At the ecclesia Brussel-Leuven and the ecclesia of Nebury brother
Olivia Bailey, the British education minister, announced in the Commons that the Government would
“impose some form of age or functionality restrictions for children under 16”.
She told MPs that ministers would also introduce regulations enacting the curbs by the end of the year under a timetable enshrined in law.
Her proposal can be seen as an imitation of what was decided in Australia. But we can only welcome this and hope that several more countries will follow to curb those dangerous deception platforms.
The British Prime Minister has been seeking to delay any decision on whether to introduce an Australian-style ban until after a public consultation is completed this summer.
But in a partial climbdown welcomed by the campaigners calling for a ban, Ms Bailey said:
“The Government has said repeatedly that it is a question of how we act, not if, but to put this beyond any doubt, we are placing a clear statutory requirement that the Secretary of State ‘must’, rather than ‘may’, act following the consultation.
We all must be aware that we have become in a dangerous world of algorithms and dangerously misleading fake photos and articles.
The governments have to take action to protect young people.
It is good that several countries want to limit children’s reach and impose a ban on children under the age of 16. Australia was the first to send a big and good signal, which the United Kingdom recently followed.
Lots of what you read and hear, particularly on social media, isn’t true. Big culprits are the influencers who deceive their followers and know how to sell everything on.
A lot of misinformation goes on social media. Even when a person is mistakenly giving false information, thinking it is true, it is often not put right, and goes its own way. Lots of times, we also notice that someone spreads disinformation by knowingly making false claims. Politicians and government leaders are more than happy to use social media to spread their speech and do not feel afraid to send ‘false flags’ into the world.
The disinformer’s goal might instead be simply to harm another person, maybe by spreading lies about them. In many cases, however, those who spread disinformation on social media can best be described as indifferent to their audience. All they care about is growing that audience in order to increase their income stream. If they can do this by making false claims, so be it, and if their audience is thereby harmed, too bad for them.
Social media has grown so much and has recently found a dangerous weapon. Artificial intelligence will pose an even greater danger in the future because reality will be even less distinguishable from spuriousness or falsehood.
In the 1960s, if you wanted to share your views with a large audience, you would have encountered gatekeepers. A newspaper got to decide whether to publish your angry and semi-coherent letter to the editor, and your local radio or television station got to decide whether to give you air time to lay out a conspiracy you thought you had uncovered. Decades later, social media was largely devoid of such gatekeepers.
But who is going to control the person who utilised AI? Who is going to be alert enough to decipher texts or photos? The danger is that the world is going to see more malicious deepfakes created by AI and published by persons whose intent is really to spread false news or information. It has become all to easy to fabricate a video in which a famous figure uncharacteristically utters an ethnic slur, and even in their own voice, so that it becomes really very tricky to recognise its falseness.
As a result of the advent of social media and deepfakes, the information space has become increasingly polluted. The unreliability of social media can ultimately make adults drop out and fall back on the previously known information tools such as newspapers, magazines, radio and television channels as well as renowned reliable channels on the internet.
But for youngsters, it would be very difficult to get to see the truthful information between the misleading and false information. Therefore, we can only be glad that the governments do everything in their power to make it impossible for children to join social media platforms.
Laura Trott, the shadow education secretary, said:
“We now have a commitment from the Government that they will impose an age restriction for children under 16, which will be in addition to, not instead of any curfews. That is a huge step forward in keeping children safe and in supporting parents in their fight against screens destroying children’s lives.”
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Preceding
- The Social Media Kindness Project
- Consequences of our digital environment
- Is it time to BeReal?
- To maintain a healthy relationship with technology
- Are you a newsflash nightingale?
- Who is mastering who
- With the ear shut off from the world
- Widening The Historical Inequalities due to Algorithmic Divide
- A culture of “democratic cleansing” – Elders and youngsters versus respect
- A Blog for bloggers about ideas and writing
- Necessity to be cheerful to help yourself and others
- About social media at last Sunday service
- Young Christian pastors achieving superstar status through the magic of social media
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Additional reading
- Social media, sympathy & shocks
- Manipulated content on social media
- A busy 2017 #3 Fake, gossip and real news
- Gossip and fake news, opposite fact checking and facts presenting
- Media Literacy
- Social Media and Truth
- Why social media presence matters in journalism
- Being in isolation #4 Man’s greediness, slackness, internet, friends and social contacts
- Consumers have come to depend on information sources not filtered or managed by information professionals
- What do we know about the future of journalism?
- Transformation of traditional journalism
- The First Great Information War
- Politics in our Digital Age
- Eyes on pages and messages on social media
- To protect our democratic system #1 Danger of fake and malicious social media accounts
- To protect our democratic system #2 Online platforms
- Disinformation evolving threat
- Manipulated content on social media
- Stability of our society threatened by disinformation via deep fakes endangering democracy
- About plots and conspiracy theorists who are spreading disbelief about climate change on social media
- The Truth Social update
- Social Putin
- Social media for Trumpists and changing nature of warfare
- The Troll Army of Donald Trump
- How willing are people to stand up for their values and beliefs
- Envy, affirmative action, honour, credit and divine wisdom
- How Social Media is Shrinking the Bible
- Don’t Just Log Out. Deactivate Facebook
- The Internet Is Not Safe For Children
- Safe browsing tips.
alsowritten
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heartprints
Marcus Ampe
Success Inspirers' World
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