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MPL launches #SaveOurMissingGirls campaign, teams up with Missing Link Trust for a role play game
Mumbai: Mobile and skill gaming platform (MPL), in collaboration with Missing Link Trust, has launched a campaign called #SaveOurMissingGirls to raise awareness about human trafficking. The campaign was announced on the eve of the United Nations’ World Day against Trafficking in persons. It aims to spread awareness of the dark world of human trafficking through a role-playing game.
As a part of this week-long campaign starting on 30 July, MPL has invited people to take a pledge by giving a missed call to the number 9099306000 and show their support towards ending this menace that impacts millions of lives every year.
Human trafficking is the second largest organised crime in the world and the numbers are alarmingly increasing across the world and in India. According to a Dasra report, nearly 1827 women are trafficked every hour on an average in India, resulting in almost 16 million women being victims of sex trafficking every year. 40 per cent of these victims are adolescents and children.
The UN’s theme this year for World Day Against Human Trafficking is ‘use and abuse of technology’ in human trafficking, and MPL has chosen gamification as the technology-led path to sensitise the general public and potential victims about human trafficking and ways to prevent it.
Missing, developed by Missing Link Trust, an NGO which combines art and technology to create mass awareness around sex trafficking, was onboarded on MPL recently. The interactive game, wherein the gamer assumes the role of a trafficked girl in India, is designed to allow players to experience what a missing person goes through when she is trafficked into the inhumane and cruel world of prostitution, a world into which millions of girls are lost every year. Gamers have to make smart choices at each step of the game to be able to get out of the trap set by traffickers.
MPL country head for India Namratha Swamy said, “Technology has a big role to play in the prevention of human trafficking, and we believe online gaming can be an interesting way to sensitise people and raise awareness about eradicating human trafficking. One of the key objectives of the #SaveOurMissingGirls campaign is to use games to make more people alert. We have received an overwhelming response from MPL’s users to Missing ever since its launch on our platform.”
“The Missing game comes under the genre of ‘Games for Change’ by tackling the first ‘P for Prevention’ of the United Nation’s four Ps against trafficking. We think this campaign, along with our collaboration with the MPL platform, with a strong 90 million, will be a game-changer in ensuring a wide reach for the game and making millions of people aware of the menace,” said Missing Link Trust founder Leena Kejriwal.
Several celebrities and influencers such as Durjoy Datta, Ravinder Singh, and Trendulkar have extended their support to the campaign by joining the conversation on social media. NGOs like CyberPeace Foundation, Impulse, and Digital Empowerment Foundation, among others, also supported the initiative to show their solidarity towards the cause.
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Snapchat parent Snap cuts 16 per cent of workforce in AI-driven restructuring
The Snapchat parent is axing around 1,000 jobs and closing 300 open roles to save $500m, as artificial intelligence makes smaller teams the new normal
CALIFORNIA: Snap is snapping. The Snapchat parent has confirmed plans to cut around 1,000 employees, roughly 16 per cent of its full-time workforce, as it bets that artificial intelligence can do what headcount once required. Shares jumped more than 10 per cent in premarket trading on the news, a brisk vote of confidence from a market that has watched the stock shed about 31 per cent this year.
The restructuring, which also closes more than 300 open roles, follows pressure from activist investor Irenic Capital Management, which holds an economic interest of about 2.5 per cent in the company and has been loudly pushing Snap to tighten its portfolio and lift performance. The firm got what it asked for, and then some.
Chief executive Evan Spiegel told employees the cuts would reduce annualised expenses by more than $500m by the second half of the year. The company expects to incur charges of between $95m and $130m related to the layoffs, mostly severance, with the bulk landing in the second quarter. Staff in Snap’s North America team were asked to work from home on the day of the announcement.
The financial backdrop is not without bright spots. Snap expects first-quarter revenue to rise around 12 per cent to approximately $1.53 billion, broadly in line with analyst estimates. Adjusted core profit for the January to March quarter is forecast at about $233m, comfortably ahead of Wall Street’s expectation of $186.8m.
The harder question surrounds Specs, Snap’s augmented reality smart glasses subsidiary, which Irenic has urged the company to spin off or shut down entirely. The unit has absorbed more than $3.5 billion in investment and burns through approximately $500m in cash annually. Snap is pressing ahead regardless, with a consumer product expected later this year, even as Meta leads the market in the segment.
Spiegel is betting that leaner teams, smarter machines and a consumer AR play can restore Snap’s credibility with investors who have run out of patience. The redundancy notices have gone out. The harder restructuring, the one that requires a hit product rather than a headcount reduction, is still very much pending.
