Bigwows 💚🤍💜 ✖️✖️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Often tweet at stupid o’clock, mainly about football, TV, tech, books, and random stuff that I find interesting. AKA @bigwows.bsky.social on Bluesky.

[Bigwows 💚🤍💜 ✖️✖️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @bigwows]

@Xavier477652469 You’d be surprised. But historically the bulk of the Tartan Army has always come from the east side of the country, which doesn’t have so many sectarian nutters.

[Bigwows 💚🤍💜 ✖️✖️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @bigwows]

@marionmain3 Doubt they will. We got given an extra turkey at Xmas - we gave it back even though the driver said they couldn’t then sell it. £60-worth but no biggie, apparently. 🤷🏻‍♀️

[Bigwows 💚🤍💜 ✖️✖️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @bigwows]

@Shorey__2 *conscience not consciousness.

[meathead @chrisheatherly]

I’m actually a child online safety expert and was one of the pioneers in this space with Club Penguin and so I feel uniquely positioned to critique this.

The groomer problem is real but it’s also vastly overstated. The far larger issue we saw at Penguin was suicidality or reports of sexual abuse in the home.

There is no solution for lazy/bad parenting. You can implement all the ID laws you want but if parents are going to just hand kids their phones unlocked, those kids will have access to all the same things the parents have unfettered.

What I found is that these draconian safety laws actually make it harder to be an honest operator of kids apps because on one hand it’s so much legal risk and so much user friction that it simply becomes uninvestible as a business.

Parents will just lie to let their kids use the unfettered internet. For example, I have a friend who works in mobile gaming who has two kids, one above and one below the age limit but separated by just 2 yrs, and the two wanted to play and chat together on Roblox - which is reasonable. To do this, he just verified that his younger kid is old enough for the chat feature when he’s not.

This happens all the time and will happen with these laws to. How far do we want to go with this? Scan the face of the user in real-time to make sure it’s not a kid using the device? We could do that but it feels like a massive unwanted intrusion of privacy.

That’s how you know this law isn’t about kids. COPPA and GDPR-K and so forth already make it illegal to allow chat and other grooming vectors to kids.

What’s really being done here is trying to eliminate online anonymity. And this is a far bigger issue that goes to core speech rights because if you cannot criticize the govt anonymously and if wrong speech is a crime then it becomes easy to identify all the detractors of the govt in power, and ban, fine or jail them for speech crimes.

Starmer has already been doing this and he wants to do it at a much bigger scale. Starmer won’t even acknowledge the problem of actual grooming gangs in Britain’s neighborhoods but he’s worried about online grooming?

No he’s not, and this hypocrisy gives away the game. What he wants is to kill online anonymity so he can enforce censorship of his unpopular policies. No politician should have this power.

[Bigwows 💚🤍💜 ✖️✖️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @bigwows]

@racc_theclown We haven’t read the ingredients labels though…

[Bigwows 💚🤍💜 ✖️✖️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @bigwows]

@w8ing4theman Mostly men with autogynephilia, and mixed up autistic or gay kids with internalised homophobia.

[Bigwows 💚🤍💜 ✖️✖️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @bigwows]

@Xavier477652469 I think you’re mistaking us for the English…
And mebbe read up on the Tartan Army at the Euros in Köln.

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

135 British MPs are fighting guidance that would deny ‘Paula’ the right to enter women’s and girls’ changing rooms.

[Bigwows 💚🤍💜 ✖️✖️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @bigwows]

@mattforde And Insta!

[Matt Gallagher @mattquiston]

The UK's youth social media ban will require *all adults* to submit their biometric and personal data to a host of third-party ID verification providers.

A reminder that some of these companies are connected to the Israeli Govt and Peter Thiel. 🧵

https://t.co/Tum7aBl7kv

[Bigwows 💚🤍💜 ✖️✖️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @bigwows]

@cleaner52 Flower of Scotland fires me up; Caledonia I can seldom get through without a tear. 😆

[Bigwows 💚🤍💜 ✖️✖️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @bigwows]

@KE_MrBlack Client - buying a service. Customer - buying a product.

[Bigwows 💚🤍💜 ✖️✖️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @bigwows]

Is it my imagination or does Chapman sound like Lineker? Accent, I mean, not content. #MOTD

[Bigwows 💚🤍💜 ✖️✖️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @bigwows]

Not bad for an old guy. #BELEGY

[Bigwows 💚🤍💜 ✖️✖️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @bigwows]

@fiercepatricks Have never asked a toddler that. WTF?!

[Bigwows 💚🤍💜 ✖️✖️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @bigwows]

@bossbratbimbo We really don’t.

[Bigwows 💚🤍💜 ✖️✖️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @bigwows]

@tinscognito__ The parent should have taught them that TikTok is not the place to go to for any important advice, and to call 999 in an emergency… 🤦🏻‍♀️

[Bigwows 💚🤍💜 ✖️✖️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @bigwows]

@cal3d0nia Yup; IME the transformation in people when you say you’re Scottish is stark.

[Bigwows 💚🤍💜 ✖️✖️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @bigwows]

So @Ipsos_in_the_UK have this competition going where each survey completed earns a ‘goal’ for your World Cup team.

Their list of World Cup teams includes ‘the United Kingdom’.

[Bigwows 💚🤍💜 ✖️✖️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @bigwows]

@godblesstoto Our work introduced a nudity detector for email images. It blocked images of fully clothed people if enough skin (white, natch) was on show, and images of anything skin coloured. It did not last long.

(Not saying I’m relaxed about anything the Starmerbannführer is up to tho.)