URGENT: UK Gov Social Media Consultation - protest vote

The deadline is 11:59 tomorrow (Tuesday 26th May) !!

The UK government has a consultation survey live at the moment, asking the public for their opinion on what they should do about social media harms to children. We have filled it out and found it to be skewed and biased in favour of a blanked ban. I'll explain that in a minute.

In the meantime this campaign is to ask you fill out the survey with some 'protest text' (see below) to make the point to government that they're asking the wrong questions, and seeking the wrong solution.

There are three surveys when you go to the link above and scroll down a bit: Full, Shorter (for parents), Shorter (for children). We suggest you fill out the Shorter (for parents) one, which is labelled "2. Survey for parents and carers of young people aged 21 and under".

N.B. you do not have to be from the UK to fill out this survey! Please do this wherever you are from. Why? Because the world is watching what the UK decides. What we do here, the rest will follow.

What we object to

The questions are leading, and push you towards agreeing to a blanket ban for social media for under 16s. This is the wrong solution because it regulates the public (every internet user) and not the social media companeis (who have to do nothing).

We have written to the government to say this, and they replied to us with a canned response. They are pushing for Digital ID and for Age Verification.

Why a ban is the wrong solution

Clearly social media is harmful for children. Just watch Molly vs The Machines or look at any of the content on our Parents page, and you'll see that.

Access to social media should be controlled by parents, not a blanket ban, however. The reasons are:

1. Data leaking: Forcing every internet user to prove their age via Age Verification forces people to surrender sensitive ID info (ID docs, face scans, videos) to poorly secured third party companies. These companies provide the age verification service and they are regularly hacked.
2. Data brokers' dream: This vast trove of ID data is a honeypot for hackers. As soon as the ban comes into place hackers will step up their game, using AI, and will hack all the third party services. This then finds its way to data brokers - and we all end up feeding the surveillance beast.
3. Big Tech's dream: Meta have actively lobbied to have age verification laws introduced. They track people across the internet already, so if you have to age verify whereever you go, you are proving your true ID, and this is a goldmine for Meta (and other Big Tech surveillance companies such as Google, Microsoft, Apple etc). They can now link your true ID (as opposed to some random username) to your intenet activity. Perfect for swaying your behaviour via their giant targeted ads business.
4. Gov surveillance: Do you trust your next government? Impossible to tell - so don't allow them to track all your online activity. They will triangulate the data with other sources.
5. Other surveillance knock-on effects: once your data is out there you cannot control what it is used for. You can be sure that it will affect all sorts of decisions that are based on algorithms though. E.g. insurance premiums and claims, online pricing. There are darker effects for vulnerable groups like targeting of ethnic groups or individual people for stalking.

So please: add this text to the survey

REGULATE THE TECH COMPANIES, NOT THE PUBLIC. THIS IS A DEFECTIVE PRODUCT ISSUE, NOT A BAN

Whenever there is a 'free text' field, paste that in, regardless of what the question is. The whole point is that they are asking the wrong questions, and steering towards the wrong answer.

Thank you! We're sure this will make a difference - so please forward and share this post with your friends and family now.

The deadline is tomorrow night so please act now!

Rebel Tech Alliance is a non-profit dedicated to getting as many people off big tech products as possible. Why? Because that reduces the surveillance economy, and reducing that is good for individuals, society and democracy itself.