An investigation by the Stanford Internet Observatory has found worrying volumes of CSAM on Mastodon. Of particular concern is that the child sexual abuse material included many known examples that should have been automatically detected by digital fingerprinting.
Researchers say that a large part of the issue is the open and decentralized nature of the social media platform …
CSAM on Mastodon
Anyone can create a Mastodon server, which then links to other servers (or “instances”) to form what appears to be a single social network, but which has no ownership or central control. That’s a problem when it comes to illegal and problematic content, say researchers.
The Washington Post reports on the study.
During a two-day test, researchers at the Stanford Internet Observatory found over 600 pieces of known or suspected child abuse material across some of Mastodon’s most popular networks […]
Researchers reported finding their first piece of content containing child exploitation within about five minutes. They would go on to uncover roughly 2,000 uses of hashtags associated with such material. David Thiel, one of the report’s authors, called it an unprecedented sum.
“We got more photoDNA hits in a two-day period than we’ve probably had in the entire history of our organization of doing any kind of social media analysis, and it’s not even close,” said Thiel, referring to a technique used to identify pieces of content with unique digital signatures. Mastodon did not return a request for comment.
While the open nature of Mastodon has many benefits, Stanford researchers say that the network needs to take advantage of the same kinds of scanning tools used by closed platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
Mark Zuckerberg faces contempt charge
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg faces the prospect of a contempt charge by Congress, after being accused of withholding crucial documents from a congressional investigation into its moderation policies.
Republican members accuse Meta of working with the Biden administration to censor right-wing posts. Meta denies this, stating that the same moderation criteria apply to all posts. It handed over 50,000 pages of documents, and made both current and former employees available for interview.
Some Republicans aren’t satisfied with this, however, with The Verge reporting that Zuckerberg may be charged with contempt.
Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee may vote to hold Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in contempt later this week, according to a new report from Punchbowl News Monday.
The potential contempt vote hinges on a February subpoena from the committee demanding Meta produce documents and communications related to content moderation discussions it has had with executive branch officials. Members of the committee have accused Meta of failing to cooperate with the investigation by withholding documents.
The vote is expected to take place on Thursday.
Twitter plans to become a bank
It has long been rumored that Twitter – sorry, X – plans to become a bank, or at least to offer a range of banking services like debit cards, savings accounts, and peer-to-peer payments.
Things went quiet for a while, but a memo from Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino suggests that payments and banking are very much back on the agenda as part of the rebrand.
CNBC got a copy of the memo, which says in part:
We’ll continue to delight our entire community with new experiences in audio, video, messaging, payments, banking — creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities.
Twitter temporarily rebrands to ‘er’
Speaking of Twitter’s rebranding, the company managed to accidentally achieve a temporary rebranding of its San Francisco headquarters to “er.”
The Verge reports that the company brought in a crane to remove the Twitter name from the building, but work was interrupted over confusion about whether it had a permit for this. It seems it did, but in the meantime the job was halted and the crane sent away, leaving the “er” remaining.
Photo: Krzysztof Kowalik/Unsplash
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