Championing digital rights, privacy & liberty within the Labour movement. Resisting the authoritarian playbook to build a progressive digital future. 🌹👁️

Our response to the Prime Minister's announcement ⤵️
We are banning social media access for under 16s. These days kids must find their feet in a world where technology intrudes into every area of their life. I just can’t let that go on anymore. So we’re giving children their childhoods back.
Community note
The UK Government's 'careful review' of the research found a small correlation between children's use of social media and wellbeing, but no evidence of a causal effect: gov.uk/government/pub… assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/696e0b46…
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Labour Digital Rights Network retweeted
🪪You might soon need your PASSPORT to use social media We warned that a social media ban would mean digital ID by the backdoor - this policy confirms it. Children need real protections online, not a surveillance scheme | #No2DigitalID
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We strongly support the joint letter, coordinated by @mollyroseorg and @IM_org, calling to make media literacy a fundamental life skill in our schools. Digital life is here to stay. Performative bans do not eliminate online harms - but they will leave young people unprepared when they inevitably go online. Locking teens out of the digital public square fails to build resilience or critical thinking. Labour must equip young people to navigate the online world with confidence and caution, while holding Big Tech accountable for their predatory platform designs. Read the full letter here ⤵️ mollyrosefoundation.org/medi…
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Labour Digital Rights Network retweeted
📵A social media ban "was never going to work... you can’t ban yourself to safety", former Australian police officer warns. The UK Government must learn from Australia's failed ban. We need meaningful tech and parental responsibility not performative, authoritarian government control. Read ⤵️ huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/u…
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Labour Digital Rights Network retweeted
British Transport Police scanned the faces of 537,697 people at London railway stations over six months. The trial produced one alert, and that alert was false. It cost £320,786 ($424,000) The police responded by extending the trial by four months and expanding the area. Since then, 926,912 people have been scanned in total. The system has made only three correct identifications, and every one of them ended with no action. The arrest column still reads zero. The watchlist, meanwhile, has grown from 381 names to 862. Transport for London welcomed the expansion and said it would tackle violence against women and girls. More than half of the police forces in England and Wales now scan faces in public, and every failed trial is treated as a reason to scan more of them. reclaimthenet.org/british-tr…
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🇳🇴 Norway's Labour-led government is taking action against AI glasses in public places. Our government must follow suit to defend public privacy and end the normalisation of corporate surveillance. Read more ⤵️ theguardian.com/world/2026/o…
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Labour Digital Rights Network retweeted
The UK government wants a passport, a driving license or a face scan before you can open a new social media account. This is the same country that arrests people over tweets. Britain has jailed people for what they posted online and now the state wants to know exactly who is behind every account before the first post goes up. The ban covers Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook and X, and it is expected to start in spring 2027. Discord already leaked government IDs after it introduced age checks. There is no reliable, privacy-preserving way to verify the age of every internet user. A pile of faces and passports linked to social media accounts is a gift to a government that prosecutes speech. reclaimthenet.org/uk-social-…
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Age verification methods cause people to decide not to access content. Barriers to speech are... barriers to speech. Really interesting new study. In this environment, government-ID methods achieved only 18–27% completion "regardless of reassurances"
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Labour Digital Rights Network retweeted
🚨NEWS: The Government wants Britons to face PASSPORT ID checks for social media access "Children deserve real online protections, not a sweeping surveillance scheme that has failed across the world and will introduce new risks to their safety." "This is not a policy for children, but one that affects every single adult using social media in the country. " "The Government’s requirement that all of us show a passport or driving license to open a social media account is a national ID scheme by the back door." - Maya Thomas, Legal and Policy Officer Read our full statement⤵️ bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/press…
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Labour Digital Rights Network retweeted
No matter what, children will find a way around. The under-16s social media ban is a dumb idea, that will make kids less safe by pushing them off children’s accounts regulated platforms and onto likes of VPNs and more dangerous parts of the internet.
Exclusive: Social media companies will be required to implement “hard checks” on people’s ages such as demanding passports or driving licences under plans to stop children from using their platforms The government is due to announce plans for a social media ban for under-16s in the coming weeks amid concerns that children are being exposed to harmful content Ministers want to take a harder line on age verification to ensure that children are not using the platforms after concerns that a similar social media ban in Australia has had little impact Under plans being considered by ministers, those using the sites will be required to submit their passports or driving licences or undergo credit checks to verify their age The Australian government admitted this year that more than 70 per cent of under-16s still had “some access” to platforms three months after the law changed in December 2025 Children reported that it was “easy” to circumvent the ban. They are only required to undergo basic screening — where users take a selfie and artificial intelligence estimates their age — to access platforms if they do not wish to upload official documents. In the most brazen cases, children were able to bypass the restrictions by drawing beards onto their faces Others have resorted to using virtual private networks (VPNs) to bypass checks by pretending they are based in another country, or pointing their phone’s camera at a screen showing an adult-looking face thetimes.com/article/9a7f374…
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🚨 Australia’s social media ban failed, so now ministers want your passport to access social media. This escalation just proves what we have been saying since day one: prohibition in the digital age does not work. Mandating ID checks to access social media forces 68 million Brits into a system of digital surveillance. It kills the online anonymity relied upon by journalists, whistleblowers, and vulnerable young people, while handing sensitive identity data to unregulated and unreliable corporate vendors. Worst of all, it lets tech monopolies completely off the hook for their toxic business models. We must defend digital freedom. Read more ⤵️ thetimes.com/article/9a7f374…
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Labour Digital Rights Network retweeted
A body linked to the UK Home Office has been keeping files on people who criticize government programs online. Between March 2024 and February 2025, the Prevent Standards and Compliance Unit logged 77 "observations" of critics. Most came from X, and some came from Reddit. Posts from or about groups like Hope Not Hate and Open Rights Group were also included. The entries were filed as "open-source complaints" and stored internally. The unit also tried to independently verify the claims made in them. The Home Office refused to release any of this. Rights & Security International won an appeal to the Information Commissioner's Office, and only then did the documents come out. Nobody knows whether automated tools found the posts. Nobody knows who the data gets shared with. You should be able to criticize government policy without ending up in a file. reclaimthenet.org/uk-prevent…
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Labour Digital Rights Network retweeted
What is the reputation of AI companies among Britons, and how does that compare to other sectors? For "AI companies": Very favourable: 3% Somewhat favourable: 13% Neither favourable nor unfavourable: 22% Somewhat unfavourable: 27% Very unfavourable: 32%
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Labour Digital Rights Network retweeted
Remember: the woman who championed the Online Safety Act cannot spot an obvious AI fake on her own feed. And they have the gall to attempt to police what you can see and say online.
Labour told what to post on X. Presumably, because they aren’t able to think for themselves. Challenge and report any criticism. Wow. Commies.
Community note
This image is AI-generated and contains a SynthID watermark. Nadine served as the Secretary of State with responsibility for Digital policy, including AI, so she should be aware of this. openai.com
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This is the textbook creep of safetyism in action. What is sold as a quick fix to protect children inevitably mutates into an authoritarian apparatus for state surveillance and digital control. Turning the state into an arbiter of permissible speech online does nothing to tackle the root cause of digital harm. It leaves Big Tech’s predatory attention economy completely intact while building a censorship regime that will outlast this government. It will force mandatory digital ID checks on the entire population, destroy online anonymity, and create a chilling effect on legitimate democratic dissent. Read more ⤵️ theguardian.com/technology/2…
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Labour Digital Rights Network retweeted
British Transport Police's facial recognition trial (which has now been expanded to the Tube) - cost more than £320,000 - took nearly 100 hours of police time - resulted in no arrests Uncovered by @LInvestigates standard.co.uk/news/london/f…
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Labour Digital Rights Network retweeted
⚠️A social media ban only "a staging post to what must be a very active interventionist state policing...the online space.” Culture secretary CONFIRMS our warnings about the Government's authoritarian internet control plans. The rise of censorship and narrative control for our “safety” is one of the most disturbing trends to emerge in modern politics – and unless there is a course correction, it risks becoming a permanent feature of public life. Read⤵️ theguardian.com/technology/2…
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Labour Digital Rights Network retweeted
NEW: @LInvestigates and The Guardian discover British Transport Police’s initial six-month trial of live facial recognition tech in London’s railway stations: - cost more than £320,000 - took nearly 100 hours of police time - resulted in no arrests theguardian.com/technology/2…
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Labour Digital Rights Network retweeted
🚨54% of Britons say the government only protects free speech it agrees with. Labour won't be in power forever. If you wouldn't trust someone like Nigel Farage with the power to censor the internet, don't build the infrastructure for it now. Labour must listen to the public and enshrine free speech - in both the real and digital worlds. Read more in @Independent ⤵️ independent.co.uk/news/uk/po…
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Labour Digital Rights Network retweeted
🚨New polling from @libertyhq and @Moreincommon_ is a wake up call: 58% of voters say a party's free speech stance affects how they vote, and current policies are alienating the public. Labour has a dangerous blind spot here. The reflex to assume "the state can solve everything" - while dismissing legitimate concerns from across the political spectrum - is eroding public trust. Blanket social media bans and the Online Safety Act are blunt instruments that weaponise state control and undermine digital rights. We shouldn't pretend these laws don't infringe on freedom of speech. Progressive politics must defend liberty online, not police it. Read more ⤵️ theguardian.com/world/2026/s…
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Who could have guessed? Read more ⤵️ theguardian.com/technology/2…
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