In a lawsuit that seems determined to ignore that Section 230 exists, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has sued Meta for allegedly shadowbanning his million-dollar documentary, Who Is Bobby Kennedy? and preventing his supporters from advocating for his presidential campaign.
According to Kennedy, Meta is colluding with the Biden administration to sway the 2024 presidential election by suppressing Kennedy's documentary and making it harder to support Kennedy's candidacy. This allegedly has caused "substantial donation losses," while also violating the free speech rights of Kennedy, his supporters, and his film's production company, AV24.
Meta had initially restricted the documentary on Facebook and Instagram but later fixed the issue after discovering that the film was mistakenly flagged by the platforms' automated spam filters.
Brussels has opened an in-depth probe into Meta over concerns it is failing to do enough to protect children from becoming addicted to social media platforms such as Instagram.
The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, announced on Thursday it would look into whether the Silicon Valley giant’s apps were reinforcing “rabbit hole” effects, where users get drawn ever deeper into online feeds and topics.
EU investigators will also look into whether Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, is complying with legal obligations to provide appropriate age-verification tools to prevent children from accessing inappropriate content.
Cannes film festival First-time actor Agathe Riedinger is a wannabe influencer from the wrong side of the tracks in this forthright and fluent film
Feature first-timer Agathe Riedinger is bringing the TikTok energy for this story of a wannabe Insta influencer-princess from the wrong side of the tracks – but the director is also bringing some pretty old school social realism, exerting its downward gravitational pull. The result is forthright and fluent and fiercely acted by a newcomer lead who, in the time-honoured style of movies like this, is defiant, vulnerable and front and centre of almost every shot. But it also sometimes treads water in terms of narrative, running out of ideas before the end, and its final ambiguity about an ultimate success that is there to be hallucinated rather than achieved feels anticlimactic.
Liane, played by Malou Khebizi, is a 19-year-old with a French and Italian background living in Fréjus in the south of France. She was once given up for foster care by her troubled mother but now taken back home and is now in charge of babysitting her kid sister, whom she is busily turning into a mini-me version of her own brassy, sexualised image. Liane shoplifts and sells the stolen goods – which has paid for her breast-implant surgery and she has also had her lips done. She hangs out with her friends, getting drunk, but is fastidious about how and with whom she’s having sex; she has thousands of followers on her Only-Fans-type insta (although oddly, it doesn’t occur to her to have an actual Only Fans account). Liane also has a poignantly religious sense of her own heroic martyrdom, her ill-treatment at the hands of online haters, men and her appalling mother.
Although the artist's enthusiasm wanes towards the end, especially for writing the blurbs ("only to give up and slap a couple boat emojis on it because that shit's hard"), much of the history of art is here. All in emojis.
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.”
Login
