Ian Russell, a tireless online safety campaigner and key architect of the Online Safety Act, was nowhere to be seen — because he wasn’t invited.
His Molly Rose Foundation, along with 5Rights, youth-led digital wellbeing charity FlippGen, and other civil society voices who’ve warned blanket bans are a blunt instrument that risk doing more harm than good, were kept away from the fanfare, and only invited to a later technical briefing run by officials from the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.
So for all the warm reception Starmer’s carefully choreographed set piece garnered today, some people are happier than others. Many of the details of the policy are yet to be decided, but the headlines — which POLITICO scooped last week — tell us the direction of travel, and who will be claiming a win, quietly or otherwise.
The winners
Smartphone Free Childhood
Smartphone Free Childhood, which describes itself as a movement of families “standing together to delay [access to] smartphones and social media,” has long been agitating for precisely the kind of action outlined Monday.
As POLITICO previously reported, back in January the charity used its 100,000 person-strong network of WhatsApp groups to organize a grassroots lobbying blitz that saw MPs flooded with messages from concerned parents urging them to back a ban.
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