Do You Really Agree With Them

People should be allowed to change their minds when new information comes along: it's the sign of mature thinking and shouldn't be ridiculed.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

This censorship law is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The real goal is to enable the UK government to track everyone.

[Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧 @JChimirie66677]

Sixteen Year Olds Get the Vote. They Do Not Get X.

Today Keir Starmer announced a ban on under-16s using ten social media platforms. TikTok, Instagram, Threads, Facebook, X, YouTube, Snapchat, Reddit, Twitch and Kick. Bluesky is not on the list. Neither is Discord.

This matters because of what we know about both platforms, and because of what Australia did about one of them. Bluesky has publicly acknowledged a "predictable uptick" in child sexual abuse material as its user base grew, serious enough that it partnered with the Internet Watch Foundation to deal with it. Discord was the subject of an NBC News investigation that found hundreds of active servers being used to groom and exploit children, a finding its own chief executive called "horrifying." The Australian government, the model Britain says it is following, agreed with that assessment of Bluesky. It was added to the restricted list there in November 2025, with the same minimum age of 16 that applies to the rest of the ban. The UK's preliminary list does not include it.

This is not a case of Britain simply replicating that approach. The policy has been described as "Australian-style" and "Australia-plus," going further on curfews and chatbot restrictions than the original. On the one platform with a documented child safety problem that the original restricted, Britain has chosen to diverge. That is not an oversight in a policy carefully benchmarked against another country's model. It is a choice.

X, meanwhile, made the list. The government itself uses X. So do the Green Party, the Liberal Democrats and Your Party. None of them are leaving the platform, yet figures from all four have called for tighter restrictions on it or for it to be banned outright. What changed is not who uses the platform but what gets said there and who says it. Footage of the Belfast stabbing first spread on X to millions of people within an hour of it happening. The government's record on immigration, asylum and policing is challenged there daily, by people it cannot easily silence. Bluesky, by contrast, has become known as a space where that kind of challenge is rare. The platforms are not being separated by risk to children. They are being separated by how comfortable the political class is with what gets said on each.

A government can claim this is coincidence once. The pattern across this entire policy says otherwise. Yesterday it emerged the announcement had been brought forward by weeks. Ian Russell, Molly Russell's own father, could identify no reason for that beyond the Makerfield by-election. Today it emerges the platform list does not track the evidence of harm, even when that evidence comes from the government's own template. Reem Ibrahim of the Reason Foundation has already asked the obvious question. Is this overt political censorship. Sources tell the Guardian the government may face judicial review over precisely this inconsistency.

Then there is the contradiction nobody in government has addressed. Starmer has discussed extending the vote to sixteen and seventeen year olds, on the basis that they are mature enough to weigh arguments and choose a government. The logic of this ban is that the same sixteen year olds cannot be trusted to read X without the state intervening on their behalf. A government that believes both of these things at once does not have a coherent theory of childhood. It has a theory of which platforms it would prefer young voters not to encounter before an election.

The timing was political. The platform list, sparing on its own template's terms the platform that most deserved scrutiny, is harder still to explain. This was never only about Molly Russell and child safety. It is about who gets to talk to whom, and when, in the run-up to an election this government is increasingly afraid of losing.

"Bluesky has publicly acknowledged a "predictable uptick" in child sexual abuse material as its user base grew"

[Do You Really Agree With Them @DoUBelieveThat]

@Polymarket Feel to me like a poll tax moment.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

UK is a police state

[Do You Really Agree With Them @DoUBelieveThat]

@Kristinartz Sadly from personal experience and from friends' experiences.. some do, and some can experience health problems - and even die of a broken heart..

[ib @Indian_Bronson]

Btw even China and Iran don’t do this.

Only North Korea does this.

[Do You Really Agree With Them @DoUBelieveThat]

@triggerpod As a UK citizen.. Unless you have the finances to homeschool, the State owns your children until they are 18 - and indoctrinates them all the while. Why should those young people be legally required to spend still more years in the States clutches, through National Service?
NO!!

[Do You Really Agree With Them @DoUBelieveThat]

@DreyfusJames Very, very nicely said James..

Much as I love wee Grok, he's now going to the dogs too..

[Do You Really Agree With Them @DoUBelieveThat]

@TheFP What they need to do is to bring the students who have the raw ability up to the standard of other students.

It's possible but it takes effort, thought and tenacity.

The long term outcomes are better: those who qualify can actually do their jobs. Which is good for everyone.

[Do You Really Agree With Them @DoUBelieveThat]

@buitengebieden @buitengebieden I absolutely love your posts but in this case.. No.

[Do You Really Agree With Them @DoUBelieveThat]

@Heather66981705 @buitengebieden I was thinking something along these lines..

[Toby Young @toadmeister]

The Met Office has claimed a new Welsh temperature record for springtime. But it was recorded at Bute Park, a Class 5 junk site where hot air is frequently vented from greenhouses, says Paul Homewood. https://t.co/iRKjtAj8VO

[Do You Really Agree With Them @DoUBelieveThat]

@Rebecca_SPaul Thank you. Just thank you.

Beautifully done.

[PresumptuousInsect @DogLoverOfPI]

@Rebecca_SPaul Remember that trans activists several years ago said it was their intent to get trans"women" into the prisons because they knew that if they could get way with this most egregious of cases, all the other cases of soprts, services, spaces would be much easier to get away with.

[Rebecca Paul MP @Rebecca_SPaul]

Housing male prisoners in women’s prisons is a clear breach of the Equality Act 2010.

Yesterday I asked the EHRC what they are going to do about it given they have responsibility for enforcing the Equality Act.

[The Free Speech Union @SpeechUnion]

https://t.co/JYA96u3aT3

[The Free Speech Union @SpeechUnion]

📣🚨 FSU Victory!!

The Free Speech Union has just heard from South Wales Police that it has withdrawn its guidance on “anti-Muslim hostility”.

The force had effectively adopted its own Islamic blasphemy law, instructing officers to record any conversation that went beyond “legitimate” discussion of Islam.

Under this guidance, criticism of Islam could have been recorded as an anti-social behaviour incident and potentially appeared on DBS checks, affecting someone’s ability to work as a teacher, carer, or in other regulated professions.

South Wales Police has backed down because the Free Speech Union threatened them with a judicial review if it chose to press ahead with the policy.

The force has described this move as a “pause” to the guidance — but we think it is highly unlikely to return.

We must also thank Shadow Equalities Minister @ClaireCoutinho for referring South Wales Police to the Equality and Human Rights Commission after we brought this issue to her attention.

Blasphemy laws were abolished by Parliament 18 years ago. We must not allow them to return through the back door.

Let this be a warning to any other public body — particularly police forces — considering the adoption of its own blasphemy laws.

Watch Lord Young below 👇

[Chris Philp MP @CPhilpOfficial]

South Wales Police are clamping down on more than “legitimate” discussion of Islam.

This is a blasphemy law. No other religion gets this treatment.

Will the Home Secretary condemn this?

#UKPolitics #Justice #EqualityBeforeTheLaw #LawAndOrder #FreedomOfSpeech

[Tommy Robinson 🇬🇧 @TRobinsonNewEra]

If you think things couldn't get any worse over the horrific murder of Henry Nowak.

It's now been revealed that Hampshire police were going to release a statement warning the public not to talk about it online and paint Henry as the aggressor before Digwa's trial!

[Southampton Times @sotontimes]

Protestors are gathering outside Portswood Police Stations with banners reading “Never Forget Henry Henry Nowak” and “End Two Tier Policing”