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      The End of Wonderland review – trans porn star deals with eviction and a hoarding crisis

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 06:00

    Laurence Turcotte-Fraser’s wistful documentary follows resourceful porn star Tara Emory’s ‘entropic’ problem with clutter

    This documentary about a transgender porn star turns out to be a portrait of a divided self, but not quite how you’d expect. Two personalities vie inside Massachusetts-based adult performer Tara Emory: zeppelin-bosomed sci-fi sex kitten, and grease monkey/compulsive hoarder. Director Laurence Turcotte-Fraser’s intimate and ever-so-wistful study thankfully bypasses current trans-related bloodletting and even to a large degree questions of gender definition; instead this film concentrates on a purely individual problem: Emory’s battle with the “entropic” clutter threatening to overwhelm her life.

    The lithe, rangy Emory is a mid-40s veteran of DIY internet porn, crafting bespoke photoshoots and making personal appearances in Victoriana, Barbarella and other shades of kitsch. But supporting her fantasy existence is real-world scaffolding: a trove of bric-a-brac and flotsam filling Wonderland, the rented barn-cum-studio where this intensely creative self-starter works. Emory apparently inherited this malady from her father, a Volkswagen mechanic who filled the family property with dozens of vehicles, nominally for use in salvage projects that never quite happened. (She still wears earrings made from Volkswagen keys.)

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      From doomscrolling to sex: being a boy in 2024

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 2 days ago - 06:00

    I travelled the UK interviewing teenage boys. I found openness, thoughtfulness, honesty and vulnerability on topics from sex to pornography, feelings and isolation

    It was two separate conversations that made me think properly about what life might be like as a boy these days. The first was about a 13-year-old, the son of a friend, who said he had been rounded on for making a small (and, he thought, complimentary) comment about a girl’s haircut.

    He told his mother that the girl’s friends were outraged: “Oh my God, you can’t say that about someone’s appearance. That’s so bad. You can’t talk about a girl like that!”

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      OnlyFans investigated over claim children accessed pornography

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 6 days ago - 12:51

    Ofcom told website for adult performers failed to properly implement age verification checks for under-18s

    The UK communications watchdog has opened an investigation into whether OnlyFans allowed children to view pornography on its website following an age-checking error.

    The regulator Ofcom is investigating the platform, which has a minimum user age of 18 and hosts mostly adult content for paying subscribers , over claims of inadequate age verification measures. It is also investigating whether OnlyFans gave “complete and accurate” responses to information requests.

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      UK targets “despicable individuals” who create AI sex deepfakes with new law

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Tuesday, 16 April - 14:51 · 1 minute

    An illustrator's concept of a deepfake.

    Enlarge (credit: Getty Images )

    On Tuesday, the UK government announced a new law targeting the creation of AI-generated sexually explicit deepfake images. Under the legislation, which has not yet been passed, offenders would face prosecution and an unlimited fine, even if they do not widely share the images but create them with the intent to distress the victim. The government positions the law as part of a broader effort to enhance legal protections for women.

    Over the past decade, the rise of deep learning image synthesis technology has made it increasingly easy for people with a consumer PC to create misleading pornography by swapping out the faces of the performers with someone else who has not consented to the act. That practice spawned the term "deepfake" around 2017, named after a Reddit user named "deepfakes" that shared AI-faked porn on the service. Since then, the term has grown to encompass completely new images and video synthesized entirely from scratch, created from neural networks that have been trained on images of the victim.

    The problem isn't unique to the UK. In March, deepfake nudes of female middle school classmates in Florida led to charges against two boys ages 13 and 14. The rise of open source image synthesis models like Stable Diffusion since 2022 has increased the urgency among regulators in the US to attempt to contain (or at least punish) the act of creating non-consensual deepfakes. The UK government is on a similar mission.

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      Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recounts horror of seeing herself in ‘deepfake porn’

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Tuesday, 9 April - 16:16

    Progressive New York congresswoman describes resurfacing of trauma when seeing explicit materials with her image transposed on to them

    Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has described her horror at discovering – midway through a discussion with aides during a car journey in February – that she had been transposed into a “deepfake porn” simulation generated by artificial intelligence and posted on X.

    In an interview with Rolling Stone , the progressive congresswoman said the experience of coming up close to a depiction of herself performing a sex act had shown her that being deepfaked was “not as imaginary as people want to make it seem”.

    Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html

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      How can I stop my dad watching porn on his phone at home? | Ask Annalisa Barbieri

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Friday, 5 April - 13:30

    He may be dealing with grief or depression, but whatever the cause, your dad needs help to reset his boundaries

    I’m an adult living at home with my parents for financial reasons; they are in their late 60s/early 70s.

    My father has been watching pornography in shared spaces in the house , usually on his phone and on mute, but I can see it over his shoulder .

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      Teachers’ union leader calls for inquiry into misogyny among young men in UK

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Friday, 5 April - 04:00

    Daniel Kebede accuses government of failing to tackle issue of sexism and its spread online among children

    The leader of the UK’s largest education union has called for an independent inquiry into the rise of sexism and misogyny among boys and young men , saying it should not be left to parents and schools to police.

    Daniel Kebede, the general secretary of the National Education Union (NEU), said it was “a huge issue” in schools and expressed particular concern about the ease with which pupils are accessing aggressive hardcore pornography on their phones .

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      Nearly 4,000 celebrities found to be victims of deepfake pornography

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Thursday, 21 March - 20:18


    Channel 4 News finds 255 British names including its presenter Cathy Newman on list from top five deepfake sites

    More than 250 British celebrities are among thousands of famous people who are victims of deepfake pornography, an investigation has found.

    A Channel 4 News analysis of the five most visited deepfake websites found almost 4,000 famous individuals were listed, of whom 255 were British.

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      Black Box: the hunt for ClothOff – the deepfake porn app – podcast

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Monday, 11 March - 03:00

    For the past six months, the Guardian journalist Michael Safi has been trying to find out who is behind an AI company that creates deepfakes. Deepfakes that are causing havoc around the world, with police and lawmakers baffled about how to deal with them. And in trying to answer one question, he has been left with a bigger one: is AI going to make it impossible to sort fact from fiction?

    • Subscribe to Black Box , a new Guardian audio series on artificial intelligence, for all the remaining episodes
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