For years something strange has been happening online, but most of us have no idea what’s really going on.

Ethnic conflict in Myanmar. A chemistry professor is killed in Ethiopia. A teenager dies in her bedroom in London. A mob storms the Capitol in Washington DC.

And that’s the moment that catches Jamie Bartlett’s eye. A few days after the riot, on January 9th 2021, the outgoing leader of the United States is suspended on social media. First Twitter, (renamed X), and then Facebook. A President silenced. It’s a glimpse behind the curtain. For the first time millions of us can see the power of technology companies.

They can delete you. They can amplify you. They can change your life. Social media has conquered the world.

Jamie Bartlett follows the roots of this story back to San Francisco : the home of Big Tech, where he meets one of the early pioneers of social media who tells him about a strange hand bound book, passed around hippy communes in the summer of love, and how it turned the world upside down.

Archive Credits: Wolf of Wall Street, Paramount Pictures; Telecommunications Bill sign in, C-Span 1996; Bloomberg's TicTic 2019; Fox News 2020

Presenter: Jamie Bartlett
Producer: Caitlin Smith
Sound Design: Eloise Whitmore
Music: Jeremy Warmsley
Story Consultant: Kirsty Williams
Researchers: Rachael Fulton, Elizabeth Ann Duffy and Juliet Conway
Executive Producer: Peter McManus
Commissioning editor: Dan Clarke.
A BBC Scotland Production for BBC Radio 4

New episodes released on Mondays. If you’re in the UK, listen to the latest episodes of The Gatekeepers, first on BBC Sounds: bbc.in/3Ui661u