Welcome or welcome back to Trust & Safety Lately,your monthly recap of all things trust & safety with an eye on the gaming industry. Before we dive into this past month's happenings in the world of online safety and privacy, our friends at Take This Inc. have an important ask for you.
Without further ado, in this issue of Trust & Safety Lately we're covering:
🐣 Youth Perspectives on Online Safety
💊 Video Games and Positive Mental Health
🕶️ Child Safety in VR/AR
⛓️ Telegram CEO Arrested
↪️ Video Game Industry Turn Around (Maybe)
❌ Roblox Banned in Turkey
👨🏽⚖️ X Shuts Down in Brazil, Then Gets Blocked
🚫 WhatsApp vs. Bad Actors
⬛ Valorant's Black List
☁️ Bluesky Introduces New Anti-Toxicity Measures
Let's get started! 🔸
Data & Reports
🐣 Youth Perspectives on Online Safety
Technology and safety non-profit Thorn released their 2023 report on online child safety, with an expanded focus on AI-generated CSAM. Key findings include:
More than half (59%) of minors report they had a potentially harmful online experience.
Roughly 1 in 17 minors report having personally experienced sextortion.
In 2023, the top platforms where the most minors say they've had an online sexual experience were Snapchat (16%), Instagram (14%), Messenger (13%), Facebook (12%), and TikTok (11%). Young people view platforms as an important part of helping them avoid and defend against threats.
Video games can be good for mental health, one study of Japanese gamers finds. Researchers established a causal relationship between console ownership, increased play time, and mental wellbeing in a survey of 97,602 participants. Using console and game lottery participants as their survey population, economist Hiroyuki Egami from Nihon University in Tokyo and his team found statistically significant improvements to mental health and general sense of wellbeing. Of course the study is based on self-reported feedback, so perhaps take these findings with a grain of salt, as New Scientist reports, but this latest research provides an alternative perspective to the age-old assumption that video gaming is patently "bad."
Plus, the study was conducted during the height of the initial COVID-19 outbreak. From The LA Times:
Egami agreed that some of the mental health benefits his team documented were probably due to the unique circumstances of the pandemic. But he doesn’t think they’ve disappeared altogether now that regular life has resumed.
The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation released a report of the challenges of maintaining child safety in AR and VR spaces, pointing to a risk with the current Kids Online Safety and Privacy Act with a warning:
Bills such as the Kids Online Safety and Privacy Act may lead regulators to over-censor content on AR/VR platforms or lead the platforms themselves to censor more content than necessary to avoid liability.
The report also summarizes some of the unique challenges children face in VR spaces, including unreliable forms of self-reported age verification, which can lead to bad actors masquerading as children to gain access to spaces intended only for youth. Notably, this report calls out the increased sense of "realness" for victims of bullying, extortion, and general exposure to inappropriate content due to the immersive nature of VR and AR communication.
Telegram CEO Pavel Durov was arrested at a Paris airport in August following an arrest warrant issued by the country's ministry in charge of crimes against minors, AP News reports. More details emerged, as reported by Reuters, that Durov is alleged to be complicit in organized crime happening on the app, including drug trafficking, fraud, and CSAM. From Reuters, lead prosecutor Laure Beccuau says:
Telegram had been used in various criminal cases, and that the "almost total lack of response from Telegram to judicial requisitions" eventually caught the attention of the Paris prosecutor's office cybercrime unit.
Durov's arrest raises the question of who is ultimately responsible for the content and actions that happen on digital platforms. Do platforms -- even those like Telegram that tout total privacy and freedom for its users -- have duty of care to prevent harm from happening? The Washington Post reports on how Telegram has once again become the center of a debate between privacy, freedom of speech, and safety.
↪️ Video Game Industry Turn Around (Maybe)
Deadline covers an industry report on video game investments from DDM, pointing to signs of optimism for the embattled sector. While overall investments in games increased between the first two quarters of 2024, mergers and acquisitions have dipped significantly -- nearly 60% in dollar value.
❌ Roblox Banned in Turkey
Early in August, the Turkish government announced that Roblox would be banned. Exact reasons why were not disclosed, but this might not come as a surprise as Turkey had also banned Instagram earlier this year for failing to remove content that the Turkish telecomms arm deemed "offensive." Turkish Minute has more.
👨🏽⚖️ X Shuts Down in Brazil, Then Gets Blocked
An ongoing legal battle in Brazil over requests to block certain user accounts has resulted in X announcing a stop to all work in Brazil. Brazil’s Supreme Court justice Alexandre de Moraes had asked the social platform to block accounts believed to be organizing political disinformation campaigns. When X refused to do so, Moraes threatened legal action, which led to X announcing they would cease operations in Brazil, as TechCrunch reports.
Then in early September, AP News reported on the Brazilian Supreme Court voted to continue a nationwide ban on X, cutting tens of millions of users from their primary form of digital connection and moving users to other platforms like Bluesky and Instagram's Threads. The outright ban on X has raised questions about the level of power afforded to the Supreme Court in Brazil and the general lack of transparency around its decisions.
🚫 WhatsApp vs. Bad Actors
Meta released an update on a recent investigation and blocking of select accounts on WhatsApp, which are alleged to be involved with the Iranian threat actor group APT42. The group uses social engineering tactics to target state leaders, activists, military personnel, activists, and journalists, often posing as technical support from Microsoft or other similar companies. Meta warns of potential increased malicious activity as the US election ramps up.
⬛ Valorant's Black List
From FandomWire, Riot Games' popular shooter Valorant is adding a player safety feature to help combat toxicity. Players will be able to add others to a "Black List" preventing the listed player from sending friend requests, group invitations, or being heard over the microphone. Some players are also asking for an "avoid" feature to prevent matching with known toxic players altogether.
☁️ Bluesky Introduces New Anti-Toxicity Measures
In a recent blog post, Bluesky announced new anti-toxicity features being added to the social platform. The Verge highlights the detaching function, intended to separate an original post from other users' responses. All this in an attempt to dissuade digital dogpiling by making an original post content much less visible and hopefully less likely to attract negative attention and harassment campaigns.
Industry Events
Stanford Trust and Safety Research Conference 2024
September 26-27
Stanford, CA
Women in Games Global Conference 2024
October 7
Virtual
Eradicate Hate Summit 2024
October 21- 23, 2024
Pittsburgh, PA
GamesBeat Next 2024
October 28-29, 2024
San Francisco, CA
Modulate, 212 Elm St, Suite 300, Somerville, MA 02144, USA
