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On September 5, New Mexico Attorney General Raśl Torrez filed a lawsuit against Snap. Torrez claimed that Snapchat has become a platform rife with sexual exploitation, child grooming and other dangerous behaviors. That legal complaint was heavily redacted, but today, Torrez announced in a press release that he has filed an unsealed complaint, which goes into detail on how Snap allegedly knowingly created an environment that exposed children to sexual predators. The unredacted accusations include how Snap employees encountered 10,000 sextortion cases each month. Still, the company never warned users because it did not want to strike fear among them. The statement also mentioned that Snap employees regularly ignored user reports related to grooming and sextortion. An account with 75 separate reports remains active, and Snap refused to touch any of this content, citing disproportionate admin costs. Snapchats disappearing messages have long been a draw of the platform, but the suit alleges that they lull users into a false sense of security. Therefore, predators find it easier to solicit explicit images from users before extorting them for money, or these images will be sent to friends and family. The unredacted complaint also notes that Snapchats Quick Add feature was suggesting adult strangers to minors, and Snap Map also lets adults find minors accounts. Quick Add was even proven to be dangerous as a New Mexico man, Alejandro Marquez, had used it to lure and rape an 11-year-old girl, as mentioned in the complaint. The complaint also alleges that Snap's upper management routinely ignored former trust and safety employees who pushed for additional and improved safety mechanisms. CEO Evan Spiegel prioritized design over safety and even refused to preserve abusive images for review and for law enforcement to use as proof. The company also didnt keep its child sex abuse images database updated, even rolling back changes and deleting evidence of matches. Even worse, predators using Snapchat have taken to creating a Sextortion handbook to teach others how to target users at schools. Compounded with the fact that 90 percent of all reports are ignored and 30 percent of victims never received any assistance from Snap, predators could essentially roam freely. Thats not the only issue New Mexico is concerned with. The complaint also accuses Snap of tolerating drug and gun sales. Drug dealers freely used the platform to advertise their wares without repercussions while also gaining a huge amount of subscribers. Teens have even died after using drugs they bought after seeing them advertised on Snapchat. As harmful as these dangers are, Snapchat makes it difficult for parents to monitor their childrens Snapchat use, as only 0.33 percent of teens have joined the Family Center. Snapchat also doesnt truly verify a users age, allowing fake birthdays to pass inspection. This contradicts Snaps claims that it doesnt let children under 13 years old use the app. Based on these accusations, it would be easy to conclude that Snapchat is a dangerous platform for underage users. The National Center on Sexual Exploitations Director of Corporate and Strategic Initiatives, Lina Nealon, said: In my conversations with law enforcement, child safety experts, lawyers, survivors, and youth, I ask them what the most dangerous app is, and without fail, Snap is in the top two. In a statement Snap sent to Engadget last month when the lawsuit was filed, the company claimed to be diligently removing bad actors and working with law enforcement. Today, Snap provided the following statement in regards to the unsealed complaint: "We designed Snapchat as a place to communicate with a close circle of friends, with built-in safety guardrails, and have made deliberate design choices to make it difficult for strangers to discover minors on our service. We continue to evolve our safety mechanisms and policies, from leveraging advanced technology to detect and block certain activity, to prohibiting friending from suspicious accounts, to working alongside law enforcement and government agencies, among so much more. We care deeply about our work here and it pains us when bad actors abuse our service. We know that no one person, agency, or company can advance this work alone, which is why we are working collaboratively across the industry, government, and law enforcement to exchange information and concept stronger defenses."This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/the-unsealed-new-mexico-snapchat-lawsuit-alleges-the-company-ignored-child-safety-154235977.html?src=rss
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Marketing and Advertising
It looks like Microsofts AR platform HoloLens is being sent to a nice tech farm upstate. The company just announced that its discontinuing production of its HoloLens 2 headset, according to reporting by UploadVR. Microsoft has no plans for a followup device, so this is the end of the road. The company has told its customers and enterprise partners that this will be the last time to purchase the headset before stock runs out. However, HoloLens 2 headsets will continue to receive "updates to address critical security issues and software regressions" until 2028. That will mark the end of software updates. The original HoloLens headset will stop getting software updates on December 10. That's in two months. We reached out to Microsoft to ask about its decision to end production of HoloLens headsets and if theres any chance for a hardware update at some point in the future. Well update this post when we hear back. This move isnt that surprising, considering Microsoft scrapped plans for a HoloLens 3 headset back in 2022. Alex Kipman, the companys mixed reality chief, said that same year that the HoloLens is doing great and that any rumors regarding the demise of the platform were greatly exaggerated. What a difference two years makes. The HoloLens 2 first launched in 2019, just three years after the original. It was advertised as a device for enterprise consumers, so it never really entered the mass market. This was before decent passthrough became the norm in the AR/VR industry, so it had a lock on the enterprise market for a few years. It looks like that wasnt enough. Microsoft nixed its entire mixed reality software suite last year. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ar-vr/microsoft-kills-hololens-2-with-no-plans-for-a-follow-up-device-153319304.html?src=rss
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Marketing and Advertising
A VTuber called Ironmouse now has the highest number of subscribers on Twitch, breaking the record previously set by Kai Cenat. As of this writing, Ironmouse has over 320,000 current subscribers on the website based on the counter on her profile, almost 14,000 higher than Cenat's record. Twitch subscribers pay either once or on a recurring monthly basis to support a creator's channel unlike ordinary, non-paying followers. Ironmouse, who uses a digital pink-haired anime girl avatar to interact with her fans, has been streaming regularly over the past 30 days as part of a "subathon" event." Half of what she'll get from subscriptions will go towards charity, according to her profile, specifically the Immune Deficiency Foundation. As Polygon notes, Ironmouse has talked about her struggles with common variable immunodeficiency (CVID) in the past. The immune deficiency disease apparently left her bedridden at some points in her life. Ironmouse mostly streams herself playing games, singing, collaborating with other streamers and Vtubers, and just interacting with her viewers. On her bio page, she describes herself as "your cringe demon queen from VShojo," the talent agency for VTubers which she's a part of. She posted a thank you message to her subscribers on X after breaking Kai Cenat's record, while Twitch posted a message congratulating her for "hitting the all-time sub count record." Shouting it from the rooftops!!!! Oh my Mousey, she did it. Congrats to @ironmouse for hitting the all-time sub count record and sharing the love and awareness to the @IDFCommunity. She really is THE Demon Queen!!!!! pic.twitter.com/9cXYiNKVQm Twitch (@Twitch) September 30, 2024 This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/vtuber-ironmouse-breaks-all-time-record-for-concurrent-twitch-subscribers-153029423.html?src=rss
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Marketing and Advertising
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