Ian Silvera

Digital Ads Give Glimpse of 2026 Campaigns Political parties turn to YouTube, Instagram and Facebook as we head towards the elections in May

Labour HQ has paid for Scottish Labour’s digital campaign, as previously reported. Now Anas Sarwar is calling for his leader to go.

www.news-future.com/p/digital-ad...

Wouldn’t SuperBowl be even bigger if it was on Saturday? Perhaps I’m just being a dim Brit

AI's got news for you: Can AI improve our information environment? | IPPR Already, 24 per cent of people report using AI for information seeking every week. But there is widespread concern that the information provided will be in

OpenAI has also penned agreements with News Corp, The FT and Axel Springer, amongst many others in the publishing business. A full link to the report is below.

Full report is here: www.ippr.org/articles/ais...

A new @ippr.org report (Roa Powell and Carsten Jung) has found that OpenAI's flagship LLM product, ChatGPT, heavily relies on The Guardian for news referrals. The British-headquartered outlet signed a deal with the US AI company back in Feb 2025, but...

My main challenge to Lobby reporters and political commentators: how would you describe ‘the centre’ in UK politics today and what is your empirical evidence? Cc @stephenkb.bsky.social

Teetotal and Terribly Positive, Why Strava is The Future of Social Networking With 180 million users, the fitness tracking app is now planning an IPO

With 180 million users, Strava is now planning an IPO. Here's why I think it's the future of social networking. www.news-future.com/p/teetotal-a...

War in The Age of The Meme Social media has encouraged us to become bit part players in conflicts

Surgical strikes, minimal casualties, night-time raids. We’ve been here before. But this time we’re not watching cable news correspondents embedded inside the American War Machine at prime time.

open.substack.com/pub/futurene...

Just turned on BBC Three for the first time in forever and it's literally just re-runs of old Top Gear and Tommy Furry. Make of that what you will...

DMGT buying The Telegraph would create a super Tory-affiliated outlet, w/ the latter title getting closer to Reform over the years while the Mail continually backed the Conservatives. Business-wise, Mail+ was launched far too late, so now DMGT could have a very strong subscription offering.

Why Berkshire Hathaway Loves Radio Mr Warren E. Buffett and Co. are on manoeuvres with the media again

Berkshire Hathaway, a long-time backer of Apple, has now thrown its considerable weight behind one its tech rivals, Alphabet, with a $4.3.bn stake. It has also increased its stake in SiriusXM. The biz is targeting $1.5bn of free cash flow by 2027.

www.news-future.com/p/why-berksh...

Britain is Being Shaped by Unsound Stats The issue will impact business, politics and the media

Bernanke published an extremely helpful audit of how the Bank of England communicated its forecasts and these recommendations could be easily adopted by the OBR www.news-future.com/p/britain-is...

The decision comes as the OBR, one of the country’s financial watchdogs, changes its fiscal predictions for the UK once again. I’ve written about Britain’s bad luck when it comes to data and what people like Ben Bernanke have recommended to counter what is increasingly becoming an existential issue.

Today, the international currency and bond markets have turned on Britain. After much obfuscation and unsound media briefings, it increasingly looks like the UK’s Chancellor will merely tinker with income tax thresholds at her next Budget...

Of course, the country’s unique constitutional make-up doesn’t necessarily lend to the party system, but the adoption of certain conventions, including manifestos and true democratic membership systems, would help.

If someone could actually build a proper political party in the US, something akin to the parliamentary systems across the UK, Canada and Australia, they would do extremely well. As it stands, the American Republic looks wedded to personality politics for at least the next electoral cycle.

The Financial Times launches The AI Shift, written by John Burn-Murdoch and Sarah O'Connor. It's a weekly deep-dive into how AI is reshaping work, productivity and society. The newsletter promises to combine original reporting, fresh data and visual storytelling.

The flotilla celebrations are just bizarre. Perhaps I’m just getting too old, but aren’t activists meant to achieve something? It’s all v performative. Maybe that’s the schtick — more shows, more dead ends, and more ‘celebrations’. Rinse and repeat, then move onto the next cause.

The Shadow General, The Press Baron and The CIA - a Cold War Story How The Daily Express went to war with two intelligence services, enraged Winston Churchill and found itself in the middle of an international spy scandal

A new world was created in the 1950s & we are still discovering how it was really formed today. If anything else, this story should give you a sense of the powers at play & the high stakes which had to be navigated at the start of what we now call the Cold War.

www.news-future.com/p/the-shadow...

Xbox has just raised its Game Pass to $29.99 per month. It's part of a wider industry trend, with some analysts expecting the next GTA to break the $100 mark. All during a cost of living crisis, folks. (3/3)

Fortunately, the Champions League was broadcast on ITV back then, w/ the 6 Nations on the BBC. It wasn't all bad, but it does now seem that we're returning to an entertainment divide between the 'haves and the have nots'. Point in case: being a video gamer is increasingly a middle-class pursuit.

If I ever wanted to watch the wrestling, I had to pop around my cousins as a kid. They had NTL, a now defunct US-listed British broadcaster which carried Sky Sports. My father refused to pay the Murdoch levy and we subsequently used to catch any major football games on the radio. (1/3)

Woke up to the US' Secretary of War Pete Hegseth berating his military over its sartorial standards. The message was to the point: get leaner, look meaner. I was cheering along, dear reader, until I happened upon a tragedy. Hegseth was wearing brown shinny shoes

The Digital ID debate has exposed large knowledge gaps in SW1. Some of the biggest & best think-tanks don’t have a singular tech policy expert, while top political hacks — who have to scrutinise the government in real-time — don’t have a high-level understanding of the issue

As is typical with the PM, he's sent someone else to defend this major policy and he hasn't announced it to the Commons, where our elected representatives could debate it. The good news: the plan and its messaging aren't surviving impact this morning

Digital IDs: A road to ruin

open.substack.com/pub/futurene...

Scoop: Microsoft looks to build AI marketplace for publishers Copilot would be the first buyer in the Publisher Content Marketplace.

The type of announcement which prompts emergency board meetings in Silicon Valley

www.axios.com/2025/09/23/m...

The Post-Literate Society? An Annotated Critique

I’ve responded to James Marriott’s intriguing new essay on the impact of technology and media on our post-industrial society below. In doing so, I’ve adopted a slightly different format than usual, but, as ever, I do hope readers enjoy it

open.substack.com/pub/futurene...

It was actually The Daily Express which first reported on the full gruesome aftermath in Hiroshima, warning of an ‘Atomic Plague’. (4/4)

The censors were even very wary of nuclear-related phrases which could expose the existence of The Manhattan Project. But government officials also cut a deal with The New York Times’ William L. Laurence, otherwise known as ‘Atomic Bill’, to write about the project and the bombing of Japan. (3/4)

Equally, The Office of Censorship was formed in December 1941, the same month the US entered World War II. The department was headed by Byron Price, an executive news editor at the Associated Press and World War One veteran, who reported directly to Roosevelt. (2/4)