TikTok is the latest social media platform to peel back the curtain on its efforts to fight hate speech. Since the beginning of the year, the company says it’s taken down more than 380,000 videos and 64,000 comments in the US for breaking its hate speech rules. TikTok has also banned more than 1,300 users as part of the policy.
The update is the first time TikTok has shared details of its content takedowns since it first added hate speech to its community guidelines in January. “While these numbers may not reflect a 100% success rate in catching every piece of hateful content or behavior, they reflect both our commitment to action and to building a community that is more positive and welcoming than on other apps,” TikTok’s Head of Safety Eric Han wrote in a blog post.
Han also noted that TikTok has taken steps to block hateful content from appearing in the app’s search results, and the company is “training our moderation teams to better understand more nuanced content like cultural appropriation and slurs.”
TikTok, already facing scrutiny over alleged ties to the Chinese government, has repeatedly come under fire for its moderation policies. The company has been criticized for censoring content critical of the Chinese government, such as when it hid a video that criticized its treatment of Muslims (TikTok apologized for the incident). The Anti-Defamation League has also said TikTok doesn’t do enough to combat white nationalism, extremism and anti-semitism.
The company has taken a number of steps to try to assuage these concerns, The company formed a Content Advisory Council earlier this year, and plans to open a “transparency center” that will give outside experts more visibility into its security and moderation policies.
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As you drive down the road leading to Jodrell Bank Observatory, a sign asks visitors to turn off their mobile phones, stating that the Lovell telescope is so powerful it could detect a phone signal on Mars.
Radio telescopes are designed to be incredibly sensitive. To quote the legendary astronomer Carl Sagan, “The total amount of energy from outside the solar system ever received by all the radio telescopes on the planet Earth is less than the energy of a single snowflake striking the ground.”
The total energy now is probably a few snowflakes’ worth, but nevertheless it is still true that astronomical radio signals are typically magnitudes smaller than artificial ones. If Jodrell Bank could pick up interference from a phone signal on Mars, how would it fare with an entire 4G network on the Moon?
That is the issue that is worrying astronomers like me, now that Nokia of America has been awarded US$14.1m (£10.8m) for the development of the first ever cellular network on the Moon. The LTE/4G network will aim to facilitate long term lunar habitability, providing communications for key aspects such as lunar rovers and navigation.
Radio frequency interference (RFI) is the long-term nemesis of radio astronomers. Jodrell Bank – the earliest radio astronomy observatory in the world still in existence – was created because of RFI. Sir Bernard Lovell, one of the pioneers of radio astronomy, found his work at Manchester hampered by RFI from passing trams in the city, and he persuaded the university’s botany department to let him move to their fields in Cheshire for two weeks (he never left).
Since then, radio telescopes have been built more and more remotely in an attempt to avoid RFI, with the upcoming Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope being built across remote areas of South Africa and Australia. This helps to cut out many common sources for RFI, including mobile phones and microwave ovens. However, ground-based radio telescopes cannot completely avoid space-based sources of RFI such as satellites – or a future lunar telecommunications network.
RFI can be mitigated at the source with appropriate shielding and precision in the emission of signals. Astronomers are constantly developing strategies to cut RFI from their data. But this increasingly relies on the goodwill of private companies to ensure that at least some radio frequencies are protected for astronomy.
A long-term dream of many radio astronomers would be to have a radio telescope on the far side of the Moon. In addition to being shielded from Earth-based signals, it would also be able to observe at the lowest radio frequencies, which on Earth are particularly affected by a part of the atmosphere called the ionosphere. Observing at low radio frequencies can help answer fundamental questions about the universe, such as what it was like in the first few moments after the big bang.
Despite its interest in these radio projects, Nasa also has its eye for commercial partnerships. Nokia is just one of 14 American companies Nasa is working with in a new set of partnerships, worth more than US$370m, for the development of its Artemis program, which aims to return astronauts to the Moon by 2024.
The involvement of private companies in space technology is not new. And the rights and wrongs have long been debated. Drawing possibly the most attention has been SpaceX’s Starlink satellites, which caused a stir among astronomers after their first major launch in 2019.
Images quickly began to emerge with trails of Starlink satellites cutting across them – often obscuring or outshining the original astronomical targets.
An artist’s impression of the planned SKA-mid dishes in Africa. SKA Organisation, CC BY
Astronomers have had to deal with satellites for a long time, but Starlink’s numbers and brightness are unprecedented and their orbits are difficult to predict. These concerns apply to anyone doing ground-based astronomy, whether they use an optical or a radio telescope.
A recent analysis of satellite impact on radio astronomy was released by the SKA Organisation, which is developing the next generation of radio telescope technology for the Square Kilometre Array. It calculated that the SKA telescopes would be 70% less sensitive in the radio band that Starlink uses for communications, assuming an eventual number of 6,400 Starlink satellites.
As space becomes more and more commercialized, the sky is filling with an increasing volume of technology. That is why it has never been more important to have regulations protecting astronomy. To help ensure that as we take further steps into space, we’ll still be able to gaze at it from our home on Earth.
Samsung Electronics vice-chairman Lee Jae-yong was not in attendance for a scheduled court hearing Monday after the death of his father, Samsung chairman Lee Kun-hee, was announced yesterday. Yonhap reports that the conglomorate’s de facto leader and presumed heir had asked the Seoul High Court to permit him to attend the funeral.
Samsung has said that the wake will last four days with a family-only funeral taking place on Wednesday, according to The Korea Herald. Lee Kun-hee had been incapacitated by a 2014 heart attack, with his son Lee Jae-yong — known as Jay Y. Lee in the West — widely expected to take over.
The younger Lee, however, is facing the resumption of a bribery case that has dogged him over recent years. He was sentenced to five years in jail in 2017 for his role in the sweeping bribery scandal that brought down former South Korean president Park Geun-hye; he was then freed on appeal the next year with most of the charges dismissed. But the case was sent back to a lower court for retrial to take into account alleged bribes that hadn’t previously been ruled on.
The next hearing is planned to take place on November 9th, Yonhap reports.
When it comes to incentivizing individuals to make more environmentally conscious travel decisions, government subsidies have proven quite successful in the past.
In a number of European countries, there are subsidies for buying new and used electric cars, installing EV charging points in your home, and even discounted bus tickets for those in low income brackets. Earlier this year in the UK, the government handed out vouchers to help people get their old bikes back on the road in a bid to encourage cycle commuting. In most of these cases, the money set aside to fund the subsidies was used up entirely.
It begs the question, if subsidies prove so popular, how far should they go? As governments across Europe pursue carbon neutrality, should we leave no stone unturned when it comes to financial incentives that make us less reliant on fossil fuels?
According to Norway Today, there are calls to extend a recent subsidy on studded bicycle tires after more than 4,000 people applied in the first week.
The scheme, offered to Oslo residents, would pay for half of the costs of switching their bicycles to specialist winter tires to help them continue commuting on two wheels through the winter months. The subsidy also covers workshop fees to fit the tires.
Launched on Monday, October 19, more than 2,700 people applied in the first day. By Friday, the Norwegian Climate Agency had received 4,114 applications.
“Oslo is experiencing a bicycle boom,” director Heidi Sørensen at the country’s Climate Agency told Norwegian newspaper Dagsavisen. “We want to give cyclists an opportunity to continue with the good trend into the winter.”
Indeed, Norway is keen to capitalize on its cycling boom and keep people on two wheels for as long as they can to maintain their habit. Compared to September 2019, there’s been a 54% increase in the number of trips taken on two wheels across the same period this year.
Dagsavisen also reports that the scheme is now being expanded to provide support for up to 5,000 cyclists.
“You do not need more than two good tires to ride safely in the winter,” Sørensen added. The country’s government hopes that people will see that cycling in winter isn’t just for the hardiest souls among us.
Other governments around the world should take note. It can be quite grim cycling in winter, but with the right equipment and clothing the experience can be dramatically improved.
As Norway has shown: support the specific needs of individuals to make better environmental choices, and chances are they’ll make those choices.
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