Digital safety campaigner and cross-bench peer Baroness Beeban Kidron believes that the ongoing California lawsuit against Meta, the big tech company which owns Facebook and Instagram, could be social media’s “tobacco moment”.
Talking to Welldoing about the issues covered in her book Users: How Big Tech Took Control and How to Fight Back, she said, ”I think we are getting to the stage where we can say, you knew it made kids anxious, you knew it was inappropriate, and you just allowed it to happen.
“The tobacco moment is about corporate responsibility. Now, judges are finding the will to say this is about the design of the product, it is not about freedom of speech.
“It’s a big moment, and I wish them well — but whether this particular case wins or loses, the legal uncertainty around this kind of service is going to build.”
Acknowledging that the internet has brought many boons to people’s lives the world over, Kidron says that people are now waking up to the harms it has also brought. The tech companies now compete to insert commercial needs into every product, and government regulation has fallen far behind, even when it was proven that elections could be affected.
“The normal democratic rules and expectations should have been imposed on tech. They should be responsible for their products, they should have liability. “ She argues that if they had been treated like other products, says cars, the industry would have developed in a very different way.
“Governments have been very slow to deal with it.”
The issue of children’s mental health has been Kidron’s position since she started campaigning 15 years ago. “I thought, I’ll start with children, people are less partisan about children, it’s a huge community. The harm from tech is quite visible - body dysmorphia, social comparison, anxiety, sexualisation of childhood, normalising strangling in sex - in homes, schools, the health service. It’s outrageous.”
She believes that there is a growing anger and reaction to an increasing number of issues around tech. “AI data centres, losing creative copyright, job displacement — these are things where it stops being theoretical. Different things will animate different people, and it is speeding up now.”
Kidron acknowledges that in her campaigning, which includes founding the 5Rights Foundation, she has been critical of the Keir Starmer administration as she felt they favoured closeness to President Trump, which meant aligning with large American tech companies. She is waiting to see what Andy Burnham’s direction will be, but has some caveats about how British version of the “phone ban” will be handled.
“If it’s a literal list of brands, that’s not so good. Within two years of TikTok appearing it was destroying children’s life. We have to stop tech companies marketing to children unless they are safe by design. It comes down to things like scrolling, notifications, auto play, introducing strangers. It’s not that difficult — you can just switch a few things off and make it much safer for kids. Then we would be in a more balanced position.”
