Anthony Sherratt 🎨💻🕹

Web developer, part time artist and devoted gamer.

[Anthony Sherratt 🎨💻🕹 @shezzor]

@BWallArthur @havingagiraf Oh it's on Sky News so it must be true.

[Anthony Sherratt 🎨💻🕹 @shezzor]

@ukhomeoffice Is this the disinformation the government wants to prioritise on our social media feeds?

[Paul Walsh @Paul__Walsh]

Please stop asking parents.

Parents are tech illiterate, not technical experts and don’t get to decide what the entire country must endure.

They also weren’t told that mandatory identity verification would be required for everyone. Poor reporting from the BBC.

[Anthony Sherratt 🎨💻🕹 @shezzor]

@AdamRackis @dan__lourenco You don't need to pretend though, simply just don't watch it. Just like most of the world doesn't watch basketball.

[Anthony Sherratt 🎨💻🕹 @shezzor]

@house_of_trad I see a woman with tattoos and short hair and a woman jumping. Am I missing something?

[Anthony Sherratt 🎨💻🕹 @shezzor]

@dinadolass1 @GBPolitcs God no. Conservatives had their chance and blew it, multiple times. Time for real change.

[British Intel @TheBritishIntel]

🇬🇧 STARMER HAS NO MANDATE FOR A SURVEILLANCE STATE

Keir Starmer says he will continue delivering the agenda he was elected on.

The problem is that mass online surveillance, digital ID checks, facial recognition requirements and internet censorship were never put to the British people.

No one voted for this.

No one was asked whether they wanted the Government monitoring access to social media or expanding state control over the internet.

This was not in the manifesto.

Starmer is governing as though he has a mandate for measures the public were never given the chance to approve.

[Anthony Sherratt 🎨💻🕹 @shezzor]

@leicesterliz How can you say this with a straight face? Parents have the power right now and you're now removing it. Our children will be disadvantaged compared to the rest of the world.

[Anthony Sherratt 🎨💻🕹 @shezzor]

@Britains_rights And this only their first year in power.

[Save the Children UK @savechildrenuk]

This announcement reflects legitimate concerns about children's safety online, but a ban of this scale would change how children access and experience the digital world. The UK Government must ensure that any decisions are informed by children themselves and by independent experts.

We are concerned that a blanket ban may look protective on paper, but instead pushes children into less regulated spaces, where they are less likely to seek help when something goes wrong. Children growing up in poverty are likely to be among those most affected.

If ministers want to make the online world safer, the answer is not simply keeping children off platforms. The focus must be on providing better support for parents by making platforms safer by design, tackling addictive and high-risk features such as stranger contact, live streaming, nudification tools and unsafe AI systems, so that children are not exposed to harm online.

[thinkingcap @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.

[Anthony Sherratt 🎨💻🕹 @shezzor]

@BradfemlyWalsh Yet another person who doesn't get it. The ban affects EVERYONE not just children. In the UK you are now a child on your device and internet unless you hand over your personal data to prove otherwise.

[Anthony Sherratt 🎨💻🕹 @shezzor]

@TheThomDavid Correction, YouTube IS being banned. It even says so in their list of apps. It will assume you're a child until you prove your age. And the only these platforms can do that is by handing over our personal information. Therefore it affects everyone not just children.

[Anthony Sherratt 🎨💻🕹 @shezzor]

@Miss_Snuffy And I don't think anyone is disagreeing with you. However this ban affects everyone, not just kids. As a society we are now forced to handover our personal information to these platforms to prove who we are. This is how the government will control us.

[Anthony Sherratt 🎨💻🕹 @shezzor]

@Shakacarnage The upcoming social media ban affects everyone, not just kids. So I'm sorry, everyone's opinion is valid and important.

[Anthony Sherratt 🎨💻🕹 @shezzor]

@LauraTrottMP @MumsnetTowers @RaiseTheAge16 @HP4SaferScreens @safe_screens @Netmums Only because you wouldn't accept that the government didn't want this, TWICE! You forced them and the country into this. We are now a disadvantaged digital nanny state. Yeah, you must be proud.

[Anthony Sherratt 🎨💻🕹 @shezzor]

@dr_musgrave And they will continue to do so even once the ban is implemented. Controls and tools for parents on devices have been there for years. If they were really concerned with the harms, they would have simply took their phones off them or restricted their access themselves.

[Anthony Sherratt 🎨💻🕹 @shezzor]

@jambo__fett Interested to hear why two valid arguments are "nonsense"?

[Anthony Sherratt 🎨💻🕹 @shezzor]

@GooalMouth I find it funny that everyone who is against the social media ban is a automatically labelled a predator. It's a shame how brainwashed people have become to blankly accept giving up their freedom and privacy.

[Anthony Sherratt 🎨💻🕹 @shezzor]

@linmeitalks This ban puts our children at a disadvantage to the rest of the world. Children will no longer have access to the latest news, knowledge and experience that gives them the kick start in life.