Wednesday 14th July 

Discord Buys AI Software to Fight Online Harassment  

  • Discord is set to buy Sentropy, a company that makes AI powered software to detect and remove online harassment and hate
  • Discord currently uses in-house humans, volunteer admins and moderators to create ground rules and monitor individual servers  
  • 15% of Discord’s workforce work on their Trust and Safety Team and Discord’s plans to incorporate Sentropy’s own products into its existing capabilities will likely improve the safety of the platform  
  • Discord has over 150 million monthly active users. To find out more about keeping safe on the platform, visit Our Safety Centre  
  • You can read more about Discord’s acquisition here. 

Social Media Bosses Discuss Racism with Prime Minister  

  • The Prime Minister is meeting social media executives to discuss racism in football and how the companies are tackling bullying  
  • The round table meeting will include representatives from Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and Snapchat 
  • The campaign group, Centre for Countering Digital Hate, have called for a permanent social media ban for anyone posting racist abuse online 
  • The conversation comes after the government published its draft online safety bill, which his set to give technology companies a duty of care to protect UK users from abuse 
  • You can read more here. 

1.5m pupils missed school in England last week  

  • Almost 1.5m pupils were absent from primary and secondary school last week in England 
  • The weekly DfE figures show around 840,000 were absent due to covid and a further 630,000 were absent for other reasons  
  • This means around 25% of secondary pupils and 15% of primary pupils were out of class last week 
  • Joint General Secretary of the National Education Union, Kevin Courtney, told the Education Select Committee that some pupils absent for non-covid reasons would be suffering from mental health issues or are worried they will fail the school year  
  • Nick Brook, Deputy General Secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said the attendance figures made “grim reading” and were evidence that DfE had lost control of the situation  
  • You can read more here.  

Google ends unlimited Group video calls for Free Accounts 

  • Google has brought an end to its effectively ‘unlimited’ group video calls in Meet for free Gmail accounts 
  • Users will now have group meetings capped at 1 hour rather than the previous 24 hr limit 
  • You can read more about the changes here.