Tech
‘If these social media apps were an air fryer, they would have been recalled’: digital campaigner Beeban Kidron on Big Tech
The acclaimed film-maker and peer has made it her business to represent the rights of children and creators against Silicon Valley’s ‘giant compulsion machine’. She talks to Lucia Osborne-Crowley
Q&A
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Scan your eyeballs, think of the children: how Britain sells surveillance as safety
Keir Starmer's under-16 social media ban can only work if everyone proves who they are. It is the natural conclusion of the Online Safety Act – and of a Brexit that was always about control, says digital rights advocate Heather Burns
Tech
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At last, the fool’s bargain that the media struck with AI may be over
In a thunderous speech last week, the boss of the New York Times sounded a rallying call to news organisations to rise up against the theft of their work by Big Tech – and not before time, writes Branko Brkic
Tech
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‘Her silence was more powerful than words’: how I interviewed a Facebook whistleblower who wasn’t allowed to speak
The Nerve’s Carole Cadwalladr was all set to talk to Sarah Wynn-Williams, author of the explosive memoir Careless People, at the Hay festival when Meta’s lawyers intervened ... and turned the event into ‘absurdist theatre’
News
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‘What’s happening is horrifying’: the rebel film-maker challenging AI’s march into Hollywood
While pro-Silicon Valley documentaries got major distribution deals, Valerie Veatch had to struggle to get her film, about Big Tech’s dark past and future, into the world. She talked to Charlotte O’Sullivan about what some attendees called ‘the scariest movie playing at Sundance’
Tech
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Cory Doctorow: Hell is other people – so billionaires are using AI to replace them
The tech elite are pouring billions into dispensing with inconvenient humans. Now governments want the same trick to wish away the migrants their economies desperately need, writes the author and Nerve columnist
Tech
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‘They are weapons of war’: Gisèle Pelicot on the tech platforms that facilitate rape
The woman whose courage at trial transformed the debate around abuse talks to Lucia Osborne-Crowley about survival, reclaiming confidence – and shutting down the tools of sexual exploitation
News
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‘They can shape the outcomes they claim to forecast’ – could Polymarket influence an election?
A platform backed by Peter Thiel and advised by Donald Trump Jr. is taking anonymous crypto bets on UK elections, missile strikes and the death of world leaders. In Britain no regulator will touch it, writes Ian Tucker in this in-depth guide to so-called "prediction markets"
Tech
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New fears over spread of Palantir’s influence after ‘Big Brother’ Met police project extended
The programme, designed to expose officer misconduct, was due to expire last month. The Nerve has established that it was extended to today, May 15, with no indication what happens next. Officers fear they will be under long-term surveillance, while it’s also emerged the project could be rolled out to more staff. Report by Max Colbert and Lucia Osborne-Crowley
Palantir
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‘It’s like they were sharing tips on building a barbecue’: how the ‘rape academy’ teaching men to become Dominique Pelicot was exposed
CNN’s Niamh Kennedy was one of a team that made headlines when they uncovered a porn site specialising in abusing drugged women. She talked to Lucia Osborne-Crowley about the impact of her work – and the toll it can take
News
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Richard Dawkins’s chatbot isn’t conscious: it’s just all talk
The acclaimed scientist spent time with Anthropic’s ‘Claudia’ and couldn’t believe she wasn’t sentient. But Dawkins' own work has taught us that complexity can exist without a divine spark, writes neuroscientist Anil Seth
Tech
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Cory Doctorow: Comrade Trump is the unwitting hero of a green revolution
In the first of a new monthly column for the Nerve, the author and cyber-activist argues that by dumping cheap solar panels on Asia and starting a catastrophic war in the Gulf, the president has started a headlong rush for cleantech that no eco-activism could match
Tech
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Iran is winning the propaganda war against Trump – brick by brick
Tehran’s viral videos satirising a Lego-style president have harnessed the power of AI – and Maga’s debasing of political discourse – and turned it against the US, writes disinformation expert Nina Jankowicz
Tech
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Your pension, Palantir’s war machine
USS, the UK's largest private pension fund, has £45m invested in the AI company that, its CEO boasts, can bring ‘violence and death’ to America's enemies. University union leaders want change, reports Ian Tucker
Palantir
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Big Tech tried to get young people addicted. Now the reckoning has begun
Two seismic court decisions in the US have intervened where legislators have failed to defend social media users from exploitation, writes campaigner Zamaan Qureshi
Tech
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Will Google’s AI hype man kill the BBC?
Matt Brittin spent two decades at Google, a tech company helping to destroy journalism. His appointment as leader of Britain’s biggest news organisation represents an existential threat, writes Carole Cadwalladr
Tech
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Is Palantir in your pension? UK institutions have over £5bn invested in US tech corporation
Research reveals size of investment by UK organisations – including some of Britain’s biggest retirement providers – in Silicon Valley’s most controversial technology company. Carole Cadwalladr and Ian Tucker report
Palantir
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'Why should young people have to beat an algorithm?’ Molly Russell, Meta, and the fight against online harm
As a new documentary tells the story of the teenager, who took her own life in 2017, her father, her friends and the film’s director talk about the unchecked power and threat of social media
Tech
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The billionaires' eugenics project: how Epstein infiltrated Harvard, muzzled the humanities and preached master-race science
Edge - Jeffrey Epstein's favourite intellectual salon - was sold to me as a gathering of the world's finest minds, writes Virginia Heffernan. The files reveal it was something far darker: a decades-long project that cloaked eugenics, race science and sexual misconduct in Ivy League respectability
Tech
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