Labour Digital Rights Network

📝 Our response to last night's announcement. ⤵️

When we think about policies like a youth social media ban, we have to consider the trade-offs. In Australia, around half of the young people who have been blocked are seeing less news than they were before the ban. Many are just evading the ban entirely. A social media ban is not a simple and effective way to keep kids of social media and nothing else: many won't be kept off anything at all, some will move to fringe sites, others will stop being able to access websites that benefit them, like the news.

📵How can this government argue that our 16-year-olds are well-informed enough to vote, while simultaneously trying to lock them out of the modern public square where they actually get their news and debate political issues? Instead of relying on unworkable bans that exclude young people from political discourse, we must build their digital resilience and force unaccountable tech monopolies to fix their toxic business models.

🗞️There is a profound democratic contradiction at the heart of the push to ban under-16s from social media. While the government rightly discusses extending the franchise and empowering 16-year-olds with the vote, it is simultaneously flirting with policies that would lock them out of the modern public square. As yet more evidence from Australia shows, cutting teens off from social media drastically reduces their access to news and their opportunities to share their views on the issues they care about. Read more ⤵️ theguardian.com/australia-news…

👎Australia's social media ban is proving to fail on many fronts New data reveals that the ban is preventing teenagers' access to news. The lesson for the UK is clear - a social media ban would mean ID checks for all of us and it would come at serious cost to our rights, freedom and access to information. Read⤵️ theguardian.com/australia-news…

Ofcom will push for more and more restrictions to the internet in the name of "Online Safety". But ordinary content is blocked: blog posts, X threads, political speeches. This isn't making anyone safer, it's just making the internet less open.

Today, reports confirmed that plans for a major Met Police contract with Palantir were blocked after concerns over procurement, accountability and public trust. Healthworkers, patients and communities have spent years speaking out against Palantir’s £330 million contract with our NHS England. We’re being heard. Now is the moment to keep organising and get Palantir out of NHS England. Join a regional call to connect with activists near you 💛 Register: amn.st/6010B88tLj Whether you’re brand new or have campaigned against Palantir for years, you’re welcome.

The tide is turning – if not against Palantir entirely, then against the presumption that there’s no alternative to them. The British people are saying no, and it’s working. Say no to Palantir in the NHS here: goodlaw.social/8ppt

Keir Starmer's digital ID crusade 'nothing short of a fiasco', damning report rules MPs on Home Affairs Committee said Government's disastrous handling of its digital ID proposals will make it very hard to convince the public it is a good idea in future mirror.co.uk/news/politics/…

The Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee heard from @BBC's @MariannaSpring on misinformation, deepfakes and AI-generated content in elections 👇

Today, we have published a new advice and information page that explores the different laws governing free speech in England and Wales, including what we can post on social media, and what we say and hold up signs about at protests. libertyhumanrights.org.uk/advice_informa…

Does she forget who laid the groundwork for this disaster? Sorry, but your record in power speaks for itself, and your deeds will always matter more than your sudden change of attitude. You don't get to complain when your digital censorship regime works exactly as intended. ⤵️ politico.eu/article/nadine…

📵One week left to have your say about a proposed social media ban A social media ban would give the government a reason to demand ID from every single one of us to use the internet fully. Defend online freedom. Respond today⤵️ bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/blog/respond-t…

@GBNEWS @forster_k What? The new Reform elite - Nadine Dorries, Suella Braverman, Robert Jenrick, Nadhim Zahawi - were all literally responsible for the Online Safety Act…

NEW Fears over spread of Palantir’s influence after ‘Big Brother’ Met police project extended The staff surveillance pilot was due to expire last month. The Nerve has established that it was in fact extended to today, May 15, with no indication what happens next. 🔗⤵️

@ZiaYusufUK We may not agree on much, but we're on the same page here. The Online Safety Act has been a disaster for free speech, and hands far too much power to platforms who have become arbiters of political discourse. ⤵️ x.com/i/status/20560…

🚨 Labour is using the “Online Safety Act” to silence political opponents, and TikTok is doing their dirty work. First, TikTok removed my video announcing Reform UK’s new policy to place secure illegal migrant detention centres in non-Reform constituencies, prioritising Green ones.  TikTok explicitly cited the Online Safety Act as the reason for its removal. This is hard evidence of this draconian legislation being weaponised to silence political opponents.  That same video has 6.2 million views on other platforms. Today, the censorship escalated.  TikTok has now removed my video outlining the key policies I would implement as Home Secretary, claiming it is “Hate Speech and Hateful Behaviour.”  They warned me that any further "violations" will result in a strike, potentially leading to being de-platformed altogether. This is all the more staggering given TikTok happily hosts hundreds of videos of people calling for the assassination of Nigel Farage. My TikTok videos had received 18 million views over the previous 28 days. This is a chilling attempt to silence one of the biggest and fastest-growing UK political accounts on the platform. TikTok is engaging in direct political interference in the midst of the most pivotal elections in our country’s history. All under the auspice of the “Online Safety Act” that the Tories and Labour claimed to be about protecting children. It is, and always will be about silencing voices the open-borders political establishment don’t like. @TikTokComms have decided to try and suppress Reform. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.

We may disagree with the politics of Reform and @ZiaYusufUK, but as campaigners we have always stood against the Online Safety Act for precisely this reason: its dangerously vague scope inevitably results in the weaponisation of content moderation and censorship. When the Conservatives introduced this draconian legislation, spearheaded by Nadine Dorries and shamefully supported by Labour, those politicians were either hopelessly naive to its implications or secretly hoped they would always be the ones benefitting from this arrangement. Social media platforms, including TikTok, are, whether we like it or not, the modern public square. It is absolutely not the place of Big Tech companies to act as the arbiters of political discourse. Every party has the right to propose their policies - no matter how much we may personally disagree with them - and for them to face scrutiny from the public, who will deliver their verdict at the polling booth. We hope that one day Labour MPs will come to realise the extent of the damage the Online Safety Act has done to freedom of speech online. We shall continue to fight against it and champion digital freedom for all.🌹

Schools are meant for learning, not data mining. Right now millions of students are being funnelled into Big Tech's ecosystems via school-issued devices and educational software that tracks their every move. We cannot allow the classroom to be transformed into a pipeline for surveillance capitalism.

As a reminder, you now need to submit your ID or otherwise prove your age if you want to access the uncensored internet on your OWN iPhone in the UK. Seriously, why are we doing this?