The US government regulates many industries, but social media companies don’t neatly fit existing regulatory templates. Systems that deliver energy may be the closest analog.
There was once a time when you could simply put old photos and love letters out of sight and out of mind. Editing your ex out of your digital life is a lot trickier.
The app best known for kids sharing video clips of themselves singing and dancing has become a powerful tool for activists speaking out against repression in Iran.
TikTok is shaping the music industry like never before, but with rumours that the app may soon launch its own streaming service, the stakes for creative freedom are high.
Most young people regard reining in the big social media platforms as only part of the solution to the ‘relentless stream’ of abuse and shaming they experience online
Many digital services currently hosted on social media platforms are critical to democracy. Governments must build alternative infrastructures that allow citizens to control their own data.
Black Twitter has played a significant role in shaping the platform. In the wake of Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover, questions are being asked over the community’s future.
Radical change at Twitter shows how quickly strategies and values can shift in Big Tech. New Zealand needs to be less reliant on overseas solutions for its own digital infrastructure plans.
Over the past 16 years, Twitter has amassed an incredible amount of user-generated data which contains a detailed and extensive record of cultural moments. Musk’s takeover threatens these archives.
If Twitter were to go dark, with it would go a valuable source of data as well as a means of sharing information relied on by activists, journalists, public health officials and scientists.