Is it any wonder people are in thrall to the power and vicarious thrill of digital technologies when many acclaimed films and TV series extol the apparent virtues of digital surveillance. At the same time, they fear that State surveillance has gone too far. A swift...
On 25 March 2026, a Los Angeles jury found Meta and Google negligent for designing social media platforms that harmed a young user through addictive features, awarding $6 million in damages. Just one day earlier, a New Mexico jury had ordered Meta to pay $375...
We see daily examples of pressures on press freedom in countries around the globe. Then there is a particularly chilling moment when such pressure becomes an overt threat from one of the oldest democracies in the world, in which freedom of speech is enshrined as...
Reuters recently reported that US diplomats worldwide have been ordered to track and counter data localization efforts, naming the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) as an example of “unnecessarily burdensome” regulation. According to Reuters, “Experts say the move signals the Trump administration is reverting...
The plot could easily have been from a Netflix dystopian thriller. “The Russian Guy” approaches ordinary women and girls leading ordinary lives, one walking her child to school, another stocking supermarket shelves, and a young girl walking by. “Hello. What’s your name? You look beautiful. Come with...
According to Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, social media platforms have become a “toxic, unpunished world” that “children were never meant to navigate alone.” This sharp critique, delivered at the World Governments Summit in Dubai on 4 February, reflects growing global concern about the unchecked power...
Recent headlines I read run from the latest attempts by Donald Trump to own Greenland to Taylor Swift becoming the second–youngest ever inductee to the Songwriters Hall of Fame. There doesn’t seem to be a connection, but there is – digital technology. Whether it’s the semi-conductors and...
Germany’s far-right political party Alternative für Deutschland recently relaunched a youth wing called Generation Deutschland. One of its posters portrays a young blond Aryan woman instantly recalling – for those who have not forgotten 20th century European history – Hitler’s League of German Girls and...
After all, that is the vision of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), whose +20 outcomes will be finalized by UN member states this week (December 16–17). Both at the WSIS+20 High-Level Meeting in July in Geneva and in the negotiations involved in drafting...
In 1960s Britain it was common for travelling salesmen (hardly ever women) to go from door to door selling subscriptions to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Twenty-four volumes whose cost could be spread over monthly repayments. Parents who could afford it, and even those who couldn’t, coveted Britannica...