From 5G conspiracy theories to social media’s reckoning, Zoom to online shopping, technology’s year in review

This was the year that we became almost fully reliant upon technology to not only keep us up to date with the latest coronavirus outbreak news, but to stay connected with friends and family. 

How the internet held up under the new normal

Millions of workers and pupils adjusted to working and learning from home after the Government announced virus restrictions towards the end of March, putting unprecedented strain on the UK’s broadband networks. 

While some customers struggled with the reliability of their connections in their bedrooms and living rooms, the infrastructure largely coped under the influx of extra users, causing the UK’s internet use to climb to its highest-ever recorded level – an average of four hours and two minutes a day – by June. 

Similarly, video conferencing app Zoom, once solely the preserve of virtual meetings, exploded in popularity as its use skyrocketed from 659,000 UK adults in January to 13 million by April after the nation logged on for casual catch-ups and endless digital pub quizzes as well as team meetings.  

Video-based communication receives a shot in the arm 

The appeal of being able to see the loved ones’ faces kickstarted renewed use of video calls over WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Apple’s FaceTime, while more time spent indoors also saw video app TikTok and video game streaming services Twitch and Steam welcomed millions of new fans as social media boomed in popularity. 

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Coronavirus in the UK: How broadband infrastructure coped as the nation stayed at home

Nextdoor, a neighbourhood watch app, experienced an 81 per cent week-over-week increase in daily active users during the height of the first March lockdown, while more than 360,000 people signed up to volunteer as NHS responders, collecting shopping, dropping off medicine or making regular friendly phone calls to vulnerable neighbours. 

Coronavirus conspiracy theories abound online 

The nation’s increasing amounts of time spent online wasn’t, however, restricted to looking up banana bread recipes and learning complicated dance routines. 

The pandemic has highlighted how social media and the internet as a whole is an effective, comprehensive and instant source of information, which, unfortunately, isn’t always based in fact. Conspiracy theorists and disinformation videos and posts spread rapidly across the internet in the early weeks of the outbreak and throughout 2020, blaming 5G and Bill Gates for the virus and questioning the efficacy of proposed vaccines while Amazon and Facebook Marketplace groaned under bogus cures and false tests. Fear and confusion fuelled the wave of arson and violent attacks against phone masts that started in April, with 22 phone masts belonging to EE alone targeted over the Easter weekend and Openreach broadband engineers abused in the street across the UK.

Despite the World Health Organisation (WHO) and multiple other fact-checking and science-backed organisations confirming there is no evidence for 5G causing or being linked to the pandemic the conspiracy theories continued to gather pace, fuelled by a number of high-profile figures willingly becoming the faces of fake news. 

This Morning TV presenter Eamonn Homes was criticised for claiming it was “very easy” to say the widely-debunked linking 5G to the virus was not true and adding that failure to question a relationship between the two “suits the state narrative,” causing regulator Ofcom to issue ITV with guidance over the “ill-judged” comments. Boxer Amir Khan, actor John Cusack, rapper Wiz Khalifa, actor Woody Harrelson and reality stars Lucy Watson and Calum Best were among the celebrities to weigh in, spreading false claims to their millions of combined followers.

Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms raced to police and curb the swell of both inadvertent misinformation and maliciously-spread disinformation, leading YouTube and Facebook to ban renowned conspiracy theorist David Icke, best known for his allegations the royal family are shape-shifting lizards and prediction the world would end in 1997, over his claims the virus was a hoax. 

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How dangerous 5g coronavirus conspiracy theories grew and spread online

It was unsurprising when a June study from Kings College London found that web users who used social media as a source of Covid-19 information were more likely to both believe conspiracy theories and break lockdown rules, though Big Tech’s efforts to crack down on far-right conspiracy movement QAnon by taking down networks was welcomed, if long overdue. 

Amazon vs the rest of retail 

While the British high street suffered at the hands of repeated lockdowns, online retail behemoth Amazon emerged as one of the clear winners of the pandemic, if winners is the correct term to use. Bolstered by millions flocking to its site for convenient purchases and swift delivery, the company reported a record tripling of its profits in October, raking in $96.15bn (£72bn) in revenue and $6.3bn in net income.

Founder Jeff Bezos, already the world’s richest (known) man, saw his personal fortune increase by $92bn between March and August alone, meaning he’s now worth around $182bn. Oxfam calculated during September that Mr Bezos could afford to pay each of Amazon’s 876,000 employees at the time a $105,000 bonus and still match his wealth at the onset of the pandemic, demonstrating the stark inequality the tech industry continues to fuel.     

Huawei stripped out over security fears 

Chinese company Huawei found itself in the headlines for all the wrong reasons in July when the government announced its equipment would be stripped out of the UK’s 5G networks following advice from the National Cyber Security Centre. Despite Huawei’s repeated denials of all allegations its equipment could be used for espionage and ties to its native government beyond paying taxes, the decision appears final and marks a sea change in newly-toughened UK relations with Beijing.  

Facial recognition faces a reckoning 

In a year that highlighted racial divisions, facial recognition (FR) software was among the most contentious talking points. Civil rights groups warned the software would fuel minority discrimination, given its history of difficulties identifying faces with darker skin – particularly women – when London’s Metropolitan Police force confirmed it would be bringing FR to the streets of the English capital to track down wanted criminals more quickly and effectively in January, but it took until June for Amazon and Microsoft to halt the sale of their respective FR technologies to US police forces in the wake of George Floyd’s death. 

Back in the UK, the Court of Appeal upheld an appeal brought by former Liberal Democrat councillor Ed Bridges against South Wales police force’s use of FR in August, ruling it unlawful and claiming the force has not taken reasonable steps to determine whether the software had a gender or racial bias.  

Populist divisions deepen online 

Similarly, Facebook finally banned Holocaust denial in October following years of pressure to better tackle anti-Semitic content, having previously allowed certain posts to remain online in the interests of freedom of speech. The U-turn was brought about by the well-documented rise in anti-Semitism globally, the company said, prompting analysts to speculate it represented Facebook attempting to get its ducks in a row in the run up to the November US Presidential election. 

The social network, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter and TikTok introduced new guidelines and restrictions in the months prior to the election in a bid to prevent a repeat of the barrage of fake news circulating social media in 2016 and offset potential civil unrest. Consequently, Twitter labelled Donald Trump’s tweets as containing false information for the first time in May and with greater regularity following his electoral defeat at the hands of Joe Biden, causing right-wing users to accuse mainstream social media platforms of censoring their views and to seek refuge on alternative networks such as Parler. 

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US election marks a reckoning for social media – but the crackdowns are a sign of fear, not altruism

The dramatic socio-political divides raging across the UK, more widely across Europe and the US look set to continue into 2021, particularly as malicious claims about the efficacy of the Covid-19 vaccine threaten to derail plans to return the UK and the rest of the world to a degree of normality within the next 12 months, though in some cases this may end up taking longer than anticipated.  

Correspondingly, the major antitrust cases filed in the US accusing Google and Facebook of aggressively anti-competitive practices designed to crush their rivals in October and December respectively are unlikely to be resolved within the next 12 months but will have major repercussions for the future of the internet and how major tech giants can and will behave. 

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Big Tech antitrust hearing: It is easy to blame firms like Facebook, but governments allowed them to run amok

The threat of greater regulation in the form of the UK government’s Online Harms Bill still hangs over Facebook, Google, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube‘s heads, prompting repeated reassurances that they’ll welcome working with governments where necessary and accept that “more must be done” to prevent the spread of fake news, conspiracy theories, death threats, child abuse imagery, violent content and terrorist propaganda on their platforms. 

The Government announced earlier this month that social media sites, websites, apps and other services which host user-generated content or allow people to talk to others online would be blocked from the internet or fined up to 10 per cent of their turnover by Ofcom if they’re found to fail in their duty of care. 

The road to a safer internet never did run smooth, but as we leave 2020 the enormity of the task is more apparent than ever. 

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