If Keir Starmer wants this social media ban to be his legacy, it will be a legacy of mass surveillance and digital exclusion.
Reports that the Prime Minister is rushing to announce a blanket ban on social media for under-16s ahead of the Makerfield by-election show a government abandoning evidence-based policymaking for easy headlines.
What kind of legacy condemns young people to digital exclusion while forcing digital ID checks on the entire adult population just to participate in modern public life?
The government is trying to point to Australia as a success story, but the evidence proves the exact opposite:
Research commissioned by the
@mollyroseorg reveals that over 60% of teens in Australia are still actively using their social media accounts. Worse still, 51% say the ban has made no difference to their online safety, and 14% actually feel less safe. Prohibition doesn't work.
Most chillingly, this ban cannot be enforced without fundamentally altering everyone's relationship with the internet. Tech companies have already warned that implementing a ban on under-16s is incredibly difficult without robust digital identification.
Starmer's legacy threatens to be the death of online anonymity. We cannot accept a policy that destroys the digital rights of the entire population to secure a short-term political win, all while letting unaccountable tech monopolies completely off the hook for their toxic attention-monopolising algorithms.
Read more ⤵️
ft.com/content/224e2b68-0ccd…