What would happen if central banks started to issue digital currency directly? An idea that China and other countries are currently exploring. The impetus for more radical change is coming from China, whose central bank […]

The Chinese Communist Party is reminding internet billionaires who is boss. Kendra Schaefer of Trivium, a consultancy in Beijing, has written that the publication of these new algorithm regulations marks the moment when Chinese tech […]

The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday reported Silicon Valley’s worst-kept secret: Instagram harms teens’ mental health; in fact, its impact is so negative that it introduces suicidal thoughts. Thirty-two percent of teen girls who feel […]

Time and again, documents show, Facebook’s researchers have identified the platform’s ill effects. Time and again, despite congressional hearings, its own pledges and numerous media exposés, the company didn’t fix them. Facebook made a heralded […]

Chinese regulators barred tutoring companies from making profits, as Beijing turns its focus to the growing financial burden that students — and their parents — face. Some of China’s biggest publicly listed education companies lost […]

A fight for ideological control and concerns about social pressures underpin effort. Since news of drastic new restrictions on tutoring companies leaked on Friday — and were confirmed at the weekend — the share prices […]

In a decade or so China will, if the Communist Party has its way, become a techno-utopia with Chinese characteristics, replete with “deep tech” such as cloud-computing, AI, self-driving cars and home-made cutting-edge chips. Incumbent […]

China has passed a new privacy law aimed at protecting users’ personal data, state media reported. The new law comes as Chinese tech firms have come under renewed scrutiny in the country, and sets rules […]

Conspiracy theories do not inculcate powerlessness, so much as they are the signs and symptoms of powerlessness itself. In my work for the United States National Security Agency, I was involved with establishing a Top-Secret […]

The Five Star Movement’s row with its voting platform bodes ill for the future of online politics. The Five Star Movement (5SM), wanted to upend Italian politics with its revolutionary plans for digital direct democracy. […]

With Lina Khan as chair, the FTC may have an anti-monopoly majority for the first Time in a generation. And Wall Street is nervous. What is fascinating about the nomination and confirmation of Khan is […]

Telegram isn’t just a WhatsApp with different roots. The service touts itself as a platform that is beyond the reach of states and authorities. This attracts conspiracy theorists, like Germany’s “Querdenker” movement, right-wing extremists, drug […]

This new legislation would be a significant step toward loosening tech’s power. House lawmakers on Friday unveiled five bills designed to rein in big tech companies and loosen their hold on digital industries. The legislation […]

The scientist who co-discovered Crispr does not appear to be weighed down by the burden of her creation: the revolutionary gene-editing technology that promises to empower humans to control our own genome. Crispr is now […]

Demis Hassabis is an unusual figure for Dominic Cummings to have turned to for guidance in March 2020 about the threat of the novel coronavirus bearing down on the UK. “Demis was one of several […]

The FBI attributed the massive Colonial Pipeline breach to ransomware created by a relatively new gang called DarkSide. In its own statement, the DarkSide group hinted that an affiliate may have been behind the attack […]

President Biden says he wants every American to have access to high-speed internet through his $100 billion broadband plan. But industry heavyweights worry his initiatives will leave them out of critical federal funding. President Joe […]

Facebook says its system will be able to adapt to the individual behaviours of its users by using machine learning to predict their likes, dislikes and other interests, in real time. ProPrivacy digital expert Ray […]

In Russia, Cosmism now serves as the basis for a syncretic ideology entitled “technocratic traditionalism” which combines technological modernity with religious conservatism. At the end of the 19th century, the Russian thinker Nikolai Fyodorov (1829-1903) […]

What is it about Trump that has seen him at once, and by the same people, so widely reviled as the president, yet so celebrated as a poster? It is still possible to appreciate, on […]

The shift in attitude also speaks to a growing wealth gap and diminished opportunities for the young. A growing number of people in China seem to feel the opportunities that people like Mr. Ma enjoyed […]

Andrew Yang’s nonprofit, Humanity Forward, has spoken to the incoming administration of Joe Biden about recurring checks for Americans. “I don’t want to give away too many details, but we have discussed with them our […]

The U.S. regularly hacks foreign governmental computer systems on a massive scale. The lack of self-awareness in the reactions to the Russia breach is astounding. The U.S. government has no principled basis to complain about […]

Governments around the world have had to scale up digital services in response to COVID-19, whilst also grappling macro-political challenges. It has undoubtedly been one of the most challenging years in recent history for governments […]

Open source licensing could help build sustainable vaccine manufacturing capacity within low – and middle-income countries. Schweik has studied open source software that comes with an associated copyright license that promotes free and broad sharing. […]

What Mark Zuckerberg did at Facebook is engage in systemic criminal behavior, and he was able to do so because law enforcers refused to enforce the law against the powerful. That era is over. Yesterday, […]

A small group of large platform companies have become the robber barons and rentier giants of our age. Their main focus has become the collection of rent while fending off potential competitors and swatting away […]

Why would we want to live in a world split between smug winners and humiliated losers? When the British sociologist Michael Young coined the word “meritocracy” in 1958, he meant it as criticism. His satirical […]

The U.S. – Danish scandal is an example of how the United States has abused its intelligence sharing agreements with other countries, in order to undermine that country itself for commercial gain. This week Denmark’s […]

Fifteen Asia-Pacific countries on Sunday signed the world’s biggest free trade deal, seen as a huge coup for China in extending its influence. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) includes 10 Southeast Asian economies along […]