Result of Guardian Australia experiment aligns with research showing social media automatically delivers troubling content to young men, largely without oversight

• Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates
• Get our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcast

How do the algorithms of Facebook and Instagram affect what you see in your news feed? To find out, Guardian Australia unleashed them on a completely blank smartphone linked to a new, unused email address.

Three months later, without any input, they were riddled with sexist and misogynistic content.

Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, a longtime backer of the new vice-president pick, are among those pledging support

Less than a month after Donald Trump was elected president in November 2016, he invited the cream of Silicon Valley’s tech elite to a meeting at his transition team’s headquarters at Trump Tower.

It was an awkward affair. Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, Google’s Larry Page and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos had facial expressions that ranged from a semi-rictus grin to full tech-mogul-in-a-hostage-situation. But then, in a sense they were. There was a new sheriff in town – and none of them had seen him coming.