The Latest Articles by John Naughton

What are tech billionaires’ text messages like? Just as petty as ours, it turns out

Texts released in the legal wrangle between Elon Musk and Twitter are ‘astoundingly unastounding’ – apart from the sycophancy

The Guardian - UK · Oct 15, 2022

Tech firms say laws to protect us from bad AI will limit ‘innovation’. Well, good

For too long, the industry has escaped legal liability in the pursuit of its own interests – and the EU has had enough

The Guardian - UK · Oct 8, 2022

Molly Russell was trapped by the cruel algorithms of Pinterest and Instagram

The coroner’s verdict was a world first in citing social media as a causal factor in a death

The Guardian - UK · Oct 1, 2022

Google’s image-scanning illustrates how tech firms can penalise the innocent

New technology helps to track child abuse images, but in the case of false positives, companies don’t always rescind suspensions

The Guardian - UK · Sep 3, 2022

Twitter’s whistleblower has pitched up at a very inconvenient moment

A long and detailed complaint about lax practices by the social media firm’s former security chief must be music to Elon Musk’s ears

The Guardian - UK · Aug 27, 2022

We can make our phones harder to hack but complete security is a pipe dream

Even the latest iPhone scare won’t persuade us to choose safety over convenience

The Guardian - UK · Aug 21, 2022

AI-generated art illustrates another problem with technology

Artificial intelligence is being used to design magazine covers and provide pictures for internet newsletters. What could possibly go wrong?

The Guardian - UK · Aug 20, 2022

Exclusive or not, this is one Clubhouse I was happy to leave

The titular ‘social audio’ app was a would-be $1bn unicorn in the pandemic, but its recent decline has exposed it as just another Silicon Valley solution in need of a problem to solve

The Guardian - UK · Aug 13, 2022

Have the tech giants finally had their bubble burst? I’d hate to speculate

For the first time in the tech industry’s history, combined real revenue growth is negative rather than positive and some corporations may yet be facing an existential decline

The Guardian - UK · Aug 6, 2022

Like Bill Gates before him, Mark Zuckerberg is having a ‘Pearl Harbour’ moment

His company’s motto is ‘move fast and break things’ – but if it doesn’t move fast it’ll soon be broke

The Guardian - UK · Jul 30, 2022