The United Kingdom already has one of the most controlled digital environments in the world.
We have a social media ban for children in place, requiring everyone to scan their ID or otherwise verify their age to use social media. They require age verification for “adult content”. There are proposals and legislation pending to implement “device level nudity detection”, introduce a “social media curfew” for teenagers, and we already lead the world in social media-related arrests.
But, according to the Culture and Technology Secretary Lisa Nandy, we are far from done.
Last week, at the Labour Party Conference, Nandy gave a speech hailing the UK’s “first in the world” social media ban (it’s not actually the first, except by some very specific metric, but whatever). She told the conference[emphasis added]:
[T]he world wide web – that created [sic] by Tim Berners Lee, to share knowledge, not exploitation – has revolutionised the way we live. An extraordinary democratic force, a source of connection, creativity and solace that has unleashed incomprehensible hatred, anger and polarisation – ask yourselves this, while it has undeniably shaped and defined us, have we done anything like enough to shape and define it?
Like the printing press, electricity and television, it has upended society. But what is almost unique to this moment is how absent the state – on behalf of its people – has been for so long. We have outsourced a revolution almost entirely to the private sphere to shape and police.
It is an almost violent indifference. To the women whose privacy and dignity is stripped from them. To the children who are preyed upon, their childhoods stolen. To people – how many of you in this room particularly women- hounded from public life. Where anger is monetised and profit put before people’s lives.
So conference, we are calling time on that indifference. Enough is enough.
We will not look away or stand aside when it comes to safety online. And we will be the first. First in the world to introduce legislation to make it impossible for children to take, share or view nude images. First in the world to introduce a comprehensive social media ban for children.
…[W]e will do whatever it takes. Because when it comes to women and girls. Women’s rights are human rights and human rights are non-negotiable.
Read More: Govt wants “interventionist state policing & regulating online space”
