Daily Safeguarding Update

Facebook has Explicitly Banned Holocaust Denial for the First Time

The social network said its new policy prohibits “any content that denies or distorts the Holocaust”
Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg wrote that he had “struggled with the tension” between free speech and banning such posts, but that “this is the right balance”
Two years ago, Mr Zuckerberg said that such posts should not automatically be taken down for “getting it wrong”
“I’m Jewish and there’s a set of people who deny that the Holocaust happened,” he told Recode at the time
“I find it deeply offensive. But at the end of the day, I don’t believe that our platform should take that down because I think there are things that different people get wrong. I don’t think that they’re intentionally getting it wrong.”
But on Monday, as Facebook changed its policies, he wrote that he had changed his mind
“My own thinking has evolved as I’ve seen data showing an increase in anti-Semitic violence, as have our wider policies on hate speech…” he wrote in a public Facebook post

Yelp, the local search and review website, is to label pages of businesses accused of racist behaviour
The platform, which lets users rate bars, restaurants and attractions, said the alerts would require “resounding evidence”, in the form of public attention and “floods of reviews”
They will then link to a “credible news outlet” with more information on the claims and temporarily ban new reviews
Critics on Twitter said the tool could be used to amplify false accusations
“As the nation reckons with issues of systemic racism, we’ve seen in the last few months that there is a clear need to warn consumers about businesses associated with egregious, racially charged actions to help people make more informed spending decisions,” Vice-President of User Operations Noorie Malik wrote on the Yelp website
The feature is currently only available in North America

Two misleading ads for mobile games that bear little relation to the actual product have been banned by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA)
The ads, for the Homescapes and Gardenscapes games, both come from developer Playrix
They showed a game where users pull pins in a specific order to solve a puzzle – though the actual games had totally different “core gameplay”
In recent years, a number of mobile games have used ad videos that show puzzle game mechanics they do not use – or barely use – prompting complaints from gamers
Matthew Bailey, a games analyst at Omdia said “an increasing number of gamers are becoming annoyed with irrelevant, misleading and badly implemented mobile game ads”

A controlling and violent “predator” has been found guilty of raping and sexually assaulting two children
The US national who resided in Leicester, was convicted over abuse which took place between 2001 and 2016
The suspect moved to the UK in 2001 and abused his first victim from the age of eight until she was 19 and the other between the ages of 12 and 22.
He is due to be sentenced at Leicester Crown Court on Friday
The force said the first victim contacted them in 2017 and as a result a second victim was identified.
Detective Constable Anna Blockley, from the force’s Child Abuse Investigation Unit (CAIU) non-recent team, said the offender was “predatory and dangerous”