Demands Investigation After Ambassadors Account Liked Porn Link
- China’s UK embassy has asked Twitter to “make thorough investigations” after its ambassador’s official account liked a pornographic clip
- Liu Xiaoming’s account also liked posts that criticised the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and showed blindfolded Uighurs being detained
- Officials claimed that “anti-Chinese elements [had] viciously attacked” Mr Liu’s account in a “despicable” plot designed to “deceive the public”
- The activity first drew attention after the account liked a 10-second video posted by an adult-themed page containing clips with Chinese-language descriptions
- A London-based human rights campaigner flagged this to other Twitter users just after 09:00 GMT with a screenshot as proof
- Twitter has yet to comment
Children Should be Banned From Unregulated Care Homes
- The government should ban placing under-18s in care in unregulated homes amid concerns over sexual and criminal exploitation, the Children’s Commissioner, Anne Longfield, has said
- The Commissioner said some vulnerable teenagers are “at risk every day of the week”, calling unregulated care homes “inappropriate” places for any child
- The government is consulting on proposals to introduce new minimum standards to the sector and has already told local authorities to stop placing under 16s in these homes
- Ms Longfield has said these plans do not address “the real problem” of allowing older teenagers aged 16 and over in care to be placed in such accommodation
- One in eight children in care – around 12,000 – spent time in an unregulated home in 2018-19, her report reveals
