January 8, 20255 min readPluto May Have Won Its Moon Charon with a KissPluto and its largest moon Charon could have come together via a 10-hour kiss-and-capture encounter after a grazing collisionBy Robert Lea & SPACE.com A composite enhanced-color image of Pluto (right) and Charon (left) as seen by NASAs New Horizons spacecraft as it passed by in 2015. NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research InstituteNew research suggests that billions of years ago, Pluto may have captured its largest moon, Charon, with a very brief icy "kiss." The theory could explain how the dwarf planet (yeah, we wish Pluto was still a planet, too) could snare a moon that is around half its size.The team behind this research thinks that two frigid worlds located in the Kuiper Belt, a ring of icy bodies located far from the sun at the edge of the solar system, collided together billions of years ago. Rather than mutually obliterating each other, the two bodies were united as a spinning "cosmic snowman." These bodies separated relatively quickly but remained orbitally linked to create the Pluto/Charon system we see today.This "kiss and capture" process represents a new theory of moon capture and cosmic collision. It could also help scientists better investigate the structural strength of frigid, icy worlds in the Kuiper Belt.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today."We've found that if we assume that Pluto and Charon are bodies with material strength, Pluto can indeed capture Charon from a giant impact," team leader and University of Arizona lunar and planetary researcher Adeene Denton told Space.com. "The process of this collisional capture is called 'kiss-and-capture' because Pluto and Charon briefly merge, the 'kiss' element, before separating to form two independent bodies."Most planetary collision scenarios are classified as "hit and run" or "graze and merge," meaning this "kiss and capture" scenario is something entirely new."We were definitely surprised by the 'kiss' part of kiss-and-capture," Denton continued. "There hasn't really been a kind of impact before where the two bodies only temporarily merge before re-separating!"The team's research was published on Monday (Jan. 6) in the journal Nature Geoscience.Pluto won Charon over with a 10 hour kissThe reason Pluto's relationship with Charon has been challenging to scientists is because of the relatively small difference in size and mass between the two icy bodies."Charon is HUGE relative to Pluto, to the point where they are actually a binary," Denton explained. "It's half Pluto's size and 12% of its mass, which makes it much more similar to the Earth's moon than any other moon in the solar system."For comparison, our moon is just a quarter of the size of Earth, while the largest moon in the solar system, Ganymede, is around 1/28 the size of its parent planet, Jupiter.The University of Arizona researcher, who is also a NASA postdoctoral fellow, added that it's hard to get such a relatively big moon in a "normal" way. ("Normal" being the gravitational capture of moons like Mars' moons Phobos and Deimos and the moons of the giant planets Jupiter and Saturn.)That means that the prevailing theory of the formation of the Pluto and Charon system is based on the collisional capture idea, similar to how a massive body is believed to have slammed into Earth to launch out material that our planet captured to birth our moon."Something big hits Pluto, and you get Charon, but like with the Earth-moon system, we don't fully know how that works and the conditions under which that occurs," Denton said. "It's a pretty big question since a bunch of other large Kuiper Belt Objects also have large moons, so it seems like this is something that happens in the Kuiper Belt with some frequency, but we don't know how or why."A screenshot shows the Pluto/Charon system during its linked snowman phase.Robert Melikyan and Adeene DentonDuring a standard "collision capture," a massive collision occurs, and the two bodies stretch and deform in a fluid-like way. This process explains the creation of the Earth/moon system well because the intense heat generated in the clash and the greater mass of the bodies involved causes them to act in a fluid way.When considering Pluto and Charon in a collision capture process, there is an extra factor to consider: the structural strength of the colder icy and rocky bodies. This is something that has been neglected in the past when researchers considered the collisional creation of Charon.To factor this into simulations, the team turned to the University of Arizona's high-performance computing cluster. When Denton and colleagues accounted for the strength of these materials in their simulation, something completely unexpected emerged."Because both bodies have material strength, Charon did not penetrate deep enough into Pluto to merge with it; this isn't true when the bodies are fluids," Denton explained. "For the same impact conditions, if we assume Pluto and Charon to be strengthless, they do merge into one large body, and Charon is absorbed. With strength, however, Pluto and Charon remain structurally intact during their brief merger."Because Charon couldn't sink into Pluto in this scenario, it remained beyond the so-called "co-rotation radius" of both bodies. As a result, it could not rotate as fast as Pluto, which meant the two bodies could not stay merged. As they separated and this icy kiss ended, the team thinks that Pluto would have torqued Charon into a close, higher circular orbit from which the moon would have migrated outward."The 'kiss' in this kiss-and-capture, the merger is very brief, geologically speaking, lasting for 10 to 15 hours before both bodies separate again," Denton said. "Charon then begins its slow outward migration towards its current position."The team thinks the initial collision happened very early in solar system history, probably tens of millions of years after the solar system formed, which would be billions of years ago."Typical large collisions are straightforward mergers, where the bodies combine, or both bodies remain independent," Denton said. "So this was very new to us. It also raised a lot of interesting geological questions that we'd like to test, because whether kiss-and-capture works depends on the thermal state of Pluto, which we can then tie to Pluto's contemporary geology to test."I'd really like to determine how the initial Pluto-Charon impact can influence whether and how Pluto and Charon develop oceans."Denton explained that there are two avenues the team can follow to build upon this development."The first is looking at how this applies to the other large Kuiper Belt Objects with large moons, like Eris and Dysnomia, Orcus and Vanth, and the others," Denton explained. "Our initial analysis suggests that kiss-and-capture can also be the source of these other systems, but since they're all different in their compositions and mass, it's critical to learn how kiss-and-capture may have operated across the Kuiper Belt."The second avenue the team intends to follow involves looking at the long-term tidal evolution of Charon to confirm their formation theory."To really be sure that this is the process that formed Pluto and Charon, we need to make sure that Charon migrates to its current location at around 8 times the width of Pluto away," Denton said. "However, that's a process that occurs over much longer timescales than the initial collision, so our models aren't well-suited to track it."We're planning to have a much closer look at this in the future to determine which conditions not only reproduce Pluto and Charon as bodies but also put Charon in the right spot, where it is today."Copyright 2025 Space.com, a Future company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

January 8, 20257 min readWhat the End of U.S. Net Neutrality MeansA federal courts decision deals a legal blow to the open InternetBy Ben Guarino edited by Dean Visser Imaginima/Getty ImagesThe sun has setagainon U.S. net neutrality, the principle that all Internet traffic should be treated equally. Last week a federal appeals court panel ruled that the Federal Communications Commission cannot classify Internet service providers, or ISPs, in a way that would prevent them from favoring certain content over others. Without net neutrality, providers would be able to slow down, or throttle, traffic to competitors websites. Or ISPs could demand payment for speedy connections to specific Internet destinations.The new ruling, made by a three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, spells the apparent end of FCC enforcement of net neutrality, which began in 2015 when the agency adopted the Obama-era Open Internet Order. That order defined ISPs as telecommunications providers, requiring them to act in the public interest under FCC supervision. Two years later that order was killed by the Trump administrations FCC, only to be revived under President Joe Biden, by FCC vote, in April 2024.Net neutrality advocates include consumer watchdog and free speech groups, as well as World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee. The Web is yours, he wrote in Scientific American in 2010. It is a public resource on which you, your business, your community and your government depend. Netflix, YouTube and other video-streaming giants have also supported net neutrality; they benefit when they dont have to pay extra for their content to load quickly. (Estimates vary, but streaming probably accounts for at least two thirds of all Internet traffic.)On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Internet operators that manage the Webs cell towers and cables, however, strongly oppose net neutralityand they celebrated Thursdays ruling. In the decision, the judges cited Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the Supreme Court case that overturned the so-called Chevron deference in June; this means courts no longer need to heed expertise at the FCC or other federal agencies to interpret ambiguity in laws.The FCC now says net neutralitys fate ultimately lies with Congress. Consumers across the country have told us again and again that they want an internet that is fast, open, and fair, FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel said in a news release. With this decision it is clear that Congress now needs to heed their call, take up the charge for net neutrality, and put open internet principles in federal law.Net neutrality may now appear well beyond FCC controlbut that does not mean this principle is dead, says computer scientist David Choffnes, who directs the Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute at Northeastern University. We can always keep collecting data, keep observing whats happening, go to our representatives, tell them that this matters and find a solution, he says. For a start, Choffnes and some of his colleagues have created an app named Wehe, which anyone can download to test for net neutrality breaches. It has been used to perform more than 2.5 million tests since 2017. Choffnes says Wehe has detected traffic throttling in the U.S. and censorship in a handful of nations elsewherecensorship being throttling to a bandwidth of zero, he explains. Choffnes spoke with Scientific American about the consequences of the courts decision.[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]Net neutrality can mean different things to different people: it has been described in mechanical terms as the practice of blocking or throttling speeds to certain websites or the policy of treating the Internet like a public utilityor, to take the free-market view of someone such as Ajit Pai, former FCC chairman under President Donald Trump, the use of ISP restrictions that are unnecessary and stifling. How would you define it?By and large, the idea is that your network providers arent going to treat your Netflix traffic differently than Hulu traffic or differently than Facebook or TikTok. All Internet traffic is treated the same. And its that principle, this idea of openness and neutrality, that was a large contributor to why the Internet has been so successful.How does Wehe work?When your apps send network traffic, they dont declare themselves as Netflix or YouTube or Hulu. Its just Internet traffic. Its data going to some server thats given a name, which is a number. And those numbers, those servers, these IP addresses are reused by lots of services. So how do [network providers] know that its Netflix and not Hulu or Peacock?We found that the answer was that they were looking for certain parts of the network traffic where the domain name was revealed. Think netflix.com for Netflix, as an example. [ISPs] have these devices in their networks that would look for this text..., and if they found this match in your network traffic in the first few [data] packets, then theyd say, Oh, I have decided this is now YouTube trafficand Im going to slow it down.Because we know these devices are not looking at the IP addressesthey are just looking for text in the network traffic itselfwe record everything that is sent between a real app like Netflix and its servers. We then load up our app and our own servers with that information.Our app will send exactly what the Netflix app sent, and our server will respond exactly with what the Netflix server responded. From the perspective of these devices in the cell networks that are doing this kind of application detection, our network traffic looks exactly like Netflix.Then, back-to-back, we repeat the experiment again, except we flip all the 0s and 1s. The way things are represented in Internet traffic is, at a very basic level, 0s and 1s. We just flip them. Its the most efficient way to undo any patterns, anything [an ISP] might be looking for.Lo and behold, if one of these networks is, say, targeting Netflix and slowing it down, youll see that when our network traffic looks like Netflix, you get a certain throughput. And when it doesnt, you usually get a much higher throughput.Then we run some statistical analysis to come up with a reliable, validated way of saying, Yeah, this was a big difference. This wasnt just, you know, random chance that you saw this big difference. Well say this is, in a technical term, differentiation. But the more popular term is net neutrality violation.A paper you presented at an August 2019 conference analyzed measurements from more than 126,000 people who used Wehe from January 2018 to January 2019. In it, you and your colleagues identified 30 ISPs in seven countries, including the U.S., that throttled streaming at popular websites such as YouTube. But that was out of a total of 144 ISPs, and you wrote that major broadband providers in the U.S. (Comcast, for instance) do not differentiate traffic based on content. What else have you found?Weve had 2.5 million tests since we started this thing, covering a lot of countries. Nevertheless, the high-level takeaways from that snapshot six years ago are mostly the same as what they are today.What we see in the U.S. is not censorship, [but] every wireless provider, and by that I mean either cell provider or long-range wireless or satellite wireless, they all have at least one subscription plan where we have users who run tests, and they see differentiation. They see some video streaming apps are slowed down. We found fixed-line providers are not doing this.Would you have any insight into why throttling doesnt seem to be the case for broadband providers, but it does for the wireless ones?All I can do is speculate. I think for broadband, thats clear that the bandwidth is not very scarce.On the wireless side, traditionally, the issue has been that spectrum is scarce. (And spectrum is just a stand-in for bandwidth.)Historically, maybe it made sense to try to limit how much video streaming bandwidth was being used. At a certain time, it would make sense that this was a strain on their networks.Today you go to mobile providers websites, and theyll tell you about their fast 5G networks and how much bandwidth they have. I dont think its scarce anymore. That was the whole point of these evolutions of our cellular technologies: to remove that bandwidth limitation. Im not convinced that thats still a problem.Your Wehe project has continued, and it now tracks traffic to apps like Zoom. Have you seen any changes after state net neutrality laws went into effect? (States with such laws include California, Oregon and Washington State.)The answer is no. No matter what rules were passed, at the federal or state level, we have found no evidence that theres any change in behavior in these networks.I think the states have passed these laws probably havent done anything because theyre waiting to see what happensif this decision really is the death knell for FCC rules.How is last Thursdays decision going to affect Internet traffic?In the short term, I dont expect there to be any change because network providers never change their behavior in response to any laws or rules that weve seen passed since weve been collecting data.Are you invigorated to continue your work? Or do you feel like you have an additional burden to shoulder?Ill preface this by saying of this has all happened before. The research [behind this project] was started before the 2015 Open Internet Order. And weve had the Wehe app out in the world since 2017, so Ive seen net neutrality rules created, rescinded, challenged in court, put on hold. Ive seen it all at this point.... [My response is] more ... Im tired of this being how things are going.My sense of this project has always been that we need to have this transparency. When things are opaque, when nobody can check on what companies are doing, what we tend to find is that theyre doing something that is not in the interest of the consumers who use them. Im not saying all companies are evil, and Im not saying that when they do bad things that they did it with malicious intent. But the important fact is that bad stuff happens, and if you dont know about it, you cant fix it.

You can trust VideoGamer. Our team of gaming experts spend hours testing and reviewing the latest games, to ensure you're reading the most comprehensive guide possible. Rest assured, all imagery and advice is unique and original. Check out how we test and review games here Contents hide The state of Warzone remains a hot topic of conversation among players aiming to be the last one standing. After Raven Software managed to transform the battle royale into simplistic, fast-paced action during the Modern Warfare 3 cycle, the Black Ops 6 integration has managed to undo all of the hard work.In addition to hackers running rampant on Urzikstan, Area 99, and Rebirth Island, a stale meta is also causing the player count to plummet. Instead of waiting for Raven Software to fix the issues, top Warzone streamers are ditching the battle royale in favour of a game thats the talk of the town.Warzone streamers head to pastures newDuring a recent broadcast, FaZe Clan member Kris Swagg Lamberson dropped into a Ranked Play match in a bid to climb towards the very top of the leaderboards. Midway through the match, the server began to lag ultimately leading to the streamer rage quitting and loading into Marvel Rivals.In a follow-up post, Swagg revealed he had mad fun while playing NetEease Games free-to-play hero shooter that has captivated Marvel fans and those who have grown tired of what Call of Duty has to offer.A Warzone update is expected to go live on January 8th, 2025, but details on what changes are on the way remain a mystery. Swagg has already confirmed if theres no update, hell be sticking to Marvel Rivals and climbing through the ranks instead of loading into the battle royale where its becoming impossible to load into a match that doesnt contain a hacker.Is Marvel Rivals set to dominate?Season 1 of Marvel Rivals begins on January 10th, 2025, and sees the arrival of the Fantastic Four. Unlike the divisive Squid Game event in Call of Duty, none of the heroes will be locked behind a paywall which is great news if you want to see if youve got a new main.If Raven Software is unable to rescue Warzone from the gulag, theres a strong chance other streamers will stick with Marvel Rivals to play fun multiplayer matches without game-breaking bugs and cheaters from ruining the action.For more Call of Duty, check out the latest promos along with the best mouse and keyboard settings to keep you shooting straight.Call of Duty: WarzonePlatform(s):PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox OneGenre(s):ShooterSubscribe to our newsletters!By subscribing, you agree to our Privacy Policy and may receive occasional deal communications; you can unsubscribe anytime.Share

You can trust VideoGamer. Our team of gaming experts spend hours testing and reviewing the latest games, to ensure you're reading the most comprehensive guide possible. Rest assured, all imagery and advice is unique and original. Check out how we test and review games hereThe hype around Stalker 2 may be dying down a notch, but the modding community is still as active as error as they fix the games A-Life system and even improve its movement mechanics. One of the biggest complaints aimed at GSC game Worlds Chernobyl-based epic was its incredibly short day/night cycle something as a Stalker 2 player myself I noticed straight away.Most of your adventures, whether you like it or not, feel as though theyre taking place at night. Now, thats fine for those who prefer playing it that way, but it does make it harder to appreciate the sometimes stunning world, especially with the lack of the series classic night vision goggles. However, one fan has gone above and beyond by extending the games time-of-day system.Stalker 2 longer day-night cycleIn vanilla mode, Stalker 2 operates a one-hour cycle, with 30mins or daylight and 30 minutes of night. Thankfully, the Longer Day Cycle mod, which appeared on Nexus Mods towards the tail-end of last year, solves this. The mod offers users a variety of different day-night cycle timings, ranging from 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12 or even a truly authentic 24 hour option. For those wanting an even more realistic experience, then this could well be for you.While little has been heard following the release of patch 1.1, there is an expectation that another large update will land early this year. Upon launch in November last year, critics and fans quickly cited a number of issues in the game, including problems with the A-Life mechanic, which governs how NPCs interact with each other in the world. While the system intends to see them be aware and interact with each other during certain scenarios, such as a firefight, it often didnt work that way, with some NPCs completely oblivious to events happening around them. GSC revealed these bugs were due to aggressive optimisation Thankfully patch 1.1 went some way to address this issue. With Stalker 2 already profitable, GSC Game World has announced that it will be able to work on the game even longer, offering more updates and restoring cut content. Additionally, there are plans to release mod tools in the future, allowing players to go ham on creating massive new campaigns or whatever they want. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of ChornobylPlatform(s):PC, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series S/X, Xbox Series XGenre(s):Action, Adventure, RPG, Shooter, Survival HorrorRelated TopicsSubscribe to our newsletters!By subscribing, you agree to our Privacy Policy and may receive occasional deal communications; you can unsubscribe anytime.Share

You can trust VideoGamer. Our team of gaming experts spend hours testing and reviewing the latest games, to ensure you're reading the most comprehensive guide possible. Rest assured, all imagery and advice is unique and original. Check out how we test and review games here Contents hide Remember when that damned paperclip used to dominate your desktop? Remember how much we all despised it? Now, over two decades later, virtual companions are all the rage as people who couldnt find the ice cream in a cone get ChatGPT to write their shopping list or chat people up. However, for those who want to return to the once-reviled times, Hatsune Miku is here to be the Clippy of the Modern Era,Hatsune Miku, Desktop MateReleased on Steam for free, Desktop Mate is an all new form of desktop assistant for modern Windows PCs. Described as a next-generation desktop mascot platform, the new program uses 3D-rendered graphics to allow characters to sit on top of your programs, play with the mouse, follow the cursor and give adorable reactions.The free software comes with a single Desktop Mate, Aiel-tan, an anime girl that supports your work and study. However, for the true anime gamers out there, you can purchase an add-on friend in the form of Hatsune Miku for 16.75 at the time of writing.Miku will laze around on your desktop, jump on top of your programs and do all manner of things. If Clippy did this circa 2005, there would be videos of him being eviscerated that will have haunted by dreams. If Miku does it, its all fine and dandy. After all, shes in Fortnite.Mod support?At the time of writing, only these two characters are avilable to use within Desktop Mate, but additional characters are set to arrive in the future. Desktop Mate would probably be more enticign if the program was more like Wallpaper Engine, allowing users to make and upload their own creations that annoy the hell out of you and cause your CPU usage to spike.While not everyone understands the urge to nab a virtual Hatsune Miku to kick her anime legs in front of your program when youre trying to find out why it keeps crashing, were sure someone will love it. Someone will really love it.Related TopicsSubscribe to our newsletters!By subscribing, you agree to our Privacy Policy and may receive occasional deal communications; you can unsubscribe anytime.Share

Theres so much story that comes from touching something, says Michael DeChillo. As the owner of Sample Housea year-old membership-based materials libraryDeChillo is invested in tactility. And from his sunsplashed studio in Long Island City, hes offering a rarified new model for sourcing in the design industry.Im offering [designers] highly curated selection materials and giving them access to vendors, whatever their craft is: immediate hands on, physical access, he says. Amongst open cabinetry, and angled shelvesbuilt in an inviting mix of plywood and Douglas firstacked with carefully selected, and intriguing textures of steel, leathers, stone, and tile, DeChillo invites paying members in to explore vetted materials that are specialized, rare, or simply extraordinary. (Membership is $195 per month; day passes are available for $70.) A lot of the big names, they can just follow what the trends are, and do whats safe, he says. But who wants safe?Michael DeChillo, the owner of Sample HouseKristina DittmarFor DeChillo, the path to Sample House was a winding one. After starting his career as a production engineer for bands like Evanescence and Creed, DeChillo grew curious about design, eventually landing an internship at TRNK. A few jobs at design and construction firms later, he found himself managing the materials library for AD100 firms Workstead and Nicole Fuller Interiors. This 360-degree education connected him to designers and vendors, and led him to the concept of Sample House, an endeavor he describes as a community-based enterprise. Im not feeling like Im dealing with the sales rep. Im looking at it in natural light.DeChillos woody, uncrowded space is bathed in light through a wall of glass bricks, interrupted by two traditional hinged warehouse windows. It showcases elements of both welcome and adventure, and one can immediately understand why a designer might want to spend time selecting their stone, tile, and carpet here. Its an ideal place to see, and to feel. And, best of all, its a one-stop shop, limiting a designers need to run around all over town. Theres appeal in the immediacy too: It gives them the ability to be inspired and discover the same day; they dont have to wait for anything, DeChillo says.Testers of rugs can be felt up close.Kristina DittmarDesigners can join as members, or purchase day passes for a one-time visit.Kristina DittmarWalking through the space, DeChillo handles a surprisingly light square of terra-cotta from Todobarro, a Mexican tilemaker. Theyre pushing boundaries, playing with color, exploring different use cases of the clay, he says, speaking of it less like its earth than a person, or a play. It creates different application possibilities, like, Oh, now we can do a pool, or we can put this in the shower. He moves on to a plate of reflective glass that looks as though its been carefully pulled through an oil slick. This company is called Spectrum. Its these two incredible women in South Africa. They developed a way to put a gradient on a mirror, selecting the colors you want.His conception of Sample House will not only benefit small makers like Spectrum, but can give an edge to small designers who cant afford a sample library of their own. Its also better for the planet. Designers are always talking about sample waste. They hate the fact that samples are constantly destroyed, forgotten about, but they dont have the time to really do anything. I think I could start somewhere, so we just pulled one item of everything in here.Drawers of textiles by Maharam, Soil to Studio, and othersKristina DittmarThe space also features a work table and an area for vendor presentations.Kristina DittmarDeChillo points out some burnished zinc, near a spider plant, and begins imagining a fabrication of metal that could function as drapery. Im looking forward to empowering other designers and architects, having this be a place where we can introduce material innovation, he says. Beyond that, he sees Sample House expanding to other major design cities, starting with LA, already the locale of some favorites: Kinney Blocks faade stone pieces, Portola Paints, and Heath Ceramics, who make tile in a nearly incomprehensible, yet somehow digestible neon green, and have recently expanded to lighting.The sun has dipped a little, and DeChillo moves on to his standout selection of tiles (I love tile. It grows), expounding on their dimensions, colors, the sheer vastness of their applications. He speaks about material in terms that exceed their tangibility, almost as if they were art; more questions posed than answers. This makes sense, when one considers his intention: I wanted Sample House to feel a bit like a material gallery, he says. Not like a showroom, where its branded. I think what's most important is that you picked something because of how it looks and how it feels, not because it's a companys name.APPLY NOWGrow your business with the AD PRO DirectoryArrow

In early December I got the kind of tip weve been getting a lot over the past year. A reader had noticed a post from someone on Reddit complaining about a very graphic sexual ad appearing in their Instagram Reels. Ive seen a lot of ads for scams or shady dating sites recently, and some of them were pretty suggestive, to put it mildly, but the ad the person on Reddit complained about was straight up a close up image of a vagina.The reader who tipped 404 Media did exactly what I would have done, which is look up the advertiser in Facebooks Ad Library, and found that the same advertiser was running around 800 ads across all of Metas platforms in November, the vast majority of which are just different close-up images of vaginas. When clicked, the ad takes users to a variety of sites for "confidential dating or hot dates in your area. Facebook started to remove some of these ads on December 13, but at the time of writing, most of them were still undetected by its moderators according to the Ad Library.Like I said, we get a lot of tips like this these days. We get so many, in fact, that we dont write stories about them unless theres something novel or that our readers need to know about them. Facebook taking money to put explicit porn in its ads despite it being a clear violation of its own policies is not new, but definitely a new low for the company and a clear indicator of Facebooks fuck it approach to content moderation, and moderation of its ads specifically.AI Forensics, a tech platform and algorithmic auditing firm, today put out a report that quantifies just how widespread this problem is. It found over 3,000 pornographic ads promoting dubious sexual enhancement products which generated over 8 million impressions over a year in the European Union alone.In an attempt to show that the ads didnt use some clever technique to bypass Metas moderation tools, AI Forensics uploaded the exact same visuals as standard, non-promoted posts on Instagram and Facebook, and they were removed promptly for violating Metas Community Standards.Our findings suggest that although Meta has the technology to automatically detect pornographic content, it does not apply it to enforce its community standards on advertisements as it does for non-sponsored content, AI Forensics said in its report. This double standard is not a temporary bug, but persisted since as early as, at least, December 2023.Facebook Ads containing pornography found by AI Forensics When we write about this problem with Facebooks moderation we always stress that theres nothing inherently alarming about nudity itself on social media. The problem is that the policy against it is blatantly hypocritical because it often bans legitimate adult content creators, sex workers, and sex educators who are trying to play by the platforms rules, while bad actors who dont care about Facebooks rules find loopholes that allow them to post all the pornography they want. Additionally, that pornography is almost always stolen from the same legitimate creators who Facebook polices so heavily, the ads are almost always for products and services that are trying to scam or take advantage of the audience Facebook is allegedly trying to protect, and in some cases promote tools for creating nonconsensual pornography.Whats adding insult to injury right now is that in addition to Facebooks hypocrisy I lay out above, Facebook is now punishing us for publishing stories about this very problem.In October, I published a story with the headline When Does Instagram Decide a Nipple Becomes Female, in which artist Ada Ada Ada tests the boundaries of Instagrams automated and human moderation systems by uploading a daily image of her naked torso during her transition. The project exposes how silly Instagrams rules are around allowing images of male nipples while not allowing images of female nipples, and how those rules are arbitrarily enforced.It was disappointing but not at all surprising that Facebook punished us for sharing that story on its platform. We removed you photo, an automated notification from Facebook to the official 404 Media account read. This goes against our Community Standards on nudity or sexual activity.Separately, when Jason tried to share it on his Threads, it removed his post because it included nudity or sexual activity. Weirdly, none of the images in the post Jason shared were flagged when Ada Ada Ada uploaded them to Instagram, but they were when Jason shared them on Threads. Threads also removed Joes post about a story I wrote about people making AI-generated porn of the Vaticans new mascot, a story that is about adult content, but that doesnt contain nude images.Our official 404 Media page, as well as Jasons personal account, which he has had for 20 years and which is the admin of the 404 Media page, was dinged several times for sharing stories about a bill that would rewrite obscenity standards, the FBI charging a man with cyberstalking, and AI-generated fake images about a natural disaster on Twitter. Facebook has threatened the existence of not just the official 404 Media page, but also of Jasons personal account.Not a single one of these stories or the images they include violate Facebooks policies as they are written, but Facebook nonetheless has limited how many people see these stories and our page in general because we shared them. Facebook has also prevented us from inviting people from liking the page (which presumably would limit its reach also) and warned us that it was at risk of being suspended, and later, unpublished.As many sex workers and educators have told us over the years, while Facebook gave us the chance to appeal all of these decisions, trying to correct Facebooks moderation efforts is not simple, and the appeals process consists solely of clicking a few predetermined boxes; there is no chance to interact with a moderator or plead your case. We appealed three of the decisions in late October, none of which were accepted.The appeal we filed on Ada Ada Adas story on the official 404 Media page in mid-December was accepted within a few hours and got the restrictions lifted off of the 404 Media page (and Jasons personal account) in mid-December. But an appeal Jason filed on his Threads post about the same story was not accepted: We reviewed your post again. We confirmed that it does not follow our Community Guidelines on nudity or sexual activity, the appeal determination on Jasons Threads post read. The different determinations between what was essentially the exact same post shows how all-over-the-place Metas moderation remains, which creates an infuriating dynamic for adult content creators. Mark Zuckerberg has personally expressed regret for giving into pressure from the Biden administration to censor content during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, but neither he nor Meta has extended an apology to adult content creators who are censored regularly.It was hard enough to deal with having to constantly prove to Facebook that our journalism is not pornography or harmful content when we worked at VICE, where we had a whole audience and social media team who dealt with this kind of thing. Its much harder for us to do that now that were an independent publication with only four workers who have to do this in addition to everything else. I cant imagine how demoralizing it would be to have to deal with this as a single adult content creator trying to promote their work on Facebooks platforms.Again, this is frustrating as is, but infuriating when I regularly see Facebook not only take money from advertisers that are pushing nudity on Facebook, but doing it for the explicit purpose of creating nonconsensual content or scamming its users.The silver lining here is that Facebook was already increasingly a waste of our time. The only reason were able to share our stories via our official Facebook page is that weve fully automated that process, because it is not actually worth our time to post our stories there organically. Since before we started 404 Media, we knew there was very little chance that Facebook would help us reach people, grow our audience, and make the case that people should support our journalism, so in a way we lost nothing because theres nothing to lose.On the other hand, that perspective is based on us having already accepted Facebooks rejection of our journalism years ago. Its not as if people dont get any news on Facebook. According to Pew, about a third of adults in the U.S. get news from Facebook, but according to media monitoring tool Newswhip, the top 10 publishers on Facebook are British tabloids, People, Fox News, CNN, and BBC. Smaller publishers, especially publishers who are trying to report on some of the biggest problems that are plaguing Facebook, are punished for pointing out that those problems involve adult content, which disincentivizes that reporting and allows those problems to fester.I dont like it, but ultimately the choices Facebook is making here are shaping its platform, and its going to be a bigger problem for its users who are going to fall victim to these ads than it is for us as a publisher.Emanuel Maiberg is interested in little known communities and processes that shape technology, troublemakers, and petty beefs. Email him at emanuel@404media.coMore from Emanuel Maiberg

cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional11 monthsThe cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".cookielawinfo-checkbox-others11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".viewed_cookie_policy11 monthsThe cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.

One Small Giant StepThat Shadow of the Colossus movie you absolutely forgot about is apparently not "an abandoned project by any means"Just don't bet on it coming out any time soon.Image credit: Japan Studio/ Sony/ Bluepoint News by Oisin Kuhnke Contributor Published on Jan. 8, 2025 You probably don't remember that a Shadow of the Colossus film is in the works, but it is, and even though there's been silence for years, it's not dead in the water.Way back in the distant year of 2009, Sony announced that a film adaptation of PS2 classic Shadow of the Colossus was in the works. Back then, game adaptations weren't as frequent as they are now, so such an announcement maybe would have been a bit more of a surprise, especially considering the source material. That was 16 years ago now though, and times have changed - Sony just announced a couple of movies this week, in fact. You'd think after all this time, and with very few updates, there'd be nothing going on with it any more, but nope! In 2014 The Flash and It director Andy Muschietti was attached to the project after Chronicle Director Josh Trank dropped out.To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Now, as reported by Reconectados (and translated by TheGamer), Muschietti has shared an update with Argentinian radio station Radio TU, against all odds. "The film has been in development for 10 years, and now the possibility of making it opens up," Muschietti explained, going on to say that it was never "an abandoned project by any means." The director admitted he wasn't a massive gamer, but to him Shadow of the Colossus was a "masterpiece", and said the film adaptation even has a script that he likes "a lot."Production hasn't started yet on the project, with Muschietti noting that there are "factors that have nothing to do with your desire to make it, but with how popular an intellectual property like this is. Shadow of the Colossus is a cult game, but to make a good film, there is a studio that puts the numbers and says how much it is worth to give the director 200, 150, or 100 million dollars. There are different versions of the film, and obviously, I want them to give me 200 million, but this is another factor to take into account."He's not wrong. Shadow of the Colossus is a universally beloved game, but it isn't exactly the most popular game ever made, even if it is an influential one. Personally, I think this one should just be left alone, but hey, where there's IP, there's potential money to be made, right Sony?

Knocked TF OutLeague of Legends's Noxus cinematic soars past 25 million views in less than a day, and it's got a nice surprise for fans of ArcaneMillions upon millions of people have watched Trundle getting rocked.Image credit: Riot Games News by Connor Makar Staff Writer Published on Jan. 8, 2025 In case you're not super into the Moba space, League of Legends has released its 2025 season cinematic to kick off a new year of competition. This cinematic, which takes us to the region of Noxus and introduces us to a variety of champions who hang around there, has soared past 25 million views in less than a day.As of writing, it's sitting at a healthy 27,930,944 views on YouTube, on top of the 5.2 million views the trailer has on Twitter. While League cinematics always tend to shoot up in the views due to the game's passionate community and a brilliant cinematic team, this year seems to have blown passed expectations due to links to Arcane and a certain returning character.Watch the Welcome to Noxus trailer here!Watch on YouTubeYou can watch the trailer embedded above and see for yourself! Mel makes a return, seemingly finishing her trip from Piltover to Noxus. That confirms that the characters we see, like Darius, Katarina, Elise, Vladamir, and LeBlanc, are all roaming around the place. All of this is was animated by Fortiche, the French animation studio responsable for Arcane. As such, all these characters have been Arcanified, with fresh looks to go alongside this new era of League of Legends.This aligns with what we know about future animated League of Legends shows, as it was previously confirmed that Fortiche and Riot were working on new series set in Noxus and beyond. This trailer not only points to new content coming to the MOBA, but the future of the hugely popular (and expensive) animated project.As for what's actually coming to the game with this Noxus season, there's a new Summoner's Rift map, a new epic monster, and a new system called Feats of Strength which give a team able to achieve important goals early in a game an upgraded pair of boots. That's a big deal, for those who don't play League.To see this content please enable targeting cookies. So, it's an exciting time for League for sure. One wonders how big a part Arcane's popularity will play in the future growth and engagement in League of Legends as well as Riot's other Runeterra games? What did you think of the trailer? Let us know below!