Whistleblowing - Counting The Cost of Courage

South Africa’s reputation as an ethically dodgy and pervasively corrupt country is sadly becoming as much a part of our identity as our magnificent scenery, wonderful game parks and colourful people. And, as so often happens when something becomes this common place, we become desensitised to it. Our sense of disgust and moral outrage lessens with every story of corruption that emerges. We develop a shoulder-shrugging, “well, what do you expect?” attitude that makes even just the thought of ever eradicating corrupt practices from both our private and public sectors a seemingly unattainable pipe dream.
 

Deepfakes - When Seeing Is No Longer Believing

We’ve probably all seen those amusing posts on Facebook. The ones where videos of Barack Obama or Donald Trump have been cleverly doctored so it looks as though they’re singing a rap song. They make us laugh, no one gets hurt and it’s all good, harmless fun.
The same process is also used (albeit at a much more complicated and professional level) in live action, animated movies, such as the recent remake of Disney’s The Lion King. But there is a dark side to the rise of this seemingly innocent, deep-learning technology, and it’s spawned a growing concern about the potential for abuse.

Is Twitter The Biggest Porn Site In The World?

The South African Law Reform Commission (SALRC) recently released a report outlining measures to reduce the risk of exposure – accidental or intentional – to adult material online by children. 
The most worrying of these is that none of the proposed regulations apply to social media – specifically sites like Twitter and Reddit.
The problem is that social media sites and search engines are viewed as “ancillary service providers.” As such, adult content found on social media is not defined as “online commercial pornography” and is therefore exempt from having to adhere to the new age-verifiction legislation proposals. The best that governments can do is ask these sites to take action against those who don’t comply with general content guidelines. But if none is actually taken, there’s nothing the Powers That Be can currently do to penalise them.