Prosecute tech chiefs who endanger children, says Molly Russell’s father — Ian Russell says inquest into daughter’s death is ‘unique’ opportunity to make online platforms safer
Prosecute tech chiefs who endanger children, says Molly Russell’s father — Ian Russell says inquest into daughter’s death is ‘unique’ opportunity to make online platforms safer
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Excerpt:
>Molly Russell’s father has called for a stronger UK online safety bill, including criminal sanctions for tech executives who endanger children’s wellbeing, after criticising social media platforms’ responses to a coroner’s report on his daughter’s death.
>Ian Russell said the inquest into the death of Molly, 14, was a “unique” opportunity for the tech industry and government to make online platforms safer.
>A coroner ruled in September that harmful online content contributed to the death of Molly, stating that she “died from an act of self-harm whilst suffering from depression and the negative effects of online content”.
>Molly, from Harrow, north-west London, took her own life in 2017 after viewing content related to suicide, depression and self-harm on sites including Instagram and Pinterest.
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>Russell said the response of those companies to a set of recommendations from the senior coroner, which included considering separate platforms for adults and children, was “underwhelming and unsurprising.”
>He said: “That’s not good enough when young lives are at risk.”
>Russell said the responses from Pinterest, the owner of Snapchat, and Meta, Instagram’s parent, underlined the importance of the online safety bill, which receives a third reading in parliament on Tuesday.
>“The key to making change happen is changing corporate culture. To focus minds clearly at the top of these corporations the threat of stringent financial sanctions is not sufficient,” Russell said, adding: “The prospect of prosecution will focus minds.”
>The culture secretary, Michelle Donelan, has said she is “not ruling out” backing the amendment, which has strong support among Conservative backbenchers and is backed by opposition parties including Labour.
Dan Milmo, 16 Jan. 2023, *The Guardian*.
The battlecry of the growing number of useless parents in the UK. Always somebody else to blame for their failure as parents.
It’s your responsibility to be aware of influences on your children. Being the type of person that would try to palm off that responsibility is part of why their child is dead.
We should be sympathetic towards a grieving parent, but this is ultimately a dumb and useless idea.
He would have online platforms censor content posted by users in case someone posted something that was later read by a child who then went on to hurt themselves.
So online platforms need to learn to predict the psychology of children and tell the future.
I think probably it is better for parents to have a good relationship with their kids, understand what their concerns are and how the things they are interacting with are affecting them.
I like my wild west internet, thank you very much. Can’t we just have one place that isn’t a bubble wrapped safe space for children and corporate interests?
As George Carlin would say, ‘fuck the children’. Keep them out of harms way and don’t neuter my world to cater to your crap parenting skills.
Just ban under 18s from social media.
How exactly do we prosecute these people? We had trouble getting Anne Sacoolas in court and she literally killed someone. As if Mark Zuckerberg is going come over here to answer any charges. And even if they did they’ll be an army of lawyers in tow to ensure the case gets dropped.
None of them is concerned about this bill (or have even heard of it), this is about control over us.
he is responsible for his own daughter’s death, by failing to control what she consumed
He’s not calling for stricter measures to enforce parental responsibility then?
Trouble is, a 7 year old you can pretty much control most every aspect of their lives.
A teenager you cannot. Worse their brains go through a developmental phase at this age that makes them impulsive risk takers.
I get it, he’s angry that his daughter is dead but taking that anger out on the big, bad internet won’t change a thing – it won’t even stop him from feeling guilty that he didn’t do enough.
imagine u spent years writing letters saying that u could hardly cope anymore and were thinking of dying and then everyone was like, “oh if only she never got so into writing letters! these stationary companies have a lot to answer for!”
That’s a pretty broad and vague net there. Could more or less apply to any site on the Internet.
Yes checks and balances and safer but it needs to be much narrower language than that.