There are two things that I love a whole lot. One is speculative fiction. The other is a really good wargaming exercise. In fact, I’d hold that both are essential to any career in policy that isn’t just mealy-mouthed corporate lobbying.
Which is why this cruel but brilliant speculative policy exercise, put forth in this week’s newsletter from Tech Policy Press, made my heart sing and scream in anguish at the same time:
Konstantinos Komaitis has turned some musings which he chose to edit out of his upcoming book into an essay series, which is being serialised over on Techdirt:
The Metric Is Not the Mission is a ten-part examination of how Big Tech moved from building and expanding the open internet to increasingly shaping it around its own metrics, incentives and assumptions. Across the series, the argument follows the evolution of the platform economy—from the optimism of the early internet to the growing tensions around power, prediction, geopolitics, accountability and the future of digital life.
The series will be published in two parts each week over five weeks, with each installment building on the one before it. At the end of the series, the complete essay will be brought together in a single PDF edition, providing the full argument in one place.
It is really, really good, and you should take it in.
KK and I are both 1990s dialup telnet teenagers who remember the starting point of the open commercial internet from its first principles. I don’t say that to remind you how wheezingly old we are damn good we both look for our age; I say that because our shared origin point, as teenagers listening to the modem sing, is the bias we bring to our work in policy, for better or for worse.
I’ve written before about how disorienting it is to sometimes find myself in meetings with colleagues who are younger than some of my coats and jackets, whose origin points for their work in policy is the big tech-era Silicon Valley social media hellscape. What KK and I grew up with is incomprehensible to them, as are the first principles we advocate from.
It’s a small wonder any of us, fighting the same battles on the same side, find common ground at all. I think KK’s series might go some way into building that bridge.
KK gave me the first step up to where I am today, so imploring you, dear readers, to take in the full series is the least I can do in return.
May I recommend, for your viewing enjoyment, a very good German film called Babystar. It’s currently on limited release in independent/arthouse UK cinemas. (You should have an indie cinema in your life. You really should.)
“Cold winds blow around me and I can’t help but think of you.”
I always tend to go into a slightly dark place during this specific week of every year. This year I’m feeling something else too, and that is anger. Read More
Over at Techdirt, a post I wrote on this blog several months ago has inspired a post of its own:
Would The Next George Floyd Video Survive Meta’s New Teen Safety Rules?
I’m a very very very longtime reader of Techdirt and even went on the podcast several years ago in that regrettable formal professional capacity I worked in at the time. That of course was a long time ago. So with this new Techdirt post, normally I’d roll my eyes and giggle, but I’m going to go out of my usual character and say that this is a very nice thing, for this reason: Read More
Dearest readers, I want to call your attention to some outstanding investigative journalism by Martin Calladine.
Part 1: Unsuitable Viewing for a Minister
Part 2: Prophets without profits
He has dug through the accounts of the company behind the snake oil magical nudity detection software which is being mandated for all UK phones –
remember that? The one which prompted Jess Philips to resign from her Ministerial post because Keir Starmer wasn’t battering it straight through into law?
The software being sold by the company which previously cuddled up to that famous defender of young peoples’ virtues, the Nonce Formerly Known as Prince Andrew?
Yes, that company which started its rapacious lobbying journey by placing a scare story across the UK media claiming that precious British children under the age of 10 were using the names of Nando’s hot sauces as their secret texting code for explicit sexual acts?
Yes, them.
Martin has found some cold, hard, ugly, beautiful numbers showing how the whole company is smoke and mirrors.
Albeit smoke and mirrors personally invested in by…Rupert Lowe of the Restore party.
That’s the far right for you. Screaming about government intrusion into privacy and censorship of free expression out of one side of their mouths, whilst investing in it for fun and profit out of the other.
Oh, and they’ve lobbied The Actual Pope too, having randomly discovered Jesus, conveniently, during an industry investment conference deep in the heart of Christofascist America.
As you do.
Martin has receipts on that too. In fact, the harder you dig around this company, the more you find.
Amen to that.
🚨Exclusive🚨
Two ministers filmed a video for a child-protection software firm that lost £17m in three years, made just *£112* in the UK in 2024 and gets 90%+ of its income from overseas subsidiaries that haven’t cooperated with auditors for three years.
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theuglygame.wordpress.com/2026/07/15/p…— Martin Calladine (@uglygame.bsky.social) 15 July 2026 at 17:11
There was a remarkable video going around the Scottish socials yesterday which led to quite a bit of media coverage. It’s a four-minute long video showing some furious Scotrail passengers confronting a drunk middle-aged pervert who is quietly filming a group of quiet, sober 16- and 17-year old girls heading home from a night out. Read More
I had a natter with David Meyer about the past fortnight in UK tech policy drama.
We did this deliberately as a casual chat, as opposed to a techlaw deep dive, so don’t expect anything too heavy. (I had in fact planned to switch off my brain this summer like normal policy wonks do. So much for that…)
Scan your eyeballs, think of the children: how Britain sells surveillance as safety
I wrote for The Nerve about the past fortnight in UK tech policy.
I know a lot of people expected me to have a lot of things to say about what’s happened, but here’s the thing:
aside from that article, there is absolutely nothing to say that I didn’t already say here in this blog, in my fleeting and regrettable professional capacities, or in the media, in (checks notes)
2026, 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, and 2016.
Which is why I took that article right back to where it began, ten years ago next week. Everything always circles right back to where it began. And I do mean everything.
“Power absent ethics rests on an unshakable ability and desire to punish active resistance – to beat and arrest and try to ruin the lives of people who block freeways and set up encampments and confront lawmakers. But such power has no idea what to do against negative resistance, against someone who refuses to buy or attend or align, who simply says: I will not be part of this. Against the one who walks away.”
Omar El Akkad, from ‘One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This’
A quick one because it’s Sunday and I’d rather be thinking about Scotland winning the World Cup. This morning someone alerted me to completely predictable news about Yoti, the age verification provider which has quietly driven the shape of so much internet regulation in its commercial interests, whilst embedding itself so deeply into national, regional, and local government that you need to verify your identity through them just to request a replacement recycling bin from the council (as I’ve had to do).
It turns out that Yoti are now reporting GrapheneOS users who have PlayStation accounts to “authorities” merely for having the OS. I do not know where (as in what country) this incident happened, but it most definitely happened.
Last week I had the pleasure of attending a symposium at the University of Edinburgh on “Rewilding the Web: Diversity & Resilience in Sociotechnical Infrastructure”.