Nepal to ban TikTok over hate content.
The platform with over a billion users worldwide is set to face another blow as Nepal joins the list of countries that have publicly expressed concerns over the app.
The concerns of Nepal are different however, while most major countries have taken action against the Chinese app due to worries over security and data breach problems, Nepal officials stated that TikTok is brimming with content that incite religious hate, violence and sexual abuse.
Nepal’s minister for communication and information technology stated: “Our social social harmony, family structure and family relations are being disturbed by social media” and that “The decision to ban TikTok will be effective immediately”
The country has 2.2 million active users on the app, who will now find themselves cut off from the platform.
Over in South Korea, President Yoon Suk Yeol has intensified his attack on ‘fake news’
Since his election last year, the South Korean President has intensified his fight against what he considers ‘fake news’, with journalists and newsrooms being subjected to police raids and criminal investigations.
His crackdown escalated when officials targeted an independent newspaper in September, for a report published before the elections, leading for prosecutors to raiding homes and offices, something not that common in recent South Korean history.
Mr. Yoon commented on the fact in September, telling his staff that: “If we don’t stop the spread of fake news, it will threaten free democracy and the market economy built on it”.
This aggressive approach has been a topic of discussion in South Korea, with many expressing concern over the President actions, accusing him of using the fight against disinformation as a smokescreen to suppress freedom of speech.
“It is dangerous to leave it to the government to decide what fake news is”, said Pae Jung Kun, a journalism professor.
South Korea has a deep and long history of fighting against oppressive governments, and this episode brings concerns of the past into new light.
The Ibis, who faced extinction before, were taught a new flying route south 19 years ago by Mr. Fritz himself, who built a small flying machine and trained the birds to follow it, leading them through a journey that started on Austria and ended in Italy, until eventually they would do it themselves.
The plan worked; until recently that is, when global warming made it so that the route became an icy death trap for the birds, that’s when knew he had to spring into action once more, saying: “Two or three years, and they’d be extinct again”.
Now a team of researchers is working to teach a new migration path to the Ibis once more, as they’ll fly west to France, then south to the Mediterranean before tracing the coast on their way to Andalusia. This new route is about 2,500 miles, three times longer that the previous one and is expected to take six-weeks, four more than the trip to Tuscany in Italy.
Mr. Fritz said that the risks are “necessary” and that “It’s not much of a job, but my life’s purpose”