By Rina Chandran
Sept 8 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – A worker loses his job during the pandemic, and signs up to become a driver for a food-delivery app: this was the reality for millions in the past two years, and is also the story of a new Bollywood film that examines the gig economy in India.
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Vasilis Katos, Bournemouth University
It’s a crime story fit for the digital era. It was recently reported that a number of restaurants in New York had been targeted by internet scammers threatening to leave unfavourable “one-star” reviews unless they received gift certificates. The same threats were made to eateries in Chicago and San Francisco and it appears that a vegan restaurant received as many as eight one-star reviews in the space of a week before being approached for money.
By Nazih Osseiran
BEIRUT, Sept 2 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – A Saudi app that lets ordinary people “play the role of a police officer” may have alerted authorities to the tweets of a student whose sentencing to 34 years in jail has drawn international condemnation.
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OAKLAND, Calif, Aug 15 (Reuters) – America’s tech giants are taking a modern-day crash course in India’s ancient caste system, with Apple (AAPL.O) emerging as an early leader in policies to rid Silicon Valley of a rigid hierarchy that’s segregated Indians for generations.
By Diana Baptista and Avi Asher -Schapiro
MEXICO CITY, Aug 11 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – A week after Pedro Figueroa borrowed 10,000 pesos ($500) from José Cash, a popular Mexican lending app, the barrage of online abuse began.
A slew of WhatsApp messages swamped his phone, threatening harm – to him and his reputation – if he did not pay. Continue reading
Deborah Brown and Jayshree Bajoria are senior researchers at Human Rights Watch
Last week, Meta, formerly Facebook, released its first human rights report, which included some snippets from the pending Human Rights Impact Assessment on India. But this was not a preview of the full assessment. Rather, Meta told Human Rights Watch that it does not “have plans to publish anything further on the India HRIA,” an abdication of its commitment to transparency and due diligence.
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People around the world are facing increasing pressures on their day-to-day lives. Food, energy bills and living costs are rocketing as inflation reaches record levels due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and rising global instability.
The Thomson Reuters Foundation has spoken to people living in 18 countries around the world in an attempt to gauge the human impact of the crisis.
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Michel Funicelli, Teesside University
American Kevin Strickland was exonerated after spending 42 years in prison for being wrongfully convicted of a triple murder in November 2021. His 1978 conviction was based on mistaken identification of an eyewitness. The eyewitness later said that police pressured her into identifying Strickland, and attempted to have her testimony recanted but failed. She died in 2015.