The term for England footballers’ wives and girlfriends first exploded in 2006 in Germany. The new generation watching the Euros are turning the old stereotypes on their heads
When England take to the pitch for their first game on Sunday night in Germany, eyes will be trained not just on the players but on the team sitting in the stands, cheering on the squad – the wives and girlfriends of the players, the so-called Wags.
The acronym Wags first appeared in the Sunday Telegraph in 2002 – apparently coined by the staff of a Dubai hotel where the players’ wives and girlfriends stayed. Still a relatively new phenomenon, it exploded like a glitterbomb on to the resort of Baden-Baden, where the England squad were based during the World Cup in Germany in 2006.
Meta has apparently paused plans to process mounds of user data to bring new AI experiences to Europe.
The decision comes after data regulators rebuffed the tech giant's claims that it had "legitimate interests" in processing European Union- and European Economic Area (EEA)-based Facebook and Instagram users' data—including personal posts and pictures—to train future AI tools.
There's not much information available yet on Meta's decision. But Meta's EU regulator, the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), posted a statement confirming that Meta made the move after ongoing discussions with the DPC about compliance with the EU's strict data privacy laws, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
The European Center for Digital Rights, known as Noyb, has filed complaints in 11 European countries to halt Meta's plan to start training vague new AI technologies on European Union-based Facebook and Instagram users' personal posts and pictures.
Meta's AI training data will also be collected from third parties and from using Meta's generative AI features and interacting with pages, the company has said. Additionally, Meta plans to collect information about people who aren't on Facebook or Instagram but are featured in users' posts or photos. The only exception from AI training is made for private messages sent between "friends and family," which will not be processed, Meta's blog said, but private messages sent to businesses and Meta are fair game. And any data collected for AI training could be shared with third parties.
"Unlike the already problematic situation of companies using certain (public) data to train a specific AI system (e.g. a chatbot), Meta's new privacy policy basically says that the company wants to take all public and non-public user data that it has collected since 2007 and use it for any undefined type of current and future 'artificial intelligence technology,'" Noyb alleged in a press release.
A disappointing meal at a restaurant. An ugly breakup between two partners. A popular TV show that kills off a beloved, main character.
In a perfect world, these are irritations and moments of vulnerability. But online today, these same events can sometimes be the catalyst for hate. That disappointing meal can produce a frighteningly invasive Yelp review that exposes a restaurant owner’s home address for all to see. That ugly breakup can lead to an abusive ex posting a video of revenge porn. And even a movie or videogame can enrage some individuals into such a fury that they begin sending death threats to the actors and cast mates involved.
Online hate and harassment campaigns are well-known and widely studied. Sadly, they’re also becoming more frequent.
In 2023, the Anti-Defamation League revealed that 52% of American adults reported being harassed online at least some time in their life—the highest rate ever recorded by the organization and a dramatic climb from the 40% who responded similarly just one year earlier. When asking teens about recent harm, 51% said they’d suffered from online harassment in strictly the 12 months prior to taking the survey itself—a radical 15% increase from what teens said the year prior.
The proposed solutions, so far, have been difficult to implement.
Social media platforms often deflect blame—and are frequently shielded from legal liability—and many efforts to moderate and remove hateful content have either been slow or entirely absent in the past. Popular accounts with millions of followers will, without explicitly inciting violence, sometimes draw undue attention to everyday people. And the increasing need to have an online presence for teens—even classwork is done online now—makes it near impossible to simply “log off.”
Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with Tall Poppy CEO and co-founder Leigh Honeywell, about the evolution of online hate, personal defense strategies that mirror many of the best practices in cybersecurity, and the modern risks of accidentally becoming viral in a world with little privacy.
“It’s not just that your content can go viral, it’s that when your content goes viral, five people might be motivated enough to call in a fake bomb threat at your house.”
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