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Once again, social-media companies are facing criticism as their platforms are used to racially abuse football players, following the dramatic conclusion of the Euro 2020 men’s tournament on Sunday night.

And make no mistake, it is becoming increasingly difficult for the technology giants to defend these incidents. How can they not be held more responsible for the content they share to millions?

In a nutshell, social-media platforms have not been regulated in the same way as traditional media such as the BBC, because they are not categorised as publishers or broadcasters.

If racist comments appeared below this article, written not by me but by someone who had read it, the BBC would be immediately accountable, as part of an arrangement with the regulator Ofcom.

But Ofcom does not yet have powers over the likes of Facebook, TikTok, YouTube and Twitter, which have until now been largely self-regulating – although, that is coming, as part of the long-anticipated Online Safety Bill.

Whether the threat of large fines is enough to focus the minds of these multi-million dollar businesses remains to be seen, however. But it is not just in the UK that regulation is planned.

In fairness, while the BBC does have a large global presence, it does not have to deal with anything like the volume of content and video, written and uploaded in real time by anybody and everybody, a platform such as Facebook, with its two billion users, does.

This sheer volume swamps the armies of human moderators employed by those platforms.

Some describe nightmare shifts sifting through the worst and most graphic content imaginable and then making decisions about what should be done with it.

So, the solution these companies are all pouring countless time and money into is automation.

Algorithms trained to seek out offensive material before it is published, the blanket banning of incendiary (and illegal) hashtags, the use of techniques such as “hashing”, which create a kind of digital fingerprint of a video, and then block any content bearing the same marker, are already in regular use.

But so far, automation remains a bit of a blunt instrument.

It is not yet sophisticated enough to understand nuance, context, different cultural norms, crafty edits – and there would be very little support for an anonymous algorithm, built by an unelected US technology giant, effectively censoring Western people’s speech without these factors (China of course has its own state censorship and US social-media platforms are banned).

Here is an example – a friend last night reported an anonymous account that had posted an orangutan emoji beneath an Instagram post belonging to England’s Bukayo Saka.

Now, nobody is going to blanket-ban that emoji.

But in this context, and given Saka is a young black player whose penalty kick was one of those that failed in the deciding moments of the England v Italy Euro 2020 final, the intention is pretty clear.

The response my friend received to her complaint was: “Our technology has found that this probably doesn’t go against our community guidelines,” – although, it went on to add the automation “isn’t perfect”.

She has appealed against the decision but who knows when it will get a pair of human eyes on it?

‘Quickly removed’
On Twitter, meanwhile, a user was apparently able to use an extremely offensive racial slur in a tweet about a footballer, before deleting the message.

In a statement, Facebook, which owns Instagram, said it had “quickly removed comments” directed at players.

“No-one should have to experience racist abuse anywhere – and we don’t want it on Instagram,” it said.

Twitter’s response was similar – in 24 hours, it had removed 1,000 posts and blocked accounts sharing hateful content, using “a combination of machine learning based automation and human review”, it said.

Human nature
Both companies also said they had tools and filters that could be activated to stop account holders from seeing abusive content – but this does not solve the problem of the content being shared in the first place.

“No one thing will fix this challenge overnight,” Facebook added.

And perhaps that is what really lies at the heart of all this – it is not necessarily the limitations of technology that are the issue but old-fashioned human nature.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said, on Twitter ironically, those responsible for posting racist abuse should “be ashamed of themselves”.

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View original tweet on Twitter
But for some people, there is something seemingly irresistible about hiding behind a keyboard and saying things they would in all likelihood never say out loud, in person.

Never before have people had access not only to those they want to berate but also a potentially enormous audience of those who will listen – and join in.

For some, it has proved a heady and intoxicating mix – and one that has quickly established itself as the norm.

I was talking to someone recently about something controversial that happened 20 years ago.

Her first question was about how social-media had responded.

I hesitated for a moment, wondering why I could not remember that detail – and then realised it was simply because it did not exist.

The free and open internet is under attack in countries around the world, Google boss Sundar Pichai has warned.

He says many countries are restricting the flow of information, and the model is often taken for granted.

In an in-depth interview with the BBC, Pichai also addresses controversies around tax, privacy and data.

And he argues artificial intelligence is more profound than fire, electricity or the internet.

Pichai is chief executive of one of the most complex, consequential and rich institutions in history.

The next revolutions
I spoke to him at Google’s HQ in Silicon Valley, for the first of a series of interviews I am doing for the BBC with global figures.

As boss of both Google and its parent company Alphabet, he is the ultimate leader of companies or products as varied as Waze, FitBit and DeepMind, the artificial intelligence pioneers. At Google alone he oversees Gmail, Google Chrome, Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Docs, Google Photos, the Android operating system and many other products.

But by far the most familiar is Google Search. It’s even become its own verb: to Google.

Over the past 23 years, Google has probably shaped the mostly free and open internet we have today more than any other company.

According to Pichai, over the next quarter of a century, two other developments will further revolutionise our world: artificial intelligence and quantum computing. Amid the rustling leaves and sunshine of the vast, empty campus that is Google’s HQ in Silicon Valley, Pichai stressed how consequential AI was going to be.

“I view it as the most profound technology that humanity will ever develop and work on,” he said. “You know, if you think about fire or electricity or the internet, it’s like that. But I think even more profound.”

Artificial intelligence is, at base, the attempt to replicate human intelligence in machines. Various AI systems are already better at solving particular kinds of problems than humans. For an eloquent exposition of the potential harms from AI, try this essay by Henry Kissinger.

Quantum Computing is a totally different phenomenon. Ordinary computing is based on states of matter that are binary: 0 or 1. Nothing in-between. These positions are called bits.

But at the quantum, or sub-atomic level, matter behaves differently: it can be 0 or 1 at the same time – or on a spectrum between the two. Quantum computers are built on qubits, which factor in the probability of matter being in one of various different states. This is mind-boggling stuff, but it could change the world. Wired has an excellent explainer.

Pichai and other leading technologists find the possibilities here exhilarating. “[Quantum] is not going to work for everything. There are things for which the way we do computing today would always be better. But there are some things for which quantum computing will open up an entire new range of solutions.”

Pichai rose through the ranks of Google by being the most effective, popular and respected product manager in the company’s history.Neither Chrome, the browser, nor Android, the mobile operating system, were his idea (Android was for a while led by Andy Rubin). But Pichai was the product manager who led them, under the watchful eyes of Google’s founders, to global domination.

In a sense, Pichai is now product managing the infinitely greater challenges of AI and quantum computing. He is doing so as Google faces a daily barrage of scrutiny and criticism on several fronts – to name but three: tax, privacy, and alleged monopoly status.

Taxing tech
Google gets defensive on matters relating to tax.

For several years, the company has paid huge sums to accountants and lawyers in order to legally reduce their tax obligations.

For instance, in 2017, Google moved more than $20bn to Bermuda through a Dutch shell company, as part of a strategy called “Double Irish, Dutch Sandwich”.

I put this to Pichai, who said that Google no longer uses this scheme, is one of the world’s biggest taxpayers, and complies with tax laws in every country in which it operates.

I responded that his answer revealed exactly the problem: this isn’t just a legal issue, it’s a moral one. Poor people generally don’t employ accountants in order to minimise their tax bills; large-scale tax avoidance is something that the richest people in the world do, and – I suggested to him – may weaken the collective sacrifice.

When I invited Pichai to commit there and then to Google pulling out of all tax havens immediately, he didn’t take up the offer.

He did, however, make clear that he is “encouraged by the conversations around a corporate global minimum tax”.

It is clear that Google is engaging with policy-makers on finding ways to make tax simpler and more effective. It is true that the company generates most of its research and revenues in the US, which is where it pays most of its tax.

Moreover, it has paid effective tax of 20% over the past decade, which is more than many companies. Nevertheless, any use of any tax haven is a reputational exposure for companies when, across the world, trillions are being borrowed, spent, and raised through taxes on ordinary folk in order to mitigate the pandemic.

The other big issues where Google is facing constant and growing scrutiny surround data, privacy, and whether or not the company has an effective monopoly in Search, where it is totally dominant.

On the last of these, Pichai makes the case that Google is a free product, and users can easily go elsewhere.

This is the same argument that Facebook has used, and Mark Zuckerberg’s company received a strong endorsement from Judge James Boasberg of Washington DC last month, when he rejected a raft of anti-trust cases against the social media giant on the grounds that it didn’t meet the current definition of a monopoly (that is, “the power to profitably raise prices or exclude competition”).

The exchanges on privacy, data, tax and dominance in Search were perhaps the most testy of the time I had with Pichai, and can be heard in the podcast version.

Industry respect
In preparation for the interview, I spoke to more than a dozen current or former Google executives, other senior executives at big tech firms, regulators and tech-sector strategists. There was reliably strong opinion and consensus within each camp.

Those who work in the tech sector said you just cannot argue with the growth in Google’s share price under Pichai. It has nearly tripled. That’s a phenomenal performance. Arguing that it is explained by favourable prevailing winds in consumer behaviour – of the kind that have helped other tech giants to grow – similarly misses the point.

Google created that consumer behaviour with astonishing engineering and world-class products.

Mostly off the record, the regulators said new laws, and language, needed to be designed to exert better scrutiny on this new kind of corporate giant. Judge Boasberg’s verdict on Facebook rather confirmed this. Interestingly, Lina Khan, the new 32-year-old boss of the Federal Trade Commission, has previously argued that the definition of monopoly should be expanded to reflect this new world.

The senior executives at other big tech firms were struck by what an effective public performer Pichai is. His testimonies in Congress have rarely led to drops in Google’s share price. His emollient manner and grasp of detail allows him to draw poison from potentially difficult situations.

A low-profile, avuncular figure, he keeps himself largely to himself – which is partly why Google staff who watch the interview will learn a lot about him (those present said they did).

In a very revealing quick-fire round of questions, we discover he doesn’t eat meat, drives a Tesla, reveres Alan Turing, wishes he’d met Stephen Hawking, and is jealous of Jeff Bezos’s space mission.

It was fascinating to find all this out from such an influential figure, precisely because he doesn’t make too many public pronouncements. You wouldn’t, for instance, find him on Instagram riding an electric hydrofoil surfboard while holding an American flag, on US Independence Day, to the sound of John Denver’s Country Roads (the version by Toots Hibbert is, of course, infinitely better).

Chief ethics officer
It was what I heard from those who worked with or for him, however, that most informed my approach.

Pichai is universally regarded as an exceptionally kind, thoughtful, and caring leader. Considerate toward staff, he is, according to everyone I spoke to who knew him, genuinely committed to being an ethical example. He is an idealist when it comes to the impact of technology on improving living standards, something that has its roots in his upbringing, which we discussed at length.

He was born into a middle-class family in Tamil Nadu, in south India. Various technologies had a transformative impact on him, from the old rotary phone that they were on a waiting list for, to the scooter they all piled on to for a monthly dinner.

At Google, he won over the engineers and software developers. It helped that he was a metallurgical engineer himself, but it’s still not easy; the brains trust at Silicon Valley companies includes many of the biggest egos on the planet. Yet they respect him hugely.

Pichai obeys the counter-cyclical approach to leadership appointments favoured by many head-hunters. After the necessarily pioneering, zealous, risk-taking leadership of founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, it made sense to have a lower-profile, solid, more cautious leader who would soothe public anxieties and charm public officials.

Pichai has been outstanding at these latter tasks, and the company’s share price performance is remarkable. Not many people in history could say they’ve created a trillion dollars of value as CEO.

But the very qualities that made him a smart counter-cyclical appointment also point to potential pitfalls, according to ex-Googlers and many other close watchers. It’s important to say that these people are generally tech evangelists, who have very different priorities from your average punter.

The tech evangelists are united on a few points.

First, Google is now a more cautious company than it has ever been (Google would of course dispute this, and others would say it would be a good thing if true).

Second, Google has a bunch of “Me-Too” products rather than original ideas; in the sense that it sees other people make great inventions, and then it unleashes its engineers to improve them.

Third, a lot of Pichai’s big bets have failed: Google Glass, Google Plus, Google Wave, Project Loon. Google could reasonably retort that there is value in experimentation and failure. And that this rather conflicts with the first point above.

Fourth, that Google’s ambition to solve humanity’s biggest problems is waning. With the biggest concentration of computer science PhDs in the world in one tiny strip of land south of San Francisco, goes this argument, shouldn’t Google be reversing climate change, or solving cancer? I find this criticism hard to reconcile with Pichai’s record, but it is common.

Finally, that he deserves tremendous sympathy, because managing a staff as big, recalcitrant, demanding and idealistic as Google’s in an era of culture wars is essentially impossible. These days Google is quite frequently in the news because of staff walkouts over diversity or pay; or because key people have left over controversial issues around identity.

With more than 100,000 staff, many of them hugely opinionated on internal message boards, and activist in nature, this is just impossible to control. There is a tension between Google genuinely embracing cognitive diversity by having people of all persuasions among its global staff, and at the same time really standing up for particular issues as a company.

Acceleration
All the above are concerns of people within the tech world who want Google to go faster. A lot of voters in polarised democracies would like big tech to slow down.

The most obvious lesson I draw from my time in Silicon Valley is that there is no chance of that happening. Acceleration is the norm: the speeding up of history is itself speeding up.

And, when I asked about whether the Chinese model of the internet – much more authoritarian, big on surveillance – is in the ascendant, Pichai said the free and open internet “is being attacked”. Importantly, he didn’t refer to China directly but he went on to say: “None of our major products and services are available in China.”

With legislators and regulators proving slow, ineffective, and easy to lobby – and a pandemic taking up plenty of bandwidth – right now the democratic West is largely leaving it to people like Sundar Pichai to decide where we should all be heading.

At the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, governments around the world decided the smartphone could be a key weapon in their battle to stop the spread of Covid-19.

On this week’s Tech Tent, we ask whether their various approaches, from Bluetooth contact-tracing apps to smartphone surveillance, have made a difference.

Listen to the latest Tech Tent podcast on BBC Sounds
Listen live every Friday at 08.00 GMT on the BBC World Service
Presentational grey line
The technology adopted has varied according to local cultures. South Korea used smartphone data along with information from credit card payments and CCTV to track the movements of people infected with the virus.

Victim of success
Singapore used what appeared to be a less invasive method in developing a Bluetooth contact-tracing app but it ended up collecting a lot of data for the government.

Many European countries ended up with decentralised contact-tracing apps which handed over very little data to government or health authorities.

This was the approach eventually chosen for the NHS Covid-19 app in England and Wales, after an initial trial of a centralised app proved both controversial and technically disappointing.

Susan Landau, professor of cyber-security at America’s Tufts University, examines the various methods in her book People Count: Contact-Tracing Apps and Public Health. She tells Tech Tent how each has fared.

“South Korea has done quite well in controlling the disease. But one has to say that there are cultural aspects to this – as well as the technology, the willingness to wear masks.”

That, she explains, would not work in the United States.

Singapore’s centralised app has worked well, she says, because citizens have been required to use it in offices, shopping centres and schools. But they have also been forced to hand over lots of very sensitive data.

“It has been used for criminal investigations,” she says. “If you’re a journalist and people know proximity information, then they know who you’ve been talking to. And that, of course, can be really dangerous for human rights workers.”

As for the decentralised apps, their effectiveness “has become more clear with time”. Prof Landau points to a study in the journal Nature which showed that the NHS Covid-19 app had averted hundreds of thousands of cases of the virus.

But in the last week, the app seems to have become the victim of its own success. With cases of Covid rising rapidly, the number of alerts telling app users to go into isolation has soared.

With many businesses angry that employees are being sent home – in their view unnecessarily – by pings from the app, there is mounting pressure to change the way it works.

Politicians seem to be responding, briefing that its sensitivity may be tweaked, although at the same time the Department of Health says: “The app is doing exactly what it was designed to do.”

The technology being used for contact-tracing apps is far from perfect – Prof Landau points out that Bluetooth doesn’t know whether a contact takes place outside or inside, where the danger of infection is much higher.

But overall, automated contact tracing appears to be a useful addition to the old-fashioned manual variety – after all, people’s recollections of who they were in contact with a few days ago and at what distance may also be unreliable.

Susan Landau points out that there is also an economic and social context to be considered: “For people who are bus drivers, restaurant workers, food service people, an exposure notification – where they have to stay home from work, they’re not getting paid, they may, on the third exposure notification, lose their position – can be very expensive.”

It turns out that contact-tracing smartphone apps have been an experiment not just in technology but in psychology, politics and economics.

But whatever their faults, it seems likely that they will remain a weapon in the public health armoury, ready to be deployed when the next pandemic comes along.

A recent crackdown on LGBT accounts on Tencent’s popular WeChat platform has divided Chinese social media.

Dozens of such accounts, mostly run by university students, had been deleted on Tuesday night – sparking fears of a tightening control over gay content.

The closures have garnered a wave of online support for the LGBT community, with many asking the student groups to “hang in there” and “do not give up”.

But others welcomed the move, saying “it was about time” they were silenced.

China decriminalised homosexuality in 1997, but the LGBT community continues to face discrimination in the country.

On Wednesday, at least two student LGBT groups have issued statements in response to their WeChat accounts being removed, which included the erasure of all their previous posts.

The groups are known for advocating LGBT and gender equality, and providing support to students on campus.

“Our activities will not stop due to the closure. On the contrary, we hope to use this opportunity to start again with a continued focus on gender and society, and to embrace courage and love,” Fudan University’s Zhihe Society Fudan University’s Zhihe Society said.

Meanwhile, Tsinghua University’s Wudaokou Purple said that although it was “frustrated” that its “years of hard work” had been “burned” at one go, it has only made them closer.

The schools are two of China’s top institutions.

The US State Department told reporters on Wednesday it was “concerned” that the accounts were deleted when they “were merely expressing their views, exercising their right to freedom of expression and freedom of speech”.

But other Chinese social media users celebrated the move.

“I don’t mind it if the LGBT community quietly does their own thing, but why do they have to keep shoving their ideals in my face through these groups? It’s right to shut them down,” one person said on Weibo.

‘Growing intolerance’
Many of the closed WeChat accounts display messages saying that they had “violated” Internet regulations, without giving further details.

The account names have also been deleted and just read “unnamed”.

“After receiving relevant complaints, all content has been blocked and the account has been suspended,” the notice said.

The crackdown is the latest example of what some call growing intolerance toward the LGBT community.

Last year, Shanghai Pride week, modelled on Pride events in the West, was cancelled without explanation after 11 years of it going ahead.

In 2019, the Oscar-winning Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody was released in Chinese cinemas, but references to the Queen singer’s sexuality and AIDS diagnosis were censored.

In 2018, Weibo said all posts related to homosexuality would be taken down, although it backtracked after massive outrage.

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Microsoft has issued a fix for a critical bug dubbed PrintNightmare.

It says, hackers are using the bug, accidentally disclosed by researchers.

It can help them “install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights” remotely on all versions of Windows.

It affects the Windows Print Spooler, software that manages printing, controlling the order in which print jobs from computers in an office are put in a queue, for example.

Max Heinemeyer, of computer security firm Darktrace, told the BBC PrintNightmare was like, “a cyber bazooka – it is relatively easy for criminals to use and can be leveraged to make a huge impact”.

He praised Microsoft for responding quickly and offering fixes, “even for products no longer under official support”.

The fix, a patch, is available for systems as far back as Windows 7.

Updates are not yet available for Windows 10 version 1607, Windows Server 2016, or Windows Server 2012 but would be “soon”, Microsoft says.

But The Register noted: “The first two versions mentioned are five years old and could well be quite widely used.”

British Airways has settled a legal claim by some of the 420,000 people affected by a major 2018 data breach.

The breach affected both customers and BA staff and included names, addresses, and payment-card details.

The Information Commissioner’s Office handed BA its largest fine to date, of £20m, over the “unacceptable” failure to protect customers.

But BA’s settlement – the amount of which remains confidential – did not include any admission of liability.

Qualifying claimants
While collective legal action is not as common in the UK as similar class-action suits in the US, group actions do happen.

Law firm Pogust, Goodhead, Mousinho, Bianchini and Martins earlier this year said the BA compensation claim had become “the largest group-action personal-data claim in UK history”, with more than 16,000 affected people involved.

And on Tuesday, PGMBM, the lead firm in the action, announced the settlement included compensation for “qualifying claimants who were part of the litigation”.

But because the terms of the settlement are confidential, it is unclear how many of the 16,000 will receive a payout – or how much BA will end up paying.

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The ICO’s multi-million-pound fine “did not provide redress to those affected”, PGMBM chairman Harris Pogust said.

“This settlement now addresses that.”

BA issued a brief statement saying it was “pleased we’ve been able to settle the group action”.

It apologised to customers and reiterated its stance it had acted promptly when it had discovered the problem.

The settlement may now draw a line under the long-running and high-profile data breach.

Following an investigation, the ICO initially said it planned to fine BA a record-breaking £183m for the 2018 incident.

But it lowered that amount substantially after representations from BA.

In its penalty notice of October 2020, the ICO said BA had argued penalties should be “significantly reduced or not imposed at all” because of the financial hardship airlines faced during lockdowns, when few flights were running.

And the ICO had taken this into account when lowering its fine to £20m.

About 200 US businesses have been hit by a “colossal” ransomware attack, according to a cyber-security firm.

Huntress Labs said the hack targeted Florida-based IT company Kaseya before spreading through corporate networks that use its software.

Kaseya said in a statement on its own website that it was investigating a “potential attack”.

Huntress Labs said it believed the Russia-linked REvil ransomware gang was responsible.

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency, a federal agency, said in a statement that it was taking action to address the attack.

The cyber-breach emerged on Friday afternoon as companies across the US were clocking off for the long Independence Day weekend.

Kaseya said one of its applications that runs corporate servers, desktop computers and network devices might have been compromised.

The company said it was urging customers that use its VSA tool to immediately shut down their servers.

Kaseya said in its statement that a “small number” of companies had been affected, though Huntress Labs said the number is already about 200 and counting.

It is not clear what specific companies have been affected – a Kaseya representative contacted by the BBC declined to give details.

Kaseya’s website says it has a presence in over 10 countries and more than 10,000 customers.”This is a colossal and devastating supply chain attack,” Huntress Labs’ senior security researcher John Hammond said in an email to Reuters news agency.

At a summit in Geneva last month, US President Joe Biden said he told Russian President Vladimir Putin he had a responsibility to rein in such cyber-attacks.

Mr Biden said he gave Mr Putin a list of 16 critical infrastructure sectors, from energy to water, that should not be subject of hacking.

REvil – also known as Sodinokibi – is one of the most prolific and profitable cyber-criminal groups in the world.

The gang was blamed by the FBI for a hack in May that paralysed operations at JBS – the world’s largest meat supplier.

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The group sometimes threatens to post stolen documents on its website – known as the “Happy Blog” – if victims don’t comply with its demands.

REvil was also linked to a co-ordinated attack on nearly two dozen local governments in Texas in 2019.

A coding error has been spotted in a video displaying the original source code for the world wide web, used to advertise a $5.4m (£3.9m) auction sale.

Creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee sold a non-fungible token – a certificate of ownership of a digital asset, of the code – through Sotheby’s, on Wednesday.

The NFT included time-stamped files of the source code and an animated video of it being written.

The researcher who spotted the error said it looked like “a simple mistake”.

Mikko Hypponen, from security company F Secure, said the symbols “<” and “>” had been translated into HyperText Markup Language (HTML) as “< >”.

This was a tactic sometimes used deliberately to protect code – known as “escaping” – but in this case it appeared to have been done in error.

“There have already been discussions about whether this would make the NFT more valuable – like a postage stamp with a misprint error,” he said.

Mr Hypponen added he had not personally bid for the NFT, which was sold to an unidentified buyer.

Opening bid
Website creator Mark O’Neill said it appeared “whoever made the video for the website ran the original text file through something that converted it into HTML”.

“It’s embarrassing for Sotheby’s but I trust that nobody has done the same to the original code,” he added.

Sotheby’s and Sir Tim have been contacted by BBC News for comment.

The auction began on 23 June with an opening bid of $1,000.

Proceeds will go to charities chosen by Sir Tim and his wife.

‘Royalty free’
Sir Tim created the world wide web, in 1989, by connecting different pieces of information on the early internet through hyperlinks.

He built the first web browser and server, refusing to patent his invention.

In 1993, Cern, the research organisation Sir Tim worked for at the time, relinquished all its rights to the technology and put it in the open domain.

And when the NFT auction was announced, Sir Tim told the Guardian: “The core codes and protocols on the web are royalty free, just as they always have been.

“I’m not selling the web – you won’t have to start paying money to follow links.

“I’m not even selling the source code.

“I’m selling a picture that I made, with a Python program that I wrote myself, of what the source code would look like if it was stuck on the wall and signed by me.”

Amazon is launching a child-friendly version of its Echo Dot smart speaker in the UK, several years after it was made available in the US.

The speaker – which comes with either a panda or tiger design – is billed as a learning tool, allowing children “to have fun and learn with Alexa”.

But critics said that parents should remember that it will also be collecting data on their children.

Amazon said it had imposed tight safety protocols on the device.

“We conduct robust testing and research and have strict measures in place for Echo Dot Kids, Amazon Kids and Amazon Kids+ that protect children and provide parents with transparency and control over the experience, creating a safe space in which kids can learn and have fun,” it told the BBC.

Of the delay in releasing the product in the UK, it said: “There are many elements and challenges that go into expanding into other countries and languages, particularly when it comes to content, services and features that are locally relevant.”

The device comes with one year’s worth of Amazon Kids, which offers Alexa-specific content such as child-friendly skills and audiobooks.

It will also have parental controls which allow adults to block things such as explicit lyrics on music streaming services, as well as set time limits to prevent children from “talking with Alexa late into the night”.

The Magic Word feature rewards children who use the word “please” with positive reinforcement.

However, privacy experts said parents should think twice before buying the device.

“You may want to take a moment to consider whether this is a piece of technology you really want in your child’s bedroom,” said digital privacy expert Attila Tomaschek, from ProPrivacy.

He added that the device would be recording a conversation it had with a child.

“The cute speaker will collect, process and analyse this data, potentially even sharing it with various third parties,” he said.

But Amazon denied that would happen: “We have built privacy and security deeply into the Alexa service. We never share voice recordings with third parties. Parents need to give permission to set up this device and can review, delete or choose not to have voice recordings saved at any time.”

In 2019, a coalition of child protection and privacy groups filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, asking it to investigate the Echo Dot Kids. They said that while the device offered parental controls, it did not offer parents control over how Amazon interacts with their children’s data.

Echo Dot Kids will cost £59.99 and be available from 21 July.

The stock market value of Facebook has topped $1 trillion for the first time after the tech giant won a court victory against US regulators.

A federal court dismissed two lawsuits, from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and a coalition of states, sending Facebook shares up 4.2%.

It took the value of Facebook above $1tn, making it the last of the “big five” tech firms to hit the milestone.

The legal actions had accused Facebook of stifling competition.

But Judge James Boasberg ruled that the FTC’s anti-trust complaint against the social networking giant was too vague.

Another separate anti-competition lawsuit filed by a group of 46 states was thrown out because the alleged violations occurred too long ago.

In the US District Court for the District of Columbia ruling, Judge Boasberg wrote that the FTC’s complaint was “legally insufficient” and had to be dismissed, because the FTC had “failed to plead enough facts” to back up its claim that Facebook was stifling competition.

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The FTC’s lawsuit had requested that the technology giant, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, be broken up.

“The FTC’s complaint says almost nothing concrete on the key question of how much power Facebook actually had, and still has, in a properly defined anti-trust product market,” wrote Judge Boasberg.

“It is almost as if the agency expects the court to simply nod to the conventional wisdom that Facebook is a monopolist.”

While this is a setback for the FTC that some analysts say could have repercussions for the future of anti-competition law in the US, the watchdog can re-file the charges and has until 28 July to do so.

However, investors saw it as an important victory for Facebook, sending the share price higher. The values of the other tech giants – Apple, Google-owner Alphabet, Microsoft, and Amazon – have already topped $1tn.

‘Doing nothing over the the last half decade’
Separately, Judge Boasberg also dismissed an anti-competition lawsuit brought by a coalition of 45 US states together with the FTC.

This lawsuit had also sought to force Facebook to divest Instagram and WhatsApp. It related to Facebook’s acquisition of the two apps in 2012 and 2014.

In March, Facebook petitioned the federal court in the US to dismiss them, describing the FTC complaint as “nonsensical”.

The firm said the FTC’s case “ignores the reality of the dynamic, intensely competitive high-tech industry in which Facebook operates”.

In his ruling on this case, Judge Boasberg said that the states did not provide “a reasonable justification” for why they had waited between six to eight years to decide to sue Facebook – an argument the social networking giant previously made.

He added that the states had failed to provide “a factual dispute” and only gave a “half-hearted contention that Facebook was not prejudiced but rather ‘benefitted from the states not filing sooner’, since it has been and remains a very profitable company”.

“Ultimately, this anti-trust action is premised on public, high-profile conduct, nearly all of which occurred over six years ago – before the launch of the Apple Watch or Alexa or Periscope, when Kevin Durant still played for the Oklahoma City Thunder and when Ebola was the virus dominating headlines,” wrote Judge Boasberg.

He added that the states’ allegations made it clear that the lawsuit could easily have been filed between 2012 and 2014: “The system of anti-trust enforcement that Congress has established does not exempt plaintiffs here from ‘the consequences of [their] choice’ to do nothing over the last half decade. “