The misinformation engine

The misinformation engine

By Lizzie O’Shea and Mark Andrejevic It is now six months since Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code was passed into law, and it presents an opportunity to assess the impact of this controversial piece of legislation. The Code entrenches large tech companies...
Vaccine passports are catnip for Big Tech

Vaccine passports are catnip for Big Tech

Just over a year ago, international borders closed as part of the unprecedented emergency response to the pandemic. Governments began to experiment with technological solutions to managing the movement of people, specifically at borders, but also more broadly for the...
Searching the past for a new digital democracy

Searching the past for a new digital democracy

Ada Lovelace, the daughter of poet Lord Byron and collaborator with mechanical computer pioneer Charles Babbage, is credited with being the world’s first computer programmer. Lawyer and writer Lizzie O’Shea thinks Lovelace has lessons for us today about we deal with...
Australia’s flawed push to make Big Tech pay for news

Australia’s flawed push to make Big Tech pay for news

As published in Nikkei Asia on Friday, February 12, 2021. Lizzie O’Shea is a human rights lawyer. She is author of “Future Histories: What Ada Lovelace, Tom Paine, and the Paris Commune Can Teach Us about Digital Technology.” The experience of online...
Zuck’s New Scam

Zuck’s New Scam

The rhetoric at Facebook—the largest social media platform in the world—is changing. In 2010, Mark Zuckerberg claimed that privacy was no longer a “social norm.” Today, the same man is asserting that “the future is private.” This was the buzz phrase at the company’s...
What kind of a person does Netflix favourites think I am?

What kind of a person does Netflix favourites think I am?

I look at my algorithm-generated ‘Recommendations for Lizzie’, and I don’t like that person – or the control involved in the process Each time I scroll down to Netflix’s “Recommendations for Lizzie” feed, my heart sinks in shame. Like a house of black mirrors from a...
Large butts, big thighs: how weightlifting empowers women

Large butts, big thighs: how weightlifting empowers women

We’re always told to diet and tone – to take up less space, rather than more. Now I’m pumping iron and proud to be expanding I remember the first time I tried to pull a bar off the floor loaded with two big weights. Unease pooled in my stomach. My trainer was patient,...
Tech has become another way for men to oppress women

Tech has become another way for men to oppress women

We act as if technology were neutral but it’s not. The challenge now is to highlight and remove the gender bias “Most women in the Bay Area are soft and weak, cosseted and naive, despite their claims of worldliness, and generally full of shit,” wrote former...