The Prime Minister's latest "won't somebody please think of the children" policy is treated seriously by a media addicted to easy solutions to complicated problems.
Our global rape culture is not going to be changed at all by this Big Daddy state crack down on social media sexualised abuse. The opposite. Power abusers in all walks of life and in all forms will find it both a call to more extreme actions and an enabling justification for even more forms of abuses of power. Until the underlying intentions of our late stage capitalist societies, exploitation for personal profits or infantile Big Men’s dreams of being ever bigger, are honestly exposed and addressed, no one can be safe.
While I don't dispute your central thesis - that everyone wants a magic silver bullet to come along and solve difficult problems, and that politicians are as keen to announce them as must-publish-fast media are to want to report such claims without bothering to subject them to any real scrutiny - I'm personally feeling like there might be a little more that's heartening here than in many of the other (manifold) similar instances of policy announcements and the reporting of them.
The bit that I think is different here is that the germ of truth in the middle of what it reads like Starmer has said is that it is up to the providers of these services to provide their services in a socially, legally and morally responsible manner - and the government (at least, as far as its current leader says) intends to get serious about putting enforcement measures in place to ensure they do this. For years we've had people in these companies moaning that it's impossible to police material transmitted on them, and using that as an argument for continuing to do nothing. This is clearly rubbish: though the detailed version - it's impossible *without them spending a fair bit of money on it* - is the one that neither tech firms, politicians nor media commentators seem to want to spend any time looking at. These firms make billions of pounds/dollars/etc. and have done so over the last few decades by rampaging through existing business, social and political structures/institutions, asserting their right to "disrupt" "markets" and provide "innovation" as if they were a special case and existing laws don't, and should never be allowed to, apply to them. And, as a society, we've basically just let them. The supposed privacy implications here are a straw man: if, say, Facebook was serious about preventing certain types of "content" appearing in users' accounts, it would be able to block it at the point of distribution: nobody would have to go into your phone or your account to prevent you from seeing it. That they don't do this is not because it's impossible to achieve technically, it's because they choose not to - and they have taken that choice for profit-related reasons, not moral or social or ethical ones. If Labour are serious about calling them on their decades of pretend hand-wringing and genuinely intend to make them behave with a modicum of responsibility to the audiences their product is used by, then good luck to them.
All that said: I'm not exactly holding my breath, because doing all that will be legislatively and politically very complicated, and by no means the easy quick fix that this announcement appears to be trying to implement. In the current political moment, where Starmer may be lucky to still be in his current job for much longer and where, even if he does stay, the pressure for more "quick wins" will be impossible to resist, I can't see there being sufficient political will to push this to the point where it would need to get to if it was to become proper, useful, meaningful regulation. But as an indication of a new direction of travel, fighting back against these parasitical corporations is long overdue and more than welcome.
PS: Duuuh, forgot to include the other point I intended to raise when starting writing - which is that the other area where politicians' magical thinking meets with disappointingly far-too-credulous reporting is so-called "AI". We're repeating the same pathology as attended the arrival of "social media", by just accepting and blithely repeating terminology developed by commercial corporations to market their products and allowing ourselves to be browbeaten into submission until suddenly these things sound like impregnable new realities. We all collectively allowed the "social" media companies to tell us they were connecting people and bringing benefits, didn't question the possible down sides, and are now living through the consequences of allowing them to do whatever they wanted, however they wanted, and with impunity. With so-called "AI" firms, we're swallowing the hype that these systems will bring us untold economic and social gains, allowing them to set the agenda when it comes to deciding what possible down sides are worth fretting about (invariably the ones they believe they have an answer for), and are playing an active role in their marketing campaigns by writing, speaking and talking about these tools as if they are going to eventually provide the answer to every current problem. Confining myself to the point and purpose of CotU, the bit that bothers me here is the reporting, which - as per your analysis of most of the coverage of Starmer's announcement yesterday - seems happy to repeat chunks of press releases rather than subject any of the claims made to any kind of rigorous scrutiny. Probably this is because media outlets, chasing clicks to earn fractions of pennies of income, are too strapped for cash to give reporters enough time to get their heads around a story for long enough to properly understand it. And we'll all wonder, in 20 years, why the only places sounding the alarm were niche computing or security titles rather than the big news providers who are supposed to be providing checks and balances on big business and politicians (a la Post Office Horizon). This isn't just the media's fault - it's a shared responsibility: we don't have a mainstream media capable of doing this because we prefer to get news for free on the web or from "social" media "platforms" rather than pay a specialist to provide it.
Thank you, Angus. Appreciate your perspective and necessary corrective / expansion on some of the points I made. I agree that the onus and pressure should be on the companies. The AI marketing is exactly like the wave that delivered social media with even worse outcomes.
Thanks Mic. Sorry if it came across as criticism - absolutely not my intention. Thanks for raising this. It's important.
For all that I've tried to be optimistic, the contrast between this apparent stance on "social media" and the preferred options put forward by this government in its consultation on so-called "AI" (and in their walking back the prospect of ever coming to any proper conclusions following that) doesn't exactly support me in that. On the one hand they're telling us that they're going to take steps now, albeit decades too late, to try to rein in the worst excesses of an industry politicians have aided and abetted since its inception; and at the same time they're still apparently supportive of the LLM boosters' charge to obliterate existing industries and cover the countryside in data centres and suck up more electricity than is ever going to be generated by the offshore wind farms we're still not sure we want to spend any time and money and effort to build. It's as contrary and lacking in cohesion as the policies on aviation, but that's probably something I should save for another day.
Our global rape culture is not going to be changed at all by this Big Daddy state crack down on social media sexualised abuse. The opposite. Power abusers in all walks of life and in all forms will find it both a call to more extreme actions and an enabling justification for even more forms of abuses of power. Until the underlying intentions of our late stage capitalist societies, exploitation for personal profits or infantile Big Men’s dreams of being ever bigger, are honestly exposed and addressed, no one can be safe.
Starkly put. And justifiably so.
Thanks Mic, as ever.
While I don't dispute your central thesis - that everyone wants a magic silver bullet to come along and solve difficult problems, and that politicians are as keen to announce them as must-publish-fast media are to want to report such claims without bothering to subject them to any real scrutiny - I'm personally feeling like there might be a little more that's heartening here than in many of the other (manifold) similar instances of policy announcements and the reporting of them.
The bit that I think is different here is that the germ of truth in the middle of what it reads like Starmer has said is that it is up to the providers of these services to provide their services in a socially, legally and morally responsible manner - and the government (at least, as far as its current leader says) intends to get serious about putting enforcement measures in place to ensure they do this. For years we've had people in these companies moaning that it's impossible to police material transmitted on them, and using that as an argument for continuing to do nothing. This is clearly rubbish: though the detailed version - it's impossible *without them spending a fair bit of money on it* - is the one that neither tech firms, politicians nor media commentators seem to want to spend any time looking at. These firms make billions of pounds/dollars/etc. and have done so over the last few decades by rampaging through existing business, social and political structures/institutions, asserting their right to "disrupt" "markets" and provide "innovation" as if they were a special case and existing laws don't, and should never be allowed to, apply to them. And, as a society, we've basically just let them. The supposed privacy implications here are a straw man: if, say, Facebook was serious about preventing certain types of "content" appearing in users' accounts, it would be able to block it at the point of distribution: nobody would have to go into your phone or your account to prevent you from seeing it. That they don't do this is not because it's impossible to achieve technically, it's because they choose not to - and they have taken that choice for profit-related reasons, not moral or social or ethical ones. If Labour are serious about calling them on their decades of pretend hand-wringing and genuinely intend to make them behave with a modicum of responsibility to the audiences their product is used by, then good luck to them.
All that said: I'm not exactly holding my breath, because doing all that will be legislatively and politically very complicated, and by no means the easy quick fix that this announcement appears to be trying to implement. In the current political moment, where Starmer may be lucky to still be in his current job for much longer and where, even if he does stay, the pressure for more "quick wins" will be impossible to resist, I can't see there being sufficient political will to push this to the point where it would need to get to if it was to become proper, useful, meaningful regulation. But as an indication of a new direction of travel, fighting back against these parasitical corporations is long overdue and more than welcome.
PS: Duuuh, forgot to include the other point I intended to raise when starting writing - which is that the other area where politicians' magical thinking meets with disappointingly far-too-credulous reporting is so-called "AI". We're repeating the same pathology as attended the arrival of "social media", by just accepting and blithely repeating terminology developed by commercial corporations to market their products and allowing ourselves to be browbeaten into submission until suddenly these things sound like impregnable new realities. We all collectively allowed the "social" media companies to tell us they were connecting people and bringing benefits, didn't question the possible down sides, and are now living through the consequences of allowing them to do whatever they wanted, however they wanted, and with impunity. With so-called "AI" firms, we're swallowing the hype that these systems will bring us untold economic and social gains, allowing them to set the agenda when it comes to deciding what possible down sides are worth fretting about (invariably the ones they believe they have an answer for), and are playing an active role in their marketing campaigns by writing, speaking and talking about these tools as if they are going to eventually provide the answer to every current problem. Confining myself to the point and purpose of CotU, the bit that bothers me here is the reporting, which - as per your analysis of most of the coverage of Starmer's announcement yesterday - seems happy to repeat chunks of press releases rather than subject any of the claims made to any kind of rigorous scrutiny. Probably this is because media outlets, chasing clicks to earn fractions of pennies of income, are too strapped for cash to give reporters enough time to get their heads around a story for long enough to properly understand it. And we'll all wonder, in 20 years, why the only places sounding the alarm were niche computing or security titles rather than the big news providers who are supposed to be providing checks and balances on big business and politicians (a la Post Office Horizon). This isn't just the media's fault - it's a shared responsibility: we don't have a mainstream media capable of doing this because we prefer to get news for free on the web or from "social" media "platforms" rather than pay a specialist to provide it.
Thank you, Angus. Appreciate your perspective and necessary corrective / expansion on some of the points I made. I agree that the onus and pressure should be on the companies. The AI marketing is exactly like the wave that delivered social media with even worse outcomes.
Thanks Mic. Sorry if it came across as criticism - absolutely not my intention. Thanks for raising this. It's important.
For all that I've tried to be optimistic, the contrast between this apparent stance on "social media" and the preferred options put forward by this government in its consultation on so-called "AI" (and in their walking back the prospect of ever coming to any proper conclusions following that) doesn't exactly support me in that. On the one hand they're telling us that they're going to take steps now, albeit decades too late, to try to rein in the worst excesses of an industry politicians have aided and abetted since its inception; and at the same time they're still apparently supportive of the LLM boosters' charge to obliterate existing industries and cover the countryside in data centres and suck up more electricity than is ever going to be generated by the offshore wind farms we're still not sure we want to spend any time and money and effort to build. It's as contrary and lacking in cohesion as the policies on aviation, but that's probably something I should save for another day.