YouTube suspends comments on videos of kids

Livestreamed mental-health meltdown underscores medium’s disturbing decline

On Tuesday evening, a well-known celebrity blogger, best known by the nom de plume Perez Hilton, opened up his TikTok account and began a livestream from his Miami home. What unfolded over the next 30 minutes horrified all who witnessed it — and should force the rest of us to take a very sober look at the ways social media can harm.

Quaker movement fuelled by a fierce sense of social justice

A few weeks ago, the erstwhile punk-rock-poet John Samson Fellows taught an auditorium full of people how to fold a paper cup.

With each fold, he explained that origami is an activity he likes to do with people who are incarcerated.

“It can be really empowering to make something with your hands in that environment,” he explained over the rustle of fingers creasing paper.

Samson Fellows is perhaps best known as the former frontman for the indie-rock band the Weakerthans and the author of an anthem beloved in his hometown for its self-deprecating refrain: “I hate Winnipeg.”

Winnipeggers hoping for shorter waits in rural ERs delay care for all, Selkirk nurse says

Nurses and union leaders say Winnipeggers — who are frustrated with wait times at city hospitals — head to rural emergency rooms instead, but the facilities don’t have enough staff to meet the extra demand.

As a result, patients in the Selkirk Regional Health Centre emergency department have waited up to 18 hours during peak times, said one nurse who works there.

The nurse, who spoke to the Free Press on the condition of anonymity, said in recent years they have noted more Winnipeg patients who’ve driven the 25 kilometres north to Selkirk’s ER, believing the wait for treatment would be shorter than in the three emergency departments inside the Perimeter.

“They’re all trying to access health care, right? And everybody deserves health care. And I feel bad, because people have to come out here thinking that the wait times are less,” the nurse said. “I can’t blame people for wanting to seek care, and they’re desperate to see someone.”

YouTube suspends comments on videos of kids

SAN FRANCISCO - YouTube said Thursday it will turn off comments on nearly all videos featuring kids — potentially affecting millions of posts on the site — after reports last week that pedophiles were leaving inappropriate comments on innocuous videos of children.

The change comes as YouTube grapples with moderating content across its platform as concerns about hate speech, violence and conspiracy theories continue to plague it.

It will take YouTube several months to disable comments on all videos featuring minors, the company said. It already started the process last week when it turned off comments from tens of millions of videos.

Advertisers including Nestle, AT&T and Fortnite-maker Epic Games pulled ads from YouTube last week after the inappropriate comments about children were unearthed by a popular YouTuber and media reports. At least one company, Nestle, was satisfied with YouTube's response and reinstated ads late last week.

A measure of hope a decade after senseless death, injustice

I’m a few hundred kilometres from the farm near Biggar, Sask. — the place where 22-year old Colten Boushie from Cree Red Pheasant First Nation was shot and killed by farmer Gerald Stanley precisely 10 years ago.

“You need to remind people about the 10-year anniversary,” a nearby, rural school principal tells me at the education conference I just finished speaking at.

“That death is a wound that continues to bleed in all of us,” a principal from Regina adds. “I hear about it from our students all the time.”

On Aug. 9, 2016, Boushie’s death entered the Canadian consciousness, representing what then-Saskatoon mayor Charlie Clark declared “a defining moment for this community and this country.”