Peter Bassett: The Greens Discover the Internet Is Mean

The Green Party has made a troubling discovery.

The internet, once a kindly meadow where progressive ideas fluttered freely from phone to phone, has become — according to its co-leaders — an outrage-generating machine.

This revelation comes via an end-of-year Newsroom chat in which Chlöe Swarbrick and Marama Davidson explain that their biggest fears are now found online. Not climate change. Not emissions. Not biodiversity loss. But nasty algorithms.

Mike's Minute: Paul Goldsmith cannot regulate the internet

Tell me how Broadcasting Minister Paul Goldsmith is going to sort the unsortable?

The Broadcasting Standards Authority has, deliberately or not, opened a box of whoopee that is playing out all over the world in various forms.

In simple terms regulators are trying to work out how to control tech.

Chris Trotter: Manufacturing The Truth

HISTORICAL PARALLELS between the impact of the printing press and the impact of the Internet are not new. Both inventions almost immediately began to undermine the command and control hierarchies of their respective societies. In the case of the printing press, the reimposition of elite control became the work of centuries. And, even then, the technology was constantly falling into the hands of rebels and revolutionaries. Judging by the amount of noise they are making, the elites of the twenty-first century are terrified that the social and cultural upheavals produced by the printing press are about to be replicated by the subversive communications made possible by the Internet.

Elijah Gullett: How the Supreme Court Could Break the Internet

Section 230 has been the key to our free and open Internet. Eliminating it now would be a deeply dangerous move.

Online free speech has been under fire from Congress, past presidents, and pundits from both sides of the political aisle. Now, it faces a new threat: the Supreme Court.

Karl du Fresne: The truly scary thing about Barraco Barner

Heard of Barraco Barner? Possibly not. But according to a 20-year-old English beautician, he’s the president of Britain and he really shouldn’t be getting involved in Ukraine’s problems. Here, starkly laid bare, is the one of the downsides of social media and the digital information revolution. Instant opinion, zero knowledge.

Gemma Worrall from Blackpool wrote on Twitter that it was “scary” that “our president Barraco Barner” was tangling with Russia. But the truly scary thing is that someone who thought that Britain had a president, and that his name was Barraco Barner, could so innocently display their rank ignorance for the world to see.