Shield yourself against d igital dangers

SNUFF videos, footage of people being murdered, have been around for as long as moving pictures. What has changed with the digital era is the ease and speed with which this deeply disturbing content can be broken down into bits and bytes, and beamed around the world.

Nowhere was this more evident than in the case of the Christchurch, New Zealand, mosque massacre. The alleged killer live-streamed his attack on Facebook to a relatively small audience of just 200, according to the social media giant. But this soon exploded into millions as the video went viral on Facebook, Youtube and other online channels.

Even mainstream media got in on the act, with many TV networks screening clips from the video.

Why were the social media heavyweights, with all their money and technology, unable to stem this vile tide of violence and hate? And what can we do to protect ourselves and our loved ones, particularly kids and teens, from being exposed to such content?

Artificial unintelligence

While Facebook and Youtube employ human moderators, the sheer volume of content uploaded to these networks means most of the heavy lifting when it comes to content

ORIELLE BERRY

sifting is left to computer algorithms.

As fellow tech hack Lindsey Schutters puts it in a post on his excellent That Opinion Guy blog: “The blood-curdling screams as a gunman stalks his chosen prey from room to room are truly disturbing. Computer algorithms, however, don’t have blood that can be curdled. And that’s the problem facing technology today: we’re experts at building tools that prey on universal insecurities, but terrible at keeping people safe.”

You can read the full post at bit.ly/ opinionai, where Schutters points out the algorithm-based content removal process is geared towards copyright protection rather than identifying human created horrors.

For those in the know, it’s a trivial matter to tweak these videos when re-posting them so that they slip past the algorithm. And when this happens hundreds of thousands of times, as in the case of the Christchurch atrocity, human moderators simply cannot keep up.

Protect yourself

If we can’t rely on the social media sites to shield us from the horrors they help spread, it’s up to us to protect ourselves.

Caroline Knorr, parenting editor at Common Sense Media, has some excellent advice on how to change the settings on devices and apps to minimise the chances of exposure to undesirable content.

“Check your kid’s social media settings to see what options are available to curate the feed. If certain friends always post violent, ageinappropriate posts, you can unfollow or unfriend them,” she advises.

She points out that news feeds such as Google News let you pick which news sources and topics you’re interested in. “Help your teen or teen select age-appropriate sources and topics.”

Another excellent piece of advice is to turn off auto-play. Not only will this ensure that videos, the violent ones among them, don’t play automatically as your kid scrolls by, it’ll save a fortune in data costs.

Of course, none of this guarantees that your child won’t be exposed to such content, which makes it especially important that parents keep open lines of communication with their children. Knorr has some great tips on this. Read her full article here bit.ly/violentvids.

Other resources

The Facebook Safety Centre and Bullying Protection Hub is a good place to start if you or your child use this social network. Here’s a short link bit.ly/fbsafecent.

Two of my favourite resources in this respect are Connectsafely. org and Safekids.com. Published by globally-respected expert Larry Magid, the sites are full of incredibly useful information on protecting your children from cyber-bullying, whether under 13s should be on Facebook and how to monitor your kids’ Internet and cellphone usage.

The ultimate aim of the sites is to help parents to empower themselves and their children to be confident, responsible and safe “Netizens”.

As Magid puts it, “The best way to assure that your children are having positive online experiences is to stay in touch with what they are doing.”