Login
Why so Many Kids Are Still Missing School
When schools reopened their doors after the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, eager to “return to normal,” millions of students didn’t show up. Teachers prepared their classrooms to welcome children back to in-person learning, but millions of desks were unfilled.
With an eye toward pandemic recovery, the government allocated billions of dollars to help students regain what they lost at the height of the pandemic, but many of them weren’t there to receive the aid.
Many of them were absent — and still are. Some of the latest absenteeism data reveals the staggering impact the pandemic has had on student attendance.
Before the pandemic, during the 2015–16 school year, an estimated 7.3 million students were deemed “chronically absent,” meaning they had missed at least three weeks of school in an academic year. (According to the U.S. Department of Education, there were 50.33 million K-12 students that year.)
After the pandemic, the number of absent students has almost doubled. Experts point to deeper issues, some that have long troubled students and schools and others that are only now apparent in the aftermath of school shutdowns.
Meta to Restrict More Content for Teens as Regulatory Pressure Mounts
Meta Platforms (META.O) said on Tuesday it would hide more content from teens on Instagram and Facebook after regulators around the globe pressed the social media giant to protect children from harmful content on its apps.
All teens will now be placed into the most restrictive content control settings on the apps and additional search terms will be limited on Instagram, Meta said in a blog post.
The move will make it more difficult for teens to come across sensitive content such as suicide, self-harm and eating disorders when they use features like Search and Explore on Instagram, according to Meta.
Meta is under pressure both in the United States and Europe over allegations that its apps are addictive and have helped fuel a youth mental health crisis. Attorneys general of 33 U.S. states including California and New York sued the company in October, saying it repeatedly misled the public about the dangers of its platforms.
Fauci Sits for Testimony on Mask Mandates and COVID Origin; Here’s What Congress Should Ask
Anthony Fauci is sitting for testimony in front of Congress on Monday and Tuesday to answer questions over mask mandates, lockdowns, and social distancing (which Deborah Brix admitted they pulled out of their asses) — as well as the origins of COVID-19.
The 83-year-old former NIAID director was the chief architect of the U.S. response to COVID-19, which he may have been responsible for in the first place after offshoring banned gain-of-function research to make bat coronaviruses more transmissible to humans.
To review: The U.S. was doing risky gain-of-function research on U.S. soil until 2014 when the Obama administration banned it. Four months before the ban, Dr. Fauci offshored it to Wuhan, China through New York nonprofit, EcoHealth Alliance.
After SARS-CoV-2 broke out down the street from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Fauci engaged in a massive campaign to deny the possibility of a lab leak from the lab he funded, and instead, pin the blame on a yet-to-be-discovered zoonotic intermediary species. And if you’d like to dig even deeper, this is perhaps the best, most comprehensive summary of the “proximal origin” timeline.
TikTok Restricts Tool Used by Researchers — and Its Critics — to Assess Content on Its Platform
TikTok has restricted one tool researchers use to analyze popular videos, a move that follows a barrage of criticism directed at the social media platform about content related to the Israel-Hamas war and a study that questioned whether the company was suppressing topics that don’t align with the interests of the Chinese government.
TikTok’s Creative Center — which is available for anyone to use but is geared towards helping brands and advertisers see what’s trending on the app — no longer allows users to search for specific hashtags, including innocuous ones.
The social media company, which is owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, has also removed certain hashtags from the Creative Center that some online researchers had stored for analysis. They include topics that would be seen as controversial to the Chinese government — such as “UyghurGenocide” and “TiananmenSquare” — as well as hashtags about U.S. politics and the war in Gaza and Ukraine. The Center will now only allow searches for the top 100 hashtags by industry, the company said.
The New York Times first reported on the changes, which came to light last week in an addendum to a study published in December by the Network Contagion Research Institute at Rutgers University.
In the study, researchers with the nonprofit had compared hashtags for certain geopolitical topics on Instagram and TikTok and concluded there was a “strong possibility” TikTok content was being amplified or underrepresented based on how it aligns with the Chinese government’s interests.
Pennsylvania Supreme Court Is Urged to Find Keyword Search Warrant Unconstitutional
Law enforcement agencies are always seeking innovative but questionable methods to solve crimes. One such method is the keyword search warrant. Unlike conventional warrants, these warrants do not target a person or a place but are based on specific search terms used by individuals on search engines, social media, and other online platforms. In other words, agencies are finding information on everyone who searched for a specific search term.
When law enforcement agencies suspect a crime, they can request a keyword search warrant from a court. This warrant compels tech companies to hand over data on who searched for specific terms. For example, if the police are investigating a burglary, they might ask a search engine for data on who looked up “how to pick a lock” in a certain location.
The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures. Critics argue that keyword search warrants are inherently overbroad and indiscriminate, potentially infringing on this fundamental right. These warrants often capture data on individuals who have no connection to the crime under investigation.
In a recent legal filing to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), along with several other advocacy groups, has vehemently opposed the use of keyword search warrants.
AI Is Being Used to Catch More Child Predators
While the use of artificial intelligence in the legal profession has received some bad press over the past year in instances when ChatGPT bungled cases, AI technology has been used for years outside the courtroom for investigative purposes and is becoming more efficient all the time.
One area where AI tools have delivered real results is in helping to put away suspects targeting children.
The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) has been leveraging AI technology to save time and precious resources to identify and eventually prosecute child predators at scale.
The non-profit — which works with law enforcement to prevent child abductions, recover missing kids and combat child exploitation — uses AI technology made by eDiscovery firm Reveal, which saved NCMEC over 4,000 hours in review and investigation time and helped them process more than 21,000 cases of missing children last year.
Apple Faces Epochal Moment With Looming Antitrust Scrutiny
A potential antitrust lawsuit against Apple by the federal government could be a turning point as big in the company’s 48-year history as the return of founder Steve Jobs or the invention of the iPhone, according to legal experts.
Speculation about a landmark case is again on the rise after The New York Times reported Friday that the Justice Department is in the final stages of a years-long investigation into Apple, which could lead to a lawsuit later this year.
The probe reportedly focuses on everything from the seamless integration between the iPhone and Apple Watch to the company’s digital payments system and Apple’s use of green text bubbles to differentiate Android text messages from iMessage communications — in short, a broad look at Apple’s tightly controlled, walled-garden ecosystem that’s turned it into $2.8 trillion behemoth.
Spain Makes Face Masks Mandatory in Hospitals and Clinics After a Spike in Respiratory Illnesses
Face masks will be mandatory in hospitals and healthcare centers in Spain starting Wednesday due to a surge in respiratory illnesses, the Health Ministry said.
The new leftist minority coalition government is imposing the measure despite opposition from most of Spain’s 17 autonomous regions.
“We are talking about putting on a mask when you enter a health center and taking it off when you leave,” Health Minister Mónica García told Cadena Ser radio late Monday.
García’s ministry decided to impose the measure after failing to reach an agreement with regional health authorities, many of whom argued that mask use should be recommended but not obligatory.
