Strong front pages today. It’s clear that Ofcom needs to move away from its ‘gamechanging’ PR claims and start engaging with the deep and substantive concerns being widely expressed by civil society. @mollyroseorg.bsky.social

Today you’ll hear a lot of PR about @ofcom.bsky.social ’s measures to prevent children being algorithmically recommended suicide and self-harm content. In the small print, Ofcom says these apparently sweeping measures… will cost tech firms £3,000 to £20k per annum. @mollyroseorg.bsky.social

If Playbook’s reporting is correct, this is an appalling sell-out of children’s safety. How many young lives are we prepared to lose to dodge Trump’s tariffs? @mollyroseorg.bsky.social

Worth reading in full Peter Kyle’s comments to @lbc.co.uk earlier today. A mix of vague assurances and an acceptance he’s planning a ‘piecemeal’ approach to fixing the #OnlineSafetyAct - hardly the decisive action that Ian Russell and other bereaved parents have called for @mollyroseorg.bsky.social

This little vignette from the Trump inauguration parties: ‘We’re letting a lot more stuff through. A lot’ said a member of TikTok’s DC-based policy team.

This is truly despicable. More seriously, the decision to present this to non-US users should raise eyebrows.

Two fascinating graphs showing the AI bubble in action: market capitalisation is soaring ahead of the early days of the web, but private sector R&D is lagging far behind previous comparable tech breakthroughs

Hey Chat GPT, show me what delicious irony looks like

When Nick Clegg attempts to build his post-Meta career as an elder statesman, remember this. Standing behind changes that allow people to be called ‘filth’ and LGBTQ+ people ‘mentally ill.’ www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

‘Appeasement is the art of being nice to a crocodile in the hope it will eat you last.’ Excoriating take from John Naughton on the Secretary of State’s flawed logic of genuflecting before tech companies

Making the case for a conduct-based framework for social media platforms through the unlikely means of graffiti in Camden Town

Tonight’s Playbook reports ‘people in Government were thrilled to see US tech bro’ Marc Andreeseen supporting their AI action plan.

AKA the same man whose VC firm is backing CharacterAI - the platform that hosted chatbots in the guise of Molly and Brianna Ghey @mollyroseorg.bsky.social

So Zuck has decided it’s now acceptable to refer to women as property, gay people as mentally ill, and to call people ‘primitives’ on Meta platforms. This bonfire of safety measures isn’t just shameless opportunism, it’s nothing short of disgraceful.

We know that Molly was inundated with depression-related email prompts in the months before she died. Seven years on, here’s CharacterAI sending emotionally charged prompts to re-engage with depressive teen accounts @mollyroseorg.bsky.social

Yesterday’s announcement from Ofcom was a bitter disappointment and means illegal harm will continue to flourish. Here’s some early thoughts from @mollyroseorg.bsky.social on how we got here, and why the #OnlineSafetyAct needs to be fixed without delay open.substack.com/pub/andyburr...

Important and hugely welcome move from the Secretary of State to quickly use his powers under the #OnlineSafetyAct to set Strategic Priorities for Ofcom. This will offer some course correct until new legislation can build upon and fix weaknesses in the framework @mollyroseorg.bsky.social

Big Tech is moving into nuclear power stations. So that’s reassuring.