Digital Planet Folgen

TikTok School challenge It’s November so school children in the US are being encouraged to “Kiss your friend’s girlfriend at school”. In September the TikTok school challenge suggested they “Vandalize the restroom”. These are just two of the examples that schools in the US have been dealing with following a call on TikTok to pupils. Now in the UK teachers are facing an onslaught of online abuse via TikTok too. Headteacher Sarah Raffray, who is also the Chair of the Society of Heads in the UK, is live on the show. The fake account created at her school has been removed by TikTok as have hundreds of others, but is the social media platform doing enough to control this libellous behaviour?Disinformation campaign in Kenya The Pandora papers revealed that Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta and his family have offshore accounts containing $30m. Following the release of this information a collaborative disinformation campaign manipulating Twitter’s algorithms was launched attempting to exonerate the President. Odanga Madung is a Mozilla fellow and is on the programme to discuss a report he’s co-authored “How to Manipulate Twitter and Influence People: Propaganda and the Pandora Papers in Kenya”. So far 400 accounts have been deleted, but with elections next year this campaign could already be influencing the outcome.AI (lack of) diversity in the workforce Research from the Digital Planet team at Tuft’s University has examined the world's top AI hubs and ranked them in terms of diversity. Bhaskar Chakravorti, who led the team behind the work, tells us that San Francisco has the lowest proportion of black AI talent in the US. When it comes to the proportion of women in the field, AI is much less diverse than the industry overall. 17 percent of the AI talent pool in the 50 hotspots in the world is female as compared to 27 percent in STEM overall. Tel Aviv comes out on top globally for employing women in AI. We discuss how this imbalance is impacting AI development.The programme is presented by Gareth Mitchell with expert commentary from Ghislaine Boddington.Studio Manager: John Boland Producer: Ania Lichtarowicz(Image: TikTok logo displayed on a smart phone. Credit: Illustration by Nikolas Joao Kokovlis/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

We’ve reported before on the programme about the massive energy consumption of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, which is based on blockchain technology. Now we’ll be looking at some of the other environmental impacts of blockchain. Professor Cathy Mulligan, Blockchain Expert and Member of the Institution of Engineering & Technology’s Digital Panel, joins us live to discuss the massive e-waste problem of mining cryptocurrencies and how miners change their electronic kit every six months to keep up with the ever increasing processing capacity they need to make money. This issue is not only linked to blockchain tech, it’s also seen in the mobile phone industry.AR reducing single plastic use - 100 Days to #BeatPlasticPollution Six out of the top 20 marine litter polluters are in Southeast Asia, so where better to launch a social media campaign to reduce single use plastic. The MeshMinds Foundation and the UNEP is behind the Instagram campaign to raise public awareness “100 Days to #BeatPlasticPollution” and we speak to Kay Vasey from MeshMinds as to how they hope AR will change habits and reduce single use plastic. We also have a campaigner from the Philippines whose own efforts to reduce plastic use are about to be showcased online.More than a million years of data in the ice – an immersive exhibition at COP26 A new immersive exhibition, Polar Zero, is on at the Glasgow Science Centre. The idea behind the show is to pause and reflect on humanity’s impact on our past, present and future climate. The centrepieces of the exhibition are a cylindrical glass sculpture encasing Antarctic air from the year 1765 – the date that scientists say predates the Industrial Revolution – and an Antarctic ice core containing trapped air bubbles that reveal a unique record of our past climate. With more than a million years of data stored in the ice and computer modelling vital to creating the exhibits, reporter Hannah Fisher finds out how climate data is being presented to allow us to understand the science better.The programme is presented by Gareth Mitchell with expert commentary from Bill Thompson.Studio Manager: Nigel Dix Producer: Ania Lichtarowicz(Image: Bitcoin crypto coin mining hardware. Credit: Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Digital Planet is looking at green tech during COP26. Firstly, we discover the green credentials of your favourite websites with the Green Web Foundation. Can we really make the internet more environmentally friendly? Also we’ll be hearing about the homes in Sweden’s Stockholm that are heated using waste heat from local data centres. And how a company in Wyoming in the US is using technology to change the way data centres are cooled, using liquid and not air, and then using this excess heat for agriculture. The programme is presented by Gareth Mitchell with expert commentary from Ghislaine BoddingtonStudio Manager: Nigel Dix Producer: Ania Lichtarowicz(Image: A processing facility at the Riken Center for Computational Science in Japan) Credit: STR/JIJI PRESS/AFP via Getty Images)