The UK's online safety laws have entirely failed to protect children from disgraceful social media content

Online safety laws have failed to protect children in UK, Ofcom admits.

What a surprise huh:

Landmark online safety measures have failed to limit the proportion of children suffering harm from social media, the UK’s online regulator has admitted, in an assessment branded “staggering” by campaigners.

The proportion of children being fed unsafe content that often left them frightened, confused and upset, was almost unchanged, according to an Ofcom review of the first nine months of supposedly strict requirements on social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram.

What are these rules?

Under the Online Safety Act, the tech giants had to protect children from harmful content including pornography, serious violence, suicide material, racism, misogyny and bullying

They don’t seem unreasonable.

The problem, once again, appears to lie with the algorithm these companies promote stuff with:

Personalised recommendation feeds powered by “for you” algorithms were repeatedly found by Ofcom to be at the root of the continuing tide of harmful material.

What are these kids seeing?

Examples of harms included children being shown the murder of Charlie Kirk, graphic pornography and weapon-related content making them feel unsafe in their schools and neighbourhoods

…

Children most commonly reported encountering pornographic content via personalised feeds, and girls, in particular, reported feeling confused or upset after seeing such content, Ofcom found. Suicide and eating disorder content was also driven mostly through personal feeds, with girls most likely to encounter both types of harmful material. The Ofcom review also found that “young men and boys consuming motivational and self-improvement content can rapidly become exposed to more extreme content which includes the promotion of misogyny and racism”.

Yeah, unpleasant stuff. Things that I’m not convinced any of us, even the most adulty or adults, need pushing into our feeds (or to even be accessible, depending on the specifics and one’s view). If companies can’t cover the basics then they quite obviously should not be allowed to run social networks.