Allum Bokhari

Bogus reader reviews have long been a problem for websites like Amazon and Goodreads. Intended as a mechanism to allow readers to dabble in literary criticism, their accessibility has left them vulnerable to political and personal vendettas. Despite the efforts of Amazon to stamp out

Has Twitter turned on its userbase? Desperate to develop a viable revenue model as investors start to lose confidence, the microblogging giant has begun to exert greater control over its users’ timelines. Originally presented as a means to tackle “trolling” and “abuse”, new

The office of Ron O’Brien, prosecuting attorney for Columbus, Ohio, was deluged with emails and phonecalls that “wasted time and resources” following an online campaign whipped up by Brianna Wu, a controversial video game developer. Wu published a widely-shared article on The Mary

Confirming the worst fears of users, Reddit CEO Ellen Pao has told NPR that she does not want the site to be a “completely free-speech platform”. Her comments followed last week’s introduction of new ‘anti-harassment’ policies on the link-sharing site that

Twitter has come under fire from its users after installing mandatory content filters that cannot be switched off. The new system censors the newsfeeds of users without their consent, causing messages from followers and strangers alike to be automatically hidden

A group of female webcomic artists and online radio hosts have been ejected from the Calgary Expo, a Canadian pop culture convention, after publicly disagreeing with members of a feminist panel discussion. Staff at the expo informed them that they

A Liberal Democrat activist who sits on two national party committees has been suspended from her regional party after a string of sexist comments on social media. The activist in question, Sarah Noble, made multiple tweets of a disturbingly hateful

When news emerged  that sci-fi books recommended by conservative-leaning author Brad R. Torgersen had swept the prestigious Hugo Awards nominations, sections of the mainstream media flew into an all-too-predictable panic. Disturbed by the idea that popular culture might liberate itself

In just under a year, Twitter will celebrate its 10th birthday. The microblogging service is currently the 8th-most visited website on the internet, with over 280 million active users. By offering a free, open platform that allows instantaneous communication to

The science is settled! A new study published in the journal of Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking has confirmed what many already suspected was true: video games don’t cause sexism. After examining a number of games containing allegedly “sexist” tropes

If you’ve been following the media aftermath of interim Reddit chief executive Ellen Pao’s failed discrimination lawsuit against venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, you may be forgiven for thinking that Pao won. She didn’t, of course, but the tech and

The campus rape panic that dominated western media for well over two years suffered a severe blow in late 2014 thanks to the credulous reporting of hoax allegations in Rolling Stone. Those who had long harboured doubts about the panic,

“Ladies and gentlemen, you’ve read about it in the newspapers. Now, shudder as you observe before your very eyes that most rare and tragic of nature’s mistakes – the average man. Physically unremarkable, it has instead a deformed set of

A programme that lists thousands of users on Twitter for automatic blocking has been thrown into chaos following an expose by an independent legal blogger. Known as “The Block Bot”, it claimed to list “trolls, abusers, and bigots” on its

The Muslim Action Forum (MAF), a group that describes itself as “working on the front line to deal with affronts to global civility” has announced a legal and political strategy to have depictions of the prophet Mohammed banned in the

Earlier this week, NBC aired an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit that will go down in history as one of the greatest unintentional comedies in television history. The show is famous for turning sensationalised news stories into barely-believable