SAWT BEIRUT INTERNATIONAL

| 23 April 2024, Tuesday |

Turkish President: Two-State Deal Only Way for Cyprus Peace

“The international community will sooner or later accept the reality that a permanent and sustainable solution, can be achieved through country’s division.”  Erdogan told Turkish Cypriot lawmakers in Cyprus’ breakaway north before celebrations to mark the 47th anniversary of a Turkish invasion that split the island along ethnic lines.

The same research also revealed how how Instagram is flooding the feeds of teenagers with weight-loss content. While accounts created for girls were receiving more content about dieting and losing weight, ghost accounts for boys were constantly fed images of models with unrealistic body types.

In one instance, an account set up for a 17-year-old girl liked a post about dieting which Instagram fed to the account in its “Explore” tab – where people discover new content from users they may not be “following”. Not much later, suggestions in the “Explore” section radically changed to focus on weight loss, with focus “distorted body shapes”. Similar patterns were noted for accounts created for girls.

Instagram claims that the study only represents a fraction of the teenage experience on its platform, claiming the content shown in the study is the kind which shows up when actively searched by users.

United Kingdom has taken the need to protect children from harmful content extremely seriously. Six weeks from now, social media companies will be required to follow a strict set of rules for age-appropriate content on social media, which the county’s Information Commissioner’s Office is calling the pursuit of a “child-safe internet”.

Starting September, companies will be expected to curate child-friendly content on their platforms by default, instead of the current model which operates under the assumption that every user on their portal is an adult until they state otherwise. The United Kingdom may be setting a precedent for other countries where there are no safeguards for children in the online sphere.