Facebook safety systems assist with successful prosecution of prolific child abuser

  • One of the UK’s worst child abusers, David Wilson, was jailed for 25 years at Ipswich crown court after being convicted of 96 child sexual abuse charges, with more suspected
  • Wilson mainly used Facebook and the company’s safety systems spotted suspicious activity and reported it to law enforcement
  • Wilson, 36, from King’s Lynn in Norfolk, trawled social media platforms, predominantly Facebook, and posed online as a girl, targeting boys so they would send images of themselves
  • As the grooming turned into abuse, some were threatened with blackmail if they did not do what Wilson demanded
  • Police have said they would not have caught the offender, if Facebook’s plans for end-to-end encryption were in place
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Instagram announces it will tackle hate speech via direct messaging

  • Instagram is toughening its stance on hate speech in direct messages
  • The company announced today that it’ll start disabling the accounts of people who repeatedly send hateful messages
  • First-time offenders won’t be able to send messages for an undefined period of time, but if they send hateful messages again, their account will be disabled
  • “We’ll also disable new accounts created to get around our messaging restrictions, and will continue to disable accounts we find that are created purely to send abusive messages,” an Instagram blog post states
  • Instagram’s hate speech policy bans attacks on people based on protected characteristics, including race or religion, as well as “more implicit forms of hate speech,” like content depicting blackface and anti-Semitic tropes
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Scottish FA report into historical child abuse will be published

  • The full and final report into sexual abuse in Scottish football is to be published later
  • The independent review was commissioned by the Scottish FA (SFA)in 2016, with an interim report in 2018
  • The final report will include victim testimony as well as an update on action taken following recommendations to the footballing authorities in 2018
  • The SFA ordered the review after allegations of historical child sex abuse going back to the 1970s
  • The review was led by former children’s charity executive, Martin Henry
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