Nobel laureate slams social media firms

Lifetime honour: Ressa delivering her acceptance speech at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo. — AP

ACCEPTING her Nobel Peace Prize, Philippine journalist Maria Ressa launched a vitriolic attack against US tech giants, accusing them of fuelling a flood of “toxic sludge” on social media.

Ressa, the co-founder of news website Rappler, accepted this year’s prize at a ceremony at Oslo’s City Hall together with her co-laureate Dmitry Muratov, the editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta, one of the rare independent newspapers in a Russian media landscape largely under state control.