In what will come as a surprise to nobody except our bumbling prime minister, Johnson’s government has, yet again, surrounded itself in controversy. This week, it’s the cushy relationship our government’s enjoyed with Russia’s elite circles of mega-rich, mega-dodgy oligarchs. And as the general public has voiced their anger through protests and Instagram stories, Labour […]
2021 was a bad year for Internet freedom, and 2022 hasn’t started particularly well. Free expression online is under a massive strain, most notably in authoritarian regimes like Myanmar, Belarus, and Uganda. This was one of the main findings from a Freedom House report published last September entitled Freedom on the Net 2021. Hopes of […]
A ‘Discussion on Virtual and Other Realities’ seemed like the perfect event to go to as I tried to wrap my head around some reading on NFTs, and how a cryptopunk now sells for millions of dollars. How is this relevant to reviewing a poetry festival? We’ll get to that in a bit. Last week, […]
Instagram has postponed the development of ‘Instagram kids’ due to pressure from Congress. 44 US attorney-generals wrote to Zuckerberg calling on him to drop the plan and Facebook’s global head of safety was invited to stand before the Senate Commerce Committee hearing about child safety last Thursday. Facebook’s manager Adam Mosseri has made it very […]
In early March 2021, all eyes were on the Scottish Parliament as Nicola Sturgeon was scrutinised for the handling of sexual harassment complaints. Amidst the headlines, it was easy to miss the unanimous passing of the Defamation and Malicious Publication (Scotland) Bill. This landmark piece of legislation aims to modernise and simplify the law of […]
“FAKE NEWS” has been shouted louder than almost anything else over the last few years. Coming to the forefront with the wild accusations of Donald Trump, fake news has stayed an issue in the Covid-19 pandemic, continuing to support dangerous behaviour. Current efforts to mitigate the spread of misinformation rely on readers fact checking articles, […]
My relationship with social media is rocky to say the least, and my relationship with my own self-confidence…let’s just say that will always be ‘under construction’. It’s not difficult to see how these two go hand-in-hand in the most anxiety-inducing pairing that, although can connect you to your best friend 5000 miles away, can sometimes […]
CW: racism, discrimination, hate crime In a year where we’ve been glued to our screens more than ever before, reports of social injustices appear almost unprecedented. However, racism, discrimination and mental health aren’t new phenomena…far from it in fact. So why do they now appear to be at the forefront of our discussions, social media […]