Following backlash over Discord's global rollout of strict age-verification checks, users are flocking to rival platform TeamSpeak and overwhelming its servers. According to PC Gamer, the Discord alternative said its hosting capacity has been maxed out in a number of regions including the U.S. From the report: [A]s I saw for myself while testing out free Discord alternatives, it's hard to deny the appeal of TeamSpeak. It's quick and easy to make an account, join or start a group chat, or join a massive, game-based community voice server, and at no point does TeamSpeak cheekily ask if it can scan your wizened visage. During my testing, I was able to dive into 18+ group chats without tripping over an age gate. However, there's no guarantee TeamSpeak won't have to deploy its own age verification mechanism in the future. In the UK at least, the Online Safety Act makes those sorts of checks a legal obligation, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer recently stating "No social media platform should get a free pass when it comes to protecting our kids." Besides all of that, if you'd rather not chat to randoms who also happen to have an unhealthy obsession with Arc Raiders, you'll likely need to pay an admittedly small subscription fee to rent your own ten-person community voice server. By that point, you're handing over card details and essentially fulfilling an age assurance check anyway. If you'd rather limit how much info your chat platform of choice has about you, there are arguably better options out there.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Instagram head Adam Mosseri told a Los Angeles courtroom last week that a teenager's 16-hour single-day session on the platform was "problematic use" but not an addiction, a distinction he drew repeatedly during testimony in a landmark trial over social media's harm to minors. Mosseri, who has led Instagram for eight years, is the first high-profile tech executive to take the stand. He agreed the platform should do everything in its power to protect young users but said how much use was too much was "a personal thing." The lead plaintiff, identified as K.G.M., reported bullying on Instagram more than 300 times; Mosseri said he had not known. An internal Meta survey of 269,000 users found 60% had experienced bullying in the previous week.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bloomberg reports: India tightened rules governing social media content and platforms, particularly targeting artificially generated and manipulated material, in a bid to crack down on the rapid spread of misinformation and deepfakes. The government on Tuesday (Feb 10) notified new rules under an existing law requiring social media firms to comply with takedown requests from Indian authorities within three hours and prominently label AI-generated content. The rules also require platforms to put in place measures to prevent users from posting unlawful material... Companies will need to invest in 24-hour monitoring centres as enforcement shifts toward platforms rather than users, said Nikhil Pahwa, founder of MediaNama, a publication tracking India's digital policy... The onus of identification, removal and enforcement falls on tech firms, which could lose immunity from legal action if they fail to act within the prescribed timeline. The new rules also require automated tools to detect and prevent illegal AI content, the BBC reports. And they add that India's new three-hour deadline is "a sharp tightening of the existing 36-hour deadline." [C]ritics worry the move is part of a broader tightening of oversight of online content and could lead to censorship in the world's largest democracy with more than a billion internet users... According to transparency reports, more than 28,000 URLs or web links were blocked in 2024 following government requests... Delhi-based technology analyst Prasanto K Roy described the new regime as "perhaps the most extreme takedown regime in any democracy". He said compliance would be "nearly impossible" without extensive automation and minimal human oversight, adding that the tight timeframe left little room for platforms to assess whether a request was legally appropriate. On AI labelling, Roy said the intention was positive but cautioned that reliable and tamper-proof labelling technologies were still developing. DW reports that India has also "joined the growing list of countries considering a social media ban for children under 16." "Young Indians are not happy and are already plotting workarounds."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Meta, TikTok, Snap and other social neteworks agreed this week to be rated on their teen safety efforts, reports the Los Angeles Times, "amid rising concern about whether the world's largest social media platforms are doing enough to protect the mental health of young people." The Mental Health Coalition, a collective of organizations focused on destigmatizing mental health issues, said Tuesday that it is launching standards and a new rating system for online platforms. For the Safe Online Standards (S.O.S.) program, an independent panel of global experts will evaluate companies on parameters including safety rules, design, moderation and mental health resources. TikTok, Snap and Meta — the parent company of Facebook and Instagram — will be the first companies to be graded. Discord, YouTube, Pinterest, Roblox and Twitch have also agreed to participate, the coalition said in a news release. "These standards provide the public with a meaningful way to evaluate platform protections and hold companies accountable — and we look forward to more tech companies signing up for the assessments," Antigone Davis, vice president and global head of safety at Meta, said in a statement... The ratings will be color-coded, and companies that perform well on the tests will get a blue shield badge that signals they help reduce harmful content on the platform and their rules are clear. Those that fall short will receive a red rating, indicating they're not reliably blocking harmful content or lack proper rules. Ratings in other colors indicate whether the platforms have partial protection or whether their evaluations haven't been completed yet.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Doom scrolling is doomed, if the EU gets its way. From a report: The European Commission is for the first time tackling the addictiveness of social media in a fight against TikTok that may set new design standards for the world's most popular apps. Brussels has told the company to change several key features, including disabling infinite scrolling, setting strict screen time breaks and changing its recommender systems. The demand follows the Commission's declaration that TikTok's design is addictive to users -- especially children. The fact that the Commission said TikTok should change the basic design of its service is "ground-breaking for the business model fueled by surveillance and advertising," said Katarzyna Szymielewicz, president of the Panoptykon Foundation, a Polish civil society group. That doesn't bode well for other platforms, particularly Meta's Facebook and Instagram. The two social media giants are also under investigation over the addictiveness of their design.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Meta plans to add facial recognition technology to its Ray-Ban smart glasses as soon as this year, New York Times reported Friday, five years after the social giant shut down facial recognition on Facebook and promised to find "the right balance" for the controversial technology. The feature, internally called "Name Tag," would let wearers identify people and retrieve information about them through Meta's AI assistant, the report added. An internal memo from May acknowledged the feature carries "safety and privacy risks" and noted that political tumult in the United States would distract civil society groups that might otherwise criticize the launch. The company is exploring restrictions that would prevent the glasses from functioning as a universal facial recognition tool, potentially limiting identification to people connected on Meta platforms or those with public accounts.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: U.S. messenger app WhatsApp, owned by Meta Platforms, has been completely blocked in Russia for failing to comply with local law, the Kremlin said on Thursday, suggesting Russians turn to a state-backed "national messenger" instead. "Due to Meta's unwillingness to comply with Russian law, such a decision was indeed taken and implemented," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, proposing that Russians switch to MAX, Russia's state-owned messenger.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

À ce stade, aucun lien de cause à effet n’a été établi entre le décès du nourrisson et la consommation d’un produit rappelé.

© France, 25 January 2025 : Pharmacy section featuring baby products with diapers and lotions / Henry Saint John - stock.adobe.com

«Les plus gros fraudeurs ne sont pas les particuliers», a déclaré le ministre au micro de RMC, pointant du doigt un «petit nombre» d’entreprises qui ne s’acquittent par de leurs cotisations.

© Stephanie Lecocq / REUTERS

INFOGRAPHIES – Le taux de chômage, au sens du Bureau international du travail (BIT), s’élève à 7,9% à la fin de l’année 2025.

© M+Isolation+Photo / stock.adobe.com

Le taux de chômage des 15-24 ans augmente nettement, de 2,4 points.

© sebastien rabany / sebastien rabany - stock.adobe.com

TikTok's endless scroll of irresistible content, tailored for each person's tastes by a well-honed algorithm, has helped the service become one of the world's most popular apps. Now European Union regulators say those same features that made TikTok so successful are likely illegal. From a report: On Friday, the regulators released a preliminary decision that TikTok's infinite scroll, auto-play features and recommendation algorithm amount to an "addictive design" that violated European Union laws for online safety. The service poses potential harm to the "physical and mental well-being" of users, including minors and vulnerable adults, the European Commission, the 27-nation bloc's executive branch, said in a statement. The findings suggest TikTok must overhaul the core features that made it a global phenomenon, or risk major fines. European officials said it was the first time that a legal standard for social media addictiveness had been applied anywhere in the world. "TikTok needs to change the basic design of its service," the European Commission said in a statement.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Des sociétés de travail temporaires n’auraient pas déclaré leurs salariés, à leur insu. Les sociétés ayant eu recours à ces prestataires s’exposent à de «lourds redressements de l’Urssaf».

© Delphotostock / stock.adobe.com

Ces parlementaires, mandatés pour faire un «premier bilan» de la crise de la dermatose bovine, soulignent une communication de l’État «parfois insuffisante ou inadaptée», qui a conduit à «une prolifération de fausses informations».

© Benoit Tessier / REUTERS

Le syndicat étudiant «appelle l’ensemble de la jeunesse, étudiante et travailleuse, à se mobiliser contre ces attaques inacceptables», écrit-il dans un communiqué, en réaction à la proposition du Medef de créer un CDI «pouvant être rompu sans motif pendant les premières années».

© Halfpoint - stock.adobe.com

Le Medef propose la création d’un CDI «pouvant être rompu sans motif pendant les premières années», avec «une indemnisation croissante en lien avec l’ancienneté du salarié en cas de rupture».

© DIMITAR DILKOFF / AFP

La première organisation patronale propose notamment de créer un CDI «pouvant être rompu sans motif pendant les premières années». Un dispositif qui rappelle le «contrat première embauche» (CPE), créé en 2006 par Dominique de Villepin, qui avait provoqué une mobilisation historique.

© THIBAUD MORITZ / AFP

Ce chiffre intègre notamment les bénéficiaires du RSA, inscrits d’office à France Travail depuis la loi «plein emploi». Corrigé de ces effets, la hausse est limitée à 1,7%.

© HJBC / stock.adobe.com

DÉCRYPTAGE - Dans un courrier adressé aux partenaires sociaux, le premier ministre annonce retirer la lettre de cadrage envoyé par François Bayrou et fait une croix sur 4 milliards d’euros d’économies.

© Gonzalo Fuentes / REUTERS