Tootfinder

Over 100K Nepali citizens gathered on Discord to help nominate an interim leader after protests sparked by a social media ban led to the government's collapse (Pranav Baskar/New York Times)
https://www.

Nepal’s Social Media Ban Backfires as Politics Moves to a Chat Room
“The Parliament of Nepal right now is Discord,” a user said of the platform popular with video gamers, where tens of thousands are debating the nation’s future.

Nepal says it is blocking most major social media platforms, including Facebook, X, and YouTube, after the companies failed to register with the government (Binaj Gurubacharya/Associated Press)
https://apnews.com/article/nepal-ban-social-media-plat…

Nepal blocks Facebook, X, YouTube and others for failing to register with the government
Nepal's government says it is blocking most social media platforms, including Facebook, X and YouTube, because they failed to register with the government. Nepal's Minister for Communication and Information said about two dozen platforms were repeatedly notified to register. TikTok, Viber, and three other platforms are allowed to operate because they have registered. The government has introduced a bill in parliament to ensure social platforms are managed responsibly. Rights groups criticize th…

Civil Servants as Builders: Enabling Non-IT Staff to Develop Secure Python and R Tools
Prashant Sharma
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.07203 https://arxiv.org/p…

Civil Servants as Builders: Enabling Non-IT Staff to Develop Secure Python and R Tools
Current digital government literature focuses on professional in-house IT teams, specialized digital service teams, vendor-developed systems, or proprietary low-code/no-code tools. Almost no scholarship addresses a growing middle ground: technically skilled civil servants outside formal IT roles who can write real code but lack a sanctioned, secure path to deploy their work. This paper introduces a limits-aware, open-source and replicable platform that enables such public servants to develop, p…

This choice of price point undercuts OpenAI and Anthropic ($1 each) but that's still effectively zero.
I am surprised that the obvious numerological pandering isn't pointed out in the article
Google’s ‘Gemini for Government’ offers AI platform to federal agencies for 47 cents | FedScoop

Google’s ‘Gemini for Government’ offers AI platform to federal agencies for 47 cents
The OneGov deal gives Google a pricing edge over competitors like OpenAI and Anthropic, which offer their models for $1 per federal agency.

The UK government rejects a proposed 5% levy on streaming services and a 25% tax rebate on ad costs for indie films, among other committee recommendations (Naman Ramachandran/Variety)
https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/uk-government-rejects-streamin…

U.K. Government Formally Rejects Streaming Levy
U.K. government rejects streaming platform levy and multiple film industry recommendations while emphasizing benefits of international investments.

Nepal says it is blocking most major social media platforms, including Facebook, X, and YouTube, after they failed to register with the government (Binaj Gurubacharya/Associated Press)
https://apnews.com/article/nepal-ban-social-media-platform-3b42…

Now, as a Trot, I'm obviously not a huge Stalin fan but, still... 🤔
4% of the world population, 22% of all the prisoners in the world.

User Location Disclosure Fails to Deter Overseas Criticism but Amplifies Regional Divisions on Chinese Social Media
Leo Yang Yang, Yiqing Xu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.03238

User Location Disclosure Fails to Deter Overseas Criticism but Amplifies Regional Divisions on Chinese Social Media
We examine the behavioral impact of a user location disclosure policy implemented on Sina Weibo, China's largest microblogging platform, using a high-frequency, real-time dataset of uncensored user engagement with 165 leading government and media accounts. Leveraging a natural experiment result from the platform's sudden rollout of location tagging on April 28, 2022, we compare millions of time-stamped observations of user behavior in the comment sections of these accounts before and after the …

Brazil has an interesting history of homegrown technology (see Lua!) and I guess the new big step is developing their own digital payment system: Pix.
This article is largely about US efforts against it, but also discusses the rise of Pix.
https://restofworld.org/2025/pix-brazi

U.S. targets Brazil’s payments platform Pix in trade spat
Big Tech has struggled to compete against Brazil’s beloved digital payments system, with the U.S. government now investigating the country’s “unfair trade practices.”

Memo: in H1 2025, Bloomberg Media revenue grew 7% YoY, cross-platform audience grew 6%, subscriptions revenue rose 8%, paying subscribers rose by ~100K to 660K (Chris Roush/Talking Biz News)
https://talkingbiznews.com/media-news/bloomberg-media-reve…

Bloomberg Media revenue up 7% in first half of 2025 - Talking Biz News
Bloomberg Media CEO Karen Saltser sent the following memo to Bloomberg Media employees: Team, We’re at a key inflection point in the fiscal year – a moment to recap Bloomberg Media’s growth and also focus on a strong finish. Every day, we deliver vital news, insights, context and connections to business and government decision makers; […]

The French government has launched a criminal investigation into Elon Musk’s X over “the alleged manipulation of its algorithm” and “fraudulent” data extraction, the social media platform said.
https://www.ft.com/content/21818d23-71d7-45a4-ae8c-e7940f5d9e00

Nice try LinkedIn. No, I’d rather not upload a photo of ANY PII and/or scan my face to you or your third-parties so you can misuse it. Your platform is not that important.
#survelliancecapitalism #dataprivacy

¿Corrupción? ¿Donde?
@… https://mstdn.social/@Free_Press/114857399291118861

French prosecutors open an investigation into Australian video platform Kick over the death of a content creator who was violently abused during livestreams (Graham Fraser/BBC)
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czxpepn5qlxo

Video platform Kick investigated over streamer's death
The French government also says it is suing the platform over the death of Raphaël Graven, also known as Jean Pormanove.

Leveraging Multi-Source Textural UGC for Neighbourhood Housing Quality Assessment: A GPT-Enhanced Framework
Qiyuan Hong, Huimin Zhao, Ying Long
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.16657 …

Leveraging Multi-Source Textural UGC for Neighbourhood Housing Quality Assessment: A GPT-Enhanced Framework
This study leverages GPT-4o to assess neighbourhood housing quality using multi-source textural user-generated content (UGC) from Dianping, Weibo, and the Government Message Board. The analysis involves filtering relevant texts, extracting structured evaluation units, and conducting sentiment scoring. A refined housing quality assessment system with 46 indicators across 11 categories was developed, highlighting an objective-subjective method gap and platform-specific differences in focus. GPT-4…

Roblox introduces age estimation technology for unfiltered chats https://therecord.media/roblox-age-verification-technology-unfiltered-chats