Covid: Most popular Facebook link in US spread vaccine doubt

A news article about a doctor who died after receiving a Covid-19 vaccination was Facebook’s most viewed link in the US in the first quarter of 2021, a previously shelved report shows.

The piece – updated after a report said there was no proven link to the vaccine – was popular with vaccine sceptics.

The New York Times claimed that Facebook initially held back its report because it would “look bad”.

Facebook said the delay was in order to make “key fixes”.

The company had already published its “Widely Viewed Content” report for the second quarter of 2021, in which it found a word search promising to reveal “your reality” was the most popular post.

Similarly frivolous “question posts” formed most of the top 20.

But the New York Times revealed on Friday that the company had held back the earlier report covering January to March 2021.

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.
View original tweet on Twitter
The paper alleged the report had not been shared because of fears that it would “look bad for the company”.

The most-viewed link was an article published by a mainstream US newspaper reporting that a doctor had died two weeks after getting a Covid-19 vaccine. The link attracted nearly 54 million views.

The article was subsequently updated to reflect the findings of the Medical Examiner that there was insufficient evidence to conclude whether the vaccine was responsible for the death.

Health bodies around the world have deemed the vaccine to be both safe and highly effective.

The first quarter report also revealed that the 19th most popular page on the platform belonged to the Epoch Times, which has been accused of spreading right-wing conspiracy theories.

The widespread circulation of this story of a doctor who died two weeks after receiving a Covid-19 jab exposes just how fertile a breeding ground Facebook can be for anti-vaccination content.

This can be partly explained by a committed network of activists, under a variety of different guises, who oppose coronavirus vaccines.

Promoting emotive, personal stories like this one on Facebook has been one of their primary tactics in scaring others from getting jabbed – even when, as was the case with this story, it turns out the death has no link to a Covid-19 vaccine at all.

Throughout the pandemic, these activists have muddled together real – and rare – stories of potential adverse side effects from vaccines with extreme online conspiracies, exploiting medical debates, genuine grief, and legitimate questions.

This also demonstrates the complexity of the disinformation ecosystem on social media – where users seize on a grain of truth, in this case an accurate news story, and spin it into a misleading narrative, without the facts to back it up.

I previously reported on how activists misappropriated the image of one woman’s foot on Facebook, after she took part in the Pfizer vaccine trials.

2px presentational grey line
After the publication of the NY Times’ story, Facebook released the report.

A spokesperson for the company said: “We considered making the report public earlier but since we knew the attention it would garner, exactly as we saw this week, there were fixes to the system we wanted to make.”

According to Facebook, these fixes included dealing with bugs in some of the queries on which the report was based.

The firm’s Andy Stone added more detail on a Twitter thread.

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.
View original tweet on Twitter
Both the quarterly reports focus on what is most viewed in the USA, rather than what is engaged with through likes, comments, and shares.

They paint a different picture to data gathered by researchers and journalists with Crowdtangle, Facebook’s engagement-measuring tool, which suggests that right-leaning political content is dominant on the platform.

Facebook has fiercely pushed back against that idea, saying that only 6% of content seen by users is political.

But some misinformation researchers worry that Facebook is going cold on Crowdtangle.

The company did not answer a BBC question about whether the tool was under threat.

OnlyFans to ban sexually explicit content

The subscription site OnlyFans, known for its adult content, has announced it will block sexually explicit photos and videos from 1 October.

People will still be able to post nude content on the site.

But this will need to be consistent with OnlyFans’ policies.

The announcement comes after BBC News had approached the company for a response to leaked documents concerning accounts which posted illegal content.

OnlyFans said the change had come after pressure from banking partners.

The site has grown during the pandemic and says it has 130 million users.

“In order to ensure the long-term sustainability of our platform, and continue to host an inclusive community of creators and fans, we must evolve our content guidelines,” OnlyFans said in a statement.

The children selling explicit videos on OnlyFans
Under the skin of OnlyFans
Model Demi Rose: ‘I’m finally taking control’
The London-based social media site enables its creators to post nude videos and photos and charge subscribers for tips or a monthly fee.

Creators can post a range of content from cooking to fitness videos, but it is best known for pornography.

In return for hosting the material, OnlyFans takes a 20% share of all payments.

The documents – described as “compliance manuals” – show that although illegal content itself is removed, OnlyFans lets moderators give creators multiple warnings before closing accounts.

Moderation specialists and child protection experts say this shows OnlyFans has some “tolerance” for accounts posting illegal content.

In response to the BBC’s investigation, OnlyFans said the documents are not manuals or “official guidance”, it does not tolerate violations of its terms of service, and its systems and age verification go far beyond “all relevant global safety standards and regulations”.

The site, founded in 2016 by Essex businessman Tim Stokely, has come under fire in the past after a BBC News investigation found under-18s had used fake identification to set up accounts on the site. In June, BBC News found that under-18s sold explicit videos on the site, despite it being illegal for people to share indecent images of children.

After the BBC investigation, the children’s commissioner for England said OnlyFans needed to do more to stop underage users. In response to the investigation, OnlyFans said it had closed the accounts flagged and refunded all active subscriptions.

In July, the company’s first monthly transparency report said that it deactivated 15 OnlyFans accounts after finding indecent images of children on those accounts.

Hackers steal nearly $100m in Japan crypto heist

Leading Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Liquid has been hit by hackers, with almost $100m (£73m) estimated to have been stolen.

The company announced that some of its digital currency wallets have been “compromised.”

It is the second major theft of cryptocurrencies to take place in recent days.

Last week, digital token platform Poly Network was at the centre of a $600m heist.

“We are sorry to announce that #LiquidGlobal warm wallets were compromised, we are moving assets into the cold wallet,” the company said on Twitter.

So-called ‘warm’ or ‘hot’ digital wallets are usually based online and designed to allow users to access their cryptocurrencies more easily, while ‘cold’ wallets are offline and harder to access and therefore usually more secure.

Blockchain analytics firm Elliptic said its analysis showed that around $97m in cryptocurrencies had been taken, with Bitcoin and Ethereum tokens amongst the haul.

Liquid has said that it was tracing the movement of the stolen cryptocurrencies and working with other exchanges to freeze and recover the assets.

Founded in 2014, Liquid operates in over 100 countries and serves millions of customers around the world.

It is one of the world’s top 20 biggest cryptocurrency exchanges by daily trading volumes, according to CoinMarketCap data.

Last week, $600m was stolen from blockchain site Poly Network after a hacker exploited a vulnerability in its system.

“The amount of money you have hacked is one of the biggest in defi [decentralised finance] history,” Poly Network said.

Since then the hacker, who goes under the name of Mr White Hat, has returned around $427m of the assets.

Liquid is not the only Japanese cryptocurrency platform to be hit by a major heist.

In 2014, Tokyo-based exchange MtGox collapsed after almost half a billion dollars of bitcoin went missing, while Coincheck was hacked in a $530m heist in 2018.

Former Netflix staffers charged for making $3m from insider trading

The Wall Street watchdog has charged three former Netflix software engineers over an alleged insider trading ring that made $3m (£2.2m).

The ex-staff members and two close associates were named in court papers.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said confidential Netflix subscriber growth data was used in the scheme.

The information was allegedly used to trade the streaming giant’s shares ahead of its earnings reports.

The SEC alleged that Sung Mo Jun, a former software engineer at Netflix, was at the centre of a long-running scheme to illegally trade shares using insider information about the company’s subscriber growth.

According to the complaint, while working for Netflix in 2016 and 2017, he repeatedly passed non-public information to his brother and a close friend who both used it to trade ahead of multiple Netflix earnings announcements.

The SEC also alleged that after Sung Mo Jun left Netflix, he obtained confidential subscriber growth information from two other company insiders.

“We allege that a Netflix employee and his close associates engaged in a long-running, multimillion dollar scheme to profit from valuable, misappropriated company information,” said Erin Schneider, director of the SEC’s San Francisco regional office.

The SEC said it uncovered the alleged scheme using data analysis tools to find suspiciously successful patterns of trading.

At the same time, the US Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Washington filed a criminal case against four of the defendants, which could lead to prison sentences.

What is insider trading?

Insider trading is the buying and selling of a listed company’s shares or other securities, such as bonds or share options, based on information that is not available to the public.

In many countries, including the US and UK, insider trading is illegal as it is seen as giving an unfair advantage to those with access to the information.

While the rules and penalties differ around the world, in many jurisdictions a person who is aware of non-public information and trades on that basis may be subject to penalties by financial markets regulators as well as potentially facing criminal prosecution.

The definition of an insider can often be broad, and may cover not only people with direct access to confidential information but also those they share it with and who make trading decisions based on that information.

The little-known human stories behind emoji designs

You may not think much about the emoji you use to text every day but there are compelling human stories behind them.

“My father’s music is message music, to uplift the world from its slumbering mentality,” says reggae musician Andrew Tosh, speaking from his home in Kingston, Jamaica.

His father, Peter Tosh, was one of the three founding members of the 1960s band The Wailers, along with Bob Marley and Bunny Wailer.

Peter Tosh’s story doesn’t end happily; he was murdered in a horrific attack in the 1980s, but he left both a musical and a political legacy.

And if you open your emoji keyboard and search for “levitating”, you will find a tiny picture of a man dressed in a dapper black suit, hat and shades.

That is Peter Tosh.

Niambe McIntosh, Peter Tosh’s daughter, looks after his estate. She says her father’s legacy is about justice and human rights, and she’s proud to continue his work.

“He didn’t just want people to dance; he wanted them to dance to their own (political) awakening.”

Listen to Arise Black Man: The Peter Tosh Story
Reggae music to be protected by the UN
She laughs in surprise when she learns her father is immortalised in an emoji.

“I did not know that… but I do know that picture it’s based on, of Bob, Bunny and my Dad in suits, and my Dad stands really tall.”

It was a surprise to her brother Andrew too. “Oh cool!” he says. “I actually know that picture. The young version of Peter Tosh.”

So how did a reggae legend end up as an emoji?

Web(dings) history
It’s a story which takes us from Kingston, Jamaica, to rainy Seattle in the United States; specifically, to the Microsoft headquarters in the mid-1990s.

Back then, the personal computer revolution was just beginning, and typographer Vincent Connaire was working on new fonts.

Among the scripts he designed was Webdings; a picture-based font which was intended to be used on early webpages.

Mr Connaire is a real music fan, particularly ska. One of his favourite bands is the English ska revival band The Specials. Their label, 2 Tone Records, had a logo based on an early image of The Wailers.

In the photo, Peter Tosh stands back-to-back with Bob Marley, staring out of the frame in a dark suit, bow tie and sunglasses. The 2 Tone Records designer took that image as inspiration.

And it’s that logo that was adapted by Mr Connaire two decades later for Webdings.

In his version, the suited man is jumping; or more precisely pogoing – popular among Specials fans -and it was intended to represent the “jump” from one page to another.

Years later, many Webdings symbols were encoded as emoji and released on every single smartphone and technology platform in the world.

Mr Connaire drew many of our other symbols.

“We just looked around and drew what we saw,” he says, sounding surprised by the enduring legacy his designs have had.

“The boom box was my boom box. The mountain symbol was Mount Rainier (near Seattle). It makes me proud to realise that we were a part of something special.”

Emoji memories
Emoji are approved and added to the official set by Unicode, a Silicon-Valley-based group.

For Yiying Lu and others like her, there’s something special about being included.

She’s a Shanghai-born designer who has had several proposals added to the official keyboard. The dumpling, chopsticks, fortune cookie, takeaway box and bubble or boba tea are hers, and reflect part of her identity as a Chinese woman living in the US.

She’s passionate about exploring the meanings of symbols and broadening people’s cultural horizons, and she proudly tells us about her connection to the San Francisco Chinatown community.

But the most meaningful emoji Yiying has worked on is not a reference to her culture’s food.

It’s the peacock.

A few years ago at an emoji conference, she met Irene Cho, a Korean-American marketing executive and podcast host in San Francisco. Irene worked in Hollywood and for a trendy restaurant chain, Burma Love. The pair hit it off immediately.

The Burma Love restaurant was decorated with peacock motifs and Yiying wondered why.

Hydrogen power offers jobs boost, says government

Thousands of new jobs could be created by investing in low-carbon hydrogen fuel to power vehicles and heat homes, the government says.

Ministers have unveiled a strategy for kick-starting a hydrogen industry, which they say could attract billions of pounds in investment.

Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said the fuel was also essential for UK efforts to reach net zero emissions.

He said it had the potential to provide a third of UK energy in future.

Because of the current higher cost involved in producing hydrogen compared to existing fuels, subsidies have been proposed to overcome the gap. The government has launched a consultation on this plan.

Labour also backs hydrogen’s potential, but said the government had failed to invest as much as other countries.

Using hydrogen gas as a fuel produces no carbon dioxide (CO2) pollution. It can be used to power fuel cells – devices that generate electricity through an electrochemical reaction – used in a turbine for electricity or burned in a boiler and vehicle engine.

As such, it is a low-carbon, versatile fuel that can be used by cars, trucks and trains, heat our homes and generate the power needed for industrial processes such as steel production.

Is the hydrogen tech ‘revolution’ hope or hype?
Can hydrogen fuel help drive towards green future?
The government plans to deliver 5GW of hydrogen production capacity by 2030, estimating that the industry could be worth £900m and support more than 9,000 jobs by the same date.

“Today marks the start of the UK’s hydrogen revolution. This home-grown clean energy source has the potential to transform the way we power our lives and will be essential to tackling climate change and reaching net zero,” said Mr Kwarteng.

“Our strategy positions the UK as first in the global race to ramp up hydrogen technology and seize the thousands of jobs and private investment that come with it.”

Reaching net zero by 2050 will involve cutting emissions as much as possible and then balancing out any remaining ones by planting trees or burying CO2 underground.

The potential role of hydrogen in achieving this target has been highlighted by a government analysis suggesting 20-35% of the UK’s energy consumption by 2050 could be hydrogen-based.

A low-carbon hydrogen economy could deliver emissions savings equivalent to the carbon captured by 700 million trees by 2032, the government claims. It would help decarbonise polluting industries such as chemical production and oil refining and heavy transport such as shipping and rail.

Alan Whitehead MP, Labour’s shadow minister for energy and the green new deal, said hydrogen power had a “significant role” to play in decarbonising the economy.

But he added: “The belated publication of this hydrogen strategy needs to be followed up with urgent action. That is what we will judge the government on because too many of the Tories’ warm words and targets on climate change have not been followed up with practical steps.

“It is regrettable that the Conservatives have failed to match the investment shown by other countries and key decisions have been delayed, such as mandating that all boilers must be hydrogen-ready.”

The government is proposing subsidies for the hydrogen industry along the lines of those credited with driving down the cost of offshore wind power.

It will also review the infrastructure – thought by some to be very costly – needed to underpin hydrogen power in the UK.

Ministers want a twin-track approach to hydrogen production.

So-called blue hydrogen is made using fossil fuels, but its environmental impact can be mitigated by capturing and storing greenhouse emissions underground. Green hydrogen, meanwhile, is made using renewable energy.

Though blue hydrogen is not as clean as the green form, it is cheaper.

Environmental campaigners say there is too much focus in the strategy on blue hydrogen. Jess Ralston, an analyst at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, said the government should “be alive to the risk of gas industry lobbying causing it to commit too heavily to blue hydrogen and so keeping the country locked into fossil fuel based technology”. This, she added, would make reaching net zero more difficult and costly.

Philip Dunne MP, chair of the environmental audit committee, commented: “While the twin track approach proposed, supporting both green and blue hydrogen production, is positive, it is also important that substantial capacity for carbon capture is developed, so as to avert release of damaging emissions currently created in blue hydrogen production.”

In fact, one study by researchers in the US has suggested that blue hydrogen could release more carbon than burning natural gas.

Dr Jan Rosenow, from the Regulatory Assistance Project, an organisation dedicated towards accelerating the transition to clean energy, said: “As the strategy admits, there won’t be significant quantities of low-carbon hydrogen for some time. We need to use it where there are few alternatives and not as a like-for-like replacement of gas.

He said the plan confirmed that “hydrogen for heating our homes will not play a significant role before 2030. The government’s strategy shows that less than 0.2% of all homes are expected to use hydrogen to keep warm in the next decade. This means that for reducing emissions this decade, hydrogen will play only a very marginal role.

“But we cannot wait until 2030 before bringing down emissions from heating. The urgency of the climate crisis requires bold policy action now.”

Parcel delivery texts now the most common con-trick

The majority of “smishing” fraud attempts have come through the blitz of parcel delivery texts sent out during the Covid crisis.

Millions of mobile users have received the texts that claim a small payment is needed for a package delivery to be completed.

But the texts are a front for fraudsters attempting to steal personal banking details.

Cybersecurity firm Proofpoint told banks their prevalence was on the rise.

Impersonation
Smishing is a technique that criminals use to target consumers with texts impersonating trusted organisations.

Proofpoint, which provided data for the banking trade body UK Finance, said that over a 90-day period to mid-July, some 53% of these smishing attempts were via delivery texts. This compared with 23% of messages claiming to be from banks or financial institutions.

During the most recent 30-day period, some 67% of these scams were delivery text messages.

Katy Worobec, managing director of economic crime at UK Finance, said:  “Criminals are experts at impersonating a range of organisations and have capitalised on the pandemic, knowing that many of us will be ordering goods online and awaiting parcel deliveries at home. ”

Tricked in a hurry
The text, claiming to be from Royal Mail or a delivery company arrives out of the blue and claims a parcel is awaiting delivery, but a small payment is required.

line
‘We were left with absolutely nothing’
Tom and Freyja Cuff, from Frome, Somerset, received a text about a parcel collection which eventually led to their bank account being emptied of £2,500.

Mr Cuff said that with online shopping being very common over lockdown, his wife “didn’t think anything of it” and clicked on a link authorising a small payment of £2.50 to release the parcel.

Mrs Cuff was then contacted again by the fraudsters, this time claiming to be from the couple’s bank.

She was told they wanted to move her money in order to protect it from being targeted further, but the couple’s account – including savings for a new home – was then emptied.

“Basically someone funnelled all our money out, pretending to be the bank, and we were left with absolutely nothing. It was heartbreaking, horrendous,” Mr Cuff said.

line
The message then links to a website mocked up to look like an official site. The page requests personal and payment details, which scammers may use to steal someone’s identity, or use to target them with other scams.

The influencers promoting online scams
Delivery text scams and how to deal with them
Royal Mail said it would not use such texts – unless specifically requested – and would use a grey card instead to tell people if any fee was required.

Laura Suter, personal finance analyst at AJ Bell, said: “Everyone thinks they are smart enough to spot a scam text, but the messages have become so sophisticated that it’s easy to be caught out.

“Lots of people will also see the text when they are in a hurry to receive their package or are rushing, so won’t stop to think about whether it’s legitimate or not.”

line
To report scams, contact Action Fraud, or Police Scotland
To report email scams, contact the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) by emailing report@phishing.gov.uk
For consumer advice, please call the Citizens Advice Consumer Helpline on 0808 223 1133

Competition watchdog says Facebook could have to sell Giphy

Facebook could have to sell Giphy, a search engine for Gifs, which it bought for a reported $400m (£289m) last year.

The Competition and Markets Authority provisionally found Facebook owning Giphy “could lead it to deny other platforms access to its Gifs”.

The CMA will now consult before making a final conclusion. And if its concerns are confirmed, the it may require Facebook to sell Giphy.

Facebook said the findings were “not supported by the evidence”.

Giphy’s vast library of looping short video animations is hugely popular – including among Facebook’s competitors.

Gif stands for Graphics Interchange Format, an image format developed in the 1980s to display static and moving images.

They have become a staple of social-media posts and comments.

Enforcement order
In May 2020, when the deal was announced, Facebook said half of Giphy’s traffic came from its apps, including WhatsApp and Instagram.

But it also provides Gifs to competitors such as TikTok, Snapchat and Twitter.

In June 2020, the CMA sent an enforcement order to Facebook, effectively putting a hold on any merging of the companies until its investigation is over.

Now, announcing its provisional findings, the CMA said Facebook could in theory stop other platforms from using the service.

Market power
It also warned Facebook could require Giphy customers, such as TikTok, Twitter and Snapchat, to provide more user data in order to access Giphy Gifs.

“Such actions could increase Facebook’s market power, which is already significant,” the CMA said.

It also said the purchase had removed a potential competitor to Facebook in display advertising.

At the time of the purchase, Giphy had said it was considering expanding its advertising services to other countries, potentially including the UK, the competition watchdog noted.

‘Best interest’
Facebook told BBC News: “We disagree with the CMA’s preliminary findings, which we do not believe to be supported by the evidence.

“As we have demonstrated, this merger is in the best interest of people and businesses in the UK – and around the world – who use Giphy and our services.

“We will continue to work with the CMA to address the misconception that the deal harms competition.”

The fiendish new trick cyber-criminals are using to evade capture

“Follow the money” – for generations it’s been the mantra of investigators looking for criminals.

In the cyber-realm, this battle between criminals and the authorities has been raging for years.

Despite the anonymous nature of cryptocurrencies, dozens of cyber-criminals have been caught in the last two years thanks to new techniques able to track their funds around the cryptocurrency blockchain – a public list of all transactions between wallets.

But could the tide be turning?

A new service has launched on the darknet offering criminals a way to check how “clean” their digital coins are.

“We’re seeing criminals start to fight back against blockchain analytics and this service is a first,” explained Dr Tom Robinson, chief scientist and founder at analysis provider Elliptic, who discovered the website.

“It’s called Antinalysis and criminals are now able to check their own Bitcoin wallets and see whether any association with criminal activity could be flagged by authorities,” Dr Robinson said.

Elliptic says the discovery shows how sophisticated cyber-crime networks are becoming, and how worried criminals are about getting caught.

“It’s a very valuable technique. If your funds are tainted, you can then do more laundering and try to remove that association with criminal activity until you have clean coins,” he said.

Dr Robinson says it is a concerning new trend that could make their work and that of law enforcement harder. But luckily his researchers who tested it say the service isn’t working very well at the moment.

“It actually wasn’t very good at identifying links to criminal sites. However, it will inevitably improve over time. So I think this is going to be a significant capability for criminals and money launderers in the future.”

Governments around the world including in China, the UAE and UK are trying to grapple with the growing problem of money laundering through cryptocurrencies.

There have been some high-profile arrests thanks to cryptocurrency tracking – such as US teenager Graham Ivan Clark, who is currently in prison for masterminding one of the biggest-ever social media hacks.

Clark found a way to take over the Twitter accounts of dozens of celebrities, including Kim Kardashian, Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Joe Biden.

Clark and his hacker team then tweeted an advert for a cryptocurrency scam, receiving hundreds of transfers from the public hoping to cash in from the fake giveaway.

In just a couple of hours Clark made more than $100,000 (£72,000) and began the process of moving the funds around to hide his tracks.

It didn’t work. In the charge sheet against him, the US Department of Justice said that officers had successfully “analysed the blockchain and de-anonymised Bitcoin transactions allowing for the identification” of the hackers.

Clark, now 18, pleaded guilty and is serving three years in a Florida prison.

Teen ‘mastermind’ pleads guilty to Twitter hack
Bitcoin tumbles below $30,000 on China crackdown
Privacy coin growth
Another trend that is concerning authorities is the increased use of so-called privacy coins. These are cryptocurrencies like Monero that offer more anonymity than mainstream coins like Bitcoin.

In some extortion cases, hackers are now asking victims to pay using these coins in exchange for a discount.

Again, this is a trend that is yet to fully take off and Kim Grauer, director of research at cryptocurrency analysis firm Chainalysis, says this method has drawbacks for criminals.

“Privacy coins haven’t been adopted to the extent that one may expect. The primary reason is they aren’t as liquid as Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

“Cryptocurrency is only useful if you can buy and sell goods and services or cash out into mainstream money, and that is much more difficult with privacy coins.”

To hear more about this story listen to Tech Tent on the World Service this Friday at 09:00 BST and afterwards on demand via BBC Sounds.

Activision Blizzard: Diablo 4 director and two others leave company

Three more high-profile leaders have left gaming giant Activision Blizzard, including some from new game Diablo 4.

Diablo director Luis Barriga and designer Jesse McCree have both departed, as has Jonathan LeCraft, a designer on World of Warcraft.

It follows the resignation of president J Allen Brack and other executives in the wake of allegations of widespread sexual harassment at the company.

No reason has been given for the three most recent departures.

News of their leaving was first reported by gaming news site Kotaku, and later confirmed by Activision Blizzard.

It follows the filing of a legal case by the state of California against Activision Blizzard, which alleges widespread discrimination and sexual harassment at the firm.

Blizzard initially rejected the allegations as “distorted, and in many cases false”. Following internal and external criticism, some senior management softened that language, issuing statements that the initial response had been “tone deaf” and promising an investigation.

None of the three most recent departures were named in the California legal case.

In a statement, Activision Blizzard said: “We can confirm Luis Barriga, Jesse McCree, and Jonathan LeCraft are no longer with the company.”

But it is not clear why the three have suddenly departed.

Mr McCree – who shares a name with the popular cowboy character in Blizzard’s multiplayer shooter Overwatch – was allegedly aware of the infamous “Cosby suite” detailed in the sexual harassment lawsuit, according to photos and text exchanges obtained by Kotaku in July.

Alongside Mr LeCraft, he seems to appear in a photograph of several developers posing with a photo of Bill Cosby – the actor who, years after that photo was taken, was convicted of sexual assault before having that conviction overturned.

Mr Barriga does not appear in the controversial photograph.

The loss of two significant leaders from Diablo 4 may pose problems for the game, which is widely seen as an important forthcoming title for Blizzard. The company has seen declining player numbers across its existing titles in recent years.

Blizzard directly addressed such concerns in its statement.

“We have a deep, talented roster of developers already in place and new leaders have been assigned where appropriate,” it said.

“We are confident in our ability to continue [to] progress, deliver amazing experiences to our players, and move forward to ensure a safe, productive work environment for all.”