#onlinesafetyact — Public Fediverse posts on home.social

alecm @[email protected] · 2026-07-14 · 21:48 UTC

How It Started in 2018 / How It’s Going in 2026: UK Labour Government to discover “Timezones” in 3… 2…

Oh dear.

#feed #keirStarmer #onlineSafetyAct #socialMediaBan #timezones

#feed #timezones #socialmediaban #onlinesafetyact #keirstarmer

Sam @[email protected] · 2026-06-17 · 08:48 UTC

☀️ Morning everyone,
With the news on the UK's "Phase 2" of the Online Safety Act rolling out, my focus has shifted heavily. Today's tasks are all about digital resilience and decentralization:

👉 Boosting Alternative Networks: I have to push Solent.Social and the broader Fediverse much harder.

👉 Learn New Systems: Exploring alternative platforms, as the upcoming round of strict ID verification rules will likely lock out or restrict access to mainstream spaces like TikTok and YouTube (So maybe looking at PeerTube and Loops).

👉 Content Redundancy: Pushing further into content creation while simultaneously building digital backups on alternative, self-hosted or federated systems like PeerTube or just uploading it directly to Solent.Social

👉 Alternative Comms: Researching Discord alternatives (hoping Fluxer has finally got its decentralized architecture live).

There is an immense amount of work to do before these highly invasive "safety" systems are fully implemented.

At this stage, bringing friends and family over to safer, independent digital spaces isn't just a preference, It’s a necessity! No one should be subject to this level of blanket surveillance. It treats people as criminals right out the gate and company greed causes them to harvest our personal data even further to train AI Models to replace us. This is all getting ridiculous.

#OnlineSafety #OnlineSafetyAct #UKSocialMedia #SocialMediaBan #SocialMediaBanUK #IDVerification #UK #Discord #OnlineSafetyActUK #Surveillance #IDVerify

#onlinesafety #onlinesafetyact #uksocialmedia #socialmediaban #socialmediabanuk #idverification

Sam @[email protected] · 2026-06-17 · 08:48 UTC

☀️ Morning everyone,
With the news on the UK's "Phase 2" of the Online Safety Act rolling out, my focus has shifted heavily. Today's tasks are all about digital resilience and decentralization:

👉 Boosting Alternative Networks: I have to push Solent.Social and the broader Fediverse much harder.

👉 Learn New Systems: Exploring alternative platforms, as the upcoming round of strict ID verification rules will likely lock out or restrict access to mainstream spaces like TikTok and YouTube (So maybe looking at PeerTube and Loops).

👉 Content Redundancy: Pushing further into content creation while simultaneously building digital backups on alternative, self-hosted or federated systems like PeerTube or just uploading it directly to Solent.Social

👉 Alternative Comms: Researching Discord alternatives (hoping Fluxer has finally got its decentralized architecture live).

There is an immense amount of work to do before these highly invasive "safety" systems are fully implemented.

At this stage, bringing friends and family over to safer, independent digital spaces isn't just a preference, It’s a necessity! No one should be subject to this level of blanket surveillance. It treats people as criminals right out the gate and company greed causes them to harvest our personal data even further to train AI Models to replace us. This is all getting ridiculous.

#OnlineSafety #OnlineSafetyAct #UKSocialMedia #SocialMediaBan #SocialMediaBanUK #IDVerification #UK #Discord #OnlineSafetyActUK #Surveillance #IDVerify

#onlinesafety #onlinesafetyact #uksocialmedia #socialmediaban #socialmediabanuk #idverification

Kit Peters @[email protected] · 2026-06-15 · 14:08 UTC

OPINION: ‘That is the line in the sand. The work now is on the lines that follow’ — Kirstie Logan-Townshend on the under-16s social media ban

The following is an opinion piece by Kirstie Logan-Townshend, founder of Kirstie Logan Communications and a Swansea-based strategic communications consultant. She previously worked on AI at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and holds a Masters degree in Terrorism, Organised Crime and Global Security. The views expressed are her own and do not represent the editorial position of Swansea Bay News. Swansea Bay News publishes OpEds from politicians and public figures across the political spectrum.

I am on the GWR from Swansea to Paddington, the Welsh countryside rolling by, en route to an APPG meeting at Westminster on Rhetoric, Disorder, and Crisis of Democracy. That is a column of its own. I will come back to it.

The news this morning has overtaken the day. The government has announced a ban on social media platforms for under-16s. Modelled on Australia’s. Wider restrictions on the functionalities doing the most concrete damage to children online: livestreaming, stranger contact across gaming platforms, AI “romantic companion” chatbots that have no business being aimed at minors. Legislation in Parliament before Christmas. First regulations in force by Spring 2027. By the standards of the Online Safety Act’s wander through the last parliament, this is a sprint.

I back it. I welcome it. Today is a first step on a trajectory, and we can go further. Here is what should come next.

The ban focuses on platforms where children view content; the messaging services where they communicate are not in scope. The Com networks the National Crime Agency flagged, the ones I wrote about for Swansea Bay News last month, organise primarily on Discord and Telegram. Today’s announcement names them neither as social media nor as messaging, and they therefore sit, for now, in a regulatory grey zone. They will, in time, need to be named and addressed for what the NCA already calls them: a national security threat. The Ofcom enforcement review commissioned today must come back with a clear answer on powers, not only on resource. The encryption conversation must be reopened on terms that do not let Silicon Valley write the agenda.

None of those will be easy. When tech companies are investing, or not investing, billions in your market, regulating them costs political capital, and this government has shown it is willing to spend it. I want to see it keep spending.

What does this mean for the children I wrote about for Swansea Bay News last month? For the boy at the top of Townhill, his Snapchat, his TikTok, his Instagram, his YouTube, the public-facing apps where children view content and which my column tied to the radicalisation pathways the National Crime Agency has been warning about, are all to be blocked to under-16s. The livestreaming so prominent in the most coercive online spaces will be restricted. The stranger contact built into the gaming voice chats and Discord servers his caregivers had assumed were just games will, for under-16s, be ring-fenced. The AI “romantic companion” chatbots that have crept quietly into the lives of teenage boys this past year are locked behind an age-18 floor. None of that is small.

For the girl in West Cross, the change is real in different ways. The TikTok scroll that fills her evenings is gone. The predator whose first move depends on the stranger-contact functions the ban now restricts will find that move harder to make. The algorithmic feeds implicated in preventable teenage tragedies will no longer operate on under-16s at all.

Swansea has engaged with this. Torsten Bell MP’s public meeting during the consultation period drew a room from every quarter of the political conversation. As Torsten said on the night, “we’re not all going to agree, and we shouldn’t either.” But one thing we in the room agreed on, instinctively, was that the safety of children comes first.

Since the news landed, my WhatsApp has been lighting up. Some technology-sector contacts have been weighing in unprompted; others I have been asking. Most sent a clapping emoji and a few words either way. One, who has worked in government, sent “dying government’s response,” which pained me. A dying government does not legislate for regulations that land after the next election. That is a bet on a future you expect to be holding.

Another said “this is a start. We go.” A cyber security expert wrote back at length, with a thought I have been turning over since:

A good move. Social media has significant impacts on mental health and personal resilience. These changes will deliver real benefits, and they will help with extremism: less exposure to extremist views online, less risk of getting caught in a self-perpetuating algorithm of them.

That last phrase, self-perpetuating algorithm, is one I want to come back to before Paddington.

The follow-through is visible in the choices already made. A choice to legislate via the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act rather than wait for primary slots that may never arrive. A binding timetable written into the process: a progress report due within three months of Royal Assent, regulations laid within a year of that. And a consultation, Growing Up in the Online World, that closed in May with ninety per cent of parents behind the change. None of that is the work of a government simply chasing a headline.

Which brings me back, as the train approaches Paddington, to the session ahead of me, titled, perhaps not coincidentally, Rhetoric, Disorder, and Crisis of Democracy. This is the week for it. As I travel, the National Security (State Threats) Bill is moving through the Commons: counter-terrorism-style powers to confront the foreign states and their proxies who do this country harm, a Bill I welcome without reservation. It is a different national security from the one I have spent this column on, and a welcome one. The foreign-power threat and the threat to a child in West Cross are not the same danger, but they are answered by the same instinct, that the state has a duty to act, and that the bodies built to handle these things should be given the tools to handle them.

The self-perpetuating algorithm my cyber security friend identified is not only the mechanism by which children are radicalised into Com networks or fed extremist content. It is the same mechanism that hollows out democratic discourse, delivers disinformation, and turns reasonable disagreement into the kind of online aggression we have all become too used to. The boy at the top of Townhill and the girl in West Cross are not a separate conversation from the one I am going to spend the afternoon having in Westminster. They are the same conversation at different ages.

Online harm carries consequences for democracy. In acting decisively to protect children from these feeds, this government has, whether it has fully articulated this yet or not, taken a step to protect democracy itself. After a decade in which the previous government pretended the problem belonged to parents, this one has decided the problem belongs where it has always belonged, with the bodies built to handle it. That is the line in the sand. The work now is on the lines that follow.

If you have been affected by any of the issues in this article, the Samaritans can be contacted free at any time on 116 123.

Kirstie Logan-Townshend is the founder of Kirstie Logan Communications, a Swansea-based strategic communications consultancy. If you would like to submit an OpEd for consideration by Swansea Bay News, please email [email protected].

Related stories from Swansea Bay News

OPINION: ‘It was about as close to a strategy as padding a pillow with iron filings’ — Kirstie Logan-Townshend on the Online Safety Act
Kirstie’s previous column on why the Online Safety Act was set up to fail.

SOCIAL MEDIA BANNED: Under-16s to be blocked from popular apps — what it means for Welsh teens
Our full report on the ban and what it means for families across Swansea Bay.

Opinion and comment — all our columnists
Read all opinion pieces published by Swansea Bay News.

#KirstieLoganTownshend #NationalCrimeAgency #onlineSafety #OnlineSafetyAct #socialMedia #socialMediaBan #TorstenBell #under16SocialMediaBan

#kirstielogantownshend #nationalcrimeagency #onlinesafety #onlinesafetyact #socialmedia #socialmediaban

Kit Peters @[email protected] · 2026-06-15 · 13:28 UTC

SOCIAL MEDIA BANNED: Under-16s to be blocked from popular apps — here’s what it means for Welsh teens

Weeks before Westminster made its move, Swansea had already made up its mind.

When the local MP asked, eight in 10 people who answered his survey backed some kind of limit on children using social media. A packed public meeting at the Guildhall said much the same.

On Monday, the UK Government caught up with them.

Children under 16 will be banned from social media apps including TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and X, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer announced.

The rules should become law before Christmas and take effect in spring 2027. Messaging apps like WhatsApp won’t be included.

It is one of the biggest changes to childhood in a generation — and for families across Swansea, Carmarthenshire and Neath Port Talbot, it has been a long time coming.

A slide presented at a Swansea meeting showed that one in five children in Wales spend more than seven hours a day on a screen, and that most children aged three to five already have their own social media profile. (Image: Torsten Bell MP)

A debate that started here months ago

This has been a live issue across the area since the spring.

Back in May, Swansea West MP Torsten Bell held an “emergency” public meeting at the Guildhall after the subject filled his postbag more than any other this year.

The room was standing-room only. Parents spoke of children glued to screens for hours. Teachers described what they see in the classroom every day. Charity workers laid out the growing evidence on children’s mental health.

Afterwards, Bell surveyed his constituents and found 80% backed some form of age limit. “Swansea’s voice has been heard loud and clear,” he said, “and Swansea backs a ban.”

Local MPs had already been pushing in the same direction. Tonia Antoniazzi and Henry Tufnell were among more than 60 Labour MPs who had called for a ban before the government acted.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

What actually changes

So what does the ban mean in practice?

From spring 2027, social media companies won’t be allowed to let under-16s use their apps at all. Accounts already held by younger teenagers will be switched off or paused.

A child won’t be able to get around it with a parent’s permission — the ban applies either way.

There’s a second part to it. On gaming sites and other services, under-16s will be stopped from livestreaming themselves — broadcasting live video — and from being contacted by strangers. The government says these are the features that put children most at risk.

For 16 and 17-year-olds, those same restrictions will be switched on automatically, though they can choose to turn them off.

And so-called AI “companion” chatbots — apps designed to act like a virtual boyfriend or girlfriend — will be locked to over-18s.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

What stays the same

This is not a ban on being online.

Children will still be able to message friends and family on apps like WhatsApp. They’ll still watch videos, play games, read the news and use school and learning sites.

The government has promised a short list of exceptions covering things like educational tools, shopping and music apps.

What teenagers themselves think

The young people who’ll actually be affected aren’t all convinced.

When BBC Wales visited Morriston Comprehensive in Swansea last month, pupils pushed back.

Ruby, 14, said it was easy for older people to want rid of social media because they grew up without it — but her generation hadn’t.

Indy, 13, said that growing up now, social media felt “vital”. Their classmate Alex, also 13, thought a ban was too harsh, arguing the responsibility should be shared between children, parents and the apps themselves.

It’s a feeling the government’s own research backed up. Across the UK, children were far more likely to want certain features restricted than to want apps banned outright — and only around three in 10 supported a full ban.

A city that’s already worried — but not united

Back at that Guildhall meeting, the mood in the room captured the national split in miniature.

There were parents who wanted action now, certain that social media was harming their children. There were others who doubted a ban could ever really be enforced — and worried it might just push young people somewhere worse.

The worries aren’t hard to understand. According to the Children’s Commissioner for Wales and the regulator Ofcom, one in five children in Wales spends more than seven hours a day looking at a screen. Most children aged three to five already have their own social media profile.

And the harm isn’t abstract. In March, a school warned pupils they could face expulsion over abusive TikTok posts that caused real distress.

Will it actually work?

That’s the question hanging over everything — and it’s the one the Swansea meeting kept coming back to.

To make the ban work, apps will have to get much better at checking how old their users really are. That could mean scanning a face to estimate someone’s age, asking for ID, or working it out from how an account behaves. The regulator Ofcom has been told to report back on the best way to do it by October.

Most adults shouldn’t have to do anything, the government says — but some will be asked to prove they’re over 16.

The doubters point to Australia, which brought in an almost identical ban in December. Six months on, 70% of parents there told officials their children were still on the banned apps, and not a single fine has been issued.

The experts are cautious too. Prof Amy Orben, of the University of Cambridge, said a ban was unlikely to make a big difference to children’s wellbeing in the short term, pointing to Australia, where most young people are still online.

A ban could still change attitudes over time, she said — but called it an admission that efforts to make social media safe had failed, adding that she felt “a deep sense of disappointment” about it.

Others were blunter. Prof David Ellis, of the University of Bath, said the ban was “based on worry, not evidence” and risked pushing teenagers towards less safe corners of the internet while letting the social media firms “off the hook”.

The numbers behind the headline

The government’s big claim is that nine in 10 parents support a ban. That figure is worth a second look.

It comes from parents who chose to respond to the consultation — people already motivated enough to take part. In the government’s own representative survey, the figure was lower, at around three-quarters.

And children, as the Morriston pupils showed, are far more divided. The point worth holding onto is that the people the ban is built to protect are often the least sure about it.

The Welsh questions

Closer to home, the ban throws up a few knots that don’t quite apply across the border.

In Wales, 16 and 17-year-olds can already vote in Senedd and council elections — old enough, in other words, to help pick a government. Yet under these plans they’d have spent their younger teens shut out of the very apps where a lot of that debate now happens.

There’s a question of who’s in charge, too. The internet is governed from Westminster, so the ban itself isn’t a decision for Cardiff. But schools and children’s services are run by the Welsh Government — and that’s where a ban actually plays out, day to day.

Wales has already gone its own way once. When England moved to make schools phone-free, First Minister Rhun ap Iorwerth ruled out a Wales-wide ban and left it to each school to decide.

The Welsh Government said it was “committed to doing all we can to protect children and young people from the harmful impacts of social media”, and would wait to see the outcome of the consultation.

The thing the apps give that’s easy to forget

There’s one more Welsh wrinkle, and it came from children themselves.

When researchers asked young people across the UK what they’d miss, Welsh children pointed to two things in particular: keeping in touch with friends in the countryside, where everyone lives far apart, and having somewhere to practise the Welsh language.

For a teenager in a village in rural Carmarthenshire, an app isn’t just a time-sink. It can be the difference between feeling part of things and feeling cut off — exactly the balance the government says it’s trying to get right.

What happens now

For families, the short answer is: nothing yet.

The government says parents and children don’t need to do anything before the changes land in 2027. More detail is promised in July, including possible overnight “curfews” on apps and limits on the endless scrolling that keeps children glued to their phones.

There may be an upside to all the uncertainty. Dr Catherine Sebastian, of the health charity Wellcome, said nobody yet knew how the ban would affect teenagers’ mental health — so Wellcome will fund studies across the country to find out, working with young people themselves to design them.

Whether the ban protects children or simply pushes the determined ones somewhere harder to see is the question now hanging over all of it. It’s the same question a Swansea Guildhall full of parents and teachers was asking back in May — and the answer still isn’t in.

If you’re worried about a child in your life, support is available through Childline on 0800 1111.

Related stories from Swansea Bay News

SOCIAL MEDIA: ‘Swansea backs a ban’ says MP Torsten Bell as survey finds strong local support
The Swansea West MP found 80% of those he surveyed backed some form of age limit.

Packed Swansea public meeting hears parents’ fears about social media and their kids
Inside the Guildhall meeting that drew parents, teachers and residents.

First Minister rules out Wales-wide ban on phones in schools
The Welsh Government has left the decision on school phone bans to individual schools.

Bridgend school warns pupils could face expulsion over abusive TikTok posts
The real-world consequences of children’s social media use in our schools.

#children #ChildrenSCommissionerForWales #featured #HenryTufnellMP #onlineSafety #OnlineSafetyAct #RhunApIorwerthMS #socialMedia #socialMediaBan #ToniaAntoniazziMP #TorstenBell #under16SocialMediaBan

#children #childrenscommissionerforwales #henrytufnellmp #onlinesafety #onlinesafetyact #rhunapiorwerthms

infosertecla.com @[email protected] · 2026-06-11 · 17:00 UTC

Signal llama «vigilancia masiva» al plan del Reino Unido de escanear dispositivos

El primer ministro Keir Starmer anunció en la London Tech Week que Apple y Google deberán activar herramientas para detectar imágenes de desnudos en dispositivos de menores. Signal respondió con un documento titulado «La vigilancia no es seguridad», advirtiendo que el sistema sentaría las bases para el control estatal sobre cualquier contenido privado (Fuente Signal).

El gobierno del Reino Unido quiere que cada teléfono y tablet se convierta en un punto de control de imágenes. Signal dice que eso es exactamente el problema. La propuesta de escaneo de dispositivos fue anunciada por el primer ministro Keir Starmer durante la London Tech Week. Bajo el plan, compañías como Apple y Google deberían activar funciones integradas en smartphones y tablets para detectar y bloquear imágenes de desnudos en dispositivos de menores.

El alcance de lo que se pide es amplio. El gobierno quiere que las protecciones se apliquen en todo el dispositivo, incluyendo cámaras, aplicaciones de terceros, funciones de búsqueda y servicios de mensajería. Los adultos podrían seguir viendo o compartiendo contenido para adultos, pero solo después de pasar una verificación de edad. Si las empresas tecnológicas no actúan en un plazo de tres meses, el gobierno dice que impulsará una legislación con multas para las compañías y posible responsabilidad penal para sus ejecutivos.

Apple ya tiene algo similar en funcionamiento. La compañía ofrece su función Communication Safety, que usa aprendizaje automático en el propio dispositivo para detectar fotos y videos de desnudos, difuminar el contenido y advertir a los menores antes de que lo vean o envíen. Apple recientemente presentó herramientas ampliadas de seguridad infantil en la WWDC26, aunque la propuesta del Reino Unido va más lejos al hacer el enfoque obligatorio y extenderlo más allá del ecosistema de Apple.

La respuesta de Signal fue contundente. En un documento titulado «La vigilancia no es seguridad», la app de mensajería cifrada señaló que obligar a los residentes del Reino Unido a probar su edad o tener su contenido escaneado simplemente para comunicarse es una propuesta peligrosa. Aunque el escaneo ocurra en el dispositivo, Signal argumenta que el sistema normalizaría la inspección de contenido privado antes de que pueda enviarse o verse.

El argumento central de los críticos no es técnico, sino político. «Sabemos que las capacidades de vigilancia masiva y censura, por más sinceras que suenen las promesas de quienes las inician, nunca permanecen acotadas de forma estrecha», escribió Signal. Una vez que los teléfonos estén obligados a inspeccionar contenido para una categoría de material, el mismo sistema puede expandirse a lo que los gobiernos consideren amenazas o contenido dañino.

Signal también advirtió que el sistema fortalecería el control que Apple, Google y Microsoft ya tienen sobre la información más personal de los usuarios, y sostuvo que la verdadera seguridad infantil debería significar mejor educación financiada, servicios sociales más sólidos y salvaguardas reales en plataformas de IA, no escaneo predeterminado en cada dispositivo.

No es la primera vez que el Reino Unido choca con las grandes plataformas de mensajería cifrada. WhatsApp y Signal habían dicho anteriormente que preferirían abandonar el país antes que debilitar el cifrado bajo la Online Safety Bill. Más recientemente, las reglas de verificación de edad de la Online Safety Act impulsaron un aumento en el uso de VPNs.

#APPLE #ciberseguridad #cifrado #clientsidescanning #encriptacion #google #KeirStarmer #mensajeria #OnlineSafetyAct #PORTADA #privacidad #ReinoUnido #SeguridadInfantil #signal #Vigilancia

#apple #ciberseguridad #cifrado #clientsidescanning #encriptacion #google