Home-made videos featuring a catchy Vietnamese song and an accompanying dance about the necessity of hand-washing during the coronavirus crisis have racked up more than 2 million views on video app TikTok.Cribbing the tune from pop song "Jealous" - or "Ghen" in Vietnamese - by singers Erik and Min, the Ministry of Health released an animated video with lyrics telling its citizens to "push back the virus Corona, Corona". The unlikely earworm by a usually

Twitter unveiled a plan Tuesday to curb the spread of manipulated content including "deepfake" videos as part of a move to fight misinformation which could result in violence or other harm.The policy was announced after Twitter asked for comments last year on ways to reduce "synthetic and manipulated media" on the online platform that could deceive people during election campaigns or provoke violence or physical harm.Twitter, which along with other social platforms has bee

Advertisements targeted at young children in today’s digital world are becoming increasingly invasive and prevalent.Research on 135 of the most popular free and paid apps for children between the ages of one to five in Google’s Play Store in 2019 – some of which were posted under the guise of educational tools – found that 95 percent of the apps contained some form of advertising.Among the ill-effects of advertising on young children include materialism, obesity and low self-esteem.

Google on Thursday said it disabled a series of YouTube channels that appeared to be part of a coordinated influence campaign against pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.The announcement by YouTube's parent company came after Twitter and Facebook accused the Chinese government of backing a social media campaign to discredit Hong Kong's protest movement and sow political discord in the city.Google disabled 210 YouTube channels that it found behaved in a coordinated manner while uploa

YouTube advertisers should stop posting on channels that feature "toxic" anti-state content, a Vietnamese official said Tuesday at a meeting with major brands including Yamaha and Grab. The communist country has tightened its grip on online dissent as critics turn to social media to air grievances about the one-party state. A controversial cybersecurity law passed last year calls for global tech giants such as Google and Facebook to scrub "toxic" content