To see the government pick a fight with Elon Musk would be very encouraging; I suppose that's one reason why I don't expect it to happen. But you have persuaded me that it needs to. If we don't want to be governed by foreign oligarchs — we are going to have to fight them off. Pre-emptive cringing won't help us.
Wonderfully provocative article, James. While your analogy of physical and digital public spaces is valid, I think there's a practical (and societal?) distinction when comparing in loco parentis responsibilities between the two. It's fair to say that there's a broadly common understanding of the jeopardy to which a responsible adult is willing to expose children in their care, requiring a degree of constant vigilance. Rightly or wrongly, not a week goes by that some hapless parent or carer isn't publicly shamed and/or prosecuted for falling below our shared, expected level of diligence.
It might just be my and my peers' feckless approach to parenting, but I don't know anyone who's ever applied the same level of scrutiny to their child's online activity, nor does our public judgement or current legal guidelines expect as much.
So maybe my insomnolent brain has defeated its own rebuttal? There'd be no need to prohibit young people's access to social media if we expected the same standards of supervision to their online experiences as we do in the physical world. That can't ever happen, of course; have you ever had to watch a kid play Minecraft? Because fuck that.
To see the government pick a fight with Elon Musk would be very encouraging; I suppose that's one reason why I don't expect it to happen. But you have persuaded me that it needs to. If we don't want to be governed by foreign oligarchs — we are going to have to fight them off. Pre-emptive cringing won't help us.
Britain is powerless against the tech companies unless it bands together wirh other countries like the EU
That must be why quasi-public spaces are generally nicer than true public ones.
Wonderfully provocative article, James. While your analogy of physical and digital public spaces is valid, I think there's a practical (and societal?) distinction when comparing in loco parentis responsibilities between the two. It's fair to say that there's a broadly common understanding of the jeopardy to which a responsible adult is willing to expose children in their care, requiring a degree of constant vigilance. Rightly or wrongly, not a week goes by that some hapless parent or carer isn't publicly shamed and/or prosecuted for falling below our shared, expected level of diligence.
It might just be my and my peers' feckless approach to parenting, but I don't know anyone who's ever applied the same level of scrutiny to their child's online activity, nor does our public judgement or current legal guidelines expect as much.
So maybe my insomnolent brain has defeated its own rebuttal? There'd be no need to prohibit young people's access to social media if we expected the same standards of supervision to their online experiences as we do in the physical world. That can't ever happen, of course; have you ever had to watch a kid play Minecraft? Because fuck that.