Are there flaws in the new law meant to be keeping kids safe online?

0:00Tamara C:Hello, Ed Conway here. Here is what might sound like a slightly random question. What do AirPods, bananas and a pair of shoddily made running trainers from the 1970s have in common? On the surface, not very much. But on my podcast, Stuff Matters, I will uncover the deeper stories behind each of them. You will see how together they tell a fascinating new story about the world we live in. The first full series of Stuff Matters is out now. Just search for it on your podcast app and follow.

0:30Ian Russell:Today on the Sky News Daily with me, Tamara Cohen. Why is online safety becoming an almighty political row?

0:36Tamara C:Hello, Ed Conway here. Here is what might sound like a slightly random question. What do AirPods, bananas and a pair of shoddily made running trainers from the 1970s have in common? On the surface, not very much. But on my podcast, Stuff Matters, I will uncover the deeper stories behind each of them. You will see how together they tell a fascinating new story about the world we live in. The first full series of Stuff Matters is out now. Just search for it on your podcast app and follow.

1:09Ian Russell:The Online Safety Act was passed two years ago, intended to protect children from harmful content. It's now being implemented, but it's under attack. The Trump administration's concerned about it. Nigel Farage says reform would repeal it altogether. and a government minister hit back, saying people who oppose the measures are on the side of predators like Jimmy Savile. But campaigners argue it doesn't go far enough. Today we ask, how did the discussion around online safety get so politicised? I'm Tamara Cohen, political correspondent at Sky News, and I've reported a lot on online safety, what children see online and how it's affected them.

1:49Ian Russell:I've been speaking to Ian Russell, bereaved father of Molly Russell, who took her own life aged 14, who says suicide and self-harm pages are still being targeted at teenagers.

1:59Tamara C:It is horrifying. A harmful situation that led in a more than minimal way to the death of my daughter in 2017, nearly eight years ago, has got worse rather than better. If you've strayed into the rabbit hole of harmful suicide self-injury content, the platforms in particular TikTok and Instagram will recommend to you algorithmically they'll recommend more and more of that content.

2:29Ian Russell:In a moment we'll hear from the peer and free speech campaigner Toby Young who argues that legitimate debate is being shut down by the Online Safety Act but first let's bring in the Children's Commissioner Rachel D'Souza. Rachel you took on this role four years ago what have you discovered in that time about what young people are exposed to online? Now, I had been a head teacher for 20 years and a teacher for 30 odd years, and I had no idea what I was about to walk into. The first thing I did was survey like hundreds of thousands of children about the things that were of concern to them. And the online world kept coming up again and again.

3:07Ian Russell:We were hearing stories of children as young as six, seven, eight, seeing the most heinous porn. alongside that we were seeing lots of self-harm material hearing the terrible stories like of molly russell's death and children who were being driven to suicide with a key obvious culpability of the stuff that they were seeing online that we now know was so dark and deep so i've made it my business to really dig deeply into this i mean the work i'm talking to you about today um is my second big survey into porn in the online world for children. And I think parents and families would be absolutely shocked and stunned.

3:50Ian Russell:Tell us a bit about this research because it shows that things are actually worse than they were a couple of years ago. So we did the same survey two years ago where we talked to 16 to 21 year olds. I've just done that survey again because we really needed to calibrate that like a line in the sand for the online safety act and it's getting worse well more now than 50 % of children seeing really misogynous hardcore porn strangulation rape sex that is not consensual a child's brain is not able to cope with this if you're eight or nine if you're 14 or 15 and seeing this stuff you you can be confused you can be anxious you can get addicted.

4:33Ian Russell:Now, a lot of people will be listening to this thinking, what are the social media companies doing about it? And you have had them in, haven't you? You've got the powers to call them in. You've met them. You've said to them, why aren't you doing anything about this? And what do they say to you? I'm afraid it is always a very unhappy, sad event, really, because what they do is try and tell me how much they're doing. And then I have to challenge them and say, absolute rubbish. Now I bring my young youth ambassadors with me. One of my ambassadors was talking to the X representative the other day saying, you are not X, you're triple X.

5:09Ian Russell:We see nothing but porn on your sites. The other of my youth ambassadors was talking to TikTok and they were saying, oh, TikTok shop doesn't go to like the under 18s. And she was like, well, I was getting adverts this morning and I am so cross with them. For two years, we've known this act is coming on the books it's coming in they did nothing about their new responsibilities until just before the you know a few weeks ago and actually really literally this stuff is poisoning our children's mind and they they've got no moral sense and they jolly well need to step up and do something about it now of course a lot of people have heard of the online safety act which was passed two years ago they may not know that it's only being implemented now and an important part of it came in at the end of July, which is the children's code.

5:54Ian Russell:So all websites have to make sure that children don't see some of this harmful content or they can face massive fines. And they say, and indeed the government say, this will make a real difference. This is a line in the sand. Do you doubt that is the case? Look, I'm always glass half full. I'm hopeful and I'm really backing Ofcom to use their powers, the government regulator to use their powers to hold tech companies, particularly to accounts to make sure things do get better. We really need these protections to be giving some ease to parents who are the number one concern I get from parents is about what kids are seeing online.

6:33Ian Russell:They are beyond despair in how this is affecting their children. So it needs to be better. And yes, I am sceptical because I've worked with these companies for years. If they are out of line, I would like to see the regulator go after them and give them their biggest fines. And that's what will stop things happening. But there is another side to this where some people feel that age verification goes too far. It might put people's data at risk. People are now seeing pop-ups when they go online saying you need to put your age in, we need to see some ID for you to go on even sort of discussion forums.

7:07Ian Russell:And they're worried that there are free speech concerns there. Do we need to take those concerns seriously? Look, we need the adults of this country to feel confident to use age and trust age verification for this to work that needs to happen so i think there is a lot of work to do to really give people the confidence if you look at what happened after the children's code and their osa came in there was a massive reduction of traffic to pornography sites like porn hub and a huge uptake of vpns which is you know an individual world privately been able to get on the internet. We need government and Ofcom and others to give confidence about age verification because honestly it is absolutely secure.

7:53Ian Russell:I don't think there is any adult in any political party of any political persuasion with any view about freedom and liberty who would say six-year-olds should see strangulation and coercive sex. The Online Safety is a great big messy bill right i would far rather it just been a children's bill but we are where we are it's the best thing we've got so we've got to try and get behind it and give the adults confidence that age verification will work now you mentioned vpns which i'll just explain are private networks and they basically obscure the user's location and allow people to get around the restrictions and we have seen in the last couple of weeks a big spike in the number of people getting those are you worried that that could take children young people to unregulated places where we can't see what they're seeing.

8:40Ian Russell:There are totally legitimate and positive reasons for using a VPN. So I don't want to demonise VPNs, but VPNs are a loophole in the Online Safety Act. We need, I think, to get that loophole closed. The majority of children don't tell us they see porn through a VPN. They tell us that they see porn for the first time on social media. So if we could make sure the social media companies are stepping up to their very real and legal responsibilities and getting this stuff down and getting underage children off, we would be a large part of the way there. Bring VPNs in, that would be good too. I just worry that what I've seen of the social media companies is too little too late and we need to be tough with them about children.

9:25Ian Russell:If X won't get pornography off its site, then it has to not have children on its site. It has to not have under 18s on its site. Straightforward to me. Now, Rachel, while we're talking about all the horrifying things that children see online, you've also got this political row going on where you've got Reform, who are currently leading the opinion polls, saying we'd get rid of the Online Safety Act at the time that other people are saying it doesn't go far enough. You've got a government minister responding to that by saying anyone who thinks like that is on the side of predators like Jimmy Savile.

9:57Ian Russell:How do you feel about this row and where we are? right i think all of them need to grow up um like i don't think there is any adult in this country so which is who politicians are appealing to who thinks that children should be seeing the kinds of things that we're talking about if reform have great ideas about how to protect children let's hear them they need to collaborate grow up work together and keep the children safe the adults of this country the parents of this country expect nothing less when i talk to 16 to 21 year olds And I say to them, would you allow your child or your younger sister or brother to have the kind of free access to the stuff that your generation did?

10:37Ian Russell:They say absolutely no way. I think the political parties, all of them need to listen to that and not play Westminster games. Before we hear more from Rachel, let's put that point to the free speech campaigner Toby Young. Is Rachel D'Souza right? Do the Westminster parties need to grow up?

10:54Tamara C:Well, I haven't been impressed by the shrill, sensationalist tone of the government when defending the Online Safety Act. it's surely possible to have a grown-up conversation about how we can protect children from pornography, from websites advocating suicide and self-harm without encroaching on the freedom of speech of adults, without throwing around accusations of being sympathetic to paedophiles and sexual predators. If the government want this to work and want it to command public support, then responding, I think, to legitimate concerns about over-removal is important. And not to dismiss those expressing those concerns as being on the side of Jimmy Savile.

11:47Ian Russell:Rachel DeSouza has said the Online Safety Act is, in her view, not perfect, but that having got this far, it's absolutely worth the risks in order to protect children as young as six from seeing harmful content. Don't you think a lot of parents will agree with her?

12:03Tamara C:I don't know. I haven't seen any polling on that. But I mean, I don't think anyone would think that was an illegitimate interference in free speech. But again, I'm slightly concerned that too great an onus is placed on the regulator on Ofcom to protect children from harmful content. It's a bit like blaming the school when a child comes into the school age five and can't change its nappy. And schools are expected to take on all sorts of responsibilities that traditionally belong to parents. And if six-year-olds are accessing pornography or extremely violent content, then OK, Ofcom should do what it can to prevent that.

12:48Tamara C:But at the same time, don't parents have a responsibility to prevent their children from accessing that kind of content as well?

12:54Ian Russell:There has been polling on one aspect of this, which is age verification, which was at the end of July, just as the government were bringing in the new rules. And the YouGov polling found that most people supported age verification. 58 % strongly support and 22 % somewhat support. And the numbers who didn't support it were quite low. So now, obviously, that was asking the question before it's actually come in. But do you think free speech campaigners like yourself will win the argument? Will you be able to get a lot of people concerned about these implications?

13:33Tamara C:Well, I think the argument is being won for us by the over-removal of content, particularly by social media companies. I think lots of people are getting increasingly frustrated that they can't access content of democratic importance, content that they should be able to see if they're going to make informed choices at the ballot box in four years' time, unless they can verify their age. One of the reasons, I think, for the over-removal that's been taking place since July 25th, when this age-gating responsibility was imposed on online providers, is that originally there were a couple of protections built into the Online Safety Act.

14:12Tamara C:So category one providers, those providers with most onerous safety duties, also had some free speech duties. They were supposed to be careful before removing content of democratic importance and journalistic content. But those duties, for a variety of reasons, haven't kicked in.

14:31Ian Russell:What would you like to see to address these concerns? Are you talking about repealing the Online Safety Act, changing it in a relatively small way? What do you think would address these concerns about news content being age gated?

14:47Tamara C:Well, I think one quick fix would be to make sure that the free speech protections, the safeguards built into the act are activated. I think that might curb some of the over removal. I think greater clarity from Ofcom to say we're not going to engage in endless mission creep and end up insisting that social media companies have to protect adults from supposedly legal but harmful content. I think that would be helpful. I hope the Online Safety Act isn't amended and made worse. Ultimately, I would like to see it repealed. I think a better solution would be to simply ban under 16-year-olds from having smartphones.

15:29Tamara C:So they simply can't access any content on the Internet. One of the difficulties with trying to age-gate content is that most children can get around it pretty easily. They can access virtual private networks. They can fake IDs. So they can fool a social media company into believing they're 18. I mean, believe it or not, some content which I haven't been able to access because it's been age-gated, I've had to ask my 17-year-old son how to access. Now, it's content that he shouldn't be able to access, but because he's a bit more techno-literate than me, he knows how to get around it.

16:01Ian Russell:The Reform Party, who, of course, are leading the opinion polls, are talking about repealing the Online Safety Act. Obviously, it's quite a few steps forward. But do you think that they or any party getting into government would actually do that? Do you think that is a realistic prospect?

16:16Tamara C:Well, it's always hard to know what parties will do when they get into office. parties typically campaign in poetry and govern in prose. There are obviously political risks in repealing the Online Safety Act. I think it's more likely that a conservative or reformed government would reform it than repeal it altogether.

16:38Ian Russell:Thanks, Toby. Let's get a final word from Rachel D'Souza. I just want to finally ask you, Rachel, just thinking about how we grapple with this issue. It feels to me, having covered this, that some people think this is like smoking that will one day look back and think what will we be doing allowing it to happen everywhere and some people think we will have to just help children to navigate the dangerous things online themselves as they get older what do you think about about this as how we approach it yeah one of the difficult things about this is just how complex it is the online world is evolving And the trouble is that we want children to be able to experience the really good things and positive things.

17:24Ian Russell:I've been a digital native and been online. And so it's really, really difficult to sort of separate out the issues. When it comes to child protection, child safety, things that children just should not see, I am of the smoking variety in the sense that we will look back and say, what on earth were we doing? Look at our anxiety and mental health issues. look at porn addiction the more we understand about this i think the more we will look back and say this we exposed generations of children to massive danger now we have a chance we have a chance we've got the online safety acts this stuff seems to be taught really well in schools it should be absolute priority in the actual curriculum so we need schools to play their part and parents ultimately you know our parents are the the most important carers and teachers of our children but the parents I have to say are at their wits end so I guess my positive on this one would be when I talked to 16 to 21 and said what would you tell your pet you know what would you wish your parents had known when you were growing up and they gave me some really good like guidelines don't give us our phones and social media too young let's have a childhood let us play they said don't let us take them to bed at night absolutely manage the amount of time we're on them and then most importantly and this is the hardest bit talk to us about what we see there don't just have that one talk where you talk to us about this is what sex is or whatever and you run out the room as quickly as possible talk properly about the things your child is seeing in an age-appropriate way it's really hard but actually that is the best way to inoculate and support your child but that should be supported by a strong government response and I think Sometimes government are afraid to say these things about family life.

19:16Ian Russell:So we talk about, you know, tech companies and da-da-da. But actually, we need to be supporting parents to protect their children, as well as having good, robust legislation, because no eight-year-old should see violent, coercive strangulation and sex when they're just picking up, you know, or being shown a social media account, should they? They just shouldn't. Thank you, Rachel. There's a lot more in this story on the Sky News app and website. The Daily will be back tomorrow.

20:10Tamara C:new story about the world we live in. The first full series of Stuff Matters is out now. Just search for it on your podcast app and follow.