Oscar Williams
New Statesman
United Kingdom
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Past articles by Oscar:
“It could’ve been a great story for UK plc”: Justin Basini on Clearscore’s failed sale to Experian
The Clearscore founder reflects on an acquisition that unravelled, the state of household finances and the CMA's renewed focus on digital markets. → Read More
Elon Musk’s texts reveal his plan for Twitter
The Tesla CEO and billionaire’s promise to launch an “everything app” is untethered from reality. → Read More
The dangerous approach of SoftBank's Masayoshi Son
The Japanese-Korean billionaire warped the meaning of value in an industry that is reshaping the world. → Read More
Can the EU's new crypto regulation, the 'MiCA' Act, tame a lawless market?
The Mica act will hold providers liable if they lose investors’ money and force them to keep reserves. → Read More
Is this the start of Facebook's demise?-
Following Sheryl Sandberg's departure, how long does the company have left? → Read More
NCSC's Paul Maddinson: Businesses should be prepared for Russian escalation
The risk of Kremlin-sanctioned cyber attacks remains low, but cannot be ignored, says the British security official. → Read More
The European Chips Act: why Ursula von der Leyen is embracing silicon nationalism
The European Commission president has outlined plans to make the EU less dependent on Asian semiconductor producers. → Read More
The European Chips Act: why Ursula von der Leyen is embracing silicon nationalism
The European Commission president has outlined plans to make the EU less dependent on Asian semiconductor producers. → Read More
NYU's researchers are the latest victims of Big Tech's war on scrutiny
Facebook has disabled the accounts of New York University (NYU) researchers who had been investigating political advertising on the platform – in the latest effort by the Silicon Valley firm to crack down on independent scrutiny. Facebook said on 3 August that it had cut off the researchers because they had failed to comply with policies designed to protect user privacy. The → Read More
Helle Thorning-Schmidt: “Social media has benefited the global conversation”
In September 2019, the former Danish prime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt flew to California to visit Facebook’s global headquarters in Menlo Park. The embattled social media giant’s executives were drawing up plans for a new committee to review their most contentious content-moderation decisions, and they wanted Thorning-Schmidt to help lead it. The creation of the Oversight → Read More
Internet outage: what caused gov.uk, Amazon and many other websites to go offline?
Dozens of the world’s largest websites were knocked offline on Tuesday (8 June) as the cloud hosting provider Fastly suffered a disruptive outage – pointing to a wider problem with internet infrastructure. The outage, which began at around 10.45 BST, affected the websites of the BBC, the UK government, Amazon, Reddit, the New York Times and many more of the world’s most → Read More
How worried should we be about Priti Patel's plans for biometric border checks?
The Home Office has unveiled its latest plan to "radically transform" the operation of Britain's border and immigration system. In a policy paper published on 24 May, the department revealed it intends to "significantly increase the use of automation" to create a fully digital border by 2026. This marks the third such scheme the Home Office has attempted to roll out in the → Read More
Facebook's Oversight Board refuses to give the company an easy answer on banning Trump
The company's Oversight Board has called on Facebook executives to decide for themselves whether to permanently ban the former president from the platform. → Read More
A new lawsuit against TikTok continues the backlash against Big Tech’s plans for children
The hugely popular social network is one of several tech firms facing legal scrutiny for monetising children's internet usage. → Read More
Why is the UK offering under-30s an alternative to the AstraZeneca vaccine?
Ministers have said that the vaccine is safe at all ages and that the decision was driven by "an abundance of caution". → Read More
Has the UK’s botched broadband roll-out really hit plans for BBC reform?
Telecoms experts are sceptical of MPs’ claims that the government’s delayed plan for gigabit internet is the biggest barrier to making the BBC online-only. → Read More
Are Apple and Google weaponising privacy?
The US tech giants stand accused of co-opting EU legislation to reinforce their market power. → Read More
The Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp outage exposes the perils of monopoly power
The outage provides a stark reminder of the risks of handing control of so much of our digital infrastructure to one company. → Read More
The Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp outage exposes the perils of monopoly power
The outage provides a stark reminder of the risks of handing control of so much of our digital infrastructure to one company. → Read More
Why Dominic Cummings fears the £800m research agency he championed will fail
New legislation supporting the launch of the Aria research agency has sparked tensions over the balance between independence and accountability. → Read More