We’ve had the Apple ecosystem and the Samsung ecosystem but it looks like OnePlus is coming all guns blazing to build its very own ecosystem, and I am all here for it! Here is a detailed look at the newly launched OnePlus Y1S Pro 55-inch variant –
Display
A standard expectation from a TV display is for it to be vibrant and eye-catching. The Y1S Pro delivers in that aspect with flying colors. Sure there is some tweaking in the settings one has to do for their subjective liking, but the display is capable of catering to a wide range of people and their tastes. The 4K UHD offers a wide range of customizations through its picture mode including settings like AI Picture and HDR10+. During my extensive testing of the Y1S Pro, I noticed the HDR10+ mode turned colors oversaturated with an orange tint. One can only hope this is rectified through a software update. The default picture settings offer an overwhelming cinematic experience. I watched RRR and The Greatest Showman in 4K on the Y1S Pro and it was an immersive experience, to say the least.
Sound
In the audio arena, the Y1S Pro performs as per standard expectations. There are no audio gimmicks playing around with this television as it comes with a 24W speaker set up with Dolby Audio. There are different sound modes present in the television ranging from Standard to Surround. There is also a ‘Dolby Audio’ option which furthermore gives users the option of ‘Dialogue Enhancer’ This feature comes in handy whenever film dialogues are barely intelligible even at high volumes but the background music is blasting like a Nolan film. The dialogue enhancer feature was surely a treat.
Settings Customization
The standard setting of the Y1S Pro provides a good enough experience but the meat on the bones is the customization liberty. When it comes to picture enhancements, this TV comes with a Gamma engine, MEMC, noise reduction, color space mapping, HDR10+ decoding, and a lot more. The AI Picture mode provides an amazing video output and the Dolby Audio mode offers users a crisp sound experience. Besides the flexibility of customization, the TV can also be controlled by the OnePlus Connect application for additional functionality. OnePlus’ in-house Gamma Engine fine-tunes the visuals to provide a dynamic color and contrast range.
Performance and connectivity
Backed by the 64-bit Mediatek MT9216 processor and 2GB RAM, there were no lags or performance drops experienced during my testing of the Y1S Pro as one would expect. It also comes with 8GB storage to load up all your applications. For connectivity, the TV comes with 3x HDMI, 2 USB ports, and optical and Ethernet drives. There is also dual-band Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0 present here.
Verdict
At Rs 39,999, the Y1S Pro is one of the finest offerings from the house of OnePlus. It comes with a dynamic display and capable speakers that allow users to have a complete entertainment experience.
The western music industry had taken backstage due to the COVID pandemic which led to a number of canceled shows and delayed albums. However, with 2022 bringing back live shows with relaxed COVID protocols and artists being able to get back on track with recordings and releases, this year saw an influx of new music dropping throughout. Be it Drake, Beyoncé, or Harry Styles, the heavy hitters of pop music dropped new music left and right. Here is a look at all the best albums from 2022 –
The Weeknd – Dawn FM
The Weeknd had big shoes to fill with Dawn Fm as his 2020 album After Hours was a blockbuster hit globally. The 2022 album actually showcased how far Abel has come as a performer if we look back at his 2011 mixtape – House Of Balloons. The Weeknd’s music has often followed a theme of light/dark having multiple yin-and-yang elements sprinkled across all over his music. With Dawn FM, the artist takes the same theme to the next level and maybe even concludes. For what can be called his most upbeat album to date, Dawn FM by The Weeknd makes his way to our top albums list.
Favorite Track – Here We Go… Again (ft. Tyler, The Creator)
Harry Style – Harry’s House
I’ve spent the better part of my 2022 watching Harry Styles perform all over the world with his fans screaming ‘Leave America’ wherever he sings ‘As It Was’ live. And let me tell you, I had a ball! The wonderboy of One Direction has now evolved to become a solo showstopper and the Harry’s House album is a testament to what was waiting to be unleashed for all those years. It’s always a rocky road when a teen idol becomes a solo star and Harry’s own One Direction team is an example of the same. However, the artist has managed to break free from the shackles of the ‘boyband’ image and build a solo brand for himself. Harry’s House is a delightful entry to our top albums list.
Favorite Track – As It Was
Taylor Swift – Midnights
The imprint Taylor Swift has left on modern pop culture is unparalleled, but I am not a big fan of the megastar. While I love some of her songs, others not so much. But her Midnights album was the one where a completely evolved Taylor was presented to her fans and general listeners. Swifties around the world too were taken aback by the self-loathing and reflective nature of the lyrics this album had which was a departure from Taylor’s usual expression of music. The unfiltered and raw version of this pop icon makes Midnights a worthy mention in our list.
Favorite Track – Anti-Hero
Drake / 21 Savage – Her Loss
Drake’s Honestly, Nevermind album was a disappointment for me where tracks like Calling My Name and Sticky failed to intrigue the music enthusiast inside me. However, with Her Loss, we were presented with a much more carefree Drake coupled with 21 Savage’s exhilarating collaboration. The new collab between the two artists felt like a direct and fitting revolution from 2009’s So Far Gone. With Her Loss, the Certified Lover Boy makes his way to our best album list in all his Canadian glory.
Favorite Track – Rich Flex
Kendrick Lamar – Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers
It took five years for Kendrick Lamar to drop an album after ‘Damn’ and all I can say is that it was worth the wait! The Pulitzer-winning rapper explored the depths of his soul with his new album as opposed to serving the chartbuster formula like his previous one. In his fifth and glorious studio album, Lamar has turned his back on the limelight of being a pop icon and highlighted his own insecurities and belief systems which is a daring feat for a star of his magnitude to do.
Favorite Track – We Cry Together (ft. Taylor Paige)
Lenovo, the global technology leader, today announced that it is extending its unique ‘custom to order’ (CTO) feature to desktops in India as well.
The Legion 5i Tower desktop now comes with a customization option that was previously only available for IdeaPad, Legion, and Yoga laptops. The Legion 5i Tower is the first desktop in the country where buyers can upgrade their base model setup to a high performance battle-station with a more immersive experience.
The CTO option is exclusively available on Lenovo.com, for customers to avail end-to-end customization which includes upgrading the processor, graphics card, RAM, hard disk drive, screen type, keyboard, and operating system (OS) type at the time of purchase itself. The customized device will get delivered to customers within 4-6 weeks of purchase. All products in the Legion laptop range including the Legion 5, Legion 5 Pro, Legion 7 and Legion Slim 7 can also be similarly customized during purchase.
Lenovo has introduced some exciting offers to encourage customers to experience CTO desktops. Customers can upgrade to Nvidia RTX 3070 8GB at the cost of Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti and save Rs.15000. They can also avail an extended warranty of three years for only Rs.99, till December 15.
It was back in the 1950s when Marvin Minsky and John McCarthy, who are considered the fathers of the field, described artificial intelligence (AI) as any task performed by a machine that previously required human intelligence to complete. This can be described as a simple explanation of a complicated term, am sure even Minsky and McCarthy would not have been able to predict what AI would be perceived as in the modern world. Sometimes an evil force out to extinct humanity, other times a helping tool to evolve humans, AI has been depicted and perceived in various ways around the world in the 21st century. Now, the discussion is not about machines completing tasks on behalf of humans, but about machines replacing humans altogether! I won’t be jumping onto the pessimist viewpoint of AI (we’ve reserved that for later) but, in our AI edition, we wanted to get our readers acquainted with the technology and its integration into the real world.
Minsky and McCarthy define AI in a broad and general sense. Thus it sparks arguments about whether just a machine doing mundane tasks is truly AI or not. However, the modern definitions of technology are more specific. Francois Chollet, an AI researcher at Google and the creator of Keras, a machine learning library software, has stated that intelligence is directly tied to a machine or software’s ability to adapt and improvise in a new environment. The AI machine is capable of generalizing its knowledge to apply it to unfamiliar situations, just like humans (or better?)
Modern AI-powered systems such as your virtual assistants operate under this rule. Though your virtual assistant is capable of a limited set of tasks, they can only use their training to give an apt output. The Siri on your iPhone surely has some witty answers for your entertainment whenever you ask her a question but there are other times when she is just clueless. This is characterized as ‘Narrow AI. We’ll discuss the types of AI further in detail.
Typically, AI systems demonstrate or replicate some human behavioral patterns. Some of these patterns include learning, planning, problem-solving, reasoning, motion, and manipulation. To a lesser extent, AI is capable of creativity and social intelligence. If we lean towards science fiction, AI is also capable of feeling emotions and diving deep into philosophy trying to find the purpose of their existence. Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves as even humans haven’t been able to find the answer to that question yet!
Firstly, let’s learn about the types of AI. Looking at the technology from a stratospheric viewpoint, AI can be broadly divided into three parts. These parts include both the actual and hypothetical implementation of the technology.
Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI)
Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)
Artificial Superintelligence (ASI)
Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI)
Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI) which is also known as weak AI or narrow AI is perhaps the only type of AI0 that humanity has successfully mastered. Narrow AI is tied to a goal, designed to only perform a singular task. This could include the fingerprint reader or face unlock on your mobile device, voice assistants, driving a car, or searching things on the internet. The AI is simply programmed to follow specific tasks and it does the same without a hiccup. Well, most of the time.
These machines are undoubtedly super intelligent, but only in the fields they have been programmed in. It operates under a narrow set of tasks with limitations and constraints, thus it is typically referred to as weak or narrow AI. This type of Ai is not designed to replicate human patterns, behaviors, and thinking but is simply designed to simulate human behavior based on a limited set of parameters and context. In simple terms, your Siri assistant is incapable of having human-like conversations with you as it is not designed to do so and operates under limitations. Wouldn’t it be fun if Siri could one day just start talking to you like JARVIS from the Iron Man films?
While Siri is one example of Narrow AI, other examples include Tesla’s self-driving cars that use visual recognition and recommendation engines to suggest products based on your purchase history. These systems can simply only learn and be taught to process specific tasks. While Narrow AI is a straightforward concept to understand, it is furthermore classified into two possibilities. These include Reactive AI and Limited memory AI.
Reactive AI – It can be defined as the ‘Basic’ version of AI. It comes with no memory and data storing capabilities. It simply emulates human behaviour and responds to different inputs without relying on any past information.
Limited Memory AI – This is a more advanced version of Narrow AI. It has great memory and storage capabilities which allows machines to interpret the output based on statistical data. Most of the AI being used now in the mainstream is limited memory AI. It enables machines to dive into a large amount of data in the realms of deep learning to bring out the most accurate results.
Examples of Narrow AI
Virtual assistants like Cortana by Microsoft, Siri by Apple, and Alexa by Amazon
Rankbrain: The algorithm used by Google to sort the search result
Self-Driving Cars
Facial recognition and interpretation software
Social media marketing tools to check platform violations and content recommendation
Also used as a medication and prediction tool to diagnose diseases like cancer and other health-related issues with accuracy
Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)
So, we’ve coursed our way through the real-life implementation of the technology with Narrow AI. Now, it’s time to jump into hypothesis and what something could be regarded as fiction by many. Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is referred to as ‘Strong’ AI as it is able to carry out cognitive processes. AGI in theory is capable of demonstrating intelligence equal to humans. AGI machines are able to perform any task that a human can do, but unlike humans, they are unlimited in the ability to solve multiple problems at the same time.
Let’s reflect upon human intelligence to understand the territory AGI charters. When compared to human intelligence, AGI demonstrates intelligence similar to it. Think about it, human beings are unique and complex beings that possess a wide array of abilities. Humans possess the senses of hearing, taste, sound, and touch. We can think about making a move and then extend our physical selves to complete the said movement with ease.
The human brain is undoubtedly an impressive wonder of our existence. Not only is it capable of critical thinking, but it also is a complex algorithm that hasn’t been studied yet completely. This makes it difficult to replicate the human brain in the form of artificial intelligence. The complex algorithm that is our brain is trained right from birth till our death. Learning from trial and error and continuously learning and unlearning to store information and develop as a human being.
The complexity of the human brain is established. Now, imagine decoding this complex nature of human existence and programming it into artificial intelligence. Sounds… impossible? It just might be!
These are some of the reasons which make it nearly impossible to make AGI equal to human nature. The limitless powers of the human brain cannot be simply translated into a machine. Hence, the creation of AGI is still a far-off dream. While AGI is years away from coming to fruition, pop culture has depicted it for years. Some examples of AGI in films are
Iron Man’s Personal Virtual Assistant JARVIS
HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey
Programs from The Matrix
The Terminator
Voice Assistant from the film Her
Fun Fact: What humanity knows about the human brain is that it is a neural network, capable of processing 86 billion neurons of sensory information. However, one of the world’s fastest computers, K, built by Fujitsu took 40 minutes to simulate a single second of neural activity. So, it won’t be an overstatement to say that we’re far away from AGI becoming a reality!
Artificial Superintelligence (ASI)
Beyond the simple narrow AI and maybe an attainable general AI lies the realms of futuristic yet dystopian artificial superintelligence (ASI) Machines with superintelligence are self-aware, that’s more than some humans can say for themselves. These self-aware machines can think of abstractions and interpretations of the world that humans cannot. Human beings are capable of operating under the set limit of a few billion neutrons. ASI, on the other hand, does not have any such limitations as its intelligence surpasses the unfathomable!
ASI is not just capable of understanding human emotions but can have its own desires and beliefs. It finds its application in all domains of human interest ranging from maths, science, and arts, basically, whatever you can think, ASI can excel in!
ASI has long been a muse around the world as a dystopian science fiction entity. Films depicting AI overpowering humanity portray ASI, now you know!
Sony India today announced the launch of the new SRS-XV900, the most powerful and loudest Bluetooth party speaker in the wireless speaker X-series range. The speaker forms part of the “LIVE LIFE LOUD” vision to deliver exciting sound entertainment experiences to music lovers around the world. Life should be lived at full volume and that means being able to enjoy clear, rich sound from Sony’s new SRS-XV900 speaker to make the most of every single moment.
Omnidirectional party sound with X-Balanced speaker
Sony India’s new SRS-XV900 lets you enjoy powerful omnidirectional party sound. This wireless speaker is designed to fill the space with sound. The non-circular diaphragm of the X-Balanced speaker unit gives more sound pressure and less distorted sound by maximizing the area of the speaker and jet bass booster delivers deep, punchy, powerful bass. The midrange drivers provide excellent vocals while the 6 tweeters on the front, side and back spread high frequency sound all around.
TV Sound booster connectivity for better TV sound experience
The SRS-XV900 speaker features Sony’s unique function, TV Sound booster that lets you enjoy enhanced sound when watching TV. Deep bass and realistic high-frequency sound from the SRS-XV900 fills the room and boosts your TV’s sound to provide a rich audio-visual experience, whether you are watching live performance videos or movies. Simply connect the optical cable (included) and select TV Sound Booster function irrespective of the TV brand or model
Quick charging with long lasting battery life of 25 hours allows to enjoy your party
You can now take your sound anywhere around your home with 25-hour battery life on the SRS-XV900 that will keep the music going day and night. If you find your speaker’s running out of battery, there’s no need to worry. With the speaker’s quick charging, you can get 3 hours of playing time with just 10 minutes of charging. With the Battery Care Mode feature, you never have to worry about overcharging your speaker, making it more dependable for longer.
Mega Bass and Live Sound for enhanced music experience
The Mega Bass feature allows you to dial up the bass on your speaker, providing you with deep and punchy bass. With the new SRS-XV900 speaker, you can enjoy your music like it is live. With the Live Sound mode, you can recreate that unique atmosphere and re-live your favorite music experiences, over and over again. LIVE LIFE LOUD and create memorable moments with the SRS-XV900.
Convenient carry handle and wheels
The product comes with a convenient handle. Whenever you want to move the speaker you can hold the carry handle and tilt it back. Sturdy castors let you roll all the way to the party!
Fun and Entertaining features with karaoke double tracking
SRS-XV900 speaker is loaded with fun and entertaining features making it perfect for your party with friends. Plug in your microphone, pick a song, and sing your heart out. With two inputs (mic & guitar), you can even plug in a guitar and use the speaker as an amp. Further enrich your singing vocals with the Double Tracking feature via the Fiestable mobile app. You will also always have complete control of the speaker with the intuitive top touch panel that allows you to change function settings and lighting with just a touch.
Bluetooth connectivity and Party Connect
Party Connect via Bluetooth® allows you to connect upto 100 compatible Sony Bluetooth speakers to enjoy synchronized sound and lighting for an extra-large party and to make sure everyone’s dancing to the same beat. In addition, the speaker allows you to plug in and play music with USB connectivity. And if your smartphone is running low on battery, you can even plug it into the speaker and have it charged directly. The SRS-XV900 also allows you to instantly connect the speaker to your smartphone using Bluetooth fast pair for Android.
Sony Music Center and Fiestable
The new SRS-XV900 is compatible with both Sony Music Center and Fiestable apps. With Sony Music Center you can select playlists, cue the next song, change lighting patterns, and sound modes all from the dance floor. Fiestable allows you to access fun features to help create the ultimate party atmosphere, such as making a party playlist, karaoke functions including Voice Changer and Echo, plus DJ control to add sound effects.
The SRS-XV900 speaker will be available across all Sony Centers, major electronic stores, and e-commerce portals in India from 5th December 2022 onwards at Rs 79,990.
With the influx of gaming content creators flooding the internet and video game plays garnering millions of views across multiple portals, it is not a surprise to see a number of gaming laptops making their way to the market. While the premium gaming experience is limited to expensive laptops that can make you cash out up to Rs 5 lakhs and more, there are some capable computers that provide a considerable gaming performance at a cheaper price point. Lenovo is one such company that is offering gaming laptops at both a premium and a mid-range price point and we are here to review the latter. Before we jump on the detailed review of the IdeaPad Gaming 3i 15IAH7, here is a quick conclusion for those who do not have time – It is amazing! (for the price)
Design and Display
While buying a gaming laptop, it is only natural for people to assume that it’ll come with the best display. Well, that’s not the case here. The 15.6-inch variant of the IdeaPad 3i comes with an FHD IPS display with a 165Hz refresh rate. There is no 2K or 4K display here but rather a 1080P display which is vibrant for its limitations. The design of this machine is especially eye candy that does not comes with aggressive branding all over. There’s subtle Lenovo branding on the top and the base of the laptop which gives it a sophisticated look. One additional point to Lenovo for adding ample ports to the IdeaPad Gaming 3i that include USB Type-A ports on either side coupled with major ports including a Type-C at the rear of the laptop. It comes with a vibrant 1080P webcam that was more than just good enough to attend zoom calls.
Connectivity
The IdeaPad Gaming 3i’s connectivity proved ample options ranging from Wi-Fi 6 to Bluetooth 5.0. I was easily able to connect and disconnect from Bluetooth devices experiencing little to no delay while gaming on Bluetooth earbuds. The Wi-Fi performance was top-notch having no issues in loading high-quality videos and downloading heavy files from the internet.
Keyboard and trackpad
Being a content writer, I spend my days typing away a thousand words daily. While using the IdeaPad Gaming 3i as my daily driver, I found no issues while typing on the keyboard as it is evenly spaced out making for a seamless typing experience. While I understand that the RGB-lit keyboard is the current trend and it differentiates gaming laptops from others, I found myself keeping the keyboard lights shut down as they were more of a distraction at times. While I was provided with the IdeaPad gaming mouse which was an amazing experience, I made sure to spend a long chunk of my gaming hours on the trackpad. There were no issues while using the trackpad that was worth noting.
Performance
Now, jumping on the big gun! How does this budget gaming laptop actually perform? During my extensive testing of this gaming laptop I played Marvel’s Spider-Man: Remastered in its entirety along with some Fortnite and Valorant sprinkled on the side. With the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti and Intel i7 12th Gen working hand-in-hand, the laptop was capable of producing some engaging gaming performance. While the lack of a 4K screen was dearly missed, the vibrancy of the display and the smooth performance made up for it. The 170W charger provided was quick to juice up the laptop during extended gaming sessions, however, I found the battery to drop too quickly while playing games for my liking.
Verdict
The Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3i is an ideal gaming machine that strikes the perfect balance between pricing, performance, and even portability with its lightweight form factor. If you’re looking for a gaming laptop that does not burn a hole in your pocket then this is definitely the one for you!
YouTube as a platform is known to have strict community guidelines. The community guidelines serve the purpose of protecting advertiser interest and limiting content with adult themes. The platform does not play around when it comes to the guidelines and does to tolerate any creator crossing the lines. Thus, YouTube removes lakhs of videos from its platform every quarter for videos violating the community guidelines. Now, YouTube has revealed that it removed 17 lakhs videos uploaded from India during the July-September quarter for violating the company’s community guidelines.
YouTube removes 17 lakh videos
YouTube recently revealed in a blog that it removed 1.7 million videos from India for violating the community guidelines in the third quarter of 2022. On the other hand, a total of 5.6 million videos were removed from the platform at the global scale. The platform received a total of 2,71,000 removal appeals during the third quarter out of which about 29,000 appeals were reinstated.
YouTube revealed an interesting statistic that July through September of 2002, for every 10,000 videos, at least 10 or 11 were them violating the community guideline. however, YouTube also revealed that it tracks a number of appeals made by creators for the videos that are removed in order to get a better understanding of accuracy of the removal system. Check out an excerpt from YouTube’s official blog below –
“To measure the effectiveness of our enforcement, we release a metric called our violative view rate, which looks at how many views on YouTube come from violative material. From July through September of this year, that number was 0.10% – 0.11%, which means that for every 10,000 views, between 10 and 11 were of content that violated our Community Guidelines.
We also track the number of appeals submitted by creators in response to videos that are removed (an option available to any Creator on YouTube), as this helps us gain a clearer understanding about the accuracy of our systems. For example, during the same time period mentioned above, we removed more than 5.6 million videos for violating our Community Guidelines and received roughly 271,000 removal appeals. Upon review, we reinstated about 29,000 appeals.”
Corning over the years has become the go-to option for smartphone manufacturers. The company is known for making the Gorilla Glass protective layer for smartphones and other devices. The company has now announced the latest protective glass expanding the Gorilla Glass lineup. The new protective glass is titled ‘Gorilla Glass Victus 2’ which comes as the successor of the previously launched Gorilla Glass Victus that launched a few years back and became a norm for flagship devices.
Gorilla Glass Victus 2 launched
According to Corning, the new protective glass offers better drop performance on rough surfaces like concrete while also retaining the scratch-resisting capabilities of the original Victus glass. Corning revealed that the bigger the device screen gets diagonally, there is greater the chance of it breaking off due to the heavier form factor. The company shared that today’s phone devices have become 15% heavier with screen sizes up to 10% larger than they were half a decade ago. Corning wanted to create a glass protector that can improve the protection for larger and heavier devices.
Corning revealed that the Gorilla Glass Victus 2 easily survived drops of up to one meter on a surface ‘replicating’ concrete. The company claimed furthermore that while Victus 2 easily survived the drop test, other manufacturers failed from half a meter or less. besides this, the Victus 2 also survived 2-meter drops on a surface replicating asphalt while maintaining scratch resistance four times better than its competitors. The Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2 is expected to hit the markets within the next few months.
There’s always skepticism when it comes to major Hollywood studios jumping on the video game bandwagon. Films based on popular video games have been less than impressive in the past, 2022’s Uncharted was a good example of the same. On the other hand, there also has been Sonic The Hedgehog films that successfully managed to grab the essence of the blue speedster. Now, Nintendo and Illumination have launched the full trailer for their upcoming The Mario Bros Movie which looks like another step in the right direction. Check out the trailer – HERE
The Super Mario Bros. Movie trailer launched
While the first teaser was just a mere introduction to the film’s villain, Bowser, and a little glimpse of Mario, the second trailer is a full-fledged look at what’s waiting in store for fans. The bigger idea of the movie’s plot revolves around Bowser’s quest to conquer the world while Princess Peach tries to stop him. By the looks of it, protagonist Mario is still finding his footing as a hero. He gets beat up by Donkey Kong, attacked by Cheep Cheeps, and even fails to land a simple platform while karting.
The trailer is full of fan service. However, one interesting aspect of the film is the character development of Princess Peach from a damsel in distress to a butt-kicking savior. Making Peach an active part of the narrative is surely a welcoming change. The trailer successfully manages to integrate parts of the existing Mario games. Yoshi Island, the original Donkey Kong game and Karting on the Rainbow Road are all present in the trailer making it the perfect gift for Mario fans! While Chris Pratt’s voice as the iconic character was a matter of concern for hardcore fans when it was initially announced, the actor seems to have done a pretty good job!
How many times have you stumbled upon questionable or grotesque content on social media and asked yourself – How the hell did this get here?
It has been more times than one would imagine (which is zero) and government authorities around the world have not shown any interest in trying to regulate self-harm/suicide content on social media, until now! The Britain government has taken the first step to stop the spread of self-harm content on social media and ordered to fine social media companies that fail to remove such content. This decision has been taken as a part of the overhaul of legislation governing online behavior.
UK to fine social media companies over self-harm content
The debate about government organizations infiltrating social media platforms to promote their agenda has been long and tiring. While I stand tall on the belief that a governing body has no right to make definitive changes to what people say on social media as it tampers with people’s right to an opinion, this is one aspect where I do not mind the government doing so. There has been an influx of suicide-related content on social media that indirectly encourages the act as opposed to educating people about it. Normalizing content that in a way ‘promotes’ suicide or self-harm undoubtedly has a lasting effect on young impressionable minds and society as a whole.
Recently, Britain’s culture, media, and sports ministry issued a statement saying that it now needs social media firms to block a wide range of content. “Social media firms can no longer remain silent bystanders … and they’ll face fines for allowing this abusive and destructive behavior to continue on their platforms under our laws,” said UK’s Digital Secretary Michelle Donelan.
The proposal aims to block videos and images viewed by 14-year-old Molly Russell whose death in 2017 sparked a public conversation about social media content. The investigation following her death concluded that social media platforms had fed content to her that romanticized the acts of self-harm by younger people. Social media algorithms are known to feed content a user indulges in thus the allegation of such platforms feeding malicious content does not feel far-fetched.
While Britain is the first country to take this step towards the right decision, one can only hope the rest of the countries follow suit!
If you or anybody you know who is struggling with depression and suicidal thoughts and need help can reach out to the numbers listed below –
