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Lizzie O’Shea

Lizzie O’Shea is a practicing lawyer, writer, and broadcaster. She is the author of Future Histories, a guide to how historical social movements and thinkers are relevant to debates about technology today, and is a founder and chair of Digital Rights Watch. Her commentary is featured regularly on television and radio, and her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, and Sydney Morning Herald, among others.

An 8-bit-style illustration of a molotov cocktail.

The Judgment of Paris

In August 2019, Facebook settled an eight-year legal dispute with a French schoolteacher. The complaint, made by Frédéric Durand, accused the platform of deleting his account because he posted an image of Gustave Courbet’s iconic oil painting, L’Origine du monde. A closely ...
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We Keep You Alive

A surprising number of people start their working life at McDonald’s. Paul Ryan claimed flipping burgers was central to his understanding of the American Dream. Pharrell Williams was fired three times from the chain. James Franco penned a mildly off-putting love memoir to the ...
A flying saucer and a ten-story robot emblazoned with the Facebook and Google logos destroy the Capitol Building alongside a giant eagle and a man riding an electric scooter with virtual reality goggles. There are explosions.

Invisible Handcuffs

The regulation of technology capitalism is now a mainstream topic of discussion. Privacy scandals such as the misuse of Facebook data by Cambridge Analytica, the rise of right-wing extremism, and the diminishing quality of public spaces in the digital age have generated ...

Zuck’s New Scam

May 21, 2019
Facebook's new vision of privacy doesn’t hold any power because it does not challenge the definitive power framework for users of social media.