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Internal documents, leaked to BBC News, reveal that OnlyFans allows moderators to give multiple warnings to accounts that post illegal content on its online platform before deciding to close them.

Described as a “compliance manual”, the documents also show that staff are asked to be more lenient towards successful accounts on the British content-sharing service.

Moderation specialists and child protection experts say this shows OnlyFans – which is best known for hosting pornography – has some “tolerance” for accounts posting illegal content.

OnlyFans says it goes far beyond “all relevant global safety standards and regulations” and does not tolerate breaches of its terms of service.

On Thursday evening, Only Fans said it would ban sexually explicit content on the site from October. The announcement comes after BBC News approached the company for its response to the leaked documents, and concerns about its handling of accounts posting illegal content.

OnlyFans said it would still allow creators to post nude photos and videos if they were in line with its terms of service, which are to be updated.

The site has more than 120 million subscribers, who pay a monthly fee and tips to “creators” for videos, photos and the ability to send personal messages to them. OnlyFans takes 20% of all payments.

In May, BBC News revealed the site was failing to prevent under-18s from selling and appearing in explicit videos, despite it being illegal for children to do so. At the time, OnlyFans said attempts to use the site fraudulently were “rare”.

Now, the leaked documents show accounts are not automatically shut down if they break the site’s terms of service.

Moderators have also told BBC news they have found prostitution services advertised, bestiality and material one moderator believed to be incest.

The BBC has seen examples of some of this banned content. In one video, a man is seen eating faeces. In another, a man pays homeless people to have sex with him on camera.

OnlyFans says it has now removed the videos and the documents are not manuals or “official guidance”. In a statement it says: “We do not tolerate any violation of our terms of service, and we take immediate action to uphold the safety and security of our users.”

Short presentational grey line
Moderators we spoke to have given a rare insight into how content on the site is checked.

Christof – not his real name – says on some days, he has viewed up to 2,000 photos and videos looking for content prohibited by the site. He uses lists of keywords to search within bios, posts and private messages between creators and their subscribers.

He says he has found illegal and extreme content in videos – including bestiality involving dogs and the use of spy cams, guns, knives and drugs. Some material is not actively searched for by moderators as frequently as he believes it should be, says Christof, despite being banned under the platform’s terms of service.

On multiple occasions, he says, OnlyFans told him he over-moderated, particularly in relation to videos showing sex in public and to “third-party” content – material featuring people not registered with OnlyFans.

OnlyFans says moderators are given specific briefs and if they routinely go beyond them they will be “directed to focus only on their assigned type of content”. Christof also says that despite being banned, the advertising of sex for sale is common among low earners on the site.

Christof, and a second person who has moderated content for the site, say some creators offer competitions to meet and have sex with a fan, as a way of increasing tip payments.

One of the documents we obtained detailing moderation guidelines in 2020, states that adverts for sex are an issue for the site. It says the “most popular places for escort promo” on the site are in creators’ usernames, bios, content descriptions and “tips menus” which advertise customised videos. The document says “examples” of this promotion include references to “PPM (pay per meet)”, “CashMeets”, “Book me”, “IRL Meet”, “scort” and others.

Despite this, BBC News was able to find more than 30 active accounts using those keywords in bios, profiles and posts, on one day.

One creator’s profile described them as an “[e]scort – sex partner”. A different account asked: “Anyone want to book me for a weekend?” Only two of the accounts we found had been removed 10 days later.

OnlyFans says it upholds its terms of service, uses both human and technological forms of moderation, and closes accounts where there is a serious contravention of its terms.

But the documents show that although illegal content itself is removed, OnlyFans lets moderators give creators multiple warnings before closing accounts.

One, from February this year, reveals OnlyFans recommends three warnings are given to accounts when illegal content is discovered. It provides templates for each successive warning – explaining why material has been removed, and that failure to comply with terms of service may result in the closure of the account.

We obtained several differently-dated versions of the same 2021 document. All, except the oldest, state there should be at least five examples of “illegal” content on an account for it to be “escalated” immediately to management. Later versions from this summer include an apparently contradictory statement requiring immediate management referral for some examples of illegal content.

The document also gives moderators specific instructions for dealing with accounts – depending on how popular each one is. It says accounts with higher numbers of subscribers can be given additional warnings when rules are broken.

However, staff are told to moderate accounts with low user numbers “as we would and [restrict] when necessary”. With middle range accounts, they are told to warn, “but only restrict after the 3rd warning”. If one of the site’s most successful – and lucrative – creators breaks the rules, the account is dealt with by a different team.

“There is a discrimination between accounts,” says Christof. “It shows money is the priority.” The second moderator says that with violations of any kind, “You get a few warnings, you don’t just get the one warning and then you’re off.”

One expert in content moderation says the documents clearly show that OnlyFans has “some tolerance” for illegal material. “This suggests that they know the type of illegal content that their users are trying to upload enough to have templates for it,” says Dr Sarah Roberts, a co-director of the Center for Critical Internet Inquiry at UCLA in the US.

“Because [OnlyFans] have a certain amount of leniency, it also suggests that they are not willing to completely alienate their creators – even people who may do things illegally at worst, inappropriately at best – by immediately deplatforming them.”

Despite being described as a “compliance manual” in the header of each page of all versions of the 2021 document, OnlyFans says the documents are not manuals or “official guidance”. The first document – from 2020 – has edits attributed to Tom Stokely, the company’s chief operating officer.

Christof says he has frequently come across content where he fears people may be being exploited. He says while the documents set out instructions for dealing with banned content, they contain no requirements for moderators to raise concerns around exploitation.

Videos, which the BBC viewed, of the man paying homeless people to have sex on camera raised such concerns. The account brags of “hunting” homeless people, and is open about “taking advantage” of them.

A different account bears hallmarks of trafficking and exploitation, according to a lawyer who directed BBC News to it. A woman, whose face is never shown, appears in some videos with the walls and floor completely covered with rugs – and there are repeated references to travelling across Europe.

Detective Joseph Scaramucci, who works in Texas in the US, says he has recently worked on specific cases targeting human trafficking where there were obvious signs of women under another person’s control appearing in OnlyFans videos. He says some men are happy to pay for sex with these women and pay a premium to be filmed and have the footage uploaded to OnlyFans.

This month, 101 members of Congress signed a letter calling for the US Department for Justice to investigate content on OnlyFans, principally focusing on child sexual exploitation. In response, OnlyFans said it has a zero tolerance policy relating to child sexual abuse material, reports it to relevant authorities and supports their investigations.

Special agent Austin Berrier, from US Homeland Security, specialises in investigating child exploitation online. He estimates he finds between 20-30 child abuse images a week which he says have clearly originated on OnlyFans. He says every internet forum he has visited as part of his investigations in the past six months or so, has included child abuse images from OnlyFans. Most of them are videos that were live streamed on the site. In some of them, children are receiving direction – he says.

“It’s out there, it’s all over the place and it’s being widely traded.”

Dozens of accounts that appear to have been set up by underage users are closed each day, according to Christof, who shared a record of some accounts closed over a period of a few weeks with BBC News. Almost all underage accounts are for subscribers, rather than creators – including, he says, children as young as 10.

While they cannot post pictures or receive payment directly on the site, Christof says some use the site to advertise escort services or the sale of explicit pictures of themselves. The profile of one subscriber stated they were 16 years old and advertised the sale of photos of feet “or other” areas for £4.

Christof says this is a particular problem with accounts not written in English. He says some foreign language accounts are insufficiently moderated despite the site’s huge popularity around the world.

BBC News was able to set up two subscriber accounts in French and German – despite explicitly stating they were young teenagers in the bios and advertising the sale of photographs. The accounts remained active for a week until BBC News contacted OnlyFans.

OnlyFans says all content can be reported by moderators, and the company complies with anti-trafficking legislation and provides annual training to staff. It says the account featuring homeless people breaks its terms and conditions and has now been closed and that it actively reviews livestreamed feeds.

Children’s rights campaigner Baroness Kidron says any leniency towards accounts posting unlawful material is “wrong”.

“The answer is in the name: If it’s illegal content, there should be zero tolerance,” says the peer, founder of a charity campaigning for children’s rights online, the 5Rights Foundation – and a member of the pre-legislative scrutiny committee for the long-delayed Online Safety Bill.

She says payment companies should take responsibility for how their services are being used. “Companies should withdraw their commercial support unless and until there is an Onlyfans that is clearly an adult site,” she says.

On Thursday, OnlyFans told the Financial Times that the company was banning pornography so as to “comply with the requests of our banking partners and payout providers”.

Many payment providers, including industry giants Visa and Mastercard, ban the use of their services for specific types of content. Last year, both ended their relationship with Pornhub after allegations of unlawful material.

Baroness Kidron also believes minimum standards of moderation and a statutory code of conduct should be introduced to address leniency over accounts posting unlawful material.

BBC News has learned that the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) was warned by a US anti-trafficking charity about content on OnlyFans in 2019 and given a presentation.

In a statement, the DCMS said its Online Safety Bill would introduce the toughest laws in the world – and that OnlyFans would face huge fines or be blocked if it failed to tackle illegal content.

It added that the media regulator Ofcom already has the power to suspend video sites if they fail to take steps to protect users from harmful content.

In May, OnlyFans published its most recent accounts and stated that “any lapse” in monitoring underage content and trafficking “could bring government sanctions from a wide range of countries and regulators”. The company has repeatedly declined to be interviewed by BBC News about these subjects.

In response to BBC News, it said it fully complies with all laws and regulations that apply to it globally – including those of Ofcom – and that it uses state-of-the-art age verification and monitoring software, together with human monitoring.

OnlyFans says it believes one of the moderators BBC News spoke to was an employee it dismissed for repeated failures to close accounts containing unauthorised material.

The source says he repeatedly raised the number of underage subscriber accounts with OnlyFans.

Apple censors references to Chinese politicians, dissidents and other topics in its engraving service, a report alleges.

Citizen Lab said it had investigated filters set up for customers who wanted something engraved on a new iPhone, iPad or other Apple device.

And Apple had a broad list of censored words, not just in mainland China but also in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Apple said its systems “ensure local laws and customs are respected”.

“As with everything at Apple, the process for engraving is led by our values,” chief privacy officer Jane Horvath wrote in a letter provided to CitizenLab in advance of the publication of its report.

And the engraving service tried not to allow trademarked phrases, alongside those that “are vulgar or culturally insensitive, could be construed as inciting violence, or would be considered illegal according to local laws, rules, and regulations”.

But CitizenLab accuses Apple of having “thoughtlessly and inconsistently curated keyword lists”.

Sexual words
CitizenLab, a research group at the University of Toronto known for its work in technology and human rights, said there had been previous research on the censorship of Apple’s App Store in China.

But there were until now only anecdotal reports of engravings being refused, it said.

Its new report found more than 1,100 filtered keywords, across six different regions, mainly relating to offensive content, such as racist or sexual words.

But it alleges the rules are applied inconsistently and are much wider for China.

“Within mainland China, we found that Apple censors political content, including broad references to Chinese leadership and China’s political system, names of dissidents and independent news organisations, and general terms relating to religions, democracy, and human rights,” it says.

The report also alleges that censorship “bleeds” into both the Hong Kong and Taiwan markets.

It found:

1,045 keywords blocked in mainland China
542 in Hong Kong
397 in Taiwan
In contrast, Japan, Canada and the US had between 170 and 260 filtered words.

Historical figures
In Hong Kong, phrases referencing the “umbrella revolution”, pro-democracy movement, and freedom of the press appeared to be blocked, along with the names of some political dissidents.

In Taiwan, the report found filtering of senior members of China’s ruling Communist Party, including historical figures such as Chairman Mao Zedong.

Hong Kong is what is known as a special administrative region of China.

The former British colony is part of China but governed under special principles and enjoys a high degree of autonomy.

Taiwan, meanwhile, is self-governing but Beijing considers it a breakaway rebel province that will one day be reunited with mainland China.

“Much of this censorship exceeds Apple’s legal obligations in Hong Kong and we are aware of no legal justification for the political censorship of content in Taiwan,” the report says.

What’s behind the China-Taiwan divide?
Hong Kong’s year under China’s controversial law
It also cites mistakes – such as 10 people with the surname Zhang having their engravings censored, a restriction with no obvious political significance.

“Apple does not fully understand what content they censor,” CitizenLab alleged.

“Rather than each censored keyword being born of careful consideration, many seem to have been thoughtlessly reappropriated from other sources,” it said – possibly including a list used to censor products at a Chinese company.

China was a valuable market for big technology companies, CitizenLab said.

But its research “points to a more alarming trend of the export of one jurisdiction’s regulatory and political pressures to another”.

There were “growing uncertainties and dilemmas global companies face between upholding internationally acknowledged human-rights norms and making decisions purely based on commercial interests”, it added.

‘Mistakenly rejected’
Replying to the group, Ms Horvath said Apple’s rules depended on the region – and “no third parties or government agencies have been involved in the process”.

“To a large degree, this is not an automated process and relies on manual curation,” she said.

“At times, that can result in engraving requests being mistakenly rejected.

“And we have a process in place to review and correct those situations when they occur.”

Mastercard is to stop issuing cards with a magnetic strip.

By 2033, none of its debit or credit cards will have a strip, with banks in many regions including Europe able to issue the strip-less cards from 2024.

The UK moved to chip-and-pin for all card payments in 2006, but in the US, some magnetic strip systems are still in use.

Mastercard says chip-and-pin and new biometric cards that use fingerprints, offer greater security.

The firm claims to be the first payment network to phase out the technology.

A spokesperson told the BBC the level of global acceptance of chip-and-pin was such that the time was right to begin phasing out the magnetic strip.

The slow phasing out is to leave what the firm calls a “long runway” for companies accepting payments to move to chip-and-pin.

Spy-dentity cards
The magnetic strip began life in the 1960s as an IBM project to create identity cards for CIA staff.

Forrest Parry, one of its engineers, had the idea of sticking information encoded on a strip of magnetic tape to a plastic card, but was struggling to join the two together.

It was Dorothea Parry, his wife, who hit upon the idea of using heat to join tape to card, initially with the iron she was using at the time.

But the pandemic, the company says, has highlighted the appetite for different ways to pay, increasingly consigning paying using the Parrys’ invention to the history books.

Contactless payments which can be made using card or smartphone increased by more than one billion in the first quarter of 2021 compared with the same period last year.

And experimentation in biometric payment systems continues – from systems that enable payments using face recognition to palm scanners.

The technology that currently powers landline telephones is to be switched off in 2025 – but don’t panic, you will still be able to have a handset in the hallway should you wish.

The Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) is a modern version of 19th Century technology – it is what brings the connection into your home via a copper cable – but its days are numbered, according to Openreach, which has already begun work on the switchover.

Landline operators in the UK will switch every home phone in the UK to an internet-based connection instead of traditional, copper-wire landlines. A total of 14 million lines are affected.

Here is what we know about how it will all work.

What’s happening to the old landline network?
PSTNs around the world have been modernised many times but still work on the same principle – establishing direct connections between telephones via an intermediary exchange.

Initially, PSTN copper cables also carried internet connections into people’s homes.

But this has increasingly been replaced by fibre-optic cable.

Internet communications also mean landlines themselves have become less popular.

And a survey, in April, suggested 40% of people in the UK had stopped using them altogether.

Telecoms companies also say old PSTN equipment is costly to maintain and call quality could be improved by routing landline calls via internet connections instead.

“The traditional analogue landline signal is carried over copper – that’s what it is,” James Barford, of Enders Analysis, says.

“And so if you go to fibre, you have to do something else and [voice over internet protocol (VOIP)] is the obvious thing.”

Old landline phones will still work after the network changes, however.

And unless moving to a different part of the country, most people will retain the same phone number.

Handsets will not need replacing either – existing phones will be connected to a different system behind the scenes.

But you may have to plug your phone in to your internet router or a new wall socket.

When will it happen?
Openreach, which manages the UK’s phone and internet network, has already begun switching people over to VOIP connections.

The company launched a trial in Mildenhall, Suffolk, earlier this year.

New landline customers there can purchase VOIP connections only.

And Openreach is planning hundreds of similar trials for exchanges in towns across the UK, this year and next.

Will I need an internet connection to use my landline phone?
Once the PSTN is completely switched off, if not before, you will be unable to make a phone call via a landline with no internet connection.

You will be able to use your existing broadband connection for landline services, however.

And if you have no broadband internet connection, you should, according to telecoms regulator Ofcom, be given the option to buy a simple connection for making calls only, rather than having to pay for high-speed services.

What if I cannot access a broadband connection in my area?
“Nobody will find themselves being cut off,” an Openreach representative says.

And you can continue using an existing analogue service unless upgrading or switching providers.

Ofcom says 2% of homes in the UK are unable to access a basic 10Mbps broadband connection.

But Ben Wood, of CCS Insight, says: “For the vast majority of people, the landline is now just an annoying tax they have to pay when they want internet access.”

Will internet-based calls be less reliable?
Many businesses have already had VOIP phone systems for some time.

And customers should not notice a drop in quality compared with the PSTN system, Mr Barford says.

“They should be at least as good, possibly better,” he says.

After the digital-TV switchover, some viewers noticed blockiness in their picture.

But voice calls require a relatively tiny amount of data.

And modern internet connections should be able to handle them well.

What if there is a power cut?
Old landline phones receive power via the line itself, which is separate to the household mains electricity supply, and often remain functional even during a power cut.

Internet-based phones, however, rely on home routers or similar devices.

Ofcom requires phone operators to come up with back-up solutions, though, to ensure people can call emergency services.

Virgin, for example, intends to offer battery-powered back-up lines to customers with accessibility needs or who cannot rely on a mobile phone during a power cut.

The battery provides 24 hours of standby and one hour of talk time.

And an engineer will install a small box in the customer’s home so they can connect.

Are traffic lights affected?

Besides landline phones, lots of systems currently rely on the PSTN, including:

home burglar alarms and security systems
public traffic lights
cash machines
railway signals
motorway signs
And they will all have to switch to fully digital alternatives.

“All of these services are dependent on the voltage supplied by the PSTN – and all will need local batteries in addition to an internet connection, once the network closes, with some requiring more complex solutions,” the Crown Commercial Service notes in an article published online last year.

A Transport for London spokesman, for example, tells BBC News 1,000 of its 6,400 sets of traffic lights currently monitors remotely using PSTN technology – and it has set up a working group exploring options for replacement telecoms services.

The UK’s CCTV watchdog has criticised a Chinese firm for not saying if its cameras are used in Uyghur internment camps.

Professor Fraser Sampson, said: “If your company wasn’t involved in these awful places wouldn’t you be very keen to say so?”

In July, MPs said Hikvision provided the “primary camera technology” used in Uyghur internment camps.

The company said it respected human rights.

On 8 July, MPs on the foreign affairs committee published a report which said: “Cameras made by the Chinese firm Hikvision have been deployed throughout Xinjiang, and provide the primary camera technology used in the internment camps”.

More than a million Uyghurs and other minorities are estimated to have been detained at camps in the north-west region of Xinjiang, where allegations of torture, forced labour and sexual abuse have emerged.

China has denied the allegations and claimed the camps are “re-education” facilities used to combat terrorism.

The foreign affairs committee recommended that Hikvision “should not be permitted to operate within the UK”.

In June, President Biden signed an executive order prohibiting US investments in Hikvision.

Hikvision cameras are widely used in the UK, including by many local councils.

In a letter sent to “partners” after the report’s publication, Hikvision wrote that the committee’s accusations were “unsubstantiated and not underpinned by evidence”.

It called the suggestion of a ban a “knee-jerk response… disproportionate, ill-measured, and reinforces the notion that this is motivated by political influences”.

Biometrics Commissioner
On 16 July, Professor Sampson, the UK Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioner, followed up that response, asking the company if it accepted that crimes are being committed against the Uyghurs and other ethnic groups in Xinjiang.

In a reply sent this week, Justin Hollis, Hikvision’s Marketing Director for UK & Ireland, wrote: “It is beyond our capability to make a judgement on this matter, particularly against a backdrop where the debate surrounding the Xinjiang issue comes with clashing geopolitical views.”

The firm said it was difficult to answer “narrow pointed questions on paper”, fearing what it called a “kangaroo trial by media”.

It added that an “independent” report by former US Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues (2001-2005), Pierre-Richard Prosper, had concluded: “We do not find that Hikvision entered into the five projects in Xinjiang with the intent to knowingly engage in human rights abuses or find that Hikvision knowingly or intentionally committed human rights abuses itself or that it acted in wilful disregard.”

The company has previously said it had retained a law firm led by Ambassador Prosper “to advise on human rights compliance”.

Hikvision said it fully embraced the UN guiding principles of business and human rights.

The firm said that it did not oversee or control its devices once they are passed to installers, adding that “operational matters are not within our remit”.

Simple Questions
But the letter’s answers were not a satisfactory response for Professor Sampson, who told the BBC: “It’s a simple enough question – ‘Were your cameras used in these internment camps?'”

“Saying ‘we’re not involved in operations’ or ‘we don’t have any control over what’s done with them’ isn’t really an answer.”

He wrote: “Our parliamentary committee accepted that these internment camps exist and that substantial and sustained human rights abuses are being enabled by sophisticated surveillance technology. I need to understand the level of Hikvision’s involvement.

He said he was “unimpressed” with what he had heard, and remained unconvinced he was getting a “full account”.

The company has invited Professor Sampson to meet Ambassador Prosper, but the commissioner says he wants answers to “basic questions” first.

Hikvision told the BBC: “We are looking forward to meeting the Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioner, and have nothing to add to our letter.”

Apple says its announcement of automated tools to detect child sexual abuse on the iPhone and iPad was “jumbled pretty badly”.

On 5 August, the company revealed new image detection software that can alert Apple if known illegal images are uploaded to its iCloud storage.

Privacy groups criticised the news, with some saying Apple had created a security backdoor in its software.

The company says its announcement had been widely “misunderstood”.

“We wish that this had come out a little more clearly for everyone,” said Apple software chief Craig Federighi, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.

He said that – in hindsight – introducing two features at the same time was “a recipe for this kind of confusion”.

What are the new tools?
Apple announced two new tools designed to protect children. They will be deployed in the US first.

Image detection

The first tool can identify known child sex abuse material (CSAM) when a user uploads photos to iCloud storage.

The US National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) maintains a database of known illegal child abuse images. It stores them as hashes – a digital “fingerprint” of the illegal material.

Cloud service providers such as Facebook, Google and Microsoft, already check images against these hashes to make sure people are not sharing CSAM.

Apple decided to implement a similar process, but said it would do the image-matching on a user’s iPhone or iPad, before it was uploaded to iCloud.

Mr Federighi said the iPhone would not be checking for things such as photos of your children in the bath, or looking for pornography.

The system could only match “exact fingerprints” of specific known child sexual abuse images, he said.

If a user tries to upload several images that match child abuse fingerprints, their account will be flagged to Apple so the specific images can be reviewed.

Mr Federighi said a user would have to upload in the region of 30 matching images before this feature would be triggered.

Message filtering

In addition to the iCloud tool, Apple also announced a parental control that users could activate on their children’s accounts.

If activated, the system would check photographs sent by – or to – the child over Apple’s iMessage app.

If the machine learning system judged that a photo contained nudity, it would obscure the photo and warn the child.

Parents can also choose to receive an alert if the child chooses to view the photo.

Criticism
Privacy groups have shared concerns that the technology could be expanded and used by authoritarian governments to spy on its own citizens.

WhatsApp head Will Cathcart called Apple’s move “very concerning” while US whistleblower Edward Snowden called the iPhone a “spyPhone”.

Mr Federighi said the “soundbyte” that spread after the announcement was that Apple was scanning iPhones for images.

“That is not what is happening,” he told the Wall Street Journal.

“We feel very positively and strongly about what we’re doing and we can see that it’s been widely misunderstood.”

The tools are due to be added to the new versions of iOS and iPadOS later this year.

Samsung heir Lee Jae-yong has been released from a South Korean prison and is now on parole.

He served 207 days in jail – just over half the sentence he received after being convicted of bribery and embezzlement in January.

The case involved the country’s former President Park Guen-hye, who is also in jail for bribery and corruption.

Samsung Electronics was founded by Lee’s grandfather and he has been the de facto head since 2014 .

Lee made a brief statement to reporters outside the prison.

“I’ve caused much concern for the people. I deeply apologise,” Lee said. “I am listening to the concerns, criticisms, worries and high expectations for me. I will work hard.”

The 53-year old was sent to prison for two-and-a-half years by a high court in January.

He was accused of paying 43bn won ($37.7m; £26.7m) to two non-profit foundations operated by Choi Soon-sil, a friend of Park’s, in exchange for political support – alleged to include backing for a controversial Samsung merger which paved the way for Lee to become eventual head of the conglomerate.

The deal needed support from the government-run national pension fund.

At the time of his verdict, the court said that Lee “actively provided bribes and implicitly asked the president to use her power to help his smooth succession” at the head of Samsung.

The court found Lee guilty of bribery, embezzlement and concealment of criminal proceeds worth about 8.6 billion won ($7.8m; £5.75m).

The Justice Ministry said it made the decision to release Lee after considering the effects of the pandemic on South Korea’s economy and global markets.

However, Lee’s parole conditions include five years of business restrictions – it is unclear if he will be able to run the company unless he gets an exemption.

He will also need approval for any trips abroad.

Lee is also under investigation for fraud and stock manipulation and if found guilty could be jailed again.

This appears to be an economic decision by South Korea’s Justice Ministry. Free the Samsung heir and aid the country’s Covid recovery. But it comes at a political cost.

President Moon Jae-in came to power with a firm promise to break the link between big business and government.

Millions protested for months to impeach his predecessor Park Geun-hye and more than one thousand civic groups related to these protests wrote a letter asking for the so-called “Crown Prince of Samsung” not to be pardoned.

But pressure to free Jay Y Lee came from the US Chamber of Commerce alongside Samsung. American businesses argued that his release was vital to help combat a shortfall of computer chips. Samsung is currently mulling multi-billion dollar investments in semiconductor facilities in the US.

It’s also worth noting that earlier this year the law was changed to allow prisoners to be considered for parole after serving 60% of their sentence. That allowed Mr Lee to be released today. He has not been granted a pardon.

But, as we head full swing into presidential election season here in South Korea, the calculation being made by the current administration is that voters will reward the ruling party for its economic decisions more than if it stuck to its previous promises.

Apple has defended its new system that scans users’ phones for child sexual abuse material (CSAM), after a backlash from customers and privacy advocates.

The technology searches for matches of known abuse material before the image is uploaded to its iCloud storage.

Critics warned it could be a “backdoor” to spy on people, and more than 5,000 people and organisations have signed an open letter against the technology.

As a result, Apple has pledged not to “expand” the system for any reason.

Digital privacy campaigners warned last week that authoritarian governments could use the technology to bolster anti-LGBT regimes, or crack down on political dissidents in countries where protests are deemed illegal.

But Apple said it would “will not accede to any government’s request to expand” the system.

It published a question-and-answer document, saying it had numerous safeguards in place to stop its systems from being used for anything other than the detection of child abuse imagery.

“We have faced demands to build and deploy government-mandated changes that degrade the privacy of users before, and have steadfastly refused those demands. We will continue to refuse them in the future,” it said.

However, Apple has made some concessions in the past in order to keep operating in countries around the world.

Should encryption be curbed to combat child abuse?
Facebook encryption ‘must not cause children harm’
Last New Year’s Eve, the tech giant removed 39,000 apps from its Chinese App Store amid a crackdown on unlicensed games by authorities in the country.

Apple also said its anti-CSAM tool will not allow the company to see or scan a user’s photo album. It will only scan photos that are shared on iCloud.

The system will look for matches, securely on the device, based on a database of hashes of known CSAM images provided by child safety organisations.

Apple also claims it is nearly impossible to falsely flag innocent people to police. “The likelihood that the system would incorrectly flag any given account is less than one in one trillion per year,” it said. There is also a human review of positive matches.

Privacy advocates, however, have argued that the only thing preventing that technology being turned to other uses is Apple’s promise that it will not be.

Digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation, for example, said that “all it would take… is an expansion of the machine learning parameters to look for additional types of content”.

“That’s not a slippery slope; that’s a fully-built system just waiting for external pressure to make the slightest change,” it warned.

Apple also provided reassurances regarding another new feature that will warn children and their parents using linked family accounts, when sexually explicit photos are sent or received.

The company says its two new features do not use the same technology, and says it will “never” gain access to users’ private communications.

While there was a backlash regarding Apple’s announcement from privacy advocates, some politicians welcomed the new technology.

UK Health Secretary Sajid Javid said it was time for others, especially Facebook, to follow suit.

Larry Page, Google’s co-founder and one of the world’s richest men, has been granted New Zealand residency under a category for wealthy investors.

Applicants are required to invest at least NZ$10m ($7m, £5m) in New Zealand over three years.

Mr Page entered New Zealand in January, when its borders were still closed because of Covid-19.

But the government said he was allowed in because of a medical emergency application involving his son.

Mr Page, 48, had applied for residence in November. However, his application could not be processed because he was offshore at the time.

But in January, the US tech billionaire was allowed into New Zealand so his son could be evacuated from Fiji because of a medical emergency, the government confirmed on Thursday. His application was approved in February.

In parliament this week, Health Minister Andrew Little defended the decision to grant him entry.

“[His entry] met all the standard conditions of a medical emergency requiring a medical evacuation from the islands, and every requirement and regulation that was in place… was complied with,” Mr Little said, according to a transcript on the parliament’s website.

Some critics of the decision highlighted its apparent unfairness.

“We have got these GPs or nurses who are stuck in an interminable waiting room to get their residence, whereas Larry [Page] comes in and boom, straight away can become a resident,” immigration adviser Katy Armstrong told Radio New Zealand.

Mr Page is listed as one of the richest people in the world with a reported wealth of more than $116 bn. He stepped down as chief executive of Google’s parent company Alphabet in 2019, but remains a board member and controlling shareholder.

He is not the first Silicon Valley tech billionaire to have taken a particular interest in New Zealand.

Peter Thiel, a co-founder of Paypal and early investor in Facebook, once described the South Pacific island nation as “the future” and became a citizen back in 2011. He has since invested heavily there.

Located more than 6,000 miles (10,000km) from the US mainland, New Zealand was recently identified as a country more resilient than most to the threat of climate change.

In a study released last month, researchers at the UK-based Global Sustainability Institute described New Zealand as “best placed to survive the collapse of global civilisation”.

The temperate, mountainous country is well-placed to deal with threats such as rising sea levels.

Huawei revealed its biggest-ever decline in revenue in the first half of 2021 – it fell by almost 30% to Rmb320 billion (£35.5 billion).

The firm sold part of its mobile phone business following US sanctions, which analysts say contributed to the drop.

Sanctions make it hard for Huawei to buy components and software using US technology.

Revenue from Huawei’s consumer electronics arm, which includes phones, fell by 47%.

Huawei also cited the effect of the chip shortage on its business.

Earlier this year the company’s consumer devices chief acknowledged the challenges it faced: “US sanctions have posed great difficulties to our business operations and day-to-day work,” Richard Yu, said as the company announced the launch of a new phone.

The sanctions have also effectively prevented Huawei devices from working fully with Google’s Android Operating system, prompting the firm to expand the use of its own Harmony OS .

Slow rollout
Huawei’s telecoms equipment business also saw a decline in revenue.

A spokesperson for the company told Reuters this was due to the slow rollout of 5G in China.

But sales outside China increased, in spite of US pressure on its allies to exclude Huawei from 5G infrastructure over concerns about national security.

Huawei denies allegations that its equipment poses a security risk, and has called the claims politically motivated.

The company saw growth from its enterprise and cloud services businesses.

Efficiency improvements also saw profit margins increase, it said.

In a statement, Chairman Eric Xu said: “Our aim is to survive, and to do so sustainably,”