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- [00:01]
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- [00:54]
Mia Sorrentou
welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm senior producer Mia Sorrentou. We are increasingly aware of the potential dangers smartphones and social media pose for young people. Social media bans for under 16s are being rolled out across the world, but can we actually make the Internet safe for children? And if digital platforms are designed to capture our attention, who should be responsible for protecting young people from the harms they can create? On today's episode, Baroness Beben Kidron, filmmaker, campaigner and member of the House of Lords, joins Carl Miller, author and researcher at Demos, to discuss why making the digital world safer will require holding technology companies to greater democratic accountability. Let's join our host, Carl Miller, now with more.
- [01:39]
Carl Miller
Welcome to Intelligence Squared, everyone. I'm Carl Miller and our guest today is Baroness B. Ban Kidron. She's a crossbench peer in the House of Lords, founder of the 5Rights Foundation, a global authority on digital regulation, especially to enshrine children's rights in the digital world, and the author of a new book, Users. Baroness Kidron, it's so lovely to have you on Intelligence Squared. Very warm welcome to you.
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Baroness Beben Kidron
Thank you very much. Great to be here.
- [02:05]
Carl Miller
All right, well, let's start with the kind of overall kind of claim, I suppose, allegation that the book makes. So a generation of children have been plonked onto digital platforms that didn't protect them and that has, I think, displaced childhood is the phrase you use.
- [02:23]
Baroness Beben Kidron
I think so. I mean, if you take the book as a whole, it sort of starts with that. It sort of says not only has childhood been interneted, but actually every aspect of private and public life. And it looks at the claim of the tech sector to be exceptional. And it basically says, look, you know, if tech is exceptional then they've actually got an out clause but for all of life, because they are everywhere. And it then goes from that analysis to saying actually there are some things we can do about it and this is what they are. So I think that children give us the clearest vision of what's wrong with tech. They have least electoral capital, least sort of experience in the world, least time without it. And they're very, very early and enthusiastic adopters. But what starts in childhood doesn't stay in childhood and what starts online doesn't stay online. And that's what the book looks like, looks at.
- [03:29]
Carl Miller
And you also bieben take aim quite early in the book on something I've always found extremely curious, which was like a kind of generational indifference to the actual experience of children online. I mean I can't tell you the number of Think Taunt roundtables I sat through. I'm sure you too where due to the fact they were digital natives, it was kind of somehow assumed that they were going to be far more kind of like apt kind of navigators digital world than their parents.
- [03:56]
Baroness Beben Kidron
I know, it's such an extraordinary claim. And when people use that sort of digital natives, I always have this image in my head of a four year old, you know, with an HTV truck, you know, like this. And you go, okay, now drive on the open road, love. You know, it's just not like that. Life is not like that. Child is not like that. You know, childhood is not like that. And the idea that you kind of go, okay guys, we know you can walk now. So off you go at the house, you're four years old, the nursery, somewhere, we won't tell you where, we won't tell you how to cross the road, we won't tell you where it is and we'll see you at three o'. Clock. You know, it's so preposterous. And I think two things, you know, obviously in the beginning I was sort of as bewildered as anyone. Now having done my 10,000 hours on this subject, you know, I begin to understand it a little bit, a little bit better. And I think that two things that are worth sort of really sort of getting in mind. One is that children's experience is very different from adult experience. I think that parents and teachers and so I've been very slow to wake up to the fact that the algorithm for a 13 year old boy is different from an algorithm of a 14 year old girl, which is different from the algorithm of some professional who's on Pinterest and thinks all it is about wallpaper and soft furnishings, that each of us are served what the tech bros think will make us stay most. And if you are a 13 year old boy, unfortunately that is likely to be porn. And if you are a 14 year old girl, it'll be something to do with your body, your pretty, your, you know, whatever it is, dieting and so on. And so I think that it was very difficult for parents to understand that the experience that their children were having was so astonishingly different. And when you get to the point now where you go, how many kids have seen beheadings online? And it's somewhere around 50%, you go, hang on a minute, no one, no one should see a beheading online, let alone a kid. So I think that it was one of those. We'd been boiled like a frog, bit by bit by bit and people didn't realize. But you know, to your absolute, you know, point, I just want to make clear, too fast thumbs doesn't give you life experience. Too fast thumbs doesn't actually give you wisdom. And actually too fast thumbs do not in itself make you a competent user of the digital world.
- [06:51]
Carl Miller
And you've already began there to take us through this kind of landscape of the kind of harms ranged against, well, not just children, but all of us when we begin to navigate online. But before we, before we explore further, we of course have to go into some very difficult places, I think, to really understand children's experiences. Let's begin B band just with the kind of main culprit here, because the claim you make is very strong, isn't it? It's not just that this is a story of negligence, this is actually a kind of deliberate kind of designed experience which is causing the harm.
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Baroness Beben Kidron
Yeah, absolutely. And I think looking at the book as a whole, as you do, once you sort of put your pen down, as it were, there are three evil, three baddies in the book. I think the first baddie is big tech and the way that that's organized and the way that is owned and operates. I think the other baddie, if you like, is governments who have absolutely bought the soft. So I don't know whether I write it in the book, but it seems to me like they've been in and out of the White House, in and out of number 10 like cats with a flap. And this sort of the excitement that politicians have to share the beanbag with these sort of incredible figures in tech has been palpable, and the decisions they've made have been undemocratic and absolutely reprehensible. In retrospect, I think we will judge a generation of popular of politicians very, very badly for the position that they've taken on tech. And then in the middle is the third evil, which is the lobby. And the lobby actually sort of is an intersection of those two things and involves a whole lot more people. But, you know, I think people would be absolutely shocked and horrified. In fact, some people who have had early readers have sort of texted me in the middle of chapter five and got, oh my God, I had no idea. But the money, the detail, the places, that being everywhere, paying for everything, and the extent to which governments and tech are implicated in this huge lobbying machine is very, very clear in the book. So there you have the three, you know, the three corners of the triangle of evil, if you want to put it like that. And I'm very clear that it is not technology itself. Yeah, I mean, you know, if the book says one thing, and I hope it says a few things, but if it says one thing is, you know, technology is not the problem. In fact, you know, the tragedy is not what technology can do, but what we've allowed it to become. And I hope that that sort of, that ceiling is what makes people sort of mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore.
- [10:01]
Carl Miller
Yeah, and the lobbying, I mean, I found that especially fascinating because that's the world, isn't it, Biban? That kind of. For those outside of the Houses of Parliament or the world of online safety, it's going to be the kind of most invisible bit of this whole story. But perhaps if we just briefly touch on big tech and its incentives first, this will be probably the bit of the story that's more familiar to people. And it all begins with attention capture, doesn't it? And the kind of basic commercial incentives that have really driven the kind of rise of social media.
- [10:35]
Baroness Beben Kidron
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, at one point, and the great utopian vision had several parts, but it was gonna spread democracy, not concentrate power. It was gonna treat all users equally. And that was why I had my light bulb moment and say, well, if you treat all users equally, you're treating a child as if they were an adult. Whoops. That kills childhood right there. And then this third thing, which was sort of open and, you know, we saw era after era of sort of closing down that open and free. And you know, I go through it in the book, for those people who don't know the history to understand, you know how it is that, you know, Meta or Facebook as was becomes the interlocutor of all our relationships. How Google becomes, you know, the interlocutor between us and our, you know, our information and how Amazon and becomes the interlocutor between us and those people who make things, products and so on. And what it shows is that actually a lot of what passes for innovation is actually market capture. It sits between the thing that we want as consumers and citizens, be it information or a cab ride, and the person who's going to provide it. And they take a cut from both sides. They take a cut from the maker and they take a cut from the consumer. And I think that's an important piece of the equation for people who don't look at this. And this is very much a book for the general reader, you know, people who know something's up, people who'd like to understand, people who maybe don't have all the questions ready but could go on a journey. And that's why I wrote it the way I wrote it. It's part memoir, it's. It's part explanation how we got here. And then it really turns to where we should go. And I'm sure that it helps people. In fact, I know it helps people. I've been doing this for 15 years. And people really sort of have an aha moment. Aha moment when they understand this thing had a really good sort of idea of itself. And it was captured. It was captured by commercial forces. And central to that capture is this idea that we must spend as much as possible of our time, our lives, our money online. And so all of these things, particularly around social media. But frankly, you know, it's around the news, it's around shopping, it's around. All of the services are really designed to, to keep our attention. And in the cause of keeping our attention, they do some really, really wicked things to us. They sort of hack our body and hack our democracy, if you like. But as well as that, we lose a lot of agency. And I think that, you know, it is. You're one of the few first people that I'm discussing the book with here. But some people have read it and that's what they're saying to me. They're saying it is so useful to have a story that explains one's own personal feeling. You know, so when they pick up the phone and they think, hey, I don't remember deciding to pick up the phone. I don't remember, you know, what it is I even wanted to do on the phone, and, and now I'm already engaging. They go back to a piece of the book and go, oh, that's how it works. This is what it is. And actually somebody's bullying me to do this for their commercial benefit. And then they put the phone down. And that's a really interesting thing that a lot of the early readers have already said. That is their reaction. They don't like being bullied. Now they understand what it is.
- [14:45]
Carl Miller
I mean, so, I mean, maybe one of the areas where people might feel the kind of loss of agency the keenest is in the simple kind of habits that they kind of form the compulsion to open that email app or to switch the phone on. So let's dwell for a moment there. You mentioned actually someone that long time listeners of Intelligence Squared might remember BJ Fogg. He was actually B banned. The first person I ever interviewed for Intelligence Squared was BJ Fogg. Yeah. We've done two interviews with him. How does persuasive technology play into this story?
- [15:24]
Baroness Beben Kidron
Well, I think the thing that most people will have a sort of a recollection of is the sort of Pavlov dog experiment that basically what happens is you ring a bell, you feed the dog and it salivates. Yeah. And then if you do it often enough. Yeah, you ring a bell and the dog salivates even when you don't give the food. And that is basically the way of hacking a body, which is you set an expectation, you reward it. Yeah. And then you can start, you know, just putting up the reward. Putting up the reward. And in the world that we're discussing in the online, the rewards are very funny. I mean, like, it's obvious that if someone says a message and says, you look so beautiful, well. Well, that's quite a reward. I wouldn't mind that myself. You know, the thumbs up is a reward. You know, actually the three little dots waiting or someone's typing that all gets you salivating, as it were. And so literally, absolutely every aspect of the digital world is designed to keep you on this reward cycle. And, you know, the sort of scientific piece of it is that you release dopamine. The dopamine gives you a little thrill. And what you want immediately is dopamine. I think that it's been interesting in these recent weeks and again, it's something I write in the book about the, you know, about what's been happening in America with the court cases. But what is really interesting is that we have seen in legal disclosure some of the internal emails between tech executives and they're calling it Addiction, they're calling it crack. They're calling it. So we're drug pushers. I mean, they are very cognizant of the fact that it is deliberately designed to keep our attention. And so there is this sort of very bizarre thing that people like me have been saying for a decade and a half. Hang on a minute, we're all being addicted and everyone's going, and what's the definition of addiction? Yeah. Meanwhile, inside Tech, we've got these people going, hey, we're drug pushers. Is that okay? The book will tell you categorically not okay. And then I just, you know, for a moment, and this is why I keep on saying, you know, through the specter of childhood, we see it more clearly. Who thinks it is okay to design a child to obey or to need a reward or to pay attention to at all times of day or night when that child will not develop properly, if it doesn't run, if it doesn't play, if it doesn't actually get signals from adults, if, you know, and this is why on the one hand, we're seeing kids arriving in nursery who can swipe but not speak. Yeah. And on the other hand, it's why you get on the tube now and everybody's like this, you know, we have lost our ability to turn around to the person next to us and go, hey, how are you doing? And in that, we are really paying attention to the sort of industrialized commercial need of these tech companies and not actually our own human individual need or even needs as a society.
- [18:56]
Carl Miller
And probably the other design feature that we do need to briefly point to in all of this is the algorithm, isn't it? Because I think that's probably the most important single part of the entire kind of digital landscape that's kind of driven by this kind of attention capture. Tell us a bit, Bibin, about what the algorithm actually does to children, like what it shows them, what it kind of how it interacts with young and old, vulnerable psychologies.
- [19:26]
Baroness Beben Kidron
Well, I think, I mean, that the funny thing about the digital world is the sort of, the promise and the reality is always so far apart in so many complex ways. And the algorithm is a brilliant example of that because it says, you know, we are told this is personalization, it's all for you. Yeah. And that we know you so well that we are going to look after you. It's sort of the unspoken promise of the algorithm. And. And yet 60% of kids see porn without looking for it. Now why? Why do they see it? They see it because we're not actually dealt with individually, we're actually dealt with in tribes. Yeah. And because a 13 year old boy is in a tribe that has sometimes shown interest in pornography, all you have to be is 13 and a boy to be sent it. So in this really bizarre way it's saying 13 year old boys are interested in this. So here it is. But the 13 year old boy gets it irrespective of whether they want it. Most don't, FYI. Yeah. In the research. But then because they've had it, it sends a signal that other 13 year old boys get it. So it's a sort of a, you know, what I like to think of as an unvirtuous lo, you know, and I think that this is what, where the problem comes and you see it in all sorts of ways. So, you know, if you're a little bit interested, maybe a, you know, a young person looking at, you know, from a religious family looking at something or someone who's interested in, you know, in politics, you can go so swiftly into, you know, very, very extremist content without meaning to, because what it's doing is saying, ah, this person's interested. And so we'll send more and we'll send more. And the way that the tech sector talk about it, they talk about signals. And I think that's the thing is the difference between a signal of interest and an actual interest, an intentional interest is vast. It's vast. And so, you know, this way that the algorithm almost automatically gets more and more extreme because it's narrowing and narrowing the signals of interest. So, you know, in reality what happens is, you know, you look for some gym routines and you end up, you know, with extreme diets and looking at people who are really, really unwell and eating 500 calories a day or not at all. You start off looking for sort of slightly, you know, I'm just transgressive jokes and you end up in a place of, you know, incel, which is a sort of a very misogynist, deliberately sort of, you know, anti woman space. Yeah. You start off with looking at, at maybe people your own age and you end up looking at children for sexual interest. And so that journey is not your journey, it is the journey that the algorithm sort of encourages you to take. And there is this sort of false, there is a sort of a falseness in the idea that at every point we have choice. We didn't need to click on it, we didn't need to hover, we didn't need to be hesitated by it. But if we did, then it goes on its journey. And I think it's interesting for people to understand that. I was speaking the other day with the clinical lead of the extremist program here in the UK and he said to me something that has been said to me before by other sort of enforcement communities who deal in these areas. And basically people who are isolated, people who do not have good relationships in the real world, people who are divergent in, neurologically divergent, and people who are very upset really go off the rails because the algorithm totally falls into their loneliness or their patterns of behavior. And so it sort of both creates a vulnerability by separating us all, and then it exploits that vulnerability, and then the most vulnerable are even more vulnerable in this context. So it's a very, very toxic space.
- [24:30]
Carl Miller
How do children. Are there consistent ways that kind of children feel or react to living in these sorts of, like, content landscapes sculpted by algorithms? Because, you know, unlike actually quite a lot of people in this debate, you actually speak to a lot of kids, don't you? Like you. You've always been such a pioneer in actually bringing child voices into this because it kind of. Surprisingly few people really do.
- [24:57]
Baroness Beben Kidron
Yeah, no. Well, thank you for noticing. I really appreciate that. Yeah, no, since the very, very beginning, I have, I've had workshops and meetings with children, and in fact, I set up some deliberative juries at the beginning and a whole way of talking with young people so that they get to tell me what they know and I get to tell them what they know. And it's a sort of a much more exchange thing that we do. And yes, they do have some very, very clear messages. I mean, first of all, they are absolutely clear. They want tech, they want to be online, that they want it to be kinder, less addictive, less toxic. They. They don't want the ugly and they don't want to be sent stuff they don't like. And they want all those tricks of the trade, you know, whether it is the streak or the. Or you can't get out of a group without actually the other people knowing that you've kicked them out. And all of those things that are designed to keep them in, they want gone. So they want a much, much more neutral space online. I think the other two things that I would say, one is, has been since the very first I've spoken to children right up to now is they say, give us some alternatives. You've taken away our playgrounds, you've taken away, you know, the youth clubs, you've taken away the after school Clubs, you know, and then you tell us to take, you know, to put down our phones. How, when, where. Yeah, so I think there's that. And then I think two other things that really, you know, are sort of burnt into my heart. One is they want their parents to put their phones down. Oh, my goodness. I would be rich indeed if I had a fiver for every time a child had said that to me. I mean, really, they are very abandoned by adults who are distracted. They feel the absence profoundly. And I think that we all have missed that point. And then finally, I do want to say this, that over the last year, I've been talking a lot with children, young people, about AI specifically, and I was surprised because I thought they'd have a lot more to say about chatbots. And they're very clear about chatbots. They are toxic and difficult, quite fun until they're not fun. It's a sort of a flip, not a gradual line. And they absolutely think that they should be within, you know, there should be laws. They are absolutely surprised as hell. Yeah. That there are no laws covering chatbots. But. But I think the bigger thing for all of us to think about and. And definitely what I'm trying to get at, you know, in the book, in the plan forward, in the road forward, is, is they say they can't see a future. You know, we're all running around and there's headlines saying, you know, there'll be no more jobs and the robots will turn on us and, you know, and that there's going to be AGI in a nanosecond. And, you know, and they say to me, we can't see a picture of ourselves in the future. And that really is literally everywhere. It's like, you know, they might have wanted to be actors, but they think they're going to be replaced by avatars. And they might have wanted to be singers, but they think that the AI is going to do it, and they might even have wanted to be doctors and lawyers, and they think that's going too, you know. You know, and I think it's important to really sort of understand this. I speak to kids, not just in the uk. In fact, the boy who said to me, you know, he couldn't see himself in the future was actually in Kenya. And what was shocking to me was that every other kid on the screen, because we were doing it online, nodded. You know, it was like, he's told my truth. And they were from America and Pakistan and Germany and Ireland and England. And I think that that is an absolute crime to sort of steal not just the childhood. We've taken their childhood and now we're stealing their future. And I have to sort of ask people to really reconsider what progress is in their minds. Because in my mind progress is not world domination by five guys who own the big five companies. And I think the kids are saying that too. You know, how are we going to spread the spoils? How are we going to spread the experience? How are we going to spread the future if we're all just going to gallop after unquestionably like Lennings after these guys? And I think that that is why the political response has been so toxic, because it doesn't really take very much to look forward. And here we are, I'm hearing from 13 year olds and the Pope what good looks like, you know, and all the politicians are too busy with the tech Bros.
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- [32:29]
Carl Miller
Well, let's talk politics. So a decade and a half ago you begin to raise the alarm. Think tankers and researchers and academics and writers and others began to uncover this kind of amassing evidence base that was pointing towards a bit, towards lots of this. What happens Biban? Why isn't there more activity? Because I think for lots of people on the outside it looked like for 10 years at least government essentially kept asking the social media platforms nicely to do a little bit more to take responsibility for what was happening.
- [33:08]
Baroness Beben Kidron
Yeah, it's a really good question because I think, and let me answer it this way. I recently spoke to someone at the highest level of White House previous cabinet member and I asked that question of them and they said to me, interestingly, since I left I've done some research and what I saw was that until the 80s, Congress and the Senate used to vote very much based on where they came from. So what was good for Kentucky, what was good for Alaska, what was good for California? In the mid-80s that stopped and they started to vote for the top 10% of earners. And the reason that I think it's worth answering your question in that way is it comes back to my point about lobbying, that actually the beginnings of the digital world were very utopian. And I think I do a love letter to Wikipedia in the middle of the book, you know, as a sort of, as a remnant of the early Internet. And I think I also make the point that actually it's not technical solutions we need, we need a few things switched off rather than new things made to make it less toxic. So you know, it's not that difficult. But what is really difficult is how captured political world is by the tech companies. And I think one statistic sort of sits in my mind that 96% of US politicians that sit on any kind of oversight committee have tech money for their reelection. And you go, so 96% of the people supposed to hold them to account are already beholden before we even open our mouths. Yeah, and I think that that and this sort of argument about tech exceptionalism, the Idea that tech is other, you know, made us very slow. That's the best I can say. It's a combination of. It looked different, maybe it felt different, and we were slow to work out that it was actually life, not other. Yeah. And by that time everyone was a bit bought off. Yeah, I think there's that. And I think there's another thing in politics which is people aren't good at numbers and they're not good at science. And you say the word algorithm and they go, it's white noise. Yeah. And actually if you say, do you think that any teaching in a school should be peer reviewed to show educational benefit? People will go, yeah, duh, why not? Yeah. If you say, well, why isn't EdTech like that? They go, Whoops. EdTech other. And I think you can go through domain after domain after domain and see that people have been frightened, bought off, slow. And now we have tech in all these spaces. And the book argues that actually what would be revolutionary is to treat it in ordinary ways, to treat it as if it was a product. Yeah. Not the, you know, the. In the ether tech, but actually tech in a domain, tech in the world, tech, you know, impacting on our lives. And how would we do it if it were a car, if it were a drug, if it were big, you know, food, et cetera, et cetera.
- [37:04]
Carl Miller
What is it like to personally confront big tech lobbying operations? Because, you know, they have a footprint in Westminster too, don't they, and in Brussels, you know, and you've obviously, for a decade and a half been making the counterargument to what big tech has been trying to do. So how have you kind of felt the kind of power of the lobbying operation directly?
- [37:27]
Baroness Beben Kidron
Oh, I mean, in a number of ways. I mean, at a very sort of crude level. Twitter campaigns and threatening messages and all the things that anybody in public life suffer from. And you can say, oh, those are individuals, just ideologically driven. But it's interesting that they pop up like a sort of, you know, a flock of birds just when there's something, you know, going through parliament or Congress or so of it, you know, so I think that they are given liberty. But I do talk about this a bit in the book and I do sort of admit to some of the more, you know, difficult moments. And, and some of it is, you know, there was a time when the U.S. state Department opened an inquiry on whether I was a foreign state actor, you know, and it's very confronting. That's a proper legal challenge by the biggest state in the world. You know, and it sort of puts you on a par with, you know, people who represent Iran and Russia and so on. You kind of go, hang on a minute, how did a child safety campaign again in this place? I often, I have periods where everywhere I go there's someone from a tech company or from one of the professional associations. They very often, you know, ring me to challenge me, write to me to challenge me. And perhaps the worst of it is actually sort of the whispering, undermining, you know, the sort of brother coziness that they have with ministers and say, oh, yes, she's so well meaning, but she's completely wrong about all of this. And I think that I'm having a bit of an interesting moment. Obviously, I sat down and I wrote a book a year ago. It's not that I did it just now, but it has arrived at its sort of birth, just at a time where everybody can see that what I have been saying is absolutely right. And I am worried that a lot of the court cases that have. Have been so revealing about the lobbying and so revealing about the deliberate design of products that hurt children are settling, you know, because if they settle, all the information that we've gathered goes with it. And if they don't settle, it comes into the open. But I do think that increasingly people are not buying the narrative that diminishes people like me. And I mean, I do get downhearted sometimes, but I actually get more downhearted by a government that is bought off, a government too close to tech, a government that is, you know, not telling the truth. Yeah. Than I do about Big Tech. Because Big Tech has got its, you know, it's got its huge profits to protect. And we know why Mark Zuckerberg is not giving in to be Banker Drum. Yeah, we can see that. It's visible. I think what is unfathomable, you know, is why our current government is not allowing me to bring forward things that would mean we would check AI to see if it made child sexual abuse, that would put chatbots under the law or. In the last five minutes, before we started, I asked a question about creative copyright and the new sovereign AI fund. Our money, taxpayers money and the kids. The Minister refused to answer straight, whether or not they were investing in firms that were scraping UK copyright material abroad. And I know they are, I know they are. I know the answer. But she refused to give it on the floor of the House. And I think that really, really upsets me because a lot of what the answer is is for us to actually tackle this democratically. Locally, you know, and if these guys won't do it, then frankly, we've got to get rid of them, find some that are willing.
- [42:09]
Carl Miller
Right, well, let's talk about Ofcom. So many people would say, you know, we've got the online safety app now. Well, Nick Clegg was calling to be regulated. Nick Clegg, our former deputy prime minister, was basically Meta's chief lobbyist for many years, you know, and he spent much of that time calling for regulation to be put in place to control Meta. We have regulation now, which I suppose in theory be banned, should mitigate at least some of the harms which your book spotlights. Do you think does Ofcom make you feel more or less optimistic that we are getting a kind of this under control?
- [42:49]
Baroness Beben Kidron
I'm going to give you a politician's answer, because more or less optimistic around Ofcom is a very difficult one. You decide when I answer. I mean, I think let's do the good first. The good is that actually we do have some rules that are being followed by some of the people and they are quite significant because the bigger the company is, the more they have to lose if they don't follow the rules, because they're more embedded in other government contracts. Because actually the way the fines work, it's scaled up according to how big they are, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I think that if 10 years ago we had been talking and I would say it would be illegal for anyone under the 18 to be sent pornography, self harm, pro suicide, extreme diets by the tech companies, you'd go, don't be daft. You know, one world, you know, it's already too late, the horse has bolted. All of those things that people say. And here we are in a time where actually that is the truth and that is actually a bit of a reality. So there's the good bit. I think the two really appalling bits, one of which is right at Ofcom's door and one of which is not, but I wish they would be more robust in voicing it. So the bit that's at their door is they are so timid, they are so slow, they are so process driven and they really, I mean, a couple of weeks ago they put out a thing saying, we are shocked that a lot of companies haven't done this in a very good way. And you kind of go, let us do the being shocked. You get on and tell them to do it. And there's a sort of an idea that they have of themselves that they're there to facilitate in a proportionate way and look after the. And they've got that absolutely wrong. And we can see how wrong they got it because they're trying to be friends with these guys and their meta boom goes. We don't agree that you have jurisdiction over our global, our global income for your fines. And so we're going to take you to court for your interpretation. So it's like they were never going to get to be big friends with Big Tech and they should have been tougher. I think the second thing, which is actually not on them, but they could be clear about it, they don't have the right enforcement powers. That was down to the last government. They were tentative novel legislation. But we have the begging the government since it came into power two years now to do a review of enforcement to make sure that the business disruption works, to create an individual complaints operation and to make sure that people can go to court so that we're not just dependent on Ofcom. And I sit here and I speak as someone who first put all the bereaved parents into one group because I had so many of them and who I probably get at least one a week, often a lot more. So I think that there is a whole range of things, I've got it written up my arm in, you know, tattoo that we could do absolutely immediately. And instead of actually sitting down with me and others who know and saying, okay, tomorrow we are going to do these 10 things. Yeah, that would then be already enacted two years later. They're still reviewing, they're still consulting. And do you know what 70,000 people were put into the consultation and they'll do what the headlines say anyway, you know, so I think that we get back to your earlier question, which is, you know, where is, you know, where are the baddies, you know, where are the villains? And the villains are, you know, the lobby, the government and Big tech. And in government comes these third party organizations that, you know, they go between. You know, there's what we call the revolving door. You know, I have spoken to the same person three times. And once they work for Meta, once they work for Ofcom, and once they're at the Department of Science and Innovation, same person, three institutions, very narrow vision of what good looks like.
- [47:20]
Carl Miller
Well, let's end Bibin just with the fight back, because you've kind of alluded to it and you're completely right. Your book does land at an extraordinary moment where there's been landmark cases in the United States. There has been OFCOM activity here and regulatory activity in Europe and, and the Prime Minister increasingly vocal about this too. So do you get the feeling that the kind of landscape is shifting, that after all these years, you are now actually winning this argument and change will come and what will that change look like?
- [47:58]
Baroness Beben Kidron
I think that it's a really interesting moment and I think it is actually up to all of us. I did a, you know, I did a public event last week and someone asked me a similar question and I said, just before I answer the question, could anyone who made tech policy the reason for voting in the last election put their hand up? 500 people in the room, zero. So I think what the book says, I think usefully, is, yes, we're at a really tipping point moment. And that tipping point is about kids. And if we can't do it for kids, we can't do it at all. So let's get on and do it for kids. And it does set out what good looks like. And, you know, and I do make a difference and I do deal with both. One is my, you know, my 12 rules for a Flourishing World. And those are very much around regulatory government, you know, big tech, all the actors in the space. But I do, because I'm always asked, what can I do? And I do make the point that we are, you know, democracy is the result of our behavior. You know, an attention economy is the result of our behavior. And to a degree, to whatever power parents think they have, how kids behave has something to do with our behavior. And it sets out all the things that people have over the years told me, work for them. And it's a bit of a smorgasbord, but I do think that you can do things yourself. You can make it a political priority, and you can, and this is the gap. But if we see that we're at a tipping moment for kids, how about we extrapolate to AI, to robotics, to adult behaviors, to the information ecosystem, to our workplace and questions over what efficiency is and efficient for whom. And it really does sort of lay out and say, I've made the argument, you can see that we're ready on the kids, let's move on the kids. But actually, we have to apply these thoughts to absolutely everywhere where tech impacts on life. And I think only when we are all willing to spend our attention wisely, when we are all, well, willing to actually say, do you know what? It's not the triple lock or the NHS or migrants, but tech that earns you my vote. Until that time, we're not going to actually get over the hump. We're going to play around in the shallow waters. But what the kid thing does fantastically well. And I really hope that the book is ultimately optimistic because when you see some of the things we've been able to do for children around the world. Yeah. What you actually see is not an individual change. What you actually see is that we can design the digital world however we want it to be. And maybe that's the most important thing I can say to you. I shouldn't have left it right to the end, should I? If you're still listening, you are the person who got the most important thing. You know, the most important thing is this is an engineered environment. There's nothing, you know, there's no nature in it. There's no weather and wind and mountain ranges and lakes. You know, this is an environment that is built for certain purposes. And so all I'm saying and all I'm arguing and the tools that I suggest we use are saying actually we would like to impose our agreed collective democratic assumptions on the technology that will be alongside us now and in the future. And that is weirdly how you get away from the bad robots.
- [52:25]
Carl Miller
Well, I'm sure everyone has been listening because this has been absolutely fascinating. So Bibin, thank you so much. That was Baroness Beben Kidron, everyone, author of Users, which if you ask me, really is one of the most important books of recent years, unbelievably important Intervention in this Whole debate, which is available now online and in stores near you. I've been Carl Miller, you've been listening to it at Intelligence Squared. Everyone, thank you for spending your attention so wisely with us today.
- [52:54]
Baroness Beben Kidron
Thank you.
- [52:57]
Mia Sorrentou
Thanks for listening to Intelligence Squared. This episode was produced by Margarita Volpatto and it was edited by Mark Roberts. For ad free episodes and full length recordings, you can become a member@intelligencesquared.com membership. And if you'd like to join us at future live events, you can find our full program or buy tickets over@intelligencesquared.com attend. You've been listening to Intelligence Squared. Thanks for joining us.
- [53:39]
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