Spring has finally sprung at Firefly HQ, with a few sunny days being enough to get our teams outside and enjoying all that our cities have to offer. We’re well into the first quarter of the year and the tech industry is continuing to thrive amidst the waves of geopolitical issues and legal challenges. Here’s everything you need to know from March.

Keeping up with regulatory change and legal protections can be tough in such an ever-evolving industry. We’ve seen multiple different approaches to prevent fraud, all the way from the heights of big tech cracking down on online scammers, to the day-to-day of dating app Tinder introducing criminal background checks on users. Giants Meta and Google were also in the firing line again, as governments in both the UK and the EU delving into their online advertising.

For those of us who want something a little lighter, social and streaming have, as usual, seen a number of adjustments in the last month. CNN has launched a new streaming platform – yay! At the same time, Netflix has increased its prices – boo! TikTok expanded even further to 10-minute videos, but I’m not convinced we have the attention span to avoid scrolling for that long. Discord had the proof for that, as when plagued by outages, it had to tell its users to go outside and focus on something else for a little while. Research even proves that we’re hooked on platforms, as nearly a fifth of young people are ready to take the leap to the metaverse.

We can’t ignore the more serious side of the news this month, with the tragic conflict in Ukraine resulting in a Russian tech brain drain, and the end to numerous financial tools and social media sites in the country. Innovation has also continued, with a new digital front line transpiring in Ukraine and facial recognition technology fighting misinformation.

On the brighter side of things, Wordle continues to dominate our daily routines, with a linguistics expert sharing her top tips. Maybe you can do Wordle while you’re waiting for a takeaway and split the bill with your friends, or one day even connect on the first ever gravity-powered infinity train.

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