Twitch is cracking down on accounts belonging to users under the age of 13 as part of its efforts to protect children on the platform. From a report: In a post on Twitch’s safety center, the Amazon-owned company announced that it’s improving its methods for detecting and terminating the accounts belonging to young users and is also working on ways to block users who were previously suspended for being under 13. These changes come after a report from Bloomberg revealed rampant child predation on the platform. The report, first published in September, analyzed 1,976 accounts on Twitch with follower lists made up of 70 percent or more users who are kids or young teenagers. According to Bloomberg, a total of 279,016 children were targeted by these alleged predators on Twitch.

In addition to “expanding the signals” it uses to catch and block users under the age of 13, Twitch is going to introduce mandatory phone verification requirements to “potentially vulnerable accounts” before they can start livestreaming. While Twitch doesn’t expand on how it will identify these accounts, it says this should help the platform prevent young users who lie about their age from becoming exposed to child predators during livestreams.

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Source: Slashdot – Twitch Says It’s Getting Better at Detecting and Blocking Young Users

China’s top gaming industry association declared that the problem of children’s video gaming addiction has been “resolved,” the clearest signal so far that Beijing will ease its curbs on the approval of new titles. From a report: China’s Game Industry Group Committee, which is affiliated with the government’s gaming regulatory body, released a report on Tuesday that found 70 per cent of minors played less than three hours of games a week. “Minors’ gaming addiction has been basically resolved,” the body wrote in a report co-authored by Beijing-based research body CNG. Any easing of China’s crackdown on online video games would be a boon for industry leaders Tencent and NetEase, which have borne the brunt of the restrictions.

Beijing sent a shockwave through the gaming industry in August 2021 when it restricted children to only playing online games for one hour on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. The move came after state media highlighted the mental and physical health toll gaming addiction was having on China’s youth, labelling online games a form of “spiritual opium.” The time spent by children on Chinese internet giant Tencent’s games has plummeted since the regulation change and was down 92 per cent in the third quarter compared with the same period last year. During an earnings call with investors last week, Tencent said it had become “fully compliant” with Chinese regulations on gaming for minors and expected “more licenses will be forthcoming in the future.”

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Source: Slashdot – Chinese Children’s Addiction To Gaming ‘Resolved’, Says Industry Body

Can a change in the weather trigger a landslide? Sometimes, yes, according to research. From a report: Most landslides are set in motion by an earthquake or torrential rain, but some have no obvious trigger. In 2009, scientists were stunned to discover that the stop-start Slumgullion landslide in the Rocky Mountains — which has been inching down the hillside for 700 years — is triggered by changes in atmospheric pressure. So is Slumgullion a rare exception? To find out, scientists fed weather and landslide data from Taiwan — whose typhoons and steep hills create a perfect natural landslide laboratory — into a landslide model. Their results, which are published in Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, demonstrate that when the eye of a storm passes over a hillside, the change in atmospheric pressure can provide the final push, but its ability to do this depends upon the weather over the preceding months.

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Source: Slashdot – Storms Can Cause Landslides Days Later, Scientists Find