John Glynn

Perhaps you’re one of the millions of people who decided to download FaceApp and participate in the '#FaceApp Challenge.' If so, I have just one question: why?As Kristina Libby, a writer for Popular Mechanics, notes, 'You may have unintentionally given access to your likeness to malicious actors … to do whatever they want with that content … for life.'FaceApp burst onto the scene in 2017, when it was downloaded more than 80 million times. Thanks to the 'make yourself older' challenge, the app is in recent days experiencing a renaissance of sorts. By using neural networks to simulate what an individual looks like as they age⁠ (adding wrinkles, sagging skin, yellowing teeth, etc), the company behind the app encourages users to share their images.

On June 7th of this year, five teenagers were arrested in connection with a homophobic attack on two women on a London bus. It was an extremely heinous incident, and prompted widespread condemnation across the UK. But though the crime was grotesque, disingenuous outlets have since used the incident to promote a nefarious idea: that members of the LGBT community are under constant attack, quite literally. Over the weekend, the Guardian published a piece of analysis that said 'Homophobic and transphobic hate crimes have more than doubled in England and Wales over five years.' The report, which used Home Office and police force statistics, revealed that the 'rate of LGBT hate crime per capita rose by 144 per cent between 2013-14 and 2017-18.