The International Forum for Responsible Media Blog
The UK government has launched a consultation on introducing an Australian-style ban on social media for under-16s. The proposal is framed as a bold response to rising concerns about young people’s mental health, online abuse and exposure to harmful content. Continue reading
Reddit is asking Australia’s High Court to rule that it’s not a social media platform and therefore should not have to comply with the under-16s social media account ban. Continue reading
Canadian politicians have increasingly taken to social media to campaign as well as communicate with constituents, sharing updates on policies, local events, emergencies or government initiatives. But stories have emerged of constituents being blocked by their representatives. Should Canadian politicians be free to block their own constituents? Continue reading
What the matters discussed in Part One of this post demonstrate above all is the complexity and difficulty of critiquing the OSA as a threat to perfectly legitimate forms of expression when such significant parts of the mainstream media, namely the Telegraph, Times, Sun, Express, Mail and GB News, along with pressure groups such as the Free Speech Union and powerful right-wing ‘think tanks’ (in actual fact, ‘free market’ lobbyists) such as the Adam Smith Institute and Policy Exchange have, in pursuit of their own political and ideological ends, repeatedly set it up as a straw man and attacked it from the perspective of what has come to be known as free speech fundamentalism. Continue reading
In a recent article for the journal Porn Studies I raised doubts about whether children and young people watching porn online is apparently so harmful to them that the restrictive measures proposed by the Online Safety Act (OSA) are necessary, proportionate and compatible with the UK’s various human rights obligations. I also posed the question of whether these measures, and particularly the requirements for age-verification, are actually workable. Continue reading
Several pieces of legislation across the world are coming into effect this year to tackle harms experienced online, such as the UK’s Online Safety Act and Australia’s Online Safety Act. There are also new standards, regulations, acts and laws related to digital products (including smart devices such as voice assistants, virtual headsets) and services such as social media platforms. Continue reading
As of July 25 2025, people in the UK accessing web services with pornographic content will have to prove they are over 18 years of age. This development has been in the works for a while. It was proposed in 2014 by the video-on-demand regulator, and legislated for introduction in 2019 through the British Board of Film Classification. Continue reading
Nestled within a corner of the internet, a new website was created in 2017. It was to be similar to a celebrity forum, but with one key difference. Rather than being a space for fans to celebrate those within the public eye, it was a space to attack them. Tattle Life would expressly target those who its posters had decreed had “choose[n] to monetise their personal life as a business and release it into the public domain”. Continue reading
Last week, Meta – the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp – unveiled a new “personal artificial intelligence (AI)”. Powered by the Llama 4 language model, Meta AI is designed to assist, chat and engage in natural conversation. With its polished interface and fluid interactions, Meta AI might seem like just another entrant in the race to build smarter digital assistants. Continue reading
2025 is set to be a busy year for providers of user-to-user (e.g. social media) and online search services in the UK. Continue reading
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