The Canadian Digital Safety bill is a fine example of 'second-mover advantage' in the tech regulation space. But the provision that's more interesting to me is one that's totally novel: enjoining regulators with companies in the process of determining what good safety looks like.

I understand why this is newsworthy, but the crucial missing context is that this kind of intervention on tech policy matters has been a standard playbook for US embassies in Europe and globally as far back as the Obama administration. www.thetimes.com/article/cd13...

'For de Souza, the language shouldn't be about "banning the children", but instead "banning the companies"'. The UK gov isn't planning to include an 'off-ramp' for companies whereby they can avoid a ban by offering age-appropriate services. That means it's a ban on companies AND a ban on children

Know anyone who has burning questions about how law is responding to the confluence of AI and social media? The 2026 instalment of the Law Society of Ireland's free annual Massive Open Online Course kicks off next week, and this year the focus is all things AI and social media law.

“Ireland is described as “a live cautionary example” of energy demand running ahead of infrastructure, with data centres using electricity equivalent to all urban households combined” Everyone always says how fun it is to be held up as a cautionary tale by the UN www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2026...

Sigh. I feel for the junior civil servants whose job it will be to write the policy to ban 'political' symbols in the NHS, that somehow captures pro-Palestine badges but doesn't mess with the poppy. www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

This episode of "Today" desperately needs a historian of policing, to explain why things like anti-racism training were introduced in the first place. This wasn't some departure from a world in which the police treated everyone the same. It was an attempt to bring that world fractionally closer.

📢 Calling all UK online safety practitioners and enthusiasts I've created a free two-part introductory course on the UK Online Safety Act, as a starting point for lawyers, public affairs practitioners, or frankly anyone who wants to learn the fundamentals of the OSA and its implementation by Ofcom.

I would like to see news publishers establish a standard practice whereby the outside law firms that enable this kind of lawfare are named in the articles (and not solely their clients).

🔔Ofcom has this morning published a update on its regulatory engagement with large tech companies on child protection. www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safet... Three stand-outs for me ⤵️

I look forward to the day when Harvard Business School whiz kids write the history of Sonos' *two* catastrophic attempts at building a functioning mobile app.

As necessary as it is, I don't see any pathway for Labour to deliver a dramatic EU reset this side of a general election. The party got elected on a manifesto that allows for only the most tentative of resets. Either it breaks the manifesto in a radical way, or it owns the catastrophic error.

Companies at risk of NCII in the UK will now need to deploy dedicated hash-matching technology to remain in compliance with the Online Safety Act, under an update to Ofcom's codes of practice announced today. ofcom.cmail20.com/t/i-l-zhuykkt-iiulklydjk-i/

The European Partnership Bill in the King’s Speech isn’t quite what I expected. It’s said the Bill will contain powers to implement treaties with the EU once agreed. Earlier reports suggested a form of “dynamic alignment” which would allow gov to follow EU rules even with no treaty. Will wait & see

Come & work with me at the Hasso Plattner Institute & Prof @bmittelstadt.bsky.social & @cruss.bsky.social @oii.ox.ac.uk I am looking for a post doc on the governance of emergent tech. jobs.plattnerfoundation.org/HPI/job/Pots... Application deadline is June 18, 2026

I’m generally of the view that the EU and UK’s online safety rulebooks are sufficiently flexible to respond to the ever-evolving commercial, technological, and social factors that drive online safety risks. But GenAI chatbots and their emerging risks to children might prove an exception.

Perhaps because I 'want' it to be true, I found this piece by @mijrahman.bsky.social on Europe's emerging geopolitical consciousness to be a great read. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Significant change at the top of Ireland's online safety regulator, with Commissioner Niamh Hodnett stepping down after three years in the role. Given she's been running the public sector equivalent of a high-octane start-up, that's a good innings. www.gov.ie/en/departmen...

According to MLex, the European Commission Pres has signalled that an EU-level social media ban could be proposed as early as this summer. If Brussels goes down that route, London will have little choice but to follow suit, irrespective of domestic sentiment. www.linkedin.com/posts/sara-b...

Much of the media commentary in the build-up to Starmer's last-chance speech focused on this 'Britain at the heart of Europe' line. But now that we know it doesn't imply a review of the government's self-sabotaging negotiating 'red lines' vis-à-vis the EU, it shouldn't be taken seriously.

'We are extremely concerned about the chilling effect on the Bar of the state seeking to criminalise barristers for their representation of their clients'. Strong statement from Garden Court Chambers, as one of their barristers faces contempt of court proceedings WRT a Palestine Action case.

A major and often forgotten features of the UK Online Safety Act is that it empowers Ofcom to direct companies to deploy advanced tech to identify and suppress CSAM and terrorist content. The regulator has today set out its views on how that tech should work www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safet...

Given the limited powers of local authorities and the constraints on financing and on doing anything, a majority is something one would perhaps wish on one's political opponents. It is almost impossible for a majority to do well in charge of a local authority nowadays, only grades of doing badly.

Crucial point by John Curtis on BBC - Councils flipping from Labour to Reform are because Labour are losing **to the left**, & Cons to Reform Chasing Reform failed Labour; they lost the base & didn’t convince many on the right (Failed Tories too) Watch everyone learn the wrong lesson anyway

Another great policy job, this time at the Irish Council for Civil Liberties. Focus is broader than tech, mind. www.iccl.ie/wp-content/u...

What has the European Convention on Human Rights ever done for anyone? A new ITV drama shows how survivors of serial rapist John Worboys used the ECHR to hold the authorities to account for failing to protect women from violence. Find out more👇 🔗 www.centreforwomensjustice.org.uk/news/2026/5/...

Internet Matters has just published timely research that explores how the UK online safety regulatory project is impacting the online lived experience of children. I'll be joining this online panel on Thursday, to discuss what the research tells us about the state, and the future, of regulation.

kudos to @rightscon.org for standing firm and not sacrificing principles or vulnerable participants. Zambian officials, evidently pressed by Beijing, caved and behaved like amateurs. it’s an example of how china seeks not only geopolitical power but wants to crush critical civil society.

Those pesky European hate speech and platform accountability laws strike again. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

These numbers should be amplified everywhere there is a flat surface. The 3,000 person sample size was statistically significant. The direction of travel is positive but runs directly contrary to the perception born in the echo-chamber of Twitter-brained media and politics. (H&CC is a client)

I've had a growing sense of FOMO in recent days, as Lusaka is the first instalment of RightsCon in a decade that I won't be attending. But this news has put it into perspective. A lot of cash-strapped digital rights organisations will have sacrificed a lot to get to Zambia. A real shame.

Convince me that EU Council presidency venue choices are not a crafty attempt by mid-level civil servants to make the case to their political masters for investment in regional public transport. EU politicos are going to spend *a lot* of time in minivans with the EU presidency comes to Ireland.

I spoke to the @thetimes.com about the UK's impending social media restrictions for teenagers. Until it is clear about what harms to children it is trying to mitigate, government is likely to make sub-optimum policy choices about the services to target and how. www.thetimes.com/uk/technolog...

New DSA enforcement action against Meta for having under-13s on its services. While the DSA doesn't set out minimum age thresholds for access to social media, I suspect DG CNECT is relying on the risk management provisions that concern how companies set and enforce their terms of service.

I spoke to TPP for this story on the Southport inquiry report. Online regulation probably wouldn't have made a difference in this case, but the report tells us something about how companies approached age assurance and children's exposure to age-inappropriate content in the pre-reg days.

I'm excited to be a keynote at next week's Westminster Forum Projects conference on children's use of social media. I'll be sharing thoughts on how experiences from Australia, the EU, and elsewhere can inform the UK debate on social media restrictions, ahead of likely govt action this summer.

The Australian government has set out its plans for a sweeping overhaul of the domestic online safety rulebook. AU was the world's first country to create comprehensive online safety rules back in 2021, but its approach looks increasingly dated (the EU DSA ushered in a regulatory paradigm shift).

Online safety enforcement klaxon: Ofcom has opened an investigation into Telegram, alleging the service has failed to adequately manage the risk of CSAM being shared among users. Note that unlike the DSA, there is no carve-out in the UK rules for messaging apps. www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safet...

The shortlist of candidates for the role of UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression has been published. I recognise several strong human rights defenders in the mix. www.ohchr.org/en/hr-bodies...

As an instrument for international norm-setting in the online safety regulatory space, I'm a big fan of the Council of Europe's new recommendation on online safety. I explain why in this piece for Tech Policy Press.

The recording for this webinar is now online. Come for the comprehensive overview of online child protection developments across jurisdictions. Stay for my wild hand gesticulations when describing the UK banning discourse. www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5iy...

Aditya Chakrabortty has long been one of the most insightful commentators on the left of British politics. This piece, on how Brexit has poisoned and disfigured the country's politics and body politic, is characteristically excellent.

As we say in the Old Country, 'it's a great day for the parish' to see an Irish person ascend to such a senior role in EU officialdom.

#OTD 10 April 1998, the Good Friday Agreement was signed, marking a step towards ending decades of violence in Northern Ireland. #SpéirGhorm #speirgorm #IrishHistory

Important news out of Strasbourg this morning for those of us tracking platform regulation macrotrends. The Council of Europe has officially endorsed its new recommendation on online safety and user empowerment. I have some thoughts on why it matters, here: www.linkedin.com/posts/owbenn...

An interesting reframing of the policy rationale for the AU social media ban, and one that lends itself more to the idea that the threat of bans should be negotiating leverage to extract child safety design concessions from companies. www.politico.eu/article/aust...

This is the least interesting but most compelling reason for why the DSA/DMA enforcement units of DG CNECT should be spun-out into an independent agency of the EU Commission. Too much institutional memory and regulatory expertise is put at unnecessary risk.

Ofcom has written to tech companies *reminding* them of their safety duties ahead of UK local elections But unlike the DSA, the UK framework excludes electoral integrity as a policy objective and is largely silent on platforms as a vector for election-related risks www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/r...