3) Find more creative ways of getting the story out. Not everyone reads @guardian. And v few people really understand how implicated Boris Johnson is in the #RussianReport
Last week, the new owners of the Observer wrote to tell me they would *not* be issuing me with a new contract.
So...I want to say publicly that it was an absolute privilege to speak on behalf of my Observer colleagues during our strike. I don't regret doing so. And I learned so much from it.
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It means my 20 years at the Guardian & Observer is drawing to a close 😢. For most of that time, it's been the journalistic job of my dreams. I worked with the best editors, photographers & designers & got to do stories that wouldn't have been possible anywhere else. I know how lucky I've been.
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And I'm lucky too, in a way, that this is happening as the world convulses. My beat has been trying to understand the information revolution, it's the crisis beneath the crisis...& now I'm throwing myself into its swirling eddies just as the wave hits the shore.
This is what should be on every front page right now. What's happening in the US right now is an illegal power grab by a private citizen.
IT'S A COUP.
It's a digital coup. It's Musk who's leading it. The consequences are terrifying. And it's coming for us next. 1/
Please read this. I'm far from alone in saying it. The great
@TimothyDSnyder, @RBReich, @ruthbenghiat have all been shouting it.
There's superb reporting happening into every aspect of what's happening. But there's no framing. It's all facts, no story. broligarchy.substack.com/p/it-is-a-coup
This is a digital coup. A data coup. What Musk's cyber troops - mercenaries - have done is take control of the federal government's operating systems. They've downloaded or scraped vast quantities of data. It's a hack on an unprecedented scale. 3/
Britain: we have to understand wtf we’ve done. We’ve allowed one of Trump’s closest allies have access to our entire NHS data systems. This is the CEO of Palantir telling shareholders that ‘when it’s necessary to scare enemies & on occasion kill them’
There is much more I want to say on this but if you’re in the US right now, you need to understand that Silicon Valley is your creepy ex boyfriend. Who’s now conspiring with Donald Trump. They have your data & it can & will be weaponized against you.
Understand: the first use case of all technology is always against woman. A predator(s) used technology to surveille, harass & intimidate Hannah. And this is now what’s coming for journalists, activists, civil servants, lawyers & many more in the USA now.
The technology we use in every day life is powered by what @shoshanazuboff christened ‘surveillance capitalism’. But now we are heading into‘surveillance authoritarianism’. We are already in a coercively controlling relationship with these platforms
NEW: Hannah is my ex-step daughter. And when I was in middle of my Cambridge Analytica investigation, she had a stalker. Stalkers. A whole cast of characters making her life hell. In 2021, I approached the BBC: could we try & nail the perpetrator(s)? 1/
This was Han during those years. You would never know how much she was hiding from the world. Every day brought a new wave of abuse & threats that she dealt with alone. She finally opened up & told me the whole story in the dark winter lockdown of 2021. 2/
It was wildly confusing. But it was also clear where this could end. A young woman from Hannah’s school, with whom she shared a group of friends, was murdered by her stalker. And there was a common thread: the police hadn’t taken the action required 3/
This is president of @Google - a company accused of illegally harvesting copyrighted work - saying journalists need to learn to use AI or ‘risk missing out’.
He’s just been appointed to the board of @guardian. I hope every journalist in the org watches this & asks: why?
This is a headline in @pressgazette today. This is a rapacious company whose business practices have done more to undermine journalism than almost any other yet he has been appointed to Guardian board while *still actually working for Google*. The conflict of interest is off the charts