— 6 min read — Reading the recent stories about the UK government wanting to invest to create UK tech champions reminds me of a conversation with a BT (British Telecom) executive some years back. This person had been with BT for many years and seen how they had not been able to capitalise on…
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— 12 min read — The heated debate going on in the US about postal voting prompts me to reflect more widely on voting mechanisms and the use of technology. This is not strictly speaking about the regulation of tech so much as about how tech can be used in a political context, which I…
Leave a Comment— 10 min read — I shared some thoughts about how a UK misinformation regulator might work last week and received some useful feedback from people who think a lot about these things. This has prompted me to take a step back and explain in this post why I proposed this kind of body by…
Leave a Comment— 3 min read — People sitting inside President Trump’s campaign right now must be laughing. If they produce something outrageous and push this out through their social media channels, then they seem always to be able to “win”. On a normal day, the content goes out to the audience of supporters they have built…
1 Comment— 18 min read — Summary :- I put questions about the regulation of online political ads into a framework of general election regulation. I urge caution in terms of unilateral moves by any party. I suggest how progress can be made but only through broad consultation and deliberation.
Leave a Comment— 5 min read — I will be writing more about whether internet platforms should be treated as ‘publishers’ of the content they carry. Before I do that, I want first to address some phrases that are thrown around which sound appealing but become more complex under closer examination. We often hear people say they want…
Leave a Comment— 8 min read — There is much excitement today about the US President threatening to move against social media companies after Twitter attached a factcheck to two of his tweets. This includes a review of a piece of US law called ‘Section 230’ with the implied threat that this review may lead to this…
1 Comment— 19 min read — Summary :- I describe some of the ways that governments are using regulation to control political speech including misinformation. I frame this as being within a broader context of attitudes to sedition and talk about the exceptional situation in the US.
Leave a Comment— 5 min read — Policy makers are undergoing a crash course in technology – learning to ‘speak Geek’. This is going to have a significant, and positive, impact on discussions about internet regulation.
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