TikTok Bans Several Accounts In Myanmar In Effort To Curb Spread Of Violent Content

TikTok has been actively banning numerous accounts and devices in Myanmar, as it scrambles to slow the spread of violent videos and misinformation since the coup d’etat by its military.

According to a Rest of World report, Burmese soldiers have frequently used Bytedance’s platform to post hundreds of videos since the country’s military seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi, on 1 February this year. The kinds of video being posted range from pro-government propaganda and misinformation tailored to foment dissent among anti-coup protestors, right down to videos of soldiers brandishing their weapons and threatening to kill protestors.

In addition, many human right activists have drawn similarities from the way the Myanmar military also used social media – namely, Facebook – to fan the flames and spread hate speech against the country’s minority during the early parts of the last decade. On the subject of Facebook, the social network found itself blocked in the country just days after the coup went into effect, with the junta saying that it would disturb the “restoration of stability in the country”.

TikTok released a statement, denouncing the Myanmar military’s use of its platform to promote “hate, violence and misinformation”. However, it appears that the social media platform’s response to the offending videos was not fast enough and at this point, did little to curb the spread of said violent content.

AnTuTu Bans Realme GT For Allegedly Cheating Its Benchmark

AnTuTu has called out Realme for cheating on its benchmarking platform. It alleged that the brand had used deceptive measures during testing in order to rake in a high score for its latest Snapdragon 888-equipped flagship smartphone, the Realme GT.

In late February, brand vice president Xu Qi Chase shared a screenshot of the GT’s AnTuTu benchmark results on Weibo, revealing an impressive score of around 770,000 points. This placed it ahead of another Snapdragon 888 device, Xiaomi’s recently launched Mi 11 flagship, which scored around 708,000 points.

However, AnTuTu themselves were skeptical of the Realme GT’s overachieving score and decided to conduct the test on their own. The platform then took to Weibo to announce that the phone scored only 688,602 points – around 80,000 points less than what was claimed by the smartphone brand.

The platform explained the Realme GT used thread delay tactics during the multi-core test, which enabled it to hold back some threads that were meant to run on the smaller CPU cores and rerouted them to run on the larger and powerful cores instead. In the UX test, the smartphone was discovered to have skipped much of the processing involved with JPG decompression by relying on mosaic colour blocks to reduce the quality of an image. Both of these methods allowed for faster processing times, which in turn rewarded the GT with more points from the benchmark.

Consequently, AnTuTu has banned the Realme flagship from its platform for a period of three months due to cheating – removing its listing and score, as well as preventing any future tests involving the GT from taking place. It also issued an ultimatum to the brand, demanding Realme to address the issue within the given time frame or risk having the phone permanently banned.

Responding to the allegation, Xu Qi Chase issued a statement on Weibo saying that no tampering has been done to the particular Realme GT unit that was used for the benchmark. In the meantime, brand correspondents also told several outlets that it is currently communicating with AnTuTu in order to resolve the problem.

Cheating on mobile benchmarks is nothing new. Smartphone brands such as OnePlus and even chip manufacturers such as MediaTek have been previously caught tweaking their products in order to get higher scores. These numbers play an important role in terms of marketing and  bragging rights, especially when comparing performance results with the competition.

Twitter Introduces Five-Strikes Bans For COVID Vaccine Misinformation

As countries around the world begin vaccinating their citizens, Twitter is stepping up its efforts against COVID-19 vaccine misinformation by introducing a ban policy based on the number and severity of violations. Five strikes gets you permanently banned from Twitter.

But as the BBC noted, Twitter isn’t definitive on how it will act against misinformation, leaving itself a lot of wiggle room. The general idea is, less serious forms of misinformation will be labelled while more serious ones are outright deleted.

Then it gets more complicated. You get one strike if your tweet is labelled, but two if your tweet is removed. That’s important to remember because two to three strikes will lock your account for 12 hours. Four strikes will lock it for a week, and then five or more will send you to live in perma-ban land with Donald Trump.

Among other things, Twitter said it’s targeting content that misrepresents the safety of the vaccines, or claims the vaccines are part of a deliberate conspiracy to harm or control people. But it’s okay to raise questions about the effectiveness of the various vaccines as long as you don’t misrepresent research findings.

Since issuing earlier COVID guidelines, Twitter claimed it had taken down over 8,400 tweets and “challenged” 11.5 million accounts globally. That figure for removed tweets may seem underwhelming given what the other tech platforms have accomplished – in January, YouTube announced it had removed over 500,000 videos containing COVID misinformation over a period lasting nearly a year.

Facebook Bans Australians From Sharing and Viewing News Contents On Its Platform

Facebook has announced that it has begun to restrict Australian publishers and users from posting and sharing news content on its platform. This is the company’s latest response to a hotly debated law called the News Media Bargaining Code.

In general, Australian publishers are now no longer able to post contents on their Facebook Pages. As for normal Facebook users in Australia, they are also not able to view and share news from Australian and international news Pages.

Similarly, Australian news Pages and news contents are restricted for international users as well. The company is quite serious about its decision to the extent that Australian users can’t even see the contents on Facebook’s own official page:

We have also checked out the Facebook Pages that belong to two prominent Australian news outlets and were greeted with these views:

In general, the move is the opposite of what Google is doing who has entered into paid deals with several publishers including global conglomerate News Corp that runs several publications in Australia as well as the country’s own Nine Entertainment and Seven West Media.

In fact, Facebook did point the difference between its approach and Google in its announcement today. The company said that Google Search is closely tied to the news while less than 4% of contents that users saw on Facebook are news. Facebook also claimed that Australian publishers have received 5.1 billion free referrals through its platform which is apparently valued around AUD 407 million (~RM 1.28 billion).

China Bans Social Media App Clubhouse After Users Discuss Taboo Topics

China has banned audio-based social media app Clubhouse after users began discussing taboo topics such as China-Taiwan relations, the ill treatment of Uighur Muslims in China’s Xinjiang province and the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, the New York Times (NYT) reported. The young app, currently available only on iOS, wasn’t even officially on Apple China’s app store and remains invite-only and in beta.

To download Clubhouse, users in China had to resort using non-local based Apple IDs. Because joining the app also requires an invitation, a black market for invitation codes had developed right before the ban. According to the NYT, the going rate went up to 300 yuan (~RM189) for one code.

Despite the ban, some China users are reportedly still able to access Clubhouse using a VPN. But searches for “Clubhouse” on Weibo were blocked and many posts on the local social media page discussing the app’s banning were quickly purged, the NYT and Reuters reported.

Launched just last year in the US, Clubhouse allows users to drop into and converse in audio-based chatrooms that disappear once conversations are over. Chinese users flocked to the app after billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk chatted with Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev (see the Gamestop drama) using the platform. Musk apparently has quite the fandom in China.

Clubhouse joins the very long list of Western websites and apps banned in China, including Google, Facebook, and Twitter. Homegrown apps like Weibo and WeChat are subject to strict policing and monitoring by authorities. This intense censorship regime by the Chinese government is often referred to as the ‘Great Firewall of China’.

Indonesia bans forced religious attire in schools

Indonesia has banned public schools from making religious attire compulsory, after the story of a Christian student being pressured to wear a headscarf in class went viral.

The 16-year-old girl was attending a school that had a rule that all students had to wear the Muslim headscarf.

The government has given schools 30 days to revoke any existing rules.

Indonesia, a Muslim-majority country, officially recognises other religions.

But there are growing concerns about rising religious intolerance.

The ban was signed into decree on Wednesday, and schools which do not comply may face sanctions.

Indonesia's Minister for Education and Culture Nadiem Makarim said the choice of wearing religious attire was "an individual's right… it is not the school's decision".

The issue captured national attention in recent weeks after a student from a Christian family who was attending a vocational school in Padang was repeatedly asked to wear a Muslim headscarf in class in January.

She refused, and her parents were called in to speak to school officials.

Her parents secretly filmed a video of the meeting and posted it on social media, which prompted a backlash online.

In the video, the official insisted that the school had a rule that all female students, including non-Muslims, must wear the headscarf according to school rules.

"Almost every day, my daughter has been summoned for not wearing a headscarf, and her answer is that she is not Muslim," Elianu Hia, the father of the girl, told BBC News Indonesia.

"If I (force) my daughter to wear the headscarf, I will be lying about my daughter's identity," Mr Hia added. "Where are my religious rights? This is a public school after all."

The school's principal later apologised at a press conference and said the student would be allowed to dress according to her own religious beliefs.

At a media briefing on the decree on Wednesday, religious affairs minister Yaqut Cholil Qoumas was quoted as saying: "Religions do not promote conflict, neither do they justify acting unfairly against those who are different."

Andreas Harsono, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, told Reuters news agency the decree was a positive step, given that schools in more than 20 provinces still make religious attire mandatory in their dress code.

Activision Bans Over 60000 Call of Duty: Warzone Accounts As Cheating Complaints Mount

Activision recently banned over 60000 Call of Duty: Warzone accounts in one day, the studio said in blog post detailing its latest efforts to root out cheating in the game. It added that over 300000 accounts had been permanently banned since the game’s launch in March last year. Activision and its developer subsidiaries have received intense criticism for not doing enough to address rampant cheating in their Call of Duty (COD) games.

“We have zero tolerance for cheaters across Call of Duty and Call of Duty: Warzone,” the company declared. Among other things, it promised to enhance its internal anti-cheat software and implement additional detection technology. It also vowed to go after cheat providers. Relatedly, at least one cheat maker ceased all development and sale of COD cheats, and even apologised after Activision threatened a lawsuit last year.

Still, Activision’s previous efforts against cheating have seemed woefully inadequate to many players. Vikkstar, a popular Warzone streamer with millions of YouTube subscribers, recently got a lot of press for very publicly quitting the game out of frustration.

The streamer decried the pervasiveness of in-game cheating, pointing out that one hacker even livestreamed their cheating on Facebook. Perhaps that was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back (and forced Activision’s hand). Vikkstar did praise Activision’s latest statement as “a step in the right direction.”

Warzone has been primarily plagued by two kinds of cheats: aimbots and wallhacks. Aimbots lock your gun’s reticle to the enemy’s head, while wallhacks allow you to see other players through walls.

Twitter Finally Bans Donald Trump For Good

Twitter has permanently suspended the outgoing U.S President, Donald Trump from its platform, effective immediately. The decision was taken following several tweets that the social media company believed could incite another round of violence from his supporters.

While the original tweets can’t be seen anymore since the account has now been banned, Twitter did list them down on its announcement:

“The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!”

“To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.”

In its announcement, the company has also revealed that there is already a plan going around online including on Twitter itself for another attack on the U.S Capitol as well as state capitol buildings on 17 January.

Twitter has already temporarily suspended Trump earlier this week in the wake of the raid on the U.S Capitol. Many deemed that the raid which ended up in five deaths was caused by Trump’s speech during Save America rally as well as his false claims surrounding election frauds.