First lady Melania Trump to hold first public event on cyberbullying

Representation picMelania Trump is hosting executives from major online and social media companies to discuss cyberbullying and internet safety more than a year after saying that would be her issue as first lady The meeting today marks her first public event on the topic a choice some observers have questioned given that her husband often berates people on Twitter Amazon Snap Facebook Google and Twitter are among the companies that are expected to attend the meeting The Internet Association said it will also be representedAll the major technology companies have strict policies prohibiting harassment and other bullying behaviour on their services but primarily rely on users to report abuses and weed them out They try to clearly spell out the kinds of remarks and other posts that wont be tolerated in special sections such as one Facebook the largest online social network has set up Instagram a popular service among kids and young adults for sharing photos and videos provides links to the US governments antibullying site and tips from a cyberbullying research center on one of its help pagesBut the efforts so far have fallen short leading to rampant abuses that even some of the companies acknowledge have driven away or tormented portions of their audience It got so bad on Twitter which has 68 million US users that the San Francisco company vowed last fall to crack down on hateful tweets Among other things Twitter adopted new policies aimed at protecting women who unknowingly or unwillingly had nude pictures of themselves distributed online a common bullying tacticYik Yak another messaging app once popular among high school and college students shut down last year partly because schools banned it following complaints about bullying and harassment Online bullying takes many shapes but some of the most common tactics include posting embarrassing or salacious photos making demeaning or cruel remarks under a photo or in a general post about someone and sharing screenshots of what at least one person thought was a private textHarassment is widespread and extends beyond teenagers A Pew Research Center poll last year found 41 percent of US adults believed they had been harassed online The popularity of and volume of content on major social media sites presents a huge challenge in policing what is being shared Facebook for instance has 21 billion worldwide users who collectively share billions of posts on their pages daily More than 300 hours of video is uploaded to Googles YouTube site every minuteThe companies are also constantly struggling to balance the desire to prevent harassment and other abuses and maintain a commitment to freedom of expression In some cases they see harassment and still look the other way For instance some of President Trumps more vitriolic tweets have openly mocked and denigrated people prompting calls for Twitter to shut down his account and ban him from its service But Twitter has declined maintaining the news value of the presidents tweets eclipse complaints about him being a bullyThere is no federal law that applies to bullying State laws vary ranging from requiring public schools to have a bullying policy to requiring anonymous reporting systems said Sameer Hinduja codirector of the Cyberbullying Research Center and professor of criminology at Florida Atlantic University The federal government can best help by giving schools more tools and money to provide programs Hinduja said Trump announced in a speech near the end of the 2016 presidential campaign that her priority as first lady would be to fight cyberbullying A native of Slovenia she at the time lamented a US culture that she said had grown too mean and too rough It was a curious speech for a woman whose husband uses Twitter to dismiss people as losers and taunt them with unflattering nicknamesThe mother of a 12yearold son the first lady has made child wellbeing her focus in the White House including an unexpected interest in how the opioid crisis is affecting youngsters She has visited hospitals and care centers to see the effects first hand and has embraced parents whose children died from drug overdoses She accompanied the president to New Hampshire on Monday as he discussed a threepronged effort to combat drug addiction including applying the death penalty against those caught trafficking highly addictive substances Mrs Trump recently asked the spouses of US governors to help promote values such as encouragement kindness compassion and respect in children She has also spoken about limiting the amount of time children spend online and helping them understand the content they are exposed toCatch up on all the latest Crime National International and Hatke news here Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps to get latest updatesThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text 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