In the headlines
The government has been accused of watering down its flagship Online Safety Bill after scrapping a rule obliging tech firms to remove “legal but harmful” content. Culture Secretary Michelle Donelan defended the omission as a “common-sense tweak”, amid concerns the original measure would have curbed free speech. The “golden era” of relations with China is over, Rishi Sunak has told business leaders in his first foreign policy speech. The PM said the UK had been “naïve” to pursue closer economic ties with Beijing and must replace wishful thinking with “robust pragmatism”. Gaslighting, defined as manipulating somebody into doubting their own thoughts, has been the most frequently looked up word in Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary this year. Perhaps it’s a “reflection of the increasingly paranoid nature of online society”, says Patrick Kidd in The Times. “Mind you, that’s probably exactly what ‘they’ want you to think.”