Technology | The Guardian

Marc Lamont Hill and Todd Brewster’s brilliant book considers the history of communications technology in a racist societyNearly all the books I have read about the internet have deepened my fears about the net effect of social media on the health of our body politic. For example, I thought three facts from the congressman Ro Khanna’s recent book, Dignity in a Digital Age, were enough to scare anyone concerned about the future of democracy.Khanna reported that an internal discussion at Facebook revealed that “64% of all extremist group joins are due to our recommendations”; he revealed that before 2020, “QAnon groups developed millions of followers as Facebook’s algorithm encouraged people to join based on their profiles”; and he pointed to a United Nations report that Facebook played a “determining role” in events in Myanmar that led to the murder of at least 25,000 Rohingya Muslims and the displacement of 700,000 others. Continue reading...

Investors say Musk saved himself $156m by failing to disclose that he had purchased more than 5% of Twitter by 14 MarchElon Musk was sued by Twitter investors for delaying the disclosure of his stake in the company, as the Tesla owner mounts a $44bn takeover bid for the social media platform.The investors said Musk saved himself $156m by failing to disclose that he had purchased more than 5% of Twitter by 14 March. Continue reading...

Collapse this month prompted widespread crash of cryptocurrency sectorTerra, the “algorithmic stablecoin” project whose collapse this month prompted a widespread crash of the entire cryptocurrency sector, is being rebooted as “terra 2.0” in a last-ditch attempt to recover investor losses.However, the new cryptocurrency, which will be launched on Friday morning, will no longer involve any effort to peg its value to the US dollar, in an attempt to avoid the “death spiral” that destroyed the original iteration. The plans were approved by a vote of terra investors, with 65% voting in favour. Continue reading...

Report claims public money from countries around the world is funding growth of tech companyAmazon has reaped a total of £425m in UK government contracts in the past two years, it has emerged in a report, prompting fresh criticism that the tech giant is failing to pay a fair share of tax in the country.The report, by the Centre for International Corporate Tax Accountability and Research (CICTAR) with assistance from investigative thinktank Taxwatch, finds Amazon’s highly profitable cloud computing business is increasingly being indirectly supported by taxpayers through hundreds of billions of dollars in government contracts around the world. Continue reading...

With pandemic restrictions showing no sign of ending, home rental service says it will cease taking bookings for accommodation inside China from 30 JulyAirbnb is closing down its business inside China indefinitely, as the country’s zero-Covid policy, lockdowns and travel restrictions continue.On Tuesday Airbnb told its China-based users it would cease taking all bookings for accommodation and experiences in China from 30 July. The ability to book for dates beyond 29 July was suspended on Tuesday morning, according to screenshots of the Airbnb notice shared across Chinese social media. An attempt by the Guardian to make bookings from outside China after that date produced an error message. Continue reading...

The vote marks a victory for labor advocates in an industry mired with allegations of abuse and poor working conditionsWorkers in a division of video game company Activision Blizzard have voted to unionize, creating the first labor union at a major US gaming firm.A small group of Wisconsin-based quality assurance testers at Activision Blizzard’s Raven Software, which develops the popular Call of Duty game franchise, voted 19-3 in favor of unionizing on Monday. Continue reading...

Video shows simulation of Sedar Soares, who was shot dead in 2003, asking public to help solve caseDutch police have received dozens of leads after using deepfake technology to virtually bring to life a teenager almost two decades after his murder.Sedar Soares was shot dead in 2003 while throwing snowballs with friends in the parking lot of a Rotterdam metro station. Continue reading...

Clearview AI hit with penalty for collecting images of people from social media and web to add to global databaseThe UK’s data watchdog has fined a facial recognition company £7.5m for collecting images of people from social media platforms and the web to add to a global database.The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) also ordered US-based Clearview AI to delete the data of UK residents from its systems. Clearview AI has collected more than 20bn images of people’s faces from Facebook, other social media companies and from scouring the web. Continue reading...

Billionaire donors are pushing an unsettling agenda for America – backing Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen, calling for restrictions on voting and even questioning the value of democracy itselfDecades ago, America’s monied interests bankrolled a Republican establishment that believed in fiscal conservatism, anti-communism and constitutional democracy.Today’s billionaire class is pushing a radically anti-democratic agenda for America – backing Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen, calling for restrictions on voting and even questioning the value of democracy.The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women – two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians – have rendered the notion of “capitalist democracy” into an oxymoron.Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com Continue reading...

Yuri Popovich invested in the supposedly safe cryptocurrency to protect against risks of the invasionA Ukrainian man who converted almost all his family’s money into the crypto “stablecoin” terra in April in an effort to protect against the risks of invasion or currency collapse has lost almost $10,000 (£8,000) after its sudden demise.“It was impossible and unsafe to store funds in the form of banknotes,” said Yuri Popovich, who lives in Kyiv. Cryptocurrencies advertised as safe and “backed with fiat currency” suggested another option. Continue reading...

Although connecting with friends online has positive benefits for mental health, overdoing screen time can lead to a catastrophic emotional crashMost people think that phones are a bad thing for anxiety. Parents, in particular, believe phones are terrible for the mental health of children, teenagers and young adults. So, what is the truth? While I was writing my book You Don’t Understand Me, which addresses the mental health of teenage girls and young women, I felt I had to get to the bottom of the relationship between phones and anxiety. And to be honest, it doesn’t look great. Since smartphones came out in around 2000, there has been a steady decline in the mental health of young people. But as we know, correlation does not necessarily equal causation.What I have observed clinically is that rather than being the cause of the problem per se, phones seem to act as a catalyst to our emotions. This can be a positive thing, when it allows us to connect with friends and family; share happy news; photos or jokes. It also allows marginalised communities to find each other. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Platform takes ‘unprecedented action’ to address content guideline violations since invasion

This week the supergroup begin seven months of gigs in a purpose-built London arena… with the band members elsewhereJust over 41 years ago, Abba played their last concert together. It wasn’t a live show for salivating fans, but a short set for Swedish TV. A highlight was their recent hit Super Trouper, a song about the sad, endless grind of being on tour.“All I do is eat and sleep and sing / Wishing every show was the last show,” sang Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad, their voices still gorgeous together. The lyrics go on: “Facing 20,000 of your friends, how can anyone be so lonely?” Continue reading...

They are two of the world’s richest people, and both are obsessed with space travel, but they use social media for very different reasonsWhy do billionaires tweet? Is it because they no longer have to earn a living? Or because they’re bored? Or because they spend a lot of time in, er, the smallest room in the mansion? Elon Musk, for example, currently the world’s richest fruitcake, has said that “At least 50% of my tweets were made on a porcelain throne”, adding that “it gives me solace”. This revelation motivated the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson to do some calculations, leading to the conclusion that more than 8,000 tweets over 12.5 years suggests that, on average, Musk “poops” twice a day. (I make it 1.75 a day, but that’s just quibbling.)So why does Musk tweet so much? One explanation is that he just can’t help himself. He has, after all, revealed that he has Asperger’s. “Look, I know I sometimes say or post strange things,” he said on Saturday Night Live, “but that’s just how my brain works”. Understood. It may also be a partial explanation of his business success, because his mastery of SpaceX and Tesla suggests not only high intelligence but also an ability to focus intensely on exceedingly complex problems without being distracted by other considerations. Continue reading...

A 70-year reign is being hailed in 60-second video clips to mark the Queen’s platinum jubilee – winning over hundreds of thousands of followersCharlie Richardson, 19, known on TikTok as notaroyalexpert, has been working tirelessly over the past few weeks to update his online audience on the Queen’s recent appearances, as well as dispelling rumours that she has died and is now a CGI hologram.His recent edits include footage of the Duchess of Cambridge and other royals shaking hands at a Buckingham Palace garden party to the soundtrack of Lizzo’s dancefloor anthem About Damn Time. Another shows an avatar of the Queen spinning round to Abba’s Dancing Queen. Naturally, he is already planning what to upload on the momentous day of Her Majesty’s platinum jubilee. Continue reading...

The photographer and Instagrammer looks back at the day under Manhattan Bridge when a hobby became a callingIt was a moody January morning in Brooklyn, New York, when Monaris, whose real name is Paola Franqui, headed to a local pier to meet a group of strangers. The 100 or so she found there were fellow Instagram aficionados, armed with iPhones and a sense of camaraderie and possibility. It was 2014 and the social media platform was booming. “I was working nine to five for a Taiwanese logistics company at the time,” she says, “but photography was my passion. After that day, I started taking it more seriously; three years later, I was saying no to so many opportunities that I quit my job and went full-time.”Looking back, Monaris feels lucky to have started out when she did. “It’s harder to build your brand now, because there are so many of us.” Continue reading...

Billionaire says report is ‘utterly untrue’ after allegation he paid $250k in 2018 to settle claimElon Musk has denied claims in a news report that he sexually harassed a flight attendant on a private jet in 2016, calling the accusations “utterly untrue”.SpaceX, the rocket company founded by Musk, paid the female attendant $250,000 (£200,000) in a severance settlement after a sexual misconduct claim against the world’s richest person, according to the news website Business Insider. Continue reading...

‘Hashing’ would allow copies of videos to be removed from social media – but tech companies can’t be bothered to make it workIn the aftermath of yet another racially motivated shooting that was live-streamed on social media, tech companies are facing fresh questions about their ability to effectively moderate their platforms.Payton Gendron, the 18-year-old gunman who killed 10 people in a largely Black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York, on Saturday, broadcasted his violent rampage on the video-game streaming service Twitch. Twitch says it took down the video stream in mere minutes, but it was still enough time for people to create edited copies of the video and share it on other platforms including Streamable, Facebook and Twitter. Continue reading...

PC, Nintendo Switch (version tested), iPhone/iPad; Broken Rules

In this week’s newsletter: The Gossip Girl and You heartthrob explores adolescent angst through listener-submitted stories in Podcrushed. Plus: five essential celebrity podcast interviews

Enormous energy consumption has barely reduced despite $1tn being wiped off the sectorThe crypto crash will not reduce the sector’s climate impact any time soon, an economist has warned, even though the environmental footprint of digital currencies is in theory set by their market value.“Unless bitcoin collapses further, there’s no reason to expect a decrease in environmental impact,” said Alex de Vries, a data scientist at the Dutch central bank and the founder of Digiconomist, which tracks the sustainability of cryptocurrency projects. Continue reading...

The company’s stab at the biometrics market has raised debate about data storage and trackingMastercard is rolling out a controversial programme that will allow shoppers to pay at the till with a mere smile or wave of the hand, as it tries to secure a slice of the $18bn (£14.4bn) biometrics market.While face recognition technology has long raised eyebrows among civil rights groups, the payments giant said it was pushing ahead with a biometric checkout programme it claimed would speed up payments, cut queues and provide more security than a standard credit or debit card. Continue reading...

In this week’s newsletter: Predictably, this breakup of a thirty-year deal isn’t about fans at all - it’s just about money

Tesla CEO speaks at Miami summit while his relationship with Twitter management sinks to new lowElon Musk has suggested that he could seek to pay a lower price for Twitter, as the social media company’s would-be owner expressed further concerns about the presence of fake accounts on the platform.The Tesla CEO said reducing his agreed $54.20 per share offer wouldn’t be “out of the question”, days after putting the $44bn ($36bn) deal “on hold” after he queried the number of spam accounts on Twitter. Continue reading...

After the crash of the ‘stablecoin’ sparked panic, could the fall of the wider crypto market lead to a more permanent economic crunch?

Figures suggest company has paid out more than total cash on hand, as terra backers prepare relaunchDigital investors have withdrawn savings in the “stablecoin” tether worth $7.6bn (£6.2bn) since the cryptocurrency crisis began last week, suggesting the company has paid out a sum almost twice its total cash holdings to spooked depositors.Stablecoins are supposed to have a fixed value matched to a real-world asset, in most cases $1 a token. However, faith in the concept was rocked last Tuesday when another big player, terra, broke its peg to the dollar. That has fuelled a wider sell-off across the crypto sector, which relies on stablecoins for much of its financial engineering. Continue reading...

In the increasingly lifelike worlds of VR, users are experiencing hate speech and sexual harassment. How should these lawless spaces be governed?Psychotherapist Nina Jane Patel had been on Facebook’s Horizon Venues for less than a minute when her avatar was mobbed by a group of males. The attackers proceeded to “virtually gang-rape” her character, snapping in-game pictures as mementos. Patel froze in shock before desperately trying to free her virtual self – whom she had styled to resemble her real-life blond hair, freckles and business casual attire.“Don’t pretend you didn’t love it,” the human voices of the attackers jeered through her headset as she ran away, “go rub yourself off to the photo.” Continue reading...

In Twitter Data Dash, players take control of a blue puppy who eats bones that inform him of site regulationsOn Friday, Elon Musk announced he was pausing his $45bn purchase of Twitter because he had only just discovered some of the accounts on the site were fake.But that’s not the strangest thing that has happened to the beleaguered social media platform this week. Because on Tuesday the current top brass, perhaps trying to demonstrate their vision for the site, released a Super Nintendo-style browser game that recaps Twitter’s private policy. Continue reading...

The artist on creating a tableau with a toy and some cheap plastic plantsArtist John Adams worked with assemblage boxes for years – eccentric cabinets of curios in the tradition of Joseph Cornell – before moving on to larger dioramas. An ex-teacher, Adams wanted to think bigger. In his studio, he sets up a group of objects on a table, like a still life.“I have a board at the back, which I can paint or drape material over,” he says. “For this piece, I added a box with a hole punched through, and put this doll in. He’s only 12 inches tall. I think I found him at a car boot sale, or a toy shop. After that, I decided to make a garden: they’re mostly cheap plastic plants from Aldi.” Continue reading...

Tesla owner says $44bn deal has been paused until he gets more information about fake accountsElon Musk has said his $44bn (£36bn) takeover of Twitter is “temporarily on hold” in a tweet that rocked the company’s share price and cast doubt on whether the deal will happen.The Tesla chief tweeted on Friday morning that the deal was being frozen while he awaited details supporting Twitter’s assertion that fewer than 5% of its users were spam or fake accounts. In a subsequent tweet, Musk said he was “still committed to acquisition”, amid speculation that the world’s richest man was about to walk away from the deal or seek a lower price. Continue reading...

The self-styled expert was quick to criticize Black women in the relationship sphere – and sympathy over his death was in short supplyAs a source of dating advice, Kevin Samuels would seem a last resort for America’s Black women. On his YouTube show and podcasts, Samuels criticized Black women for being old and out of shape, and for having children out of wedlock. He sneered at “modern women” who flaunted their multiple college degrees and boasted of their independence. He dropped these bombs in the softest voice, in a tailored suit, and bathed in mood lighting with a funky kinetic energy sculpture on his desk.Yet many women not only tuned in to Samuels in droves, they cued up to Zoom into his show – some in hopes of putting the self-made image consultant turned relationship expert in his place. When Samuels suddenly died last Thursday in Atlanta at 57, as his star was still rising (the Fulton county medical examiners office has not yet revealed a cause of death), his many detractors reacted like Munchkins at the feet of the Wicked Witch of the East. The overwhelming lack of sympathy for Samuels – whose mother reportedly found out about his death as speculation raged online – comes down to his profiting from dismissing single Black women over 35 as “leftovers” whose unrealistic desire for “high-value men” would doom them to a lonely death. Continue reading...

News comes as Elon Musk, world’s richest man, is working to close a $44bn deal to acquire social media companyTwitter announced the departure of two top leaders in a major shakeup that comes as billionaire Elon Musk is working to close a $44bn deal to acquire the company.In an email to employees on Thursday, chief executive Parag Agrawal said Twitter’s leaders for consumer product and revenue will leave the company. Agrawal said the company was temporarily pausing hiring, and would review all existing job offers to determine whether any “should be pulled back”. Continue reading...

Tesla’s massive Shanghai ‘Giga-factory’ pushes its workers to the limit to meet production targets amid an ongoing pandemic lockdownHow do you become the richest man in the world? In Elon Musk’s case, part of it involves making workers in China put in hours that would be unacceptable according to labor norms elsewhere.On Tuesday, the Tesla boss praised Chinese factory workers for pulling extreme hours while taking a shot at American workers. “There is just a lot of super talented hardworking people in China who strongly believe in manufacturing,” the billionaire said. “They won’t just be burning the midnight oil, they will be burning the 3am oil, they won’t even leave the factory type of thing, whereas in America people are trying to avoid going to work at all.” Continue reading...

The near-total crash of terra has fuelled real panic that the crypto sector may face existential problemsShockwaves swept through cryptocurrency markets on Thursday as tether, the largest “stablecoin” and a foundational part of the digital asset ecosystem, broke its peg to the dollar in the latest blow to the struggling sector.Bitcoin and ethereum, the two biggest cryptocurrencies, shed 5% and 12% respectively, extending losses that have seen both fall more than 20% over the past week. Losses have been even bigger for the smaller players, with dogecoin falling 10% on Thursday and 35% over the week. Continue reading...

Own-brand voice recognition update can replace Google or Alexa for faster, more private music commandsSonos, the wireless home-audio specialist, is launching a lower-cost model of its popular TV soundbars alongside its own new voice control system for its smart speakers after its public bust-up with Google.The new Ray soundbar is a more compact version of Sonos’s popular Arc and Beam models, designed to fit neatly in TV stands without affecting sound quality. It connects to a TV through an optical cable, has wifi for streaming music and can be controlled with the Sonos app or a TV remote. Continue reading...

Tesla’s CEO had tweeted that the company had secured financing from Saudi Arabia and would be taken privateA US judge has determined that Elon Musk’s 2018 tweets that funding had been secured to take electric car maker Tesla private was inaccurate and reckless, saying “there was nothing concrete” about financing from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund at that time.San Francisco-based US district judge Edward Chen’s pre-trial decision represented a major victory for investors in a lawsuit accusing the world’s richest person of inflating stock prices by making false and misleading statements, causing billions of dollars in damages. Continue reading...

Rights groups fear Twitter buyer could open door to conspiracy theorists and contravene UK online safety billElon Musk’s promise to reverse a Twitter ban on Donald Trump if he completes his takeover of the social media platform has prompted warnings that it will provoke a backlash among users and could clash with new internet safety laws.The Tesla CEO and world’s richest man is in the process of buying Twitter for $44bn (£35.6bn) and has described himself as a “free speech absolutist” with doubts about imposing permanent bans on Twitter accounts such as Trump’s, which was suspended after the Capitol riot last January. Experts also warned that Trump’s return could lead to breaches of proposed rules governing digital content in the UK and EU. Continue reading...

Xbox Series S/X, PlayStation 4/5, PC; Flying Wild Hog/ Devolver Digital

In this week’s newsletter: safer than two-factor authentication and easier than remembering dozens of codes, the ‘Fido’ system will make our digital lives smoother

Apple is discontinuing its MP3 player, bringing an end to device that transformed how we listen to musicApple has discontinued the iPod more than 20 years after it was launched.The most recent iteration of the music player, the iPod Touch, has not been updated since 2019, and many of its features are now available on other products. Continue reading...

Spain’s Pegasus spyware revelations have come to a head with the sacking of the country’s spy chiefTwo years after a joint investigation by the Guardian and El País revealed the apparent use of Pegasus spyware to target senior pro-independence Catalan politicians, the Spanish government finds itself beset by internal and external cyber-espionage scandals that have led to the sacking of the country’s intelligence chief. Continue reading...

Quick delivery became a pandemic lifeline for many – but is the endless cycle of cardboard putting an undue strain on the planet, our infrastructure and workers?The pandemic turned the US into a next-day delivery nation. Amazon, in particular, saw sales surge during the dark days of Covid. In the first three months of 2021, the company watched its total sales tick up by 44%, constituting $8.1bn in profit. Those sales were led by the 200 million subscribers to Amazon’s super-fast delivery service Prime as people demanded everything from desk chairs to bananas delivered the next day.Amazon sold 44% more items during the pandemic, but the cost of fulfilling those orders increased by only 31%. This saving was one of scale – high-order volume allowed Amazon to operate even more efficiently. “It has run its warehouses closer to full capacity, and delivery drivers have made more stops on their routes, with less time driving between customers,” reported the New York Times. Continue reading...

In this week’s newsletter: When the New York Times removed the word ‘fetus’ from the game out of fear of making a political statement, they did just that

Petition alleges local workers subjected to irregular pay and inadequate mental health supportA former Facebook moderator has filed a lawsuit against its owner, Meta Platforms, alleging poor working conditions for contracted content moderators violate the Kenyan constitution.The petition, also filed against Meta’s local outsourcing company Sama, alleges that workers moderating Facebook posts in Kenya have been subjected to unreasonable working conditions including irregular pay, inadequate mental health support, union-busting, and violations of their privacy and dignity. Continue reading...

Russian operatives trying to escalate online conflict and seeking targets in countries opposing war, says Jeremy Fleming

‘Significant chance’ of lowered offer owing to slump in tech stocks and social media firm’s weak performanceA US firm known for betting against companies’ share prices has said Elon Musk could submit a lower bid for Twitter, owing to a slump in tech stocks and a weak financial performance at the social media platform.Hindenburg Research said there was a “significant chance” that the Tesla chief executive will seek to pay less than the agreed bid price of $54.20 (£43.90) a share, which values Twitter at $44bn and has been accepted by the company’s board. Continue reading...

I know it’s the height of toxic capitalism, but you get free stuff and money – so what’s not to like? Maybe the fact it’s really difficultFor the past two years, I have been trying really hard to become an #influencer. I just wanted to #influence people to live their best lives, to find their inner strength and – OK, I wanted free stuff. If you can’t beat it, join it. Capitalism, that is.Since I have 100,000 followers on Instagram who listen to what I say, to whom I often recommend my favourite products and services, why not double-check if the brands want to pay me to do so? I would rather they pay me than someone who isn’t me. What I am saying is: I wanted to do the very easy job of #influencing and get lots of money for it. Continue reading...

Republicans are mulling retaliation against firms providing benefits such as travel assistance for employees seeking abortionAfter a supreme court decision that overturns Roe v Wade was leaked and signaled the impending end of federal constitutional protection for abortions, a trickle of companies have slowly started to announce policies that provide abortion access for their employees. But while the protections may keep employees and consumers happy, the threat of retaliation from conservative lawmakers looms.Citigroup, one of the biggest banks in the US, quietly started covering the travel expenses of employees who want to get an abortion but are banned from getting one in their home state. Continue reading...

Unlike in 2010 and 2013 when the NBN rollout was a hot topic, it is yet to hit the headlines this election, but it remains front of mind for some

Don’t dismiss soil: its unknowable wonders could ensure the survival of our speciesBeneath our feet is an ecosystem so astonishing that it tests the limits of our imagination. It’s as diverse as a rainforest or a coral reef. We depend on it for 99% of our food, yet we scarcely know it. Soil.Under one square metre of undisturbed ground in the Earth’s mid-latitudes (which include the UK) there might live several hundred thousand small animals. Roughly 90% of the species to which they belong have yet to be named. One gram of this soil – less than a teaspoonful – contains around a kilometre of fungal filaments. Continue reading...