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Keir Starmer Announces Addictive Design Restrictions
85 Plays22 days ago
Keir Starmer Announces Addictive Design Restrictions - but will it make a safer internet?
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Transcript
Introduction to Dopamine Slot Machine Podcast
00:00:11
Andrew Wilmot
Good morning, good day, good evening. Whenever you are, welcome to the dopamine slot machine, the podcast that discusses what you need to know about the video games your children are playing, how they're designed to get your kids hooked, how to make money from your children, and what can you do to make sure your child's relationship with video games is a positive one.
Regulating Addictive Tech: Starmer's Announcement
00:00:26
Andrew Wilmot
My name is Andrew, I'm a dad of two and a lifelong gamer. and you're going to have to forgive me today because I am completely unscripted. Normally I write down a set of notes at the bare minimum, Sometimes I do speak more scripted, but what I'm talking about has literally just happened. There's a good chance you might be finding out about this from this podcast. That would be something. So the gist of it is Starmer has announced a new set of regulations on big tech.
Jewel's Law and AI in Online Safety Act
00:00:53
Andrew Wilmot
to, in his words, crack down on the addictive elements of social media. Now, a lot of those details are are yet to be coming. The main new proposals at the moment are that coroners would have to notify Ofcom of the death of every child aged 5 to 18 so they can ensure tech companies do not delete their data in case it is relevant to the way they died, otherwise known as Jewel's Law.
00:01:14
Andrew Wilmot
named after a 14-year-old who died after an online challenge went wrong and his social media accounts were struggling to get the evidence they needed to prove that.
00:01:27
Andrew Wilmot
ah The other proposals include including artificial intelligence chatbots in the Online Safety Act and getting new legislation around technology through much quicker.
00:01:37
Andrew Wilmot
He also adds that he wants to crack down on the addictive elements of social media, stop the autoplay, the never-ending scrolling, that that keeps our children hooked on the screens for hours, and he wants to stop kids getting around age limits. And so one of this sounds very positive.
Children, AI, and Foundational Skills
00:01:52
Andrew Wilmot
I do have some concerns. And let's ah let's let's talk about it. So firstly, let's let's talk positive. Firstly, Jules Law is a huge win for campaigners.
00:02:03
Andrew Wilmot
Ellen room from Chatham, she has been working on this so hard. I cannot as a parent put myself in her shoes. I just can't. And the amount of hard work that's gone into this from her, huge credit.
00:02:18
Andrew Wilmot
That is just an out and out win. And I'm so glad that that's being included. Artificial intelligence chatbots being included in the online safety act. For this one, the devil's really in the details.
00:02:30
Andrew Wilmot
Now, I'm very much of the opinion that AI is a fantastic tool for adults. Sort of compare it to chainsaws, right? Chainsaws are incredibly useful if you know how to use them.
00:02:42
Andrew Wilmot
And you can, but they're vital in in a number of industries. I, as an adult have used a chainsaw to chop up some wood. Now also as a child, I chopped up wood for scout camp.
Internet Regulation Challenges
00:02:55
Andrew Wilmot
They wouldn't give us a load of chainsaws to do that. But when I hear arguments about the the use of AI for kids, I kind of feel like there's so many other necessities that need to learn as foundational skills before before giving them chainsaws or AI. Be that safety, be that actually just understanding how to chop wood without a chainsaw first. And equally with AI, understand how to do basic tasks before just giving them an AI to do it for them. So my concern with this is it's an attempt to try and create a safer internet. And that is just not possible.
00:03:35
Andrew Wilmot
I have very mixed feelings about a lot of these types of regulations because as somebody with a background in tech, I understand that the internet was purposefully designed in a way that makes this difficult. I do not believe there is a way to create a safer internet.
Legislation Pace and Child Impact
00:03:50
Andrew Wilmot
Now, if what these can do is shift the needle in terms of societal opinion, a bit like with the the legal requirement to be wearing a seatbelt, right?
00:04:00
Andrew Wilmot
now There's not seatbelt inspectors coming around every car making sure that you've got your seatbelt on. And you could drive hundreds of times without your seatbelt, without it ever being an issue.
00:04:10
Andrew Wilmot
But just bringing that into the legal space made, started to shift the, come accompanied with a big public awareness campaign, shifted the societal view on that. And I would never, I wouldn't get into a car that didn't have a seatbelt at two I just wouldn wouldn't do it. it is...
00:04:27
Andrew Wilmot
as an essential part of car safety in my view which was something that took a little while to percolate through society as an opinion and saying getting new legislation around technology through much quicker um this worries me even if it could potentially be a good thing we have been very frustrated with just how long it seems to take to do anything, anything in this country. But
Addressing Addictive Social Media Features
00:04:51
Andrew Wilmot
when we've got campaigners whose children are actively being harmed, even if you have removed social media from your children, even if you don't let your children have a smartphone, the peers do, then those children are being harmed by the decisions made by other parents. So a lot of us are feeling very frustrated by the pace of things. And things taking a year or two in politics is very quick. But a year or two in a child's life is can be can be everything. And for a lot of children, unfortunately to many children, the delay will have profound impacts on their lives. But if this just means doing the wrong thing quicker, then then that's not good.
00:05:34
Andrew Wilmot
Now, i'm I'm liking what he's talking about when he's highlighting the addictive elements of social media, stopping autoplay, never ending scrolling, better known in industry as infinite scroll.
00:05:50
Andrew Wilmot
A little bit concerned when he's talking about stopping kids getting around age limits, there has been some conversation around age gating VPNs. Now, VPNs serve a number of different tools, but it includes genuine privacy and that they're vital tool in countries with oppressive regimes, Iran, for instance.
00:06:07
Andrew Wilmot
ah And to get rid of them, to to really restrict access to them in society does have, it is a rights issue,
Evolving Tech vs. Static Regulations
00:06:16
Andrew Wilmot
right? now I like to believe that Britain could never turn into an authoritarian state, but I'm sure there are plenty of people living in other countries whose governments have turned authoritarian who thought the same thing.
00:06:31
Andrew Wilmot
Now, autoplay and infinite scroll, absolutely two of the worst offenders. But again, there's two things here that are concerning to me. So first, when he says crack down on the addictive elements of social media, it is not just social media. Binted uses infinite scroll.
00:06:48
Andrew Wilmot
Auto players included outside of just what we think of traditional social media and to limit the remit of what you're looking at to specifically social media means that you're missing out on on games. Roblox, I talk about Roblox so often for a very good reason, and that's because it is effectively the social media for children. 63% of 8 to 14-year-olds in this country are active users of Roblox. I think for that age range, that's higher than Facebook. And to disclude Roblox from this conversation just because it is a game or a platform to play games on rather than looking like traditional social media is a massive mistake.
00:07:27
Andrew Wilmot
Secondly, He's highlighting specific features, but he, i don't know, like, big tech is amazing at coming up with some, as at evolving, and it will evolve faster than regulators could ever catch up with, let alone lawmakers, regardless of what he says about making it so that new legislation under technology can pass much quicker.
Digital Age of Consent and Parental Control
00:07:53
Andrew Wilmot
He says MPs have a finance bill every year with a budget.
00:07:56
Andrew Wilmot
Oh, sorry, this was Liz Kendall, who said this MPs have a finance bill every year with the budget. I think we need to think like that with technology because it is changing so fast. A year is a lifetime in technology. In the past year, the the evolution we've had in chatbots is staggering. The spread of things like character AI amongst children is staggering.
00:08:15
Andrew Wilmot
With so many of these things, you can't wait a year. You can't wait for a year's worth of harm to be accumulated. And let's be honest, it's going to be more than a year because these things take a while to come to the attention of Parliament. It's just a year to start actually having some action on something once people have been made aware of.
00:08:35
Andrew Wilmot
And there's a number of notable exclusions that, again, are bothering me. So the digital age of consent in this country is 13. That means, and there was a post on LinkedIn that went viral about this recently,
00:08:49
Andrew Wilmot
that when your child turns 13, you can no longer manage that child's account. So a post went viral on LinkedIn, there was an ah email from Roblox saying, you are receiving this email because the age on your child's Roblox account is now 13 years old or older. You will no longer be able to manage your child's privacy settings.
00:09:09
Andrew Wilmot
Spend and screen limits will no longer apply. You will not be able to block users and experiences on your child's behalf. You will no longer receive spending-related notifications unless you explicitly opt in. They say, we encourage you to discuss spending guidelines with your child at 13.
00:09:25
Andrew Wilmot
And Roblox decides that that is an acceptable aid to remove these guardrails. If the digital age of consent was 10, they'd be sending this email at 10. We know how this works. And so to completely disclude that from any conversation is concerning. Now, again, I have to reiterate, the devil is in the details.
00:09:45
Andrew Wilmot
Just because he hasn't mentioned these in the press release or his interview with Jeremy Vine, which is what I've just listened to, which was very frustrating, by the way. Jeremy kept trying to direct him onto the Peter Mandelson-Epstein conversation, which is an important conversation to have.
00:10:01
Andrew Wilmot
but but not why he was on the radio at that point. And I really wanted him to dig into some of these details, and he just didn't.
00:10:11
Andrew Wilmot
Anyway, my final concern, all of this is to try and make a safer internet, which as I've said, is I do not believe is possible for children. Just due to the way the internet is designed from the ground up, the way big tech operates, it cannot be done.
Smartphones and Parental Control
00:10:26
Andrew Wilmot
And I'm far from the only tech expert that is sounding this. And again, I'm not wholly negative on regulation that tries to do this as long as it comes with the understanding of what you're never going to be able to create a perfect wall. You're never going to be able to create perfect age restrictions. And the argument that art will push kids to somewhere more dangerous, complete bunk.
00:10:47
Andrew Wilmot
But the the age restrictions are going to be quite easy to evade in any form. And so we need to remove the device through which the harm is being caused, which is the smartphone. We need to remove smartphones from children.
00:11:03
Andrew Wilmot
In my view, the buck there stops with parents. They need support from schools, local authorities, but ultimately parents need to be making that decision.
00:11:13
Andrew Wilmot
I'm not suggesting that we get a smartphone license checkers going around making sure that you've not given your kids a phone recently or anything like that. But the conversation needs to be set around smartphones.
00:11:26
Andrew Wilmot
All of these as problems disappear for children once we stop giving the Internet access to children through the smartphone. Now, there has been some movement on this with with guidance to schools.
00:11:40
Andrew Wilmot
And last month, the government said that all schools should be mobile phone free environments by default and anything other than this should be by exception only. So that's a positive development. However, In terms of what that could look like, they do include out of sight, out of mind policies, which the data shows just does not work.
00:11:59
Andrew Wilmot
Let alone the the anecdotes you get from from kids and parents, they are just using them. Kids are just using them in these schools that have this policy. For me, the worry is that if we get a new set of restrictions in place that may or may not have further unintended consequences, there will be a view by politicians that, ah, job done.
00:12:20
Andrew Wilmot
We have done it. this This law has made the internet safe for kids. So now I don't need to worry about social media for children. We have we've outlawed Infinite Scroll, which by the way, will just appear under different forms and some other with a different name. That's the way big tech works on this.
00:12:39
Andrew Wilmot
And so, you know, addictive design, we've conquered it. It's done.
00:12:44
Andrew Wilmot
But if all of these parts, and even if they all work as intended, then we're not done. Roadblocks will still be causing harm to millions of children in this country.
00:12:59
Andrew Wilmot
There will still be smartphone related harms to millions of children in this country.
Smartphone Dangers and Potential Solutions
00:13:06
Andrew Wilmot
Addictive, these proposals and addictive design do not tackle the fact that predators are approaching our children in WhatsApp groups that children are being added to.
00:13:16
Andrew Wilmot
And that is in every school in the country. The safeguarding leads will be dealing with that. Having a tick tock where you have to manually press the play button for every video isn't going to make it meaningfully less addictive to children who are already spending hours a day on the platform.
00:13:36
Andrew Wilmot
And I really don't think that the government, that but our public sector has the chops to keep up with big tech on this. I so often speak with policymakers and even the best intentioned ones who are really doing doing their best to keep abreast of all of this,
00:13:57
Andrew Wilmot
They're very infrequently having a tech background. They very infrequently really understand the way these things are designed, the way they're used, why it's used, beyond just, oh, it makes more money.
00:14:07
Andrew Wilmot
They don't understand how these things make more money. They don't understand why Vinted has implemented this in the same way Facebook has. That's that's a whole other point, right? There's addictive design. It isn't just social media. i pointed out games, but it's in our children's ed tech. It's in shopping apps. eBay does it.
00:14:26
Andrew Wilmot
Are we going to crack down on the use of this in non-social media or is it just going to be social media? Are we going to end up in a really bizarre situation where, like in America, where you've got the fantasy sports loophole, which has enabled a massive rise in mobile gambling over the last few years, are we going to end up in a real perverse situation where would-be social media companies are identifying or doing...
00:14:55
Andrew Wilmot
doing the bare minimum to avoid being classified a social media company so they can keep using addictive to design? The real answer is we just don't know because it's too early to tell without looking at the details of any proposals and those details just aren't available yet.
00:15:11
Andrew Wilmot
Of course, various parties have ah jumped on the government already. um Liberal Democrats have accused the government of continuing to kick the can down the road and called for a much clearer firm timeline on when action will be taken. You know, said a couple of hours ago, I'm not the biggest fan of this government, but, you know, give him a chance to actually put out the, but like if it takes another six months to put out any details, sure. But, you know, it's been less than six hours.
00:15:41
Andrew Wilmot
the Shadow Education Secretary Laura Trott described the consultation announcement as inaction and said Britain was lagging behind. She says, I'm clear that we should stop under-16s accessing these platforms. Well, I agree, Laura, on that.
00:15:52
Andrew Wilmot
However, you aren't going to stop them accessing those platforms with ineffective age restrictions. You're going to stop them by removing smartphones. Maybe they access them through a desktop computer, but that the levels of harm you get from a desktop computer in a family space where you've got passive supervision and it's a place you go to rather than something you are carrying around to bed on the bus in the bathroom, dramatically different.
00:16:17
Andrew Wilmot
even if Even if nothing else changed, but every child that had a smartphone had it replaced with a desktop, we would see less harm done to them.
Call to Action and Episode Closure
00:16:25
Andrew Wilmot
Even if we left in all of this addictive design, if they had to use it with a bigger screen,
00:16:30
Andrew Wilmot
the bigger the screen the better is a phrase i've heard used frequently on this then then a lot of these problems would would not be as ah as large as they are lord nash the uh former conservative minister who has been campaigning in the lords for tighter social media controls for children did welcome the adoption of jules law by the government uh But he also reiterates that the government must raise the age limit to 16 for the most harmful platforms now.
00:16:58
Andrew Wilmot
And so if you want genuine change, get in touch with your politician local politician. And I don't just mean MPs here, but speak with your council, speak with MPs.
00:17:09
Andrew Wilmot
If you are in Wales or Scotland, speak with the Senate members and the Scottish Parliament members respectfully and push for not just this set of regulations, but push for real action on smartphones, push for better statutory guidance smartphones,
00:17:26
Andrew Wilmot
mobile phones in schools. that's That's the first big thing that we need to do to actually address these harms. I'm going to leave you with that because that's all we have time for today. Thank you so much for joining me.
00:17:39
Andrew Wilmot
I would love to have you here with us again in our next episode, which hopefully will be a little bit more planned, and a little bit more scripted than this one was. This was completely reactive. This has been the Dopamine Slot Machine.
00:17:50
Andrew Wilmot
Thank you and see you soon.