Snapchat allows drug dealers to operate openly on platform, finds Danish study
Snapchat has been accused by a Danish research organisation of leaving an “overwhelming number” of drug dealers to openly operate on Snapchat, making it easy for children to buy substances including cocaine, opioids and MDMA.The social media platform has said it proactively uses technology to filter out profiles selling drugs.However, research by Digitalt Ansvar (Digital Accountability), a Danish research organisation that promotes responsible digital development, has found evidence of a failure to moderate drug-related language in usernames.It also accused Snapchat of failing to respond adequately to reports of profiles openly selling drugs.Researchers used profiles of 13-year-olds and found a multitude of people selling drugs on Snapchat under usernames featuring keywords such as “coke”, “weed” and “molly”.
When researchers reported 40 of these profiles to Snapchat, the company removed only 10 of them.The other 30 reports were rejected, they said.Snapchat said it had “proactively disabled” 75% of the accounts reported and had now disabled all of them.The investigation also found that despite previous criticism, Snapchat’s recommendation systems were spreading and promoting profiles of those selling illegal drugs to users – including to children who had not previously shown an interest in or interacted with drug-dealing profiles.Within a few hours, the researchers’ 13-year-old test profiles had recommendations to add up to 70 suspected drug-dealing profiles because one friend was connected to a drug-dealing profile.
Digitalt Ansvar’s CEO, Ask Hesby Holm, said: “As a child or young person, you don’t need to search for these profiles yourself; you can have them recommended directly by Snapchat.That is deeply problematic.“Snapchat itself says they proactively use technology to filter out profiles that sell drugs on the platform.Our investigation shows this is not true.Snapchat hosts an overwhelming number of openly drug-related profiles and appears not to moderate either implicit or explicit drug-related language in usernames.
” This failure to moderate profiles with such obvious usernames, he said, meant that “children and young people have very easy access to buying drugs on Snapchat”.He added: “It’s not technology that’s lacking, it is will.Snapchat can easily filter such usernames.”According to Snapchat, in 2023 it had a 90% reach of 13- to 24-year-olds in the Nordics.Digitalt Ansvar accused Snapchat of breaking EU rules for digital services on the protection of children and called for authorities to act.
Sign up to This is EuropeThe most pressing stories and debates for Europeans – from identity to economics to the environmentafter newsletter promotionA Snapchat spokesperson said: “We have zero tolerance for drug sales on Snapchat.Even though the accounts flagged in the study were not all reported in-app, more than 75% of those accounts had already been disabled by our teams before we were made aware of this report, and all accounts now have been.“At Snapchat, we are working diligently and have invested tremendous resources to stop drug dealers from abusing our platform.We deploy proactive detection to identify and disable these accounts, support law enforcement to bring dealers to justice, and educate our community about the dangers of drugs.Over the past year, we have proactively consulted law enforcement across Europe to identify new search terms and emojis used by criminals, aiming to enhance our proactive detection and maintain a hostile environment to drug dealers.
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AstraZeneca pauses £200m investment in Cambridge research site
The drugmaker AstraZeneca has paused a planned £200m expansion of its Cambridge research site, completing a depressing week for the UK pharmaceutical industry.The decision by the UK’s largest company means none of its much-trumpeted £650m investment package in the UK – which was originally announced in March 2024 – is proceeding.The now stalled £200m Cambridge project had been expected to create 1,000 jobs. In January, AstraZeneca scrapped plans to invest £450m in its vaccine manufacturing facility in Speke, Merseyside, citing a cut in government support, after months of negotiations.An AstraZeneca spokesperson said on Friday: “We constantly reassess the investment needs of our company and can confirm our expansion in Cambridge is paused
Pound dips after UK economy doesn’t grow in July; Ocado shares slide 20% amid robotic warehouses demand fears – as it happened
The pound has weakened since today’s GDP report showed the UK economy failed to grow in July.Sterling is down 0.2% at $1.355 against the US dollar this morning.Kathleen Brooks, research director at XTB, points out there is “not much to like” from the July monthly GDP update, with zero growth in the economy at the start of the third quarter
AI content needs to be labelled to protect us | Letters
Marcus Beard’s article on artificial intelligence slopaganda (No, that wasn’t Angela Rayner dancing and rapping: you’ll need to understand AI slopaganda, 9 September) highlights a growing problem – what happens when we no longer know what is true? What will the erosion of trust do to our society?The rise of deepfakes is increasing at an ever faster rate due to the ease at which anyone can create realistic images, audio and even video. Generative AI models have now become so sophisticated that a recent survey showed that less than 1% of respondents could correctly identify the best deepfake images and videos.This content is being used to manipulate, defraud, abuse and mislead people. Fraud using AI cost the US $12.3bn in 2023 and Deloitte predicts that could reach $40bn by 2027
ChatGPT may start alerting authorities about youngsters considering suicide, says CEO
The company behind ChatGPT could start calling the authorities when young users talk seriously about suicide, its co-founder has said.Sam Altman raised fears that as many as 1,500 people a week could be discussing taking their own lives with the chatbot before doing so.The chief executive of San Francisco-based OpenAI, which operates the chatbot with an estimated 700 million global users, said the decision to train the system so the authorities were alerted in such emergencies was not yet final. But he said it was “very reasonable for us to say in cases of, young people talking about suicide, seriously, where we cannot get in touch with the parents, we do call authorities”.Altman highlighted the possible change in an interview with the podcaster Tucker Carlson on Wednesday, which came after OpenAI and Altman were sued by the family of Adam Raine, a 16-year-old from California who killed himself after what his family’s lawyer called “months of encouragement from ChatGPT”
Records tumble as England thrash South Africa by 146 runs: second men’s T20 international – as it happened
I’ll leave you with Simon Burnton’s report – night night.I’m pretty lost for words! The way [Salt and Buttler] started the night off was just phenomenal. Me and Jos were in the field and we both said that we never thought anybody would get 300. But with the batting line-up we’ve got, there aren’t many heights we can’t reach.[On Salt v Duckett v Smith at the top of the order] There are some tough decisions to be made
Records tumble as Phil Salt’s stunning ton leads England to T20 rout of South Africa
England made history, and for the first time more than 300 runs, on an extraordinary night in Manchester as they buried South Africa under a mountain of runs and shredded statistics. Their highest T20 total was turbocharged by a brilliant opening stand of 126 between Phil Salt and Jos Buttler and by their highest individual score, Salt knocking himself off the top of that chart with an unbeaten 141. Within a week and against the same opponents they have set new national records for winning margins in both one-day internationals and now T20s, the final difference here an almost comic 146 runs.Salt described his evening as “really good fun” but the experience for Shukri Conrad, South Africa’s head coach, was anything but. He described a bowling performance that – having invited England to bat first – “was way off, bereft of ideas” as England were allowed to plunder 30 fours and 18 sixes en route to a score of 304 for two, with nearly twice as many boundaries (48) across the innings as there were dot balls (25)
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