Caller argues new internet safety law that could jail social media bosses is 'far too broad'
14 January 2023, 18:35
This caller says it's 'impossible' to police social media platforms
This caller tells Emily Sheffield that plans to make social media bosses face prison over damaging online content is "far too broad".
Following the revelation that several Tory MPs are backing plans to make social media bosses face prison if they fail to protect children from damaging content online, Emily Sheffield asked LBC listeners whether this bill would work in practice.
This caller, a father, told Emily: "The law is far too broad, anything posted that is illegal is already covered under the Malicious Communications Act, I just don't think it'll work."
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He went on to say: "If we as parents are that genuinely worried about it, we need to lobby the government to completely ban these systems from our country. It can be done, if you know the technology you can get round it, but it will stop 90%-99% of children accessing it."
Emily responded: "That's my concern, these VPNs...can get a teenager around the basic stops against people viewing hardcore pornography on the internet."
The caller stated: "If you look at something like YouTube, they have something like 100million videos uploaded a day. You can't police that, it's impossible.
"As quickly as YouTube can take videos down, somebody will re-upload them. Re-upload them in a slightly different format, changing the length of the video, adding extra frames or segments to change the layout of the video so it can't be recognised by the algorithms."
He urged: "This has got to be about parents taking control, educating our children to understand that they might come across stuff - and if they do they need to say no we're not going to look at that."
"We will never win doing it from the technology side, it can't be done," the caller concluded.
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