Govt wants “interventionist state policing & regulating online space”

Guest Post by Kit Knightly



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.

But friends shouldn’t we be ashamed, that decades of violent indifference has come to this, having to remove our children from social media altogether, because we cannot protect them from harm?

So our message to the incredible tech sector, who are everyday leading breathtaking innovation, is that this is our collective call to arms.

Let this country pioneer technology as an unequivocal force for good. Because our online spaces live in the palm of our hands, and the cables that run under our feet. They are a civic space like any town hall or high street. So let’s insist they are not just safe but thriving, inclusive and empowering.

Where people can trust what they see, and find common ground and connection.

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Prior to her speech, Nandy had told The Guardian:

“We shouldn’t accept that this is the end […] This is a staging post to what must be a very active interventionist state, policing and regulating the online space so that people are safe.”

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To paraphrase a politician rather more charismatic than Nandy, it seems this is not the end of digital censorship, it’s not even the beginning of the end of digital censorship, or even the end of the beginning…rather it may be the beginning of the beginning.

So what does that mean, in real terms?

Well, digital ID obviously.

One of Andy Burnham’s first acts as Prime Minister was to “scrap” the BritCard digital ID scheme. But that was very much a gesture.

It never really went away, and it will be coming back…quite soon if simmering headlines like “Britain can’t shelve Digital IDs forever” are anything to go by.

Probably, in the near future, something will happen that will “force” good old Andy to “revisit the digital ID issue”.

And, of course…

Without global interoperability, digital IDs can’t deliver on their promise
Tech Radar

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And, once digital ID is officially unscrapped and “globally interoperable” the social media ban for children will spread to verified ID for digital purchases, or to use AI or to prevent the spread of “misinformation, or even ID-gating internet access itself.

Whatever they want.

If everything they’ve already done is only a “staging post”, just imagine how tight a grip they really want.

“A very active interventionist state, policing and regulating the online space so that people are safe.”

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Chilling stuff. Perhaps most chilling of all is the fact her handlers think this is the positive spin that will sell the idea to the proles.

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[ H/T The Burning Platform ]