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Lockdowns have forced people to spend the past year and more learning, working, and socialising online – but in many countries, women have been missing out.

They are less likely than men to have access to the internet in nearly every region of the world, according to the latest figures from UN agency the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

The so-called digital gender gap is most noticeable in Africa, where the ITU estimates that 37% of men have internet access but only 20% of women.

What is more, the divide appears actually to have widened in Africa since 2013.

“If you don’t have digital skills, you’re going to be left behind,” says Regina Honu, founder of Soronko Academy, a tech school for women and girls in Ghana.

“Before Covid, if we put out an invitation for people to sign up, we would have 100 or 200 women,” she says.

“After Covid, we had more than 2,000 women signing up.

“Covid has made people realise that if you don’t have digital skills, you’re going to be left behind.”

Regina says many girls in Ghana might not even touch a computer until they go to school, or might have their internet access restricted by male family members.

And in the era of social distancing, connecting with people who are lacking the tech or the experience is difficult. Video calls are not possible for students without a computer or high-end smartphone, or for whom the cost of data is an issue.

Regina has instead found solutions that work for simpler phones.

“We used WhatsApp and Telegram. We made calls to check in and find out how they were doing,” she explains.

But it has not been possible to reach everybody using such methods and she was pleased when lockdown easing meant they could “come back in person”.

Gender-neutral
Lack of digital skills may deprive women of healthcare, education, work, and financial independence.

It is not easy to explain why the digital gender gap is wider in certain places than in others, says Boutheina Guermazi, director of digital development at the World Bank. But social, cultural, and financial factors all appear to be at work.

“I think it’s linked to the broader gender divide”, she says. “In regions where women do not have equal rights to own land, for example, or equal rights to the job market – when we add a digital dimension, the gap will clearly be deeper than in other regions, where those rights are equal.”

And she says the Covid situation “hasn’t been gender-neutral,” making life even harder for some women.

Globally, women remain less likely than men to own a smartphone, according to mobile industry body the GSMA. But they are increasingly likely at least to be able to use one to access the internet.

This has been driven by positive change in South Asia, says the GSMA. But a gap does persist in the region: women are still estimated to be 36% less likely than men to have mobile internet access.

It was around 2018 that Nirmala Kumari used a simple mobile for the first time.

Today, she is a skilled user who is also helping other women in India to get connected, thanks to her work for a social-media network run by tech firm Gram Vaani.

Typically in her east Indian state of Bihar, if there is only one handset per household, men tend to get priority. As for the women, some of them do not even know how to charge the device.

But the pandemic has changed this, Nirmala told the BBC in an interview before India’s devastating second wave of Covid infections.

“During the lockdown period, as the entire family used to stay in one place, the mobile phone was available at home,” she said.

“So, at that time, women did get mobile access.”

Her Mobile Vaani project gives women a voice on an audio-based media platform. Users dial in, listen to material on topics such as maternity advice, and can even record and contribute their own words to a conversation, as well. The service is designed to be informative and to boost women’s confidence with using mobiles.

Coronavirus has made the platform even more useful for many people – but harder for Nirmala to promote than before. She switched to a remote-working method that relies on her calling influential women who operate within village community self-help groups.

“We told them to ask others to listen to Mamp, because it had important information, and because we needed their stories about coronavirus – good ones and bad ones,” she says.

“The trick worked, and we got some very inspiring stories.”

Abuse on rise

Gender-based violence during lockdowns has been described by the UN as a “shadow pandemic”.

“If there’s discrimination in the offline world, that is going to be projected on to our online spaces as well,” says Jannat Fazal, who manages a cyber-harassment phone helpline in Pakistan. Spearheaded by the country’s Digital Rights Foundation, it is the first of its kind in South Asia.

After Pakistan entered lockdown, the Lahore-based helpline logged a 500% increase in calls. Typical complaints included women being bullied or impersonated on social media, or being blackmailed when their personal information was shared without their consent.

Online spaces
In Pakistan’s patriarchal society, these female victims may be blamed for supposedly “dishonouring” their families. In extreme cases, they may even be killed for it.

Jannat offers legal help, advice on digital security and psychological assistance for those in distress. During a peak earlier in the pandemic, her team found itself needing to offer round-the-clock support.

“Men tend to navigate online spaces without thinking something will happen”, she says. “But women, on the other hand, have this constant fear.

“We need digital literacy and training so that women are more confident using social-media platforms and they’re less vulnerable.”

Ms Guermazi is hopeful that the issue of the digital gender gap is now more prominent in the minds of policymakers – including those in developed nations.

“I think what coronavirus did for the digital agenda was something unprecedented.”

Office-sharing startup WeWork has posted a $2.06bn (£1.45bn) quarterly loss after being hit hard by Covid-19.

The announcement comes as WeWork prepares for its stock market debut.

The company’s first attempt to go public collapsed in 2019 over concerns about its business model and co-founder Adam Neumann’s leadership style.

Since Mr Neumann’s exit the company has gone through a major shakeup that has seen major job cuts and businesses sold off.

WeWork office firm valued at $9bn
WeWork sues SoftBank after withdrawal of $3bn deal
WeWork axes 2,400 staff globally
The business felt the impact of the pandemic particularly hard as social distancing rules drove a surge in people working from home and concerns about infections saw workers avoiding shared office spaces.

WeWork, which is backed by Japanese tech giant SoftBank, said its first-quarter revenue almost halved from a year ago to $598m.

But the firm said people are now returning to its offices as coronavirus restrictions are eased.

Its occupancy rate edged up to 50% in the most recent quarter, compared to 47% in the previous three months.

The company also said it expects the change in working habits to increase demand for the kind of short-term leases it offers.

Stock market plans
In March, WeWork said it would finally see its shares start trading on the stock market, through the purchase by the publicly traded BowX Acquisition Corp.

BowX is a so-called special purpose acquisition company, a shell firm that uses proceeds from a public listing to buy a private firm.

The firm is led by the owner of the NBA’s Sacramento Kings and affiliated with basketball legend Shaquille O’Neill.

The deal valued WeWork at $9bn – roughly a fifth of the its estimated worth in 2019, before its earlier flotation effort spectacularly imploded.

Investors had raised questions about the company’s finances and how the business was being managed by founder Adam Neumann, who then left the firm.

After plans to list the company were shelved, WeWork restructured the the business.

It closed around 100 locations, pulled out of non-core ventures – including a dog walking app and a wave pool maker – and now has just a third of the employees it did in mid-2019.

The company said it incurred restructuring costs of $494m, including its settlement with Mr Neumann. It posted an impairment charge of $299m partly due to an exit out of some real estate.

In February, WeWork’s backer, SoftBank, and Mr Neumann reached a settlement to end a legal battle that started in 2019.

For nine years, Chris Hughes has fought a battle very few people ever see.

He oversees a team of 21 analysts in Cambridge who locate, identify and remove child sexual abuse material (CSAM) from the internet.

The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) is funded by the global tech industry.

It manually reviews online reports of suspected criminal content sent in by the public. Mr Hughes sees upsetting material every day.

When content is verified, analysts create unique “digital fingerprints” of each photo or video, then send it to law enforcement and tech firms. They also search for material online.

Occasionally, there are harrowing situations racing to track down victims from live streaming video.

Reports jumped during the pandemic, he says: “Over the recent May bank holiday weekend, we had more than 2,000 reports.”

In 2020, IWF received 300,000 reports and 153,000 were verified to be new CSAM content.

Police say more child predators can now be found on messaging apps, rather than on the dark web. Many don’t even encrypt their web traffic.

Many authorities are concerned that Facebook wants to introduce end-to-end encryption on messages sent over Messenger and Instagram Direct.

End-to-end encryption is a privacy feature that makes it impossible for anyone except the sender and recipient to read messages sent online.

Authorities are concerned, saying this will make it much harder to apprehend suspects and detect child predators.

Facebook says using such technology will protect users’ privacy.

But the US, UK and Australia have repeatedly objected to the idea since 2019, saying it will jeopardise work to combat child abuse.

Australia has also demanded the tech industry hand over public encryption keys – backdoors to their networks – to authorities. Firms, both abroad and in Australia, refused.

Enabling backdoors would be bad, says Jenny Afia, head of Schillings’ legal team: “Any legally-enforced weakening of the encryption algorithm, or vulnerability placed within the software…would potentially allow criminals to exploit [it].

“It is worth bearing in mind that having end-to-end encryption in place has already prevented a lot of crime.”

Netsweeper in Canada catalogues the internet to help schools and internet service providers block harmful content.

It sees a quarter of the world’s internet traffic and is in 37% of British schools, scanning 100 million new URLs daily. Up to 300 URLs are reported to IWF daily.

“To date, governments have left the large tech companies alone – probably because they didn’t understand them as much as they do now,” says Netsweeper’s chief executive Perry Roach.

“But if we don’t enable law enforcement with sophisticated tools, it will allow criminals, scammers, paedophiles and terrorists to move across the internet undetected.”

Software engineer Brian Bason founded US firm Bark after giving his sons their first mobile phones.

Bark uses AI neural networks to analyse text messages and social media in milliseconds for bullying, online predation, child abuse, signs of depression and suicidal ideas.

Children have to agree to hand over their login credentials, but only relevant sections of messages are sent in alerts to parents and schools.

Bark has informed the FBI of nearly a thousand child predators over the last five years.

“The reality is end-to-end encryption will drastically reduce the amount of CSAM material reported to authorities,” Mr Bason tells the BBC. “To me, the trade-off is not worth it.”

Perhaps these firms disagree because their business models rely on having unfettered access to data pipelines.

However, former UK and US intelligence agency staff tell the BBC there are other successful methods investigators can use if end-to-end encryption is introduced, like phishing, where users are tricked into visiting fake websites and handing over login credentials.

Internet giants should use machine learning to detect child predator behaviour on the device or server, they add, which wouldn’t break encryption, as it occurs only after the message has been decrypted.

Thorn, a US foundation that develops software to combat child exploitation, identifies eight child victims and 215 pieces of child abuse material per day.

Sarah Gardner, VP of external affairs at Thorn, suggests using “homomorphic encryption” – a form of encryption that lets users perform computations on encrypted data, without first decrypting it.

Another option would be to invest in better solutions, she adds.

Edinburgh-based Cyan Forensics, which uses statistical sampling to scan suspects’ devices for CSAM content in just 10 minutes, agrees.

“End-to-end encryption is here already and it’s neither good nor bad,” says Cyan Forensics’ co-founder and chief executive Ian Stevenson.

“However, there is a dire need for broader protocols to ensure the safety of children online.”

Former detective constable Alan McConnell, who worked on more than a hundred child sex abuse cases, left Police Scotland to teach Cyan about the problems the police face.

As a result of his work, a major UK police force used Cyan’s software to detect CSAM material on an ex-offender’s computer in March. The individual was found to have surreptitiously installed cameras at a club used by children.

However, a senior German prosecutor says his biggest problem is getting tech firms to play ball.

“We’re addressing all the big tech firms – please help us,” says Markus Hartmann, director of North Rhine-Westphalia’s central cybercrime department.

“You hear they have these big teams fighting digital crimes, and I wonder, why don’t they file any complaints with law enforcement?”

His unit recently busted a child pornography ring, charging 65 suspects and rescuing a 13-year-old child.

They were aided by Microsoft, which scanned its database of Skype users to locate the suspects’ IP addresses.

Mr Hartmann is surprisingly in favour of encryption.

“If you break encryption, put in backdoors or ban it, then you’re doing more harm than good… and I doubt the guys we are really going after, will not be able to get around it,” he says.

“Even as a prosecutor, I could set up my own end-to-end encrypted network in two days, routed through public libraries.”

Dr Greg Brittles’ eyes gleam with excitement when he explains the project he is working on.

“It’s every engineer’s dream really, to have a project that’s technically challenging, which requires you to develop new technology and solutions to hard problems, but that are also simultaneously important for the world to have.”

Since finishing his research at Oxford University five years ago, he has been working for Tokamak Energy, a UK start-up that has plans to build a fusion reactor.

Fusion is the reaction that powers the Sun and the stars. If that power could be harnessed on Earth it would provide a plentiful source of energy, from only a tiny amount of fuel and producing no carbon dioxide. What’s not to love?

The principle is easy enough to understand. Take hydrogen atoms, add enough heat and pressure and they will fuse together to form helium. During that process some of the hydrogen mass is transformed into heat, which you can use to make electricity.

The catch is that to make fusion happen here on Earth, you have to heat hydrogen isotopes to hundreds of millions of degrees, until they become so energetic they break apart into a whirling state of matter called plasma.

The challenge has always been to contain that plasma. Stars do it with gravity, but on Earth the most common method is to use powerful magnetic fields to keep the plasma confined.

Much of the engineering challenge has come down to building magnets. They have to be powerful enough to contain an insanely hot, whirling mass of matter, but not use so much electricity that your reactor uses more power than it generates.

Later this year Dr Bob Mumgaard and his team at Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) will test a ground-breaking magnet that they say can make that leap forward.

Weighing 10 tonnes, the D-shaped magnet is big enough for a person to step through. Around 300km of a very special electromagnetic tape is wound into that D-shape.

The tape itself is a feat of engineering that has taken decades to develop. Thin layers of superconducting rare-earth barium copper oxide (ReBCO) are deposited on a metal tape. When cooled that bundle of tape can conduct electricity extremely efficiently, which is essential as 40,000 amps will pass through it, enough electricity to power a small town.

When the fusion industry says cooled it means the tape is chilled to minus 253C, which might sound absurdly cold to you, but in the world of superconducting materials is actually rather warm.

“It means the refrigerator that we’re using is like a refrigerator that could fit in your kitchen,” says Dr Mumgaard, who co-founded CFS and is the chief executive.

“The same thing with the previous generation of technology… would need a refrigerator that’s the size of your house.”

CFS is planning a reactor that will house 18 of those magnets, arranged in a ring – a set-up known as a tokamak – and has recently selected a site for the reactor in Massachusetts.

“We were the first to really get this magnet beyond just a tabletop, R&D [reseach and development] scale that people had done at some smaller companies and some national labs.

“We’re all at the scale now where it’s what you need to build fusion machines. You don’t have to go up from something that is sort of a toy scale to something that is at fusion scale,” Dr Mumgaard says.

The leap forward in magnet technology is also central to the fusion project at Tokamak Energy in the UK.

Dr Brittles has spent the last five years developing that technology and is currently helping to build a demonstrator that will have a series of powerful magnets working together.

“It will be an assembly of many, many coils generating forces that are all interacting and pulling on one another forming a balanced set. This has to be controlled or the forces could become imbalanced,” he explains.

The forces that such magnetic fields can generate are mind-boggling. When operating at full power, Dr Brittles likens the force generated by his magnets to double the pressure at the bottom of the deepest ocean trench.

When those magnets are ready, they will go into a spherical tokamak – an apple-shaped fusion reactor.

Research suggests such a design will generate more energy for each unit of power it uses, than the more commonly used doughnut-shaped tokamak – the design that CFS and others are using.

“The real challenge is commercial fusion. And that’s really what’s driving us, why we’re focusing on the spherical tokamak because of the long-term commercial advantages,” says Dr David Kingham, one of the founders of Tokamak Energy and currently executive vice chairman.

“We think our technology will be deployable in a fusion pilot plant in the early 2030s,” he says. “I think it will be a global race. There are interesting private ventures in the States. And we will be in a race with them.”

The promise of a working fusion reactor has been around for decades (and always will be, so the old joke goes).

The biggest project is under way in southern France where a consortium of nations are building ITER, a giant reactor that has, so far, cost billions of pounds to build and is running years behind its original schedule.

However, more compact designs like those planned by Tokamak Energy and CFS are attracting private investors, who are betting they will be viable commercial propositions.Dr Wal van Lierop founded his venture capital firm, Chrysalix, 20 years ago and, since 2008, has invested tens of millions of dollars in Canadian firm General Fusion.

Historically, he says, the fusion industry has struggled to raise finance, in part because so much money has been sunk into ITER, but that is all changing.

“I see more money being invested, more interest, and people are starting to realise that this is a very big platform technology and that it is not any longer something that may or may not work by 2050.”

Dr van Lierop points out that the potential prize is huge. The global electricity market is worth around $3 trillion (£2.15tn) a year and is only likely to get bigger.

“If this [fusion] is successful, this will open up the largest industry transition that we have ever seen.”

Back at the coal face (or perhaps plasma face), Dr Brittles confesses that there is still a lot of engineering work to be done, but he is confident.

“We’re working hard to tackle lots of challenges that could trip us up at any point. But from where we sit, there’s nothing that stands in the way that I think is a showstopper.”

Follow Technology of Business editor Ben Morris on Twitter.

“Right now, I have 14 roles immediately available and over the last month we’ve had one application.”

Mark Wright runs the digital marketing company Climb Online, which he launched after winning BBC TV show The Apprentice in 2014.

While digital marketing is a growing field, the entrepreneur says there simply aren’t enough people available with the necessary skills.

“It’s very, very worrying,” he told Radio 5 Live’s Wake Up to Money.

“Facebook advertising, Google advertising – some of this stuff has only been around five to 10 years and there’s a huge skills shortage,” says Mr Wright.

He echoes the concerns of industry experts who have warned the UK is facing a digital skills shortage “disaster”.

Earlier this month, the economist and former cabinet secretary Gus O’Donnell told the BBC the UK would “get left behind” if it didn’t become “highly competitive globally” in terms of these “new skills”.

According to research from LinkedIn, the professional networking site, 150 million new technology jobs will be created in the next five years.

Yet nearly 40% of the UK’s working population lack digital skills.

A report by the World Economic Forum (WEF) in 2020 found that 61% of the active population in the UK had digital skills – compared to 69.4% in the US.

The UK government has promised a skills “revolution” to try to bridge the skills gap, by providing opportunities for adults to retrain and “upskill”.

Mark Wright says he too is providing training, but it won’t immediately alleviate the pressing need firms like his have for staff.

What are digital skills?
“We’re actually starting an academy to train people but that’s a bit of a ‘slow boat’ – we need people now and we can’t find them anywhere,” says Mr Wright.

UK ‘heading towards digital skills shortage disaster’
‘I can’t read or write, but I can cook’
According to a UK government report in 2019, digital skills were required in 82% of job adverts online posted in the 12 month period between April 2017 and April 2018, but the precise skills in demand were not uniform across the country.

‘Digital skills’ is a loose term. It could mean anything from sending emails and taking part in video calls – something many of us will have adjusted to during the pandemic – to more complex talents such as data science and coding.

But learning those more complicated skills is likely to pay off, says Jennifer Openshaw who recently changed career.

‘I thought the tech world was closed to me’
History graduate Jennifer turned to coding after a career with the National Trust. And she’s just landed a job as a software engineer at BAE Systems.

“I started looking at digital jobs because while I was being a full-time mum to our two little boys, we moved 200-odd miles away from where we had been living, so I needed to explore new avenues and a new career.

“I had thought that the tech world was closed to me. I thought it was too late, and I didn’t have a computer science degree, so there was no hope really.

“Then a friend mentioned coding boot camps. She explained to me that they were a way to learn new computer programming skills.

“There were so many more opportunities from having completed the course. You only have to do one Google search for ‘software engineer’ or ‘software developer’ to see that there are so many roles,” she adds.

Katherine Rust is a science graduate but had to learn new digital skills in order to secure her current job.

“I had a job at a little convenience store. Obviously with Covid, I got stuck there a lot longer than I wanted to be,” she says.

“I was applying for different science roles the entire time but it was always an issue of ‘you’ve not got enough experience’, because I’d never worked in a data role before.”

Katherine went online to look for courses and started teaching herself basic Python, a computer programming language.

She is now a data analyst at Bidnamic, in Leeds, which helps retailers make the most of online sales.

For others who are similarly thinking about retraining for a new career, how do you join the dots to make sure you have the right skills, in the right place and at the right time?

“Have a think about your own skills, your strengths,” says Gori Yahaya, founder and CEO of Upskill Digital, a computer skills training provider.

“Think about what might be the best areas that you want to invest in; what jobs seem attractive to you – maybe your organisation is investing in a particular tech.

“Then go online – have a look at some of the programmes and free training that exists out there.”

Above all, he stresses people with long careers in other disciplines should not be put off learning new skills, many of which have only evolved in the last decade or so.

“A lot of these are new technologies. People have had to teach themselves how to do them, or companies have had to teach them.”

A woman who worked for beauty YouTuber James Charles says she has received online death threats since making her legal action against him public.

Kelly Rocklein claims she was fired two weeks after fainting and hitting her head while with him at a nail salon.

Mr Charles has responded by posting a video on Twitter, where he has 7.8 million followers.

He had been taking a break from social media after admitting sending sexually explicit messages to two boys aged 16.

Following this, YouTube temporarily demonetised his account, which has 25 million followers.

‘Racial slur’
Ms Rocklein, who worked for Mr Charles for six months in 2018, is suing for wrongful dismissal, lost wages and emotional distress.

She says she was working 12-18 hour days, producing videos, managing his social media and coming up with content ideas.

She also alleges he would ask her to do additional personal tasks, such as clean his house and pick up his dirty laundry, and used a racial slur on multiple occasions.

She was paid $72,000 (£51,400) per year for the role but says “it felt like doing two jobs, seven days a week”.

‘Taking advantage’
Mr Charles says her claims are “ridiculous absurd, untrue, defamatory… the craziest claims you could imagine”.

In his video response, he claims he feels “blackmailed” and accuses Ms Rocklein of “taking advantage” of his situation.

“We’re dealing with the court of public opinion and it’s a court that is not on my side right now,” he says.

Ms Rocklein told BBC News she had chosen to speak out because she had seen support for others affected by Mr Charles’s actions.

‘Kill herself’
“I feel like, up until this point, everyone on the internet had a lot to say and I didn’t have the opportunity to share my truth and my experience,” she said.

But since Mr Charles uploaded his response, which has been viewed nearly two million times, she had received death threats, demands to kill herself and abuse about her appearance.

“I was shocked and overwhelmed – it’s scary,” she said.

Ms Rocklein’s lawyer, Edwin Pairavi, told BBC News the legal action had been delayed by two years by Mr Charles’s legal team.

“After Kelly was fired, we sent a letter trying to resolve this amicably,” he said. “They said no.”

Mr Charles says he has refused to pay a settlement.

“My only option is to pursue this to the fullest extent of the law,” he says.

‘More expensive’
Mr Pairavi confirmed Mr Charles’s complaint that the overall cost of the resulting legal action now ran into hundreds of thousands of dollars but said it was “not unusual” for this type of claim.

“The longer it takes, the more expensive it becomes,” he added.

The case can now be made public, following a failed attempt at arbitration.

No court date has yet been set.

Ms Rocklein said she now worked in digital marketing and had no desire to return to working with influencers.

A Facebook moderator has for the first time given evidence revealing the mental toll of the job, to a parliamentary committee.

The Irish parliament heard how moderators viewed graphic content up to eight hours a day.

Law firm Foxglove and the Communication Workers Union, representing moderators, called for better psychological support and freedom to speak out.

Facebook said it provides 24 hours support to staff.

Isabella Plunkett has worked as a Facebook content moderator for just over two years, and still works there.

Her job is to review posts on the platform – which can contain graphic violence, exploitation, extremism, abuse and suicide.

The 26-year-old says she could not speak to her friends or family about the things she saw at work due to a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) which she had signed at the beginning of her contract.

Members of Ireland’s Joint Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment, commended her bravery in speaking out.

Isabella also spoke to the BBC
“I’m here speaking out and I don’t actually necessarily know in detail what I’m legally allowed to say and not to say,” she said.

“It was always clear we couldn’t speak about our job, we couldn’t speak about our job to friends, family… and it’s definitely a workplace with a sense of secrecy.”

Facebook told the BBC that NDAs are standard practice and that reviewers can discuss any aspect of their job with doctors and counsellors.

Staff can discuss the general challenges and rewards of their jobs with family and loved ones, but not specific details of the content they are reviewing.

Mental health
“I’ve done the job for two years and I don’t think I could do it for much longer because of the strain it does cause to your mental health,” Isabella told the BBC.

“It’s not like a normal job where you can go to work and go home and forget about it – the stuff you’re seeing is really ingrained in your mind.’”

Isabella processes around 100 “tickets” a day – these can be videos, images or text posts on the platform. She said they often contain graphic violence, suicide, exploitation and abuse.

She works for Covalen, one of Facebook’s largest contractors in Ireland.

Isabella claims she was not allowed to work from home, unlike her counterparts who were employed directly by Facebook who did the same job.

As a result, she says she is exposed to more graphic content, because she is in the office.

‘A nightmare’
“The high priority queues – the graphic violence, the child stuff, the exploitation and the suicides, people working from home don’t get that – the burden is put on us.”

Despite having family shielding at home, she was told to come into the office and developed anxiety, for which she now takes antidepressants.

“Every day was a nightmare,” she said, adding that the support given was “insufficient.”

Facebook says psychological help is available to all its moderators 24 hours a day, but Isabella claims its wellness coaches are not qualified psychiatrists.

“I was seeing the wellness team but didn’t feel I got the support I needed. I can’t say I left work feeling relieved or knowing I could go home and have a good night’s sleep – that’s not possible,” she added.

“It would follow me home. I could just be watching TV at home and think back to one of the horrible, really graphic tickets.”

Sub-contracted staff are given 1.5 hours of “wellness” time a week, she says, which can be used for speaking to a wellness coach, going for walks or taking time out when feeling overwhelmed.

“It’s not enough. I’m now seeing the content I view in work in my dreams. I remember it, I experience it again and it is horrible.

“You never know what is going to come next and you have to watch it the full way through because they might have violators.”

PTSD disclaimer
Some Facebook moderators are asked to sign a disclaimer before starting work, accepting that the content seen in their jobs could lead to poor mental health and PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder).

An example of the contract, read out in the committee said: “I understand that exposure to this content may give me post traumatic stress disorder.

“I will engage in a mandatory wellness coaching session but I understand that those are not conditions and may not be sufficient to prevent my contracting PTSD.”

A Facebook spokeswoman said: “Everyone who reviews content for Facebook goes through an in-depth training programme on Facebook’s Community Standards and has access to psychological support to ensure their wellbeing.

“We are committed to working with our partners to provide support for our content reviewers as we recognise that reviewing certain types of content can sometimes be hard,” she added.

“In Ireland, this includes 24/7 on-site support with trained practitioners, an on-call service, and access to private healthcare from the first day of employment.

“We are also employing technical solutions to limit their exposure to potentially graphic material as much as possible. This is an important issue, and we are committed to getting this right.”

Technical solutions
Facebook uses a combination of machine learning algorithms and human moderators to review content.

In future, it hopes to reduce the number of human moderators through machine learning.

But Isabella said this was a Facebook “fantasy”, that systems were “not even near that stage”.

Speaking to the committee, Isabella said “people are intimidated” by the NDA process and afraid of losing their jobs.

She cited an internal communications platform on Facebook, in which workers’ posts were deleted when speaking up. Facebook denied these claims and said no disciplinary action is taken for employees raising concerns.

“People complained about the treatment and what was going on and how they felt unsafe,” Isabella told the committee. “It was clear that it was being censored because people’s comments were being deleted, accounts were being disabled.”

She said her experience drove her to give evidence: “I just had such a feeling that I needed to do it,” she added in her testimony. “I need to speak for the people that are too afraid, that feel they have too many responsibilities, and they can’t afford to take any risks.”

England’s NHS app will be available to use as a vaccine passport from Monday, the government has said – but only for those who have had both doses of the jab.

A paper version will also be available – by calling 119 but not through a GP.

Both will be available from Monday, 17 May, when the ban on foreign travel is eased.

The NHS app is separate to the NHS Covid-19 app, which is used for contact tracing.

People can already use the NHS app to:

request repeat prescriptions
arrange appointments to see their doctor
view medical records
It can also show vaccine statuses, including for coronavirus, but currently this feature must be enabled by a GP before it appears on the app.

The new update will contain a separate feature to display coronavirus vaccine records, so the government said there should be no need to contact GPs.

The app will not show coronavirus test results, but the NHS plans to incorporate this in the future, the government website said.

It advised people to register to use the app at least two weeks before travelling.

A paper letter can be requested only at least five days after a second vaccine dose and can take five days to arrive.

Pre-departure test
“There are not many countries that currently accept proof of vaccination,” the government advice warns.

“So for the time being, most people will still need to follow other rules when travelling abroad – like getting a negative pre-departure test.”

The government has announced 12 countries people in England can travel to, without having to quarantine when they return.

But not all of these destinations allow UK tourists.

For example, travel to mainland Portugal and the Azores is currently for essential purposes only.

The list will be reviewed every three weeks.

Countries can be added or removed at short notice.

It’s finally becoming clearer exactly how the government plans to use the NHS app as a vaccine passport.

It had been assumed it depended on getting GPs to share a patient’s data with the app. I’d been on the phone to my GP surgery because neither of my two jabs was showing up in the app.

But this morning a Department of Health spokeswoman told me that NHS X – the health service digital division – has designed an update to the app which doesn’t depend on GP records.

The update won’t go live until May 17th and will provide a new tab displaying your vaccine record, the idea being that this is all you need to show rather than any other sensitive data being visible.

What’s not clear however is whether this solution will be acceptable to foreign airlines or border police. But there is one message the government is keen to get out – don’t do what I did and ring your GP.

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Holiday destination
Travellers also need to take coronavirus tests before returning to England and after arrival.

Some countries may also require tests to be taken upon entry to the holiday destination.

European officials have announced plans for an EU-wide “Green Digital Certificate”.

This would allow anyone vaccinated against Covid or who has tested negative or recently recovered from the virus to travel within the region.

Officials hope the certificate will be in place before the summer.

Several companies have been working on apps to make travel easier, including trade body the International Air Transport Association, who are piloting ‘Travel Pass’.

It said it has been in discussions with government to ensure the pass can read data from the NHS App.

“We’re keen to go further and faster now that the Secretary of State has confirmed that travellers will have access to their covid vaccination status by 17 May,” a spokesperson added. “Globally there are now 20+ countries that are either easing testing or quarantine requirements for vaccinated passengers so the UK needs to move quickly if it does not want to fall behind globally in supporting its citizens’ ability to freely travel.”

An actor is suing TikTok for using her voice in its text-to-speech function.

It converts writing into speech, which can then be played over videos uploaded to the app, often for comedic effect.

Bev Standing recorded about 10,000 sentences of audio for the state-backed Chinese Institute of Acoustics research body to use in translations, in 2018.

The legal action claims her voice can now be heard in viral videos featuring “foul and offensive language”, causing her reputation “irreparable harm”.

‘Reimburse me’
Standing, from Ontario, Canada, told BBC News no permission had been given for these recordings to be used in any other applications or resold.

“My voice is my product – it’s my business,” she said.

“You can’t just use it and not reimburse me for what I do.

“If you want to use someone’s voice, pay for it.”

Standing, who does not use TikTok, felt “violated”, after several videos were sent to her by friends, family and colleagues.

“When I realised you could get me to say anything you want… that’s when I kind of got upset,” she said, describing the content as “totally against brand.”

“I’m certainly hoping it doesn’t affect my business in a negative way.

“Clients may stop hiring me because they recognise that voice.”

‘Ordinary people’
Robert Sciglimpaglia, the lawyer representing Ms Standing, told BBC News: “The technology exists where anyone’s voice can be replicated through artificial intelligence.

“This is not an issue just about celebrities or voice actors, who of course will be hugely impacted because their livelihood is literally being taken away from them.

“This is also about ordinary people.”

Neither TikTok nor parent company Bytedance had responded to the legal filing, issued in New York last week, he added.

Local accents
Standing’s voice is used on the North American version of the app.

But in other regions, local accents – a British male voice in the UK, for example – are used.

A TikTok representative told The Telegraph, which first reported the story, it did not comment on continuing litigation.

The company told BBC News it had nothing further to add.

The Chinese Institute of Acoustics did not respond to a request for comment.

‘Moral rights’
“Actors’ performances, including vocal performances, are protected by copyright,” Jowanna Conboye, intellectual property and technology partner at Spencer West, said.

So a voice artist should have a claim under copyright if their performance is used without their permission

“A key question is where the voice artist’s content was obtained from.

“In commercial situations, copyright is often assigned to another business.

“But even if that is the case, the voice artist or actor normally retains moral rights, which should ensure that they are recognised as the person performing.”

Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk has revealed he has Asperger’s syndrome while appearing on the US comedy sketch series Saturday Night Live (SNL).

The 49-year-old told viewers he was “the first person with Asperger’s” to host the long-running programme – to loud cheers from the audience.

People with Asperger’s interpret the environment around them differently to other people.

It is thought to be the first time Mr Musk has spoken about his condition.

The tech boss was guest hosting the sketch show – a coveted role that has been filled by an array of celebrities since SNL’s inception in the 1970s. These include Adele, Chris Rock, Ringo Starr, and Will Ferrell.

What is Saturday Night Live?
Lesser-known things about Asperger’s syndrome
What is Elon Musk’s Starship?
“I don’t always have a lot of intonation or variation in how I speak… which I’m told makes for great comedy,” he joked in his opening monologue. “I’m actually making history tonight as the first person with Asperger’s to host SNL.”

His comment prompted a round of applause from the studio audience.

Some people on social media, however, questioned his claim. They pointed out that the comedian Dan Aykroyd, who has spoken publicly about his experience with Tourette’s and Asperger’s syndrome, has previously hosted SNL.

Mr Musk, who has more than 53 million followers on Twitter, also joked about his use of social media. He has faced criticism and even legal threats over his tweets in the past.

“Look, I know I sometimes say or post strange things, but that’s just how my brain works,” he said.

“To anyone who’s been offended, I just want to say I reinvented electric cars, and I’m sending people to Mars in a rocket ship. Did you think I was also going to be a chill, normal dude?”

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What is Asperger’s syndrome?
Asperger’s syndrome is a lifelong disability which affects people in many different ways
Some may choose to keep using the term, while others may prefer to refer to themselves as autistic or on the autistic spectrum
Those with the syndrome may have difficulties interpreting verbal and non-verbal language, and may need more time to process information
They may also have trouble expressing their feelings in a conventional way. But they can be more empathetic or emotionally aware than non-autistic people
Many people with Asperger’s syndrome have intense and highly focused interests – some channelling them towards a successful career
Source: Autism.org.uk

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The billionaire also joked about his son’s unusual name – he and the singer Grimes announced the birth of their first child, X Æ A-12 Musk, last year. “It’s pronounced cat running across keyboard,” Mr Musk said.

Later in the programme, the SpaceX CEO spoke about the cryptocurrency Dogecoin.

The currency was created in 2013 by a pair of software workers, and earlier this year it jumped in value by 50% after Mr Musk dubbed it “the people’s crypto”.

It uses a Shiba Inu dog as its mascot and is based on a meme featuring the animal.

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.
View original tweet on Twitter
Mr Musk described the currency as “an unstoppable vehicle that’s going to take over the world” – but later said it was a “hustle” which prompted an almost immediate fall in value.

With no intrinsic value like gold or land, and no ability to generate an income, cryptocurrencies are extremely volatile and can crash as fast as they rise. This makes them hard to value and makes their prices susceptible to tips from backers such as Mr Musk.

NBC, which airs SNL, said the episode was streamed live on YouTube to more than 100 countries.