(This is my presentation at Gikii 2019 at Queen Mary, London. Slides Here). Cyber-dystopianism For many years, we thought of the Internet as inherently good, a unique innovation that would bring about a better world through technology. The Internet could empower people to become educated and better versions of themselves. Read more…
It’s been an eventful couple of weeks for YouTube specifically, and for Internet moderation in general. It all started with YouTube’s controversial decision not to ban a famous content creator for instigating anti-gay and racist abuse. Then they were applauded in some circles for banning a number of neo-Nazi and Read more…
It’s no secret that many of the organisations involved in governing the Internet have had a strong involvement with US interests, both public and private. The Internet started as a US military project, and that country remained influential in key decision-making bodies, but most importantly, the Internet grew out of Read more…
The UK government has now released its awaited Online Harms White Paper., detailing some potential changes to the law regulating intermediaries to try to curb damaging material found on the Internet. To say that the white paper has been controversial would be an understatement. While there are specific problems with Read more…
It would be fair to say that the Christchurch terrorist attack has been one of the most shocking events in recent history, not only because of the heinous act itself, but because the perpetrator live-streamed the attack on Facebook, and the video has then been shared countless times online. Read more…
It’s a dance as old as (digital) time. When faced with a challenge, politicians will look for a scapegoat in which to assign the blame of a complex issue, and propose allegedly easy solutions to fix impossible problems. Terrorist attack? End encryption. Rise in populism? End fake news. Violent crime Read more…
We have access to more information than ever, yet disinformation is more widely available than ever before and we seem to be regressing . How is this possible? Can the Internet really be making us stupid?
The Internet was built on a series of relatively simple ideas. Decentralisation, resilience, content and transport neutrality. But from the start, one of the most important elements was that all content would be similarly available everywhere, because there would be no way to stop it. An open and free internet Read more…
This is the text for my presentation at re:publica 18. The slides can be found here. I have presented at re:publica for the last couple of years, and usually I try to do so with a work in progress paper at the early stages of research, and this is no Read more…
Digital colonialism describes the domination of Western companies in the provision of digital services in developing countries. These tend to be overwhelmingly US-based, and can be found in messaging, social media, search, music, storage, hosting, and domain names. While other names have been used to describe the phenomenon, the term Read more…