United Kingdom

The ultimatum comes a month after Jess Phillips quit her post as safeguarding minister claiming that Starmer had failed to introduce changes to halt the ability of children in the UK to take naked images of themselves.

I don't see the issue with kids being able to take naked photos of themselves? Like I get that the fear is that they will share these with adults exploiting them, but the Online Safety Act already requires platforms to limit sharing images in sensitive contexts (like DMs). You could also just require phones for children to not have cameras, but this isn't actually about children taking nude images of themselves.

“For too long, people have been told that [children sharing explicit images] is simply the price of modern tech – that nothing could be done. That government is powerless. That parents just have to accept it,” he said.

Just don't buy you kid a phone? Or just get them a phone plan without data? Parents are anything but powerless.

“That is why today, I am calling on tech companies operating in this country to introduce vice controls that prevent children from sending and receiving sexually explicit images. Because this is not an impossible challenge.

You solution is literally technologically impossible, though. There does not exist, and likely will never exist, an algorithm that can identify explicit images from non-explicit ones with fault tolerances approaching acceptable.

The announcement has been driven by an explosion in child sexual abuse referrals. The UK’s National Crime Agency receives 1,700 referrals every week. Last year nine in 10 child abuse images were generated by children, many of whom had been tricked or blackmailed by abusers they had met on the internet.

These are social issues for which technology alone cannot solve. Tech won't save us and it can't govern for you, Mr Starmer.

The proposal is designed to sit alongside the Online Safety Act, which requires companies to have processes for removing material that is illegal or harmful to children.

Bullshit, this literally works against the OSA's regime. At least with the OS age stuff happening elsewhere, you don't also have to upload your ID to every website that might host a nipple.

I'm all up for legislation requiring certain standards from system parental controls. My take on the OSA's age verification regime is that it should just be an API that tells apps/websites if parental controls are enabled. But this is about the most blatant trojan horse I've ever seen.