07 February 2024, The Tablet

From hippies to trolls – the birth of Big Tech


 

Jamie Bartlett’s fascinating – and deeply scary – eight-parter about the inexorable rise of Big Tech (5 February-25 March and BBC Sounds) begins on 6 January 2021 with the storming of Capitol Hill by a Trump-inflamed mob. As what was then known as Twitter bulged with messages demanding the execution of Vice President Mike Pence, Bartlett’s first two talking heads, the Twitter employees charged with invigilating the site, find themselves examining the inflammatory tweets beamed out by the Donald himself. After 140 of these had been taken down, his account was suspended.

 

 

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