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Image copyright Cube Entertainment Image caption E’Dawn (left) and HyunA (middle) formed K-pop band Triple H with Hui (right)

The head of a major music label in South Korea has denied reports HyunA and E’Dawn, two members of the pop trio Triple H, have been sacked after revealing their relationship.

Cube Entertainment CEO Shin Dae-Nam released a statement after 720,000 tweets in 10 hours mentioned the K-pop stars’ supposed sacking.

“We’ve yet to make an official decision on the rumour that HyunA and E’Dawn would be ousted,” reads the statement on Naver, a major South Korean website.

“We are still discussing it, it is not a confirmed decision. Since the opinions of the artists are also important, this should be deliberately decided through the process of collecting opinions.”

Many K-pop artists – often known as “idols” – are not allowed to enter into any form of romantic relationship while under contract.

The change comes after many on social media specifically pointed to the fact HyunA has worked for Cube Entertainment for far longer than the CEO.

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The decision to sack the pair was heavily criticised. Some fans defended HyunA by asking how her work for Cube Entertainment could be ignored simply because she was in a relationship.

Others came to the defence of E’Dawn, with fans referencing his struggle to land a contract with the label on TV show Pentagon Maker – a reality talent show where people competed to be part of the band.

Those not familiar with K-Pop might recognise HyunA from her appearance in the music video for Psy’s crossover hit Gangnam Style, where she can be seen dancing on an underground train before joining Psy in a larger routine.

The success of the video led the pair to release a new version of Gangnam Style sung as a duet, which has been viewed over 720 million times on YouTube.

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption More than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled Myanmar

Decades of ethnic and religious tensions, a sudden explosion of internet access, and a company that had trouble identifying and removing the most hateful posts.

It all added up to a perfect storm in Myanmar, where the United Nations says Facebook had a “determining role” in whipping up anger against the Rohingya minority.

“I’m afraid that Facebook has now turned into a beast, and not what it originally intended,” Yanghee Lee, UN special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, said in March.

The company admits failures and has moved to address the problems. But how did Facebook’s dream of a more open and connected world go wrong in one south-east Asian country?

Enter Facebook

“Nowadays, everyone can use the internet,” says Thet Swei Win, director of Synergy, an organisation that works to promote social harmony between ethnic groups in Myanmar.

That wasn’t the case in Myanmar five years ago.

Outside influence had been kept to a minimum during the decades when the military dominated the country. But with the release of Aung San Suu Kyi, and her election as Myanmar’s de facto leader, the government began to liberalise business – including, crucially, the telecoms sector.

The country where Facebook posts whipped up hate

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The effect was dramatic, according to Elizabeth Mearns of BBC Media Action, the BBC’s international development charity.

“A SIM card was about $200 [before the changes],” she says. “In 2013, they opened up access to other telecom companies and the SIM cards dropped to $2. Suddenly it became incredibly accessible.”

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption For many in Myanmar, Facebook is synonymous with the internet

And after they bought an inexpensive phone and a cheap SIM card, there was one app that everybody in Myanmar wanted: Facebook. The reason? Google and some of the other big online portals didn’t support Burmese text, but Facebook did.

“People were immediately buying internet accessible smart phones and they wouldn’t leave the shop unless the Facebook app had been downloaded onto their phones,” Mearns says.

Thet Swei Win believes that because the bulk of the population had little prior internet experience, they were especially vulnerable to propaganda and misinformation.

“We have no internet literacy,” he told Trending. “We have no proper education on how to use the internet, how to filter the news, how to use the internet effectively. We did not have that kind of knowledge.”

Ethnic tensions

Out of a population of about 50 million, around 18 million in Myanmar are regular Facebook users.

But Facebook and the telecoms companies which gave millions their first access to the internet do not appear to have been ready to grapple with the ethnic and religious tensions inside the country.

The enmity goes deep. Rohingyas are denied Burmese citizenship. Many in the Buddhist ruling class do not even consider them a distinct ethnic group – instead they refer to them as “Bengalis”, a term that deliberately emphasises their separateness from the rest of the country.

Last year’s military operation in the north-west Rakhine state was designed, the government says, to root out militants. It resulted in more than 700,000 people fleeing for neighbouring Bangladesh – something that the United Nations calls the world’s fastest growing refugee crisis.

A UN report has said top military figures in Myanmar must be investigated for genocide in Rakhine state and crimes against humanity in other areas. But the government of Myanmar has rejected those allegations.

Facebook ‘weaponised’

The combination of ethnic tensions and a booming social media market was toxic. Since the beginning of mass internet use in Myanmar, inflammatory posts against Rohingya have regularly appeared on Facebook,

Thet Swei Win said he was horrified by the anti-Rohingya material he has seen being shared. “Facebook is being weaponised,” he told BBC Trending.

Image copyright Reuters

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In August, a Reuters investigation found more than 1,000 Burmese posts, comments and pornographic images attacking the Rohingya and other Muslims.

“To be honest I thought we might find at best a couple of hundred examples I thought that would make the point,” says Reuters investigative reporter Steve Stecklow, who worked with Burmese-speaking colleagues on the story.

Stecklow says some of the material was extremely violent and graphic.

“It was sickening to read and I had to keep saying to people ‘Are you OK? Do you want to take a break?’”

Image copyright Reuters Image caption Some posts on Facebook expressed the hope that fleeing Rohingya refugees would drown at sea

“When I sent it to Facebook, I put a warning on the email saying I just want you to know these are very disturbing things,” he says. “What was so remarkable was that [some of] this had been on Facebook for five years and it wasn’t until we notified them in August that it was removed.”

Several of the posts catalogued by Stecklow and his team described Rohingyas as dogs or pigs.

“This is a way of dehumanising a group,” Stecklow says. “Then when things like genocide happen, potentially there may not be a public uproar or outcry as people don’t even view these people as people.”

Lack of staff

The material that the Reuters team found clearly contravened Facebook’s community guidelines, the rules that dictate what is and is not allowed on the platform. All of the posts were removed after the investigation, although the BBC has since found similar material still live on the site.

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So why did the social network fail to grasp how it was being used to spread propaganda?

One reason, according to Mearns, Stecklow and others, was that the company had difficulty with interpreting certain words.

For example, one particular racial slur – “kalar” – can be a highly derogatory term used against Muslims, or have a much more innocent meaning: “chickpea”.

In 2017, Stecklow says, the company banned the term, but later revoked the ban because of the word’s dual meaning.

There were also software problems which meant that many mobile phone users in Myanmar had difficulties reading Facebook’s instructions for how to report worrying material.

But there was also a much more fundamental issue – the lack of Burmese-speaking content monitors. According to the Reuters report, the company had just one such employee in 2014, a number that had increased to four the following year.

The company now has 60 and hopes to have around 100 Burmese speakers by the end of this year.

Multiple warnings

Following the explosion in Facebook use in Myanmar, the company did receive multiple warnings from individuals about how the platform was being used to spread anti-Rohingya hate speech.

In 2013, Australian documentary maker Aela Callan raised concerns with a senior Facebook manager. The next year a doctoral student named Matt Schissler has a series of interactions with employees, which resulted in some content being removed.

And in 2015, tech entrepreneur David Madden travelled to Facebook’s headquarters in California to give managers a presentation on how he had seen the platform used to stir up hate in Myanmar.

“They were warned so many times,” Madden told Reuters. “It couldn’t have been presented to them more clearly, and they didn’t take the necessary steps.”

Accounts removed

A Facebook spokeswoman told Trending via email that the company was committed to hiring more content moderators but was also taking a number of other steps to tackle the problems in Myanmar.

“In the last year, for example, we have established a team of product, policy and operations experts to roll out better reporting tools, a new policy to tackle misinformation that has the potential to contribute to offline harm, faster response times on reported content, and improved proactive detection of hate speech,” the spokeswoman said.

Since last year, the company has taken some publicly visible action. In August, Facebook removed 18 accounts and 52 pages linked to Burmese officials. One account on Instagram, which Facebook owns, was also closed. The company said it “found evidence that many of these individuals and organizations committed or enabled serious human rights abuses in the country.”

The spokeswoman said deleting the accounts was “not a decision we took lightly.”

“Staying ahead of the bad means always looking for how people can misuse technology – and doing everything you can to prevent that misuse from happening in the first place. That’s our responsibility now and it’s something that weighs heavily on all of us.”

Image copyright Facebook screengrab Image caption Radical Buddhist monk Wirathu’s Facebook page was removed earlier this year

Between them, the accounts and pages were followed by almost 12 million people.

In January this year, Facebook also removed the account of Ashin Wirathu, a radical monk famed for his angry speeches which stoking fears against Muslims.

‘Too slow’

In a statement, Facebook has admitted that in Myanmar it was “too slow to prevent misinformation and hate”, and acknowledged that countries that are new to the internet and social media are susceptible to the spreading of hate.

The subject of hate speech on the platform came up in early September, when Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, testified in front of a US Senate committee.

Image copyright Drew Angerer Image caption Sheryl Sandberg says Facebook is committed to tackling hate speech

“Hate is against our policies and we take strong measures to take it down. We also publish publicly what our hate-speech standards are,” she said. “We care tremendously about civil rights.”

When Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg appeared in front of Congress in April, he was asked specifically about events in Myanmar, and said that in addition to hiring more Burmese speakers, the company was also working with local groups to identify “specific hate figures” and creating a team that would help identify similar issues in Myanmar and other countries in the future.

Elizabeth Mearns from BBC Media Action, believes that while it is Facebook’s role in Myanmar that is currently under scrutiny, the situation is just one example of a far wider issue.

“We are definitely now in a situation where content on social media is directly affecting people’s real life. It’s affecting the way people vote. It’s affecting the way people behave towards each other, and it’s creating violence and conflict,” she says.

“The international community understands now, I think, that it needs to step up and understand technology. And understand what’s happening on social media in their countries or in other countries.”

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Image copyright Reuters

Online dialogue in Pakistan this week is being ruled via the commuting behavior of Imran Khan, recently elected as high minister.

Mr Khan has been making the 9.3-mile (15km) adventure – because the crow flies – from his non-public home to his respectable place of dwelling by helicopter. His selection of delivery has come beneath criticism for being too lavish given his guarantees to make bureaucrats and politicians tighten their belts.

but it surely used to be the defence introduced by way of Information Minister Fawad Chaudry which sparked in style scorn on social media. Talking at a press convention he claimed the helicopter used to be a cheap possibility costing as little 55 rupees ($0.77, £0.60) per km.

“i have seen this on Google,” he added.

People were sceptical that shuttle by means of helicopter may well be so cheap. #Helicopter changed into the top Twitter development in Pakistan on Monday with over SIXTEEN,000 tweets using the hashtag and plenty of making jokes about the declare.

Mr Khan’s value of transport was once compared to Careem, a experience-hailing phone app in Pakistan.

The Careem Twitter account also got in on the funny story by way of mocking up a model in their app offering flights.

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Was Once people’s scepticism over the ideas minister’s claim justified? the quick resolution is sure.

in line with analysis by BBC Urdu, the gasoline for the high minister’s helicopter, an Agusta Westland AW139, costs 1,600 Rupees ($23, £17) in step with km, higher than the FIFTY FIVE rupees Mr Chaudry claimed. That Is additionally before other costs related to running a helicopter are factored in.

Symbol copyright Government of Pakistan Image caption An Agusta Westland AW139 can seat 15 folks

Mr Khan’s travel could also be more expensive than his minster claimed but defenders of the high minister have talked about other purposes to make use of one.

This tweet arguing commute by way of helicopter used to be more secure for Mr Khan has been extensively shared:

Mr Chaudry echoed these sentiments all the way through his press convention: “we have now two choices for the travel of the top minister — by means of a motorcade that may result in traffic blockades or through helicopter,” he said. “there may be a difference among VIP tradition and security protocol,”

Symbol copyright Getty Photographs Symbol caption Louis CK has gained six Emmy Awards and had 39 nominations

Louis CK has carried out stand-up comedy for the primary time on the grounds that he admitted last year to a few instances of sexual misconduct.

In November 2017, the month after the #MeToo campaign in opposition to sexual harassment started, the comic released a statement confirming allegations made towards him by way of 5 ladies have been actual.

“there’s not anything approximately this that I forgive myself for,” he said and brought he may just hardly ever wrap his head around the “scope of hurt” he has caused.

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On Sunday night time Louis CK made an an unannounced appearance at the Comedy Cellar in Greenwich Village, Big Apple. He didn’t make reference to his prior behaviour.

Instead his set consisted of “typical Louis CK stuff,” together with racism, waitresses’ tips and parades, Noam Dworman, owner of the venue, informed the New York Times.

According To Mr Dworman, the comedian used to be given a heat greeting by way of the target audience while he took to the level.

Symbol copyright Getty Images Symbol caption Louis CK wrote, directed and acted in the film I Love You Daddy, which used to be pulled from unencumber

As information of his go back emerged, other comedians were crucial on social media.

“Louis CK being ‘banished’ from stand-up comedy wasn’t some kind of petty punishment, it was a place of job protection factor,” tweeted Portland-primarily based comedian Bris Farley.

Comic, creator and actress Melinda Hill said Louis CK was “spearheading the #MeTooSoon movement”.

Musical comedienne Allie Goertz recalled one in all her “fondest recollections” were making a song a music approximately Louis CK proper ahead of he made a wonder look.

“the speculation of him doing a drop-in now feels awful,” she tweeted. “i believe folks can grow and change, however this urgency to convey him (and others) again so soon just sends this kind of dangerous message.”

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Consistent With Mr Dworman, one target market member complained on Monday approximately no longer being told in advance of Louis CK’s look so they could come to a decision whether they desired to had been there or not. Others emailed in to mention they were pleased to have seen him.

“I consider a few people will probably be disappointed with me,” mentioned Mr Dworman. “And That I care approximately doing the right factor.”

However, he introduced there could not be “a permanent lifestyles sentence on anyone who does one thing fallacious”.

On Twitter, fanatics of Louis CK additionally defended his look: “Why Will Have To Louis CK forestall doing what he loves?” wrote one. “you’ll prevent shopping for tickets and prevent gazing.”

Even If, as a few replies talked about, this used to be an unannounced set, due to this fact Louis CK used to be now not at the invoice when folks bought their tickets.

Image caption Protestors brandishing arancini in Catania, Sicily, where a boat with around 200 rescued migrants who have been denied permission to disembark

Deep-fried rice balls full of meat and vegetables are one among Italy’s most famed foods.

But now arancini are being brandished in protests approximately roughly 170 migrants trapped at the send Diciotti in the port of Catania, Sicily.

Nearly 2 HUNDRED other folks had been rescued from the Mediterranean on 15 August, but Italy’s internal minister Matteo Salvini is denying the coastguard vessel permission to disembark the majority of them till the european agrees to distribute the migrants across other nations.

There were greater than 315,000 tweets concerning the issue: hashtags ‘Welcome Catania’ (#CataniaAccoglie) and ‘National Disgrace’ (#diciottivergognanazionale) had been trending, whilst supporters of the block on the send have used ‘I stand with Salvini’ or ‘No Way’.

The episode is the latest in a deepening political row as Mr Salvini, known for populist gestures, seeks to capitalise on anti-immigration sentiment.

Symbol copyright EPA Image caption The prosecutor of Agrigento, Luigi Patronaggio (c), visited the ship on Wednesday

The ship has been docked in Catania considering Monday, however the arancini protests began on Wednesday night when around 300 other people amassed with reference to the Diciotti, calling for the migrants to be allowed on shore.

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Arancini represents not just a snack to be eaten whilst vacationing but one thing to provide hungry visitors, contributors advised information site The Local.

“They Are a symbol of sharing for our city, we’re here to welcome them,” one protester instructed Italian newspaper Repubblica.

“For us in Sicily, meals has at all times been the way in which you welcome guests,” one girl explained.

Image caption Protestors carried signs studying Catania Welcome with photos of arancini on Thursday

One man, Maicon Thelega published a picture of arancini on Twitter, writing that they have been a logo of inclusivity.

Past Due on Wednesday, 27 unaccompanied minors have been allowed off the vessel, despite calls for them to be allowed off earlier.

The migrants’ nationalities don’t seem to be clear however almost all the children have been from Eritrea, a rustic whose obligatory army provider regime has been likened to slavery by means of the UN.

A psychologist from Medecin Sans Frontieres, Nathalie Leiba, who handled a few of the minors said many of them were “exhausted and puzzled”.

“Considered One Of them could not see neatly, he had dilated students, he informed me that he were detained (in Libya) within the dark for a 12 months,” she advised AFP.

Prosecutors within the Sicilian town of Agrigento have opened an inquiry into the unlawful detention of the migrants at the ship.

Mr Salvini has used social media to spice up public support for his position, tweeting his opposition to the inquiry.

People opposed to the migrants being allowed onto shore are tweeting “I stand with Salvini”, as some query why Italy is still at the Ecu frontline within the migrant drawback.

In View That 2014, greater than 640,000 migrants have landed on Italy’s seashores. Even Though many have considering that left for different countries, some remain.

In July 450 migrants had been allowed to disembark in Sicily as soon as France, Germany, Malta, Portugal and Spain had each agreed to take 50 migrants each and every.

Symbol copyright Getty Photographs Symbol caption Rose McGowan has transform a key #MeToo determine

It has been probably the most visual feminist social media motion of latest times, however has #MeToo also created division between women?

Few may have predicted the affect of a unmarried tweet via actor Alyssa Milano in October 2017.

Image copyright Getty Pictures Symbol caption Alyssa Milano’s tweet sparked a world pattern

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But as the allegations piled up towards accused abusers and rapists, the phenomenon simultaneously uncovered rifts and differences of opinion between girls. There had been discussions in regards to the targets of the motion: must it take care of place of job attacks, or be a much broader equality marketing campaign? What ways are useful? And what must happen when accusations prove to be false?

One doable generational divide reared its head early on, with some older feminists decrying what they saw as a do something about victimhood. In essence, they have been telling their younger counterparts to improve up and get shrewder concerning the intentions of males.

In a much-mentioned piece for The Atlantic, Caitlin Flanagan stated ladies who were teenagers within the 1970s “have been robust in some way that so many brand new ladies are susceptible.”

Megan McArdle, a columnist for the Washington Submit says: “I Feel there are situations by which ladies have more energy.”

speaking to BBC Trending, McArdle says she believes the problem is “difficult”.

“I Believe there are also a variety of scenarios where the boys do have the power. However I Think we should teach those ladies to stand up and snatch that power again.”

Gender justice professional Natalie Collins thinks that many younger ladies had been misled.

“I Believe young women had been instructed a lie that they can have equivalent power in sexual interactions with males. the truth is that they do not.”

Collins additionally believes the superiority of pornography impacts extra on the life of a more youthful girl.

“Porn culture has led her to have a particular figuring out of what it way to have sexual interactions of what is erotic and what’s no longer.

“the issue is she has lived in a tradition which hasn’t trained her that males and women aren’t equal, and males have energy over ladies in just about each interaction she’s going to have.”

on the different hand, it is conceivable that stories of a generational divide were exaggerated. In a Vox/Morning Consult survey in March, there wasn’t so much distinction in the attitudes of more youthful and older ladies approximately #MeToo – or their considerations about its doable bad effects

‘Naive Fantasy’

Other women have raised issues that the marketing campaign’s advantages will come basically for white, Western women.

greater than 10 years in the past, ahead of the existing hashtag incarnation, African-American activist Tarana Burke first used the phrase “me too” in reference to a campaign in opposition to sexual assault.

A Few have expressed fear that Burke and different ethnic minority women are being not noted.

Symbol copyright Getty Images

Poet Asha Bandele told the web site Afropunk: “I Have my worry concerning the ownership of that motion publicly being within the hands of white girls. i do not recognise that white women have ever led a movement that secured other folks out of doors of their own.

“And I additionally take into consideration Tarana Burke who is the founding father of #MeToo, now not being given her correct space, in my opinion. She’s not placed on the duvet of Time mag for the motion she founded, she’s placed within the pages.”

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However a few have argued that the motion is adaptable, and that it will be interpreted in numerous techniques across other cultures.

“Who can speak up about everything for everybody?” says author Kirsty Allison. “That’s just a more or less naive fable.”

Symbol copyright Getty Pictures Image caption The MeToo motion has impressed motion in lots of nations, including this march towards secretly filmed spycam pornography in South Korea

What Is next?

Even Supposing social media mentions of #MeToo have declined since the explosion of passion following Alysaa Milano’s preliminary tweet, the hashtag is still a consistent feature of on-line dialogue. The movement displays no sign of going away.

The #MeToo hashtag was once tweeted greater than five million instances in the ultimate 3 months of 2017. And it was used more than million instances all through a 3 month period among Might and August this yr.

“it is not like something like the fall of the Berlin Wall or like John Lennon getting shot. this is more like it is an ongoing second,” McArdle says.

“I Believe history will write this as a big cultural shift. Like many big cultural shifts in a couple of cases it will have, we are nonetheless calibrating. We had an antique norm, we have gotten rid of it, what are the new ones? I Believe we are still seeking to figure that out.

“We may glance again and assume in a few instances we went too far and in some cases we didn’t cross far enough, we are still seeking to figure this out but I Feel this may occasionally absolutely be seminal for ladies in the office. i really do.”

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Symbol copyright Getty Photographs

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