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The automated moderation algorithm introduced by gaming streaming site, Twitch, earlier this week, is already paying dividends. According to a number of streamers who traditionally have to deal with abuse or fighting in their attached chat, the number of people saying mean stuff has fallen dramatically. Traditionally, viewing any popular …

Gaming streaming site, Twitch, has announced the introduction of new automated moderation tools, which will try to analyse the intent of messages and block those it deems hateful or abusive. Designed to do what no team of human moderators could achieve, Twitch claims AutoMod will become more effective over time, …

Some of the world's biggest technology firms are going to share a database of image and video hashes for ‘extemist content' with one another, in order to prevent them from appearing on their various platforms. This is much the same system they use to tackle child pornography and although it …

The biggest file sharing website in France, Zone-Telechargement, has been shut down after being seized by the police. This will see millions of file sharers looking elsewhere for their content, as Zone-Telechargement was ranked as the 11th biggest website in France at the time of its shutdown. Launched in 2011, …

Digital advocacy organisation, the Open Rights Group, has lambasted a number of politicians for making a proposed amendment to the Digital Economy Bill, which would make it perfectly legal to block porn sites which don't add effective age registration. On top of labelling the idea censorship, the ORG criticised the …

Like a real world game of Agar.io, Facebook is swallowing up everything around it as it expands into new fields of advertising and absorbs old ones. With the release of its second quarter financials, we've learned that its net income has tripled year on year, thanks to a huge expansion …

Due to a disagreement with a local licensing body, German Youtube viewers haven't been able to watch much in the way of music videos on the streaming site – without using a proxy – for years now. However, finally, after much negotiation, a deal has been struck and the blocks …

A recent episode of Black Mirror that addressed the idea of social networking ratings affecting the real world, could be closer to reality than you might think. Admiral is currently looking to use analysis of Facebook posts, searching for triggers like exclamation points and confident statements, as a bearing on …

EA Games made the somewhat surprising move in September, to begin complying with United States trade sanctions, whereby it stopped offering its Origin service and exclusive games in affected regions. What's even more surprising though, is that when those sanctions are lifted, it doesn't remove the blocks. This is most …

A number of British politicians have made it clear they want search engines to do more to help tackle piracy. One proposed solution suggested that if those search firms don't come to a voluntary agreement with copyright holders, that the government could step in and fine them. One of the …

Following the continued downturn of the British pound compared to the U.S. dollar following the referendum on the U.K. leaving the EU, Microsoft has announced a big jump in its software prices. Businesses can expect to pay 13 per cent more for local software and as much as 22 per …

From Pirate Parties to Paypal founders, we're looking at a few AMAs this morning, but we can't pass up the chance to look through all of the things Space X CEO, Elon Musk was asked about in his. Moving swiftly on from the questions about poo disposal and electric busses …

If you ever wanted to send an email to the president of the United States, now you can. As part of its big leak of emails from Hilary Clinton campaign head, John Podesta, the personal, pre-presidential email address of Barack Obama was revealed. Unfortunately at the time of writing it …

Close to five years on from the seizure of the MegaUpload servers following the arrest of site founder, Kim Dotcom, millions of users from all over the world still don't have access to their data. Since the hosting company which currently stores the hardware has suggested the drives within them …

Rumours were abound earlier this week when Wikileaks founder and Ecuadorian embassy resident for the past four years, Julian Assange, found his internet connection severed. We were told it was by a state party and it turns out that party was Ecuador itself, which now admits that it was responsible …

Californian's attempting to access some of the world's most popular pornographic websites this week will have found it a little harder than normal. In protest of Proposition 60, which would make it mandatory for porn performers to wear condoms during shooting, a number of sites blocked Californians from viewing any …

BitTorrent Inc. the company behind the Utorrent file sharing client, has become a one CEO firm once again. This came as part of a falling out between the two heads, who previously joined up as the company transitioned to a more commercial entity. It has denied that the company is …

A new report from the Centre for Public Safety (CPS) has found that only a quarter of all police websites utilise secure connections, meaning much of the information they receive and transmit is sent in clear text. But it turns out that's just the tip of the iceberg, as many …

Message board 4chan is in serious financial trouble and unless some drastic changes can turn the ship around, much of the site may need to close. The current owner told users on Sunday that the site may need to implement pop-up adverts, a cap on upload sizes and potentially even close …

Youtube has acquired the former Warner Music executive, Lyor Cohen to be its new global head of music, with hopes that he will help strengthen ties with the music industry. Although still a dominant force in online music, Youtube has a lot of competition these days, so no doubt hopes that …

Although streaming games from a console to a PC, or phone to a TV and any other combination of local connections, have become far more common place over the past couple of years, streaming games remotely – as promised by OnLive and Gaikai – still isn't that prevalent. But the idea …

Windows Defender Application Guard for Microsoft Edge is the next big update coming to Windows 10 and it's going to encapsulate the Edge browser inside a virtual machine, making it much harder for hackers and malware to attack your machine through a browser exploit. Essentially, it will isolate the browser …

If you download the latest version of the Opera browser today, you'll be able to access the new built-in VPN feature which has been discussed for some time now. Originally made available in the developer only version, Opera's VPN can do a good job of obfuscating where you are located …

Mark Zuckerberg has been attacked by a Norwegian newspaper and many international commenters, for what many people see as outright censorship of an iconic photo from the Vietnam war. He has been accused of abusing his power and making Facebook limit freedoms with its aggressive editing of certain images. Perhaps the …

In the gradual disintegration of support for Adobe's Flash player, porn sites are some of the last hold outs, but not for much longer. With browsers like Chrome ending support for it in the near future, many of the world's largest porn peddlers are now announcing that they're moving over to …

Following years of security leaks, the world and its dog have decided it's time we ditched Adobe's Flash web standard for good, but we can't just take it out back and shoot it, it needs to be a slow, painful goodbye. That's been happening for a while now, but Chrome …

If your smartphone or laptop's main use is browsing a number of websites, then it's worth considering jumping ship from Chrome to the new version of Opera, which comes with a new battery saver mode. Purportedly, it can cut up to 50 per cent of the power draw from browsing …

If you tried to play a Battle.net game this morning, whether it was Overwatch, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm of something else, you might have run into a few difficulties. That's because some nefarious individuals launched a DDOS attack on the service. Fortunately Blizzard's response was swift and exact and …

It's no secret that YouTube is the go to source for instantly watching online videos these days, with YouTube access being a consideration when people are buying anything from tablets and phones, to consoles and TVs, let alone PCs. But now that YouTube is in such a dominant position, as …

The Internet Engineering Task Force has just reached a consensus and finished finalising the next major update, to the HTTP standard that we all use every day. The specification  builds upon and is an alternative to, but does not obsolete, the HTTP/1.1 standard that was first introduced in 1999, that we currently use whenever …