Sorry Sir Keir, I can’t get excited about the commercial possibilities of Artificial Intelligence just yet. I’m still hung up on the bit where social media company Meta declared last week it will “dramatically reduce the amount of censorship” on its platforms which include Facebook, Instagram and Threads.
“We’re going to catch less bad stuff” said co-founder Mark Zuckerberg - and that should send a shiver down the spine of parents everywhere. We should all be terrified by the cages being reopened on the kind of hateful misinformation and harmful content that saw young Molly Russell take her own life, aged just 14, in 2017.
Meta’s u-turn is throwing her and millions of teenagers to the online wolves. Zuckerberg kicked Donald Trump off his sites three years ago, claiming: “the risks of allowing the [then] President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great.".
With Trump back in the White House and Elon Musk now the owner of X, formerly Twitter, panicked Zuckerberg is sticking a metaphorical middle finger up at the millions of people whose mental health is compromised by inappropriate content. If you’re active on social media, think about the tweet that troubled you for days, maybe even weeks. Think about the abuse and insults you received from complete strangers which had you angry, upset or second guessing yourself.
