By Guardian staff reporter
Publication Date: 2026-02-18 18:00:00
Earlier this month, journalist Anuj Behal wrote about the trauma suffered by workers in rural India who moderate web content to train AI for big tech companies. He spoke to women who worked from home and watched hours of often violent and pornographic content.
It was a story about the unexpected, often hidden costs of our digital habits. It reminded me of a heated exchange at an event I chaired about ten years ago, when a member of the audience said that newspapers were disgustingly unenvironmental and deserved to die out.
“We shouldn’t buy a newspaper and kill a tree when we can buy a laptop and read everything on it,” she said.
It’s a feeling I’ve heard in a different version many times since. So many people imagine that our shiny electronic devices leave a minimal environmental footprint with our regular upgrades and lots and lots of chargers.
But from the blood-soaked cobalt tunnels of the Democratic Republic of Congo and the…
