Technology | The Guardian

Scientists at MIT have taken the leafy greens online – in the hope they will be able to warn about explosivesName: Spinach.Age: About 2,000 years old, originating, it is said, in Persia. Continue reading...

The Amazon founder’s relentless quest for ‘customer ecstasy’ made him one of the world’s richest people – now he’s looking to the unlimited resources of space. Is he the genius our age of consumerism deserves?The first thing I ever bought on Amazon was an edutainment DVD for babies. I don’t recall making the purchase, but the data is unequivocal on this point: on 14 November 2004, I bought Baby Einstein: Baby Noah – Animal Expedition for the sum of £7.85. My nearest guess is that I got it as a Christmas present for my nephew, who would at that point have been one year old, and at the very peak of his interest in finger-puppet animals who cavort to xylophone arrangements of Beethoven. This was swiftly followed by three more DVD purchases I have no memory of making. Strangely, I bought nothing at all from Amazon the following year, and then, in 2006, I embarked on a PhD and started ramping up my acquisition of the sort of books that were not easily to be found in brick-and-mortar establishments. Dry treatises on psychoanalysis. Obscure narrative theory texts. The occasional poetry collection. Everything ever published by the American novelist Nicholson Baker.I know these things because I recently spent a desultory morning clicking through all 16 years of my Amazon purchase history. Seeing all those hundreds of items bought and delivered, many of them long since forgotten, was a vaguely melancholy experience. I experienced an estranged recognition, as if reading an avant-garde biography of myself, ghost-written by an algorithm. From the bare facts of the things I once bought, I began to reconstruct where I was in life, and what I was doing at the time, and what I was (or wanted to be) interested in. And yet an essential mystery endured. What kind of person purchases within the space of a few days, as I did in August of 2012, a Le Creuset non-stick crepe pan, three blue and white herringbone tea-towels, and a 700-odd page biography of the Marxist philosopher Theodor Adorno? (The tea-towels are still in use, and so is the crepe pan, while the 700-plus page Adorno biography remains, inevitably, unread.) Perhaps the answer is as simple as: a person with an Amazon account. Continue reading...

Strategic shift beyond music content helps streaming service to grow advertising income by 29% to €281mSpotify recorded a doubling in podcast listening hours in the fourth quarter of 2020, as locked-down listeners hunting for entertainment tuned in to Michelle Obama and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, driving a Wall Street-beating 24% year-on-year increase in paying subscribers.The audio streaming company, which now has 155 million paying customers, saw its total monthly user base, including those on its free, advertising-supported tier, grow 27% year-on-year to 345 million. Continue reading...

The failure of two online giants shows you can’t just pour in money and watch games pop out – a game studio culture takes time to developIt was perhaps not the most surprising video game industry revelation of all time. Last week, Bloomberg published an eviscerating exposé on the dysfunctional culture at Amazon Game Studios, the development teams formed by the online retail giant, which have so far failed to produce a single hit title for PC or consoles, despite recruiting a wealth of industry veterans. The backstory as presented in the article is almost too predictable: Amazon trusted its game studios to a company veteran, Mike Frazzini, with no experience in game development, who greenlit expensive projects that chased already successful titles (a League of Legends clone called Nova, a Fortnite competitor named Intensity) and ended up being cancelled. According to staff who spoke to Bloomberg, the studios also adopted a “bro culture” in which female staff were belittled and sidelined. Bloomberg said they approached Amazon for a response, but a spokeswoman declined to comment or make Frazzini available for an interview.Then came the news that Google would be closing its own game development studios in Los Angeles and Montreal, neither of which have yet produced a game for its Stadia streaming service. “Creating best-in-class games from the ground up takes many years and significant investment, and the cost is going up exponentially,” wrote Stadia GM and vice president Phil Harrison in his blog post explaining the company’s decision to focus on the platform rather than on game development. But should this have come as a surprise to a man who previously launched consoles at Microsoft and Sony? Possibly not. Continue reading...

Company’s iOS 14.5 release will allow masked users to access devices with help from Apple Watch heart-rate sensorA year into the global pandemic, Apple has solved the problem of how to unlock iPhones with Face ID without removing your face mask – at least, it has for its most dedicated customers.In the latest version of iOS, the operating system for iPhones, which is being beta tested by the public, users can enable a setting that makes Face ID work even if a mask is worn, but only if the mask is accompanied by an unlocked Apple Watch. Continue reading...

Monash University research finds Bing and Ecosia delivered substantially more professionally produced news in the top 50 results compared with GoogleAustralians trying to stay up to date with the news by searching online may be better off ditching Google and using its competitors, research by Monash University has shown.On Australia Day “Grace Tame” was the most popular search term used on Google – reflecting the fact that she had just been made Australian of the Year. The top 50 results delivered by Google included only 70% of professional news websites, compared with 94% for the same search term on Bing and 82% on Ecosia. Continue reading...

Kevin Macdonald’s film aims to give a snapshot of the modern world but its context-free clips look more like a corporate adSensory overload and incoherence are sadly the dominant qualities of this idealistic crowdsourced YouTube video project from director Kevin Macdonald and executive producer Ridley Scott, which is about everything and nothing.It is a follow-up to Macdonald’s Life in a Day movie from 2011, in which legions of people responded to a request to send in homemade videos on what they were doing on a certain day in 2010: a time-capsule snapshot mosaic from all over the world. This time he and Scott put out a worldwide call for people to record all the various sad, funny, passionate or banal things they were doing on 25 July 2020; he got 324,000 videos from 192 countries. Continue reading...

They are elusive, infuriating gatekeepers that rule our lives. Easy to crack and hard to remember, forgetting them is pricey – it cost Stefan Thomas £160m in lost bitcoinModern life is the act of entering the third character of a long-dead family pet into an online form three times a week, getting it wrong, and speaking to a call-centre worker in India whose real name is almost certainly not Kenny, ad infinitum, until you die. Our ancestors lived short, brutish lives and died in childbirth, or were gored to death on the battlefield, but at least they didn’t have passwords, and that’s something.The tyranny of passwords; it colonises modern life. These petty dictators deny us access to our bank accounts, our baby photos, our phone contracts, even our heating. They reproduce as endlessly as bacteria, and yet, like Tupperware lids, you can never find the one you need. They are our boyfriends, our girlfriends, our children, our pets. A talented and motivated adversary could probably work yours out in the time it has taken you to read this paragraph. Continue reading...

The social network’s ‘supreme court’ of 40 assorted academics, politicians and journalists to oversee the site’s content is little more than a PR exerciseThe day after the insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January, Facebook suspended Donald Trump’s account indefinitely. Two things about this decision are interesting. The first is that, as Will Oremus pointed out in a perceptive post, the decision was “an overnight reversal of the policy on Trump and other political leaders that the social network has spent the past four years honing, justifying and defending. The unprecedented move, which lacks a clear basis in any of Facebook’s previously stated policies, highlights for the millionth time that the dominant platforms are quite literally making up the rules of online speech as they go along.”In this context, Facebook’s contorted decision-making about Trump throughout his presidency has been beyond parody. “The only thing that has been consistent, until now,” observes Oremus, “is Facebook’s determination to contort, hair-split and reimagine its rules to make sure nothing Trump posted would fall too far outside them.” In the end, it took the president inciting his followers to sack the Capitol to convince Zuckerberg and co that “the current context is now fundamentally different, involving use of our platform to incite violent insurrection against a democratically elected government”. Continue reading...

App helping to fuel share-buying frenzy allows ‘limited buys’ after a $1bn cash injection to safeguard tradesShares in companies including videogame retailer GameStop soared again on Friday, as an army of small investors taking aim at Wall Street regained access to amateur share trading platform Robinhood.The app, weaponised by activist small investors to trap hedge funds in a “short squeeze” that has cost them $20bn on paper by some estimates, had suspended buying of stocks such as GameStop, cinema chain AMC and BlackBerry on Thursday. Continue reading...

Facebook placed a number of leftwing organizers on a restricted list during Biden’s inauguration. It’s part of a much bigger problem

Extra battery weight of electric cars means ways must be found to cut particulate emissionsYou would think that battery electric cars, having no exhaust pipes, would emit less air pollution than diesel and petrol vehicles. A controversial study in 2016 said particle pollution from electric cars would be worse. Due to battery weight, electric cars are about 200-300kg heavier than comparable-size cars that burn oil-based fuel. More weight means more particle pollution from the wear of brakes, tyres and roads. This could offset the absence of an exhaust.New analysis by the University of Birmingham, suggests that regenerative braking, where the electric motor slows the car, should mean electric vehicles are less polluting in urban areas. A study in Los Angeles found that brakes on electric cars are used for about one-eighth of the time of those on oil-fuelled cars. However, the extra weight of electric cars means they are likely to emit more particle pollution on high-speed motorways. Continue reading...

Cases included content on Covid misinformation and hate speech, and panel will rule soon on the decision to suspend TrumpFacebook’s oversight board, the “supreme court” set up by the company to relieve Mark Zuckerberg of having the final say over moderation, has issued its first decisions, overturning the social network’s choices on four of the five first cases it has heard.The cases, all of which were appeals to reinstate content taken down by Facebook, covered a wide range of topics, from female nudity, to Russian-language ethnic slurs, through islamophobia and Covid misinformation. The board’s decisions are binding under the agreement between Facebook and its quasi-independent overseer. Facebook now has seven days to restore content in the four cases where the board deemed it necessary. Continue reading...

Bumper payout to CEO Elon Musk and move to cheaper EV models means earnings missed forecastsTesla shares fell in after-hours trading after the electric carmaker’s earnings fell short of expectations, despite recording its first annual profit, after a bumper payout to its chief executive, Elon Musk.Operating income rose to $575m (£420m) in the fourth quarter, but it was held back by a $267m payout for Musk. Under a scheme waved through by investors in 2018, Musk could eventually be eligible for awards worth up to $55.8bn as the share price rises. Continue reading...

Coming up with sneaky routes to glory has long been a guilty pleasure in video games that feature flexible play systemsIt’s clear how the Viking raids in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla are supposed to work. Ubisoft’s latest historical adventure has you playing as a brave Norse warrior rampaging across England with your fellow raiders, battling Saxon soldiers and ransacking their burning cities. That’s not how I play. I discovered early on that, instead of approaching an enemy site in my longship, with all my skilled courageous troops, then engaging in open, bloody warfare, I had more success if I went ahead alone and hid in the bushes, picking the guards off one by one and quietly hiding their bodies. You can clear out a whole town without a scratch, and then your fearsome warriors can pop in at the end and help you open the treasure chests. It feels … wrong.Open-world video games such as Assassin’s Creed, Cyberpunk 2077 and Witcher 3 are specifically designed to give players the freedom to go where they want and do what they want, tackling the game’s quests and missions how they see fit. The best of them support different modes of play, whether that’s charging into battles or stealthily breaking into enemy bases. But whatever you go for, the idea is that you develop skills and finesse your way to steely competence. I don’t think you are meant to just hide in the bushes and murder people. Continue reading...

Company announces sales for last three months of 2020 totalled $111.4bn, fueled largely by release of latest iPhonesApple finished 2020 with its most profitable quarter ever as sales of its high end iPhones, tablets and laptops soared amid the pandemic. Continue reading...

The announcement comes on the heels of the company’s earnings report, which exceeded analyst’s predictions at $28bnFacebook will halt algorithm-driven recommendations of political Facebook groups around the world and is looking into reducing political content in its News Feed, according to chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg.“People don’t want politics and fighting to take over their experience on the platform,” Zuckerberg told investors. “We’re going to focus even more on being a force for bringing people closer together,” he added. Continue reading...

The social network’s oversensitive hate speech filters have made it impossible to mention respectable locations like Devil’s Dyke and Plymouth Hoe. The residents are not amused …

The search giant’s experiments see sources of questionable quality being promoted over mainstream websites in some casesGoogle’s “experiment” in Australia to remove major news sites from search results is hiding important news stories from hundreds of thousands of Australians.In some cases filtering out mainstream news publications from search results is also resulting in lower-quality publications being promoted, including a news website known for spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories. Continue reading...

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Tech company is ‘not evil, it’s just too big’ and strong regulation is needed due to monopoly on internet searchAustralia should ignore threats from Google to shut down its search service in the country and press ahead with a code forcing the technology group to pay for news, the Council of Small Business Organisations Australia (Cosboa) says.Cosboa chief executive Peter Strong said Google turning off search in Australia would hurt both small businesses trying to promote themselves and consumers trying to find products. Continue reading...

After review, platform continues indefinite suspension that prevents former president from postingDonald Trump is suspended from posting to YouTube indefinitely after the video platform’s parent company Google extended a ban put in place this month.“In light of concerns about the ongoing potential for violence, the Donald J Trump channel will remain suspended,” a YouTube spokesperson said. “Our teams are staying vigilant and closely monitoring for any new developments.” Continue reading...

My father, Bill Broderick, who has died aged 80 of Covid-19, was an educationist ahead of his time in the field of computing. His vision and enthusiasm led to the first computer being installed in a British secondary school, the Royal Liberty school in Romford, Essex, where he was a maths teacher, in 1965.In a broadcast by the BBC programme Tomorrow’s World from the school, Bill said: “Computers are as radical and important a keystone to our standard of living and industrial wellbeing as was the steam engine.” Continue reading...

Information commissioner says data was voluntarily deleted amid concerns about ‘weak’ enforcementThe Conservative party acted illegally when it collected data on the ethnic backgrounds of 10 million voters before the 2019 general election, the information commissioner has told a committee of MPs.However, Elizabeth Denham insisted there had been no need to issue an enforcement notice against the party, as it had voluntarily deleted the data it held after a “recommendation” from her office.

Information commissioner says the chat app committed in 2017 not to share contact and user informationThe UK’s data regulator is writing to WhatsApp to demand that the chat app does not hand user data to Facebook, as millions worldwide continue to sign up for alternatives such as Signal and Telegram to avoid forthcoming changes to its terms of service.Elizabeth Denham, the information commissioner, told a parliamentary committee that in 2017, WhatsApp had committed not to hand any user information over to Facebook until it could prove that doing so respected GDPR. Continue reading...

Lindell continued to perpetuate baseless claim that Trump won the US presidential electionTwitter has permanently banned My Pillow chief executive Mike Lindell, after he continued to perpetuate the baseless claim that Donald Trump won the 2020 US presidential election.Related: Attorney in Mike Lindell martial law plan denies knowing of pro-Trump plot Continue reading...

The technology has repeatedly come up short in tests for racial bias and has been restricted in other major cities across the USFacial recognition technology amplifies racist policing, threatens the right to protest and should be banned globally, Amnesty International said as it urged New York City to pass a ban on its use in mass surveillance by law enforcement.“Facial recognition risks being weaponised by law enforcement against marginalised communities around the world,” said Matt Mahmoudi, AI and human rights researcher at Amnesty. “From New Delhi to New York, this invasive technology turns our identities against us and undermines human rights. Continue reading...

Company attempts to chart middle ground between Apple’s privacy-first approach and the needs of advertisersGoogle has announced a plan to tackle privacy issues in online advertising, as the company attempts to chart a middle ground between Apple’s privacy-first approach and the needs of advertisers – including itself.Google will use AI to bundle an individual user with similar visitors in an attempt to convince users that they don’t need to block all tracking on the internet to preserve their privacy. It will also use a “trusted server” to store adverts without needing to connect to hundreds of providers across the wider web, and cryptography to ensure that advertisers only find out the information they need to pay websites. Continue reading...

Lou Mensah explains why the new season of her podcast about art, race and identity examines the defining images of 2020 and beyond, from BLM protests to Vogue covers and Trump supportersLou Mensah spent the 1990s working in PR but her favourite part of the job was not the to and fro with clients. What she really liked was meeting and briefing photographers. So when she fell ill at one point, a friend gave her a camera and said: “If you’re well enough to go out today, just take some pictures.” And Mensah did.Six months later, another friend submitted that work to a competition Alexander McQueen and Nick Knight were judging. To Mensah’s surprise, she won. Soon she was shooting for GQ magazine and exhibiting with Helmut Newton and Damien Hirst. Artistically and professionally, she had arrived. Yet, as a mixed-race woman, she couldn’t shake the feeling she was an outsider. Continue reading...

My father, Adrian Sumption, who has died aged 76, worked in television broadcasting as a project engineer for much of his life, while devoting large chunks of his spare time to helping the young and people with disabilities in his local community.He was born in Wellington, Somerset, to Quaker parents, Harold Sumption, who worked in advertising, and his wife, Ruth (nee Burrows), a teacher. After leaving Ackworth school near Pontefract, West Yorkshire, he moved to London, where he helped to form the blues band Dissatisfied, which supported artists such as Howlin’ Wolf and the Yardbirds in the 1960s. In 1965 he married Karin Lusby, whom he had met at school. Continue reading...

The idea that emotions can ‘spread’ from one person to another seems to be taking hold in the psychological worldLast week, scientists from the universities of Oxford and Birmingham published research describing how teenagers’ moods were affected by those of others around them – and that bad moods were more potent. They also found that when a teenager “catches” a low mood from a friend, the friend’s outlook becomes more cheerful. Continue reading...

Schools have embraced apps and remote classes in the past year. Some see benefits in virtual learning but others fear the impact on disadvantaged children and privatisation by stealth

The ebullient tech tycoon embarrassed China’s leaders and went missing. Now he’s back, but seems far less outspokenWearing burgundy lipstick and a long peroxide wig, the diminutive entrepreneur who would soon become China’s richest man took to the stage and belted out Can You Feel the Love Tonight? from Disney’s The Lion King.Jack Ma, chief executive of e-commerce giant Alibaba, had earned the right to make a spectacle of himself. On that day in September 2009, in front of 16,000 adoring employees packed into Hangzhou’s Yellow Dragon stadium, the eccentric but iron-willed former English teacher was celebrating. He had built a bona fide tech champion, China’s answer to Amazon, eBay and PayPal rolled into one. Continue reading...

An online movement is pushing back against the country’s ferocious work culture of long hours for seemingly little gainOn the Chinese microblogging platform Weibo, enthusiastic slackers share their tips: fill up a thermos with whisky, do planks or stretches in the work pantry at regular intervals, drink litres of water to prompt lots of trips to the toilet on work time and, once there, spend time on social media or playing games on your phone.“Not working hard is everyone’s basic right,” said one netizen. “With or without legal protection, everyone has the right to not work hard.” Continue reading...

Since we can’t yet visit vineyards, a wine tasting on Zoom (other platforms are available) is the next best way to get to know about wineOne of the best things to come out of the months of restrictions and lockdowns (well, you have to search for positives somewhere) are wine tastings on Zoom. And while you might think they wouldn’t have much appeal, the upside is that you have the actual wines in front of you and access to their makers in person, albeit online, to shed light on the character of a particular region. I’ve particularly enjoyed ones I’ve joined in on from Australia, which have included Margaret River chardonnay, Tasmanian pinot noir and Rutherglen muscat, a sticky-toffee pudding of a wine that I suggest you treat yourself to pronto, assuming you’re not doing dry January. Though it must be said those sessions usually took place at 10am UK time, which may not be ideal.Online tastings also provide an incentive to attend a niche one you may never have previously considered. Criolla wines from Argentina, for example, made from the varieties brought by the early settlers, and totally different in character from today’s ubiquitous malbec; or wines from a single producer in Sicily that demonstrate the effect of different terroirs (see the intriguing cerasuolo below). Continue reading...

PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PC; IO Interactive

The tech giant’s Senate testimony shows how far it is prepared to go to resist real regulationGoogle’s testimony to an Australian Senate committee on Friday threatening to withdraw its search services from Australia is chilling to anyone who cares about democracy.It marks the latest escalation in the globally significant effort to regulate the way the big tech platforms use news content to drive their advertising businesses and the catastrophic impact on the news media across the world. Continue reading...

Google Australia's managing director Mel Silva has told a Senate committee the tech giant could remove its search engine from Australia if a code forcing the companies to negotiate payments to news media companies goes ahead. The threat comes as Google and Facebook are fighting against legislation currently before the parliament that would force the digital platforms to enter into negotiations with news media companies for payment for content. Prime minister Scott Morrison says his government will not respond to threats. 'Australia makes our rules for things you can do in Australia,' he says. 'And that’s how things work here in Australia and people who want to work with that, in Australia, you're very welcome'

The Apology Line tells the story of a confessional service which consumed the life of its creator. Plus: do ghosts exist – and are they in south London?The Apology Line

PC, Mac; Tim Sheinman

Social media company’s action makes a dent in follower count of a number of rightwing Australian politiciansOne Nation politicians including Pauline Hanson have suffered the biggest drop in followers of all Australian politicians as Twitter purged accounts associated with the QAnon conspiracy theory.Following the insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January, Twitter announced it had suspended 70,000 accounts promoting the QAnon conspiracy theory, after many of those involved in rioting at the Capitol espoused the fraudulent theory as their motivation. Continue reading...

Social media company aims to avoid liability over Cambridge Analytica scandal by arguing it does not collect or hold data in AustraliaFacebook is claiming it does not conduct business in Australia and does not collect and hold data in the country in its effort to avoid liability over the Cambridge Analytica scandal.Last year, the privacy commissioner took Facebook to court over an alleged mass privacy breach involving the use of Australians’ Facebook data in a vote-influencing operation involving Cambridge Analytica, a company that assisted the Trump campaign and was then headed by Trump’s key adviser Steve Bannon. Continue reading...

Georgia congresswoman is banned for 12 hours after berating her state’s election officials and making baseless election fraud claimsTwitter has temporarily suspended the account of the Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has gained a large following on social media, in part by posting incendiary videos and comments.Greene, a Republican businesswoman, is the first candidate who expressed support for the baseless, far-right QAnon conspiracy theory to win a US House seat. Greene in November won the race for Georgia’s 14th congressional district after her Democratic opponent had dropped out. Continue reading...

The actor’s unexpected response to a complaint about an 18-year-old film could pave the way for big-name actors to personally insult Twitter usersOne of the most surprising new avenues to have formed for celebrities over the course of the pandemic has been Cameo. For the uninitiated, Cameo is a service where celebrities can create personalised messages for their fans. For £75, Hodor from Game of Thrones will wish you a happy birthday or – if you have £750 lying around – Richard Dreyfuss will put on a Jaws shirt and struggle to pronounce your name.But maybe this isn’t enough for you. Maybe you want to find direct engagement, with a much bigger star than Cameo offers, and for free. If that’s the case, I can heartily endorse not liking a Russell Crowe movie. Because, even if it takes him a while, Crowe will do his best to respond to your criticism. And if you’re really lucky, he’ll sound like an out-of-touch bus stop crackpot in the process. Here’s what happened. Continue reading...

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In recent years, the conversation around free speech – and arguments to protect it – have been dominated by the right. Should liberals try and reclaim the value for themselves?Last week, as Twitter permanently banned Trump from its platform, critics from the right have been quick to blame a “leftist” culture within tech companies for a crackdown on free speech. That is not without its contradictions – many people have expressed concerns about the decision, including Alexei Navalny and Angela Merkel. But it does raise an uncomfortable issue: in recent years, the conversation around free speech – and arguments to protect it – have been dominated by the right.So what do experts make of it – and should liberals try and reclaim the value for themselves? We asked five defenders of free speech to weigh in.

A move by extremists to the encrypted Telegram app from Parler makes it harder to track where the next attack could come fromFar right “playbooks” teaching white nationalists how to recruit and radicalise Trump supporters have surfaced on the encrypted messaging app Telegram ahead of Joe Biden’s inauguration.The documents, seen by the Observer, detail how to convert mainstream conservatives who have just joined Telegram into violent white supremacists. They were found last week by Tech Against Terrorism, an initiative launched by the UN counter terrorism executive directorate. Continue reading...

Extremism experts warned that the anti-government movement was planning attacks online. Why didn’t Facebook act?One hundred days before Dave Patrick Underwood was murdered on 29 May, a group of analysts who monitor online extremism concluded that an attack like the one that killed him was coming. Continue reading...

Democracy has been threatened by commercialising the swift spread of controversy and lies for political advantageDonald Trump’s incitement of a mob attack on the US Capitol was a watershed moment for free speech and the internet. Bans against both the US president and his prominent supporters have spread across social media as well as email and e-commerce services. Parler, a social network popular with neo-Nazis, was ditched from mobile phone app stores and then forced offline entirely. These events suggest that the most momentous year of modern democracy was not 1989 – when the Berlin wall fell – but 1991, when web servers first became publicly available.There are two related issues at stake here: the chilling power afforded to huge US corporations to limit free speech; and the vast sums they make from algorithmically privileging and amplifying deliberate disinformation. The doctrines, regulations and laws that govern the web were constructed to foster growth in an immature sector. But the industry has grown into a monster – one which threatens democracy by commercialising the swift spread of controversy and lies for political advantage. Continue reading...