Labour Digital Rights Network

Championing digital rights, privacy & liberty within the Labour movement. Resisting the authoritarian playbook to build a progressive digital future. 🌹👁️

[Labour Digital Rights Network @LabDRN]

📝 Our response to last night's announcement. ⤵️

[Politics UK @PolitlcsUK]

🚨 NEW: Labour MP Jess Asato is suing Elon Musk’s X after Grok generated a photo of her in a bikini

“Elon Musk knew that Grok didn't have these safeguards… he went ahead [with it] anyway”

[Labour Digital Rights Network @LabDRN]

📵The Foundation for Information Policy Research has laid bare the chilling reality of the government's proposed age checks: they are a direct attack on our freedom of expression.

The internet is not an off-licence; it is the primary infrastructure for modern civic engagement and social interaction. If every adult and child in the country is forced to submit a biometric face scan or hand over their ID just to join a discussion, we are effectively ending the right to anonymous speech.

We should never accept a digital world where participating in public life requires sacrificing our privacy just to have a voice.

🔗 You can read FIPR's full response to the government's consultation on online safety via the link in our bio.

[Jimmy Wales @jimmy_wales]

This is something I say often. When parents ask about kids and screentime, I say the first place to start is yourself.

[Good Law Project @GoodLawProject]

🚨 BREAKING 🚨
MPs call for government to kick Palantir out of the NHS

https://t.co/wLjzZ7XEIX

[Labour Digital Rights Network @LabDRN]

This is a dangerous and ridiculous false equivalence.

Comparing internet access to a deadly carcinogen completely erases the positive utility of digital connection.

For many vulnerable young people - particularly those who are LGBTQ+, neurodivergent, or geographically isolated - these platforms offer a vital lifeline for peer support and exploring their identities.

If politicians truly believe Big Tech is behaving like Big Tobacco, their prescription is entirely backwards. We do not prevent underage smoking by forcing every adult in the country to submit to a biometric face scan or hand over a government ID just to walk down the street. Yet attempting to enforce a social media ban requires exactly this.

[Open Source Intel @Osint613]

Denmark’s PM Mette Frederiksen:

If I had small kids today, I would rather have them smoking than allowing them to stay on their own on social media.

[Labour Digital Rights Network @LabDRN]

It is deeply regrettable to admit, but @TaylorLorenz is right. The current Labour leadership is aggressively embracing a concerning agenda of digital control and mass surveillance.🥀

But this authoritarian approach does not represent all of us. This network was founded to provide a voice for everyone within the party and the wider movement who refuse to accept these infringements on our civil liberties.

We will continue to fight against the creeping surveillance state, whether from this government or those that came before. We must protect the digital public square and ensure technology remains a tool for citizen empowerment, not state control.

[Taylor Lorenz @TaylorLorenz]

The Labor govt has been a primary driver of mass censorship policies in the UK. They’re huge boosters of the Online Safety Act and continue to seek to restrict speech in even more aggressive ways. I’ve been writing about these efforts for The Guardian (link below)

[Labour Digital Rights Network @LabDRN]

🇸🇪 Sweden is asking parents to restrict their own screen time around their children.

This is a vital reminder that healthy digital habits begin at home.

We would be far better off by encouraging families to set a positive example, rather than relying on the "easy fix" of outsourcing parental responsibility to the state through unworkable blanket bans.

Read more ⤵️
https://t.co/54gIfxV7b0

[Labour Digital Rights Network @LabDRN]

Read more ⤵️
https://t.co/4BLWLM266y

[Labour Digital Rights Network @LabDRN]

The obsession with "safetyism" has everything entirely backwards. In their rush to protect children with a blanket ban, politicians are pushing a false solution that will actively put young people in much greater danger.

As the Foundation for Information Policy Research warns, enforcing age checks will not be the silver bullet that keeps kids offline. Instead, it will push them into darker, unregulated corners of the web just to access communities and information.

🔗 Read FIPR's full response to the government's consultation via the link in our bio.

[Mullvad.net @mullvadnet]

So-called age verification for social media is spreading across the world, framed as an effort to create a safer internet for children. In reality, age verification lays the foundation for a fully controlled internet.

The age verification rush must be slowed down, and politicians need to recognize the consequences of different types of legislation and systems.

Age verification is the wrong approach to fix “the social media problem”
The big tech social media companies are bad. Their business model is bad; it is based on mass surveillance and manipulation, and they cooperate with governments in mapping entire populations. But age verification is fundamentally the wrong approach to preventing children from using big tech social media platforms. Introducing age verification is based on coercion; the state forces social media companies to verify their users’ identities. But the big tech social media platforms already know which of their users are children. Their business model depends on knowing this. They know how old users are, and they know exactly what type of person they are. As age verification is based on coercion, politicians could instead force platforms to stop doing the things politicians consider harmful to children, or force them to block children (again, they know who they are) from using their services. But instead, politicians seek to massively invade everyone’s privacy and undermine democratic rights on a global scale. In other words, the latter is the real objective – they do not want to protect children; they want to impose control.

Slippery slope of age verification
It is undeniable that age verification threatens freedom of expression, risks increasing mass surveillance, and is likely to lead to censorship. It will not only shrink the online world and reduce young people’s right to privacy (for example, if VPN services were to be restricted); but also risks becoming a significant step toward a controlled internet for everyone.

Most age verification is identity verification
Most countries are now considering introducing age verification systems, meaning that everyone would have to identify themselves either to the service/website they want to use or to a third party capable of linking them to their activity on that service or website. This is not age verification but identity verification, and the consequence is therefore that freedom of information is restricted (you can no longer visit regulated websites anonymously) and that you can no longer post anonymously on social media. This is a major problem in countries like the UK and Germany where the police conduct raids on people’s homes for posting content on social media that the authorities dislike. Or in the United States, where authorities are trying to pressure tech companies into revealing the identities behind accounts protesting ICE. Social media identity verification removes important tools for activists in countries where criticizing those in power is dangerous.

Restrictions on app store or operating system level
Some countries are looking to impose identity verification at the app store level or even within the operating system itself. This is an exciting experiment, since this is possible to circumvent using open-source operating systems. Some countries are already looking to include open-source systems. Since open-source systems cannot be controlled, politicians would ultimately need to ban devices that are not controlled by the state. The end point: telescreens like those in Orwell’s 1984, devices that both monitor you and broadcast only the information approved by the state.

The Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP) alternative and the EU
The EU has presented its own age verification app as “completely anonymous”. The idea is to use Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP) cryptography to break the link between the age credential issuer (EU governments) and the regulated services/sites. Currently, the EU app does not have ZKP functionality, contrasting Ursula von der Leyen’s claim that the app ”is technically ready to be used”. But more importantly, the app is currently designed to always function without ZKP technology; if ZKP is unavailable, the app falls back to a non-ZKP model. Even if fully developed ZKP technology could be implemented in the future, it would remain an optional extra feature that countries may choose to disable and that the EU could remove at any time.

Read more on our site.
https://t.co/wTVKHMS1zg

[Shoshana Weissmann, Sloth Committee Chair 🦥 @senatorshoshana]

"Age verification lays the foundation for a fully government controlled internet."
— @mullvadnet with an amazing takedown

"If age verification is introduced, everyone will have to identify themselves either to the service/website they want to use or to a third party capable of linking them to their activity on that service/website. The correct term for age verification as it is implemented today is therefore identity verification."

[Mullvad.net @mullvadnet]

The EU age verification app is presented as “completely anonymous”. But the risk is that member states (the countries are supposed to create their own versions of the open-source EU app) use it to introduce identity verification that makes it impossible to post anonymously on social media.

The idea behind “completely anonymous” is to use Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP) cryptography to break the link between the age credential issuer (EU governments) and the regulated services/sites. Currently, the EU app does not have ZKP functionality, contrasting Ursula von der Leyen’s claim that the app ”is technically ready to be used”. But more importantly, the app is designed to always function without ZKP technology; if ZKP is unavailable, the app falls back to a non-ZKP model. Even if fully developed ZKP technology could be implemented in the future, it would remain an optional extra feature that countries may choose to disable and that the EU could remove at any time.

This means that the EU could decide at any time that ZKP may no longer be used, and in one stroke the app would fall back to its default mode, meaning that every post on social media carries an ID tag. By that point, an infrastructure will already have been rolled out; people will have gotten used to it, and it will be harder to roll it back.

More details on https://t.co/wTVKHMS1zg

[Labour Digital Rights Network @LabDRN]

To stop children from interacting in online game lobbies, platforms will inevitably be forced to identify and check the age of every single player.

This means every gamer in the UK could be forced to hand over sensitive information or submit to biometric facial scans just to play a game online. This would kill online anonymity entirely, handing tech and gaming monopolies even more of our highly sensitive personal data while creating massive new cybersecurity risks.

We cannot protect children by transforming the internet into a fully surveilled space where everyone has to show their digital papers just to log in.

[Politics UK @PolitlcsUK]

🚨 NEW: The Government is considering a ban on children having conversations with strangers on gaming platforms like Roblox, Fortnite, Discord and Minecraft

[Labour Digital Rights Network @LabDRN]

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿Scotland's Children’s Commissioner agrees with us: banning under-16s from social media "won't keep children safe".

Following a children’s rights impact assessment, Nicola Killean has concluded that a blanket ban is the wrong approach. Why? Because it completely ignores the root cause of the crisis.

A ban does nothing to fix the exploitative algorithms, and business models that drive harmful content.

Crucially, she highlights the devastating impact of digital exile on the most vulnerable. Any ban would disproportionately isolate disabled children, those in rural areas, and young people who rely on online communities for support with their identity.

Social media plays a vital role in children's lives, supporting communication, self-expression, and connection with support networks. We cannot rip away these lifelines just to make it look like politicians are "doing something".

We must listen to the experts. The government must focus on platform accountability and cracking down on harmful, addictive design features.

Read more ⤵️
https://t.co/cQooHweKoB

[Labour Digital Rights Network @LabDRN]

🚨The UN's top human rights body has just issued a stark warning to governments rushing to ban teens from social media: blanket bans are not the answer.

In a major new intervention, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has published 10 key guidelines for protecting children online. Their message is clear: blanket bans push children towards riskier, less monitored corners of the internet while letting tech monopolies completely off the hook.

Instead of forcing young people into digital exile, the UN's very first recommendation is exactly what our campaign has been demanding: force platforms to fix their toxic environments. We must curb addictive design features that prioritise corporate profit over user wellbeing.

Crucially, the UN reminds us that children have fundamental digital rights. They have the right to access information, express themselves, and participate in the modern public square. We cannot strip away these rights and sever their digital lifelines simply to compensate for the deliberate safety failures of Big Tech.

These guidelines also warn against the severe privacy risks of mass age verification, demanding strict guardrails to prevent the misuse of personal data. We cannot protect children by forcing the entire population to hand over sensitive digital IDs or biometric face scans just to get online.

It is time for our government to listen to the evidence, the experts, and the international community.

🔗Read the full UN guidelines on online safety via the link in our bio.

[SPEAK UK @speakukorg]

Many young people in Australia are consuming less news than before the social media ban. Others are just evading the ban altogether.

Adopting that same ban in the UK risks condemning a generation to being ignorant of the world around them.

[Big Brother Watch @BigBrotherWatch]

🚨NEW: We've just launched a speedy tool for YOU to reject digital ID checks for social media access

The Government's new plans for social media restrictions may require every Briton to submit to intrusive ID checks.

Tell your MP to oppose these plans⤵️
https://t.co/8TBWFeVxNB

[Proton VPN @ProtonVPN]

Before the shutdowns, over 10 million Iranians relied on the internet for work.

Now, the entire country is trying to reach the uncensored internet and resume normal life. We're moving as fast we possibly can to help you make that happen.

We are with you.

[Leman Walters @LemanWalters]

What a superb ad, wow

[Labour Digital Rights Network @LabDRN]

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿Scotland's Children’s Commissioner agrees with us: banning under-16s from social media "won't keep children safe".

Following a children’s rights impact assessment, Nicola Killean has concluded that a blanket ban is the wrong approach. Why? Because it completely ignores the root cause of the crisis.

A ban does nothing to fix the exploitative algorithms, and business models that drive harmful content.

Crucially, she highlights the devastating impact of digital exile on the most vulnerable. Any ban would disproportionately isolate disabled children, those in rural areas, and young people who rely on online communities for support with their identity.

Social media plays a vital role in children's lives, supporting communication, self-expression, and connection with support networks. We cannot rip away these lifelines just to make it look like politicians are "doing something".

We must listen to the experts. The government must focus on platform accountability and cracking down on harmful, addictive design features.

Read more ⤵️
https://t.co/cQooHweKoB