We Americans like to think of ourselves as a thoroughly modern people — living proof of what, with enough toil and grit, the rest of the free world can one day hope to be. And yet for all our progressivism …
Open Letter to Elon Musk
Dear Elon,
Congratulations on the acquisition of Twitter. We hope this will help put the world on track to be a better place.
You stated that “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy and Twitter is the digital …
How the elites lost the Twitter war
Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter is a litmus test of where you stand in the online ecosystem. To some, it means a dawn of “free speech” on a platform that has increasingly cracked down on unwanted views. To others, it …
Why Libs of TikTok terrifies the media
It’s an unmasking worthy of a demented superhero story: the exposure, after months of intrigue, of the elusive political operative known as Libs of TikTok. You may have missed this story — part secret identity drama, part media gatekeeping controversy, …
Do we need Caesar Elon Musk?
In 1515, Pope Leo X issued a papal bull stipulating that all published material translated from Hebrew, Greek, Arabic and Chaldaic into Latin, or from Latin into the vernacular, should be moderated by sensitivity readers. Without such precautions, the document …
No woman is safe on Twitter
When the journalist Leta Hong Fincher wrote about forced marriages in Xinjiang, she was bombarded with online abuse for weeks. Games designer Brianna Wu was driven from her home during an online campaign against sexism in her industry. The account …
You can’t police offence
In virtue of my heretically archaic views about biology and the importance of women’s rights, I’m the target of quite a lot of rude online behaviour. The other day, for instance, I learnt I was lucky I hadn’t been hanged …
How the Guardian enables Owen Jones
One of the greatest moments of my life was when I stood up to Susan Cuthbert. She ran our school playground and, yes, that is her actual name. (So sue me, Susan.) Every lunchtime, Susan assigned us a role to …
When libel laws are needed
“Andrew Doyle is an ultra-conservative anti-feminist homosexual who uses a drag persona on Twitter to attack trans and queer people… He wishes with all his heart that he was Julia Hartley-Brewer. Pathologically so.”
Only one assertion in this tweet is …
Does Prince Andrew deserve forgiveness?
The Queen must have known that choosing Prince Andrew to accompany her down the aisle at Westminster Abbey would bring her little but condemnation. “Still a sweaty nonce” was one such response on Twitter, charmingly expressing what many might nonetheless …
AOC is the new Trump
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez takes up space: on magazine covers, on cable news, and on social media, where her followers number in the millions across multiple platforms. Her Twitter account alone, with 12 million followers, is not just an order of magnitude …
Thread by Peter Castleden @peter_castleden March 16, 2022
Since it looks like the geniuses in the South African government seem to be entertaining the idea of forever masking, why don’t we go back to the initial MAC advisory (dated 9 April 2020) that gave us masks mandates in…
Thread by Nick Hudson @NickHudsonCT March 14, 2022
The story of PANDA’s first run-in with YouTube censorship is an interesting one.
In late 2020, our weekly Open Science meeting considered the spatial distribution of earth cases and deaths in the UK counties. We concluded that the data was …
You can’t cancel Putin
“We cannot just witness these atrocities and do nothing.” It’s a statement that resonates, the kind of thing you’d expect to hear from those we empower to keep the peace: Nato, the UN, our leaders. But this solemn vow to …
Ukraine is winning the online war
The internet is a chaotic place, but it is nonetheless ruled by a series of iron laws, especially when it comes to what we put on it. Perhaps the most important one is that whatever you post, try to make …