Instagram begins blurring nudity in messages
London, April 11: Instagram said it’s deploying new new tools to protect young people and combat sexual extortion, including a feature that will automatically blur nudity in direct messages.
The social media platform said in a blog post Thursday that it’s testing out the features as part of its campaign to fight sexual scams and other forms of “image abuse,” and to make it tougher for criminals to contact teens.
Sexual extortion, or sextortion, involves persuading a person to send explicit photos online and then threatening to make the images public unless the victim pays money or engages in sexual favours. Recent high-profile cases include two Nigerian brothers who pleaded guilty to sexually extorting teen boys and young men in Michigan, including one who took his own life, and a Virginia sheriff’s deputy who sexually extorted and kidnapped a 15-year-old girl.
Instagram and other social media companies have faced growing criticism for not doing enough to protect young people. Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Instagram’s owner Meta Platforms, apologised to the parents of victims of such abuse during a Senate hearing earlier this year.
Meta also owns Facebook and WhatsApp but the nudity blur feature won’t be added to messages sent on those platforms. Instagram said scammers often use direct messages to ask for “intimate images.” To counter this, it will soon start testing out a nudity protection feature for direct messages that blurs any images with nudity “and encourages people to think twice before sending nude images.” “The feature is designed not only to protect people from seeing unwanted nudity in their DMs, but also to protect them from scammers who may send nude images to trick people into sending their own images in return,” Instagram said. The feature will be turned on by default globally for teens under 18. Adult users will get a notification encouraging them to activate it.
Images with nudity will be blurred with a warning, giving users the option to view it. They’ll also get an option to block the sender and report the chat. For people sending direct messages with nudity, they will get a message reminding them to be cautious when sending “sensitive photos.” (AP)
High drama unfolds between Army-Punjab police personnel
Lahore, April 11: Videos of Pakistan Army personnel allegedly torturing policemen from the Punjab province have sparked a massive outrage on social media even as police brass sought to downplay the incident.
Demanding action against those involved multiple video clips of the high-octane drama surfaced late on Wednesday that showed the army officers allegedly assaulting and beating up policemen on Monday in Bahawalnagar, some 400 kms from here.
In one clip, the cops in uniform were made to sit on the ground on their knees by the army men. Two cops, being brutally tortured, were seen pleading before the army men to spare them.
In another clip, two young uniformed cops were seen running to escape being caught by the army personnel but are ultimately caught.
According to sources, “Three civilians were illegally detained and the Punjab police personnel were demanding money for their release.”
“The policemen also raided the residence of an army officer to arrest an accomplice of the trio. This piqued some army personnel then raided the Madrassa police station at Bahawalnagar to free those three persons. During that raid, the policemen were tortured,” a senior police officer told PTI on Thursday.
Following the incident, four policemen – SHO Abbas Rizwan, Muhammad Naeem, Muhammad Iqbal and Ali Raza — (who were allegedly tortured) were suspended and arrested under different sections of the Pakistan Penal Code for illegally detaining three persons and demanding money from them. (PTI)