social

Watchdog instructs social media giant to strengthen moderation following circulation of ‘grossly offensive’ content.

Malaysia’s internet watchdog has ordered TikTok to take action against “offensive and defamatory” content about the country’s monarchy.

The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) said on Thursday that it had instructed the video-sharing platform to take “immediate remedial measures” in response to an account purporting to be linked to King Sultan Ibrahim.

The MCMC said its order requires the social media company to strengthen its moderation policies and provide a “formal explanation” for its failure to block the “grossly offensive, false, menacing and insulting” content, including AI-generated videos and manipulated images.

The regulator said it takes a “serious view” of online platforms being used to disseminate content that is false or “detrimental to public order”, particularly as it relates to the monarchy.

It added that it issued the order after finding TikTok’s response to previous notifications to be “unsatisfactory”.

TikTok, founded by Chinese tech company ByteDance, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“MCMC will continue to take firm and proportionate action where necessary to ensure digital platforms operating in Malaysia uphold their responsibilities in maintaining a safe, secure and respectful online environment,” the watchdog said in a statement.

Malaysia, a constitutional monarchy, penalises speech deemed to inspire “hatred or contempt” against the royal family under a sedition law passed in 1948.

The watchdog’s order against TikTok is the latest move by authorities in the Southeast Asian country to regulate social media platforms.

In January, the MCMC briefly blocked access to the AI assistant Grok amid a global backlash over its use to create sexually explicit images of people without their consent.

Malaysia’s government is also currently preparing to enforce legislation passed last year to prohibit social media use by under-16s, following similar moves by countries including Australia, Indonesia and France.

LEE Andrews has made a change to his social media platforms after leaving his wife Katie Price furious by failing to come over to the UK.

The self-proclaimed millionaire has said he will be flying over any day now but has not kept his word.

Now Lee has turned off all the comments sections on his recent social media posts so he can’t receive messages from fans.

Lee failed to arrive in the UK in time to accompany Katie on Good Morning Britain, but praised her online for doing such a “fantastic” job on her own.

Katie then reposted the video online, insisting to fans that her man was indeed still on the way.

However, the former model and TV personality now seems to be questioning herself and whether what Lee has been saying is true.

EX’S WARNING

Lee Andrews’ ex shares post hinting at downfall & sends message to Katie Price

CAUTIOUS KATE

Katie Price FINALLY reveals doubts over hubby saying ‘something’s not right’

Speaking on her podcast The Katie Price show, she said: “I’ve said to him, he needs to make it to the UK, because if he doesn’t, then it’s obviously something not right going on.”

She then admitted to confronting Lee over the situation, and said: “It’s the fact you keep saying you’re coming and then don’t come.

“Of course, everyone is going to flag up. Even I’ve flagged it up to him.

“Big time I’ve flagged it up now. I said, ‘Don’t do that to me again. Me having to go on live TV without you and make me look stupid and a d***.

“No wonder everyone’s saying, ‘You’re this, you’re that’, because they’ve got a reason to say it. I agree with everyone.”

Lee’s ex Alana Percival has also claimed that he made up excuses for “missing” his flights while they were dating.

They were in a relationship for nine months until late last year, with Lee even proposing to her in a identical proposal to the one he did for Katie.

Taking to her Instagram stories, she expressed: “Another time he ‘pretended’ to be coming to the UK to come and see me.

“Wearing his cap so facial recognition doesn’t get him hahaha lies lies and more lies… delusional is a understatement.

“This excuse was one of soooooo many but a ‘flight risk’ if this one. He went all the way to the airport to lie when he cannot travel lol.”

Photo by Rodrigo Abd for The Associated Press, May 2019 

The window international operators had waited years opened overnight in Venezuela. The interim government has signed new hydrocarbon and mining laws. US officials have been in and out of Caracas. The government of Delcy Rodríguez has landed several new deals in a matter of months. Everything is happening so fast that elements that seemed obvious when Nicolás Maduro was in charge are suddenly overlooked or underdiscussed.

For the last thirteen years I have worked in indigenous communities in the Venezuelan Amazon, in border towns along the Colombian border, and in barrios in and around Caracas. The Venezuelan towns and territories are not the ones the companies coming back will remember.

Almost eight million people left Venezuela during the crisis, one of the largest displacement events in history. The oil-dependent towns of Zulia, Anzoátegui, and Monagas were not spared, nor were mining communities in Bolívar and Amazonas. In some places, a large share of the working-age population is simply gone. What remains is older, poorer, and more dependent on informal survival than the country they left.

Institutions have followed. Hospitals in oilfield regions operate, where they operate at all, at drastically reduced capacity. Schools have hemorrhaged teachers. Local government in many areas has ceased to perform basic functions. Chronic blackouts compound everything. Formal PDVSA employment, the organizing principle of community life in these regions, collapsed along with the company. In many places there are no longer legitimate interlocutors left to negotiate with as the local civic infrastructure that companies elsewhere take for granted has been hollowed alongside everything else.

Once the rigs come back, however, these towns will not stay hollow. They will hastily be filled with returnees, prospectors, informal traders, and internal migrants chasing rumored hiring. The Mining Arc has already shown what this looks like: since 2016, gold has pulled in shifting populations of miners, intermediaries, and military protection chains, with towns like Tumeremo and El Callao expanding and contracting to the rhythm of the frontier economy.

A criminalized operating environment

In most resource markets, companies enter with a clear distinction between the formal environment and the informal risks around it. That distinction broke down in Venezuela a long time ago.

Research by Insight Crime and the International Crisis Group has documented how, over a decade, the line between State oversight and participation in illicit extraction dissolved. Individuals linked to the military and the ruling party benefited from illegal mining, using it as political currency and to cement alliances with Colombia’s ELN and FARC dissident factions. Gold mining was estimated to generate more than $2.2 billion last year, much of it through channels that evaded oversight. In the oil sector, criminal groups have been documented siphoning roughly 30% of fuel in some regions.

“There is deep political skepticism in the communities. Many do not believe that this time will actually bring lasting reforms,” a senior humanitarian told me.

The Rodríguez-led interim government intends to change this, and the foreign policy pressure behind the new laws is real. But the continuity problem deserves precision. The recent turnover at the top of the security apparatus—Defense, military intelligence, the presidential guard—was a selective reshuffle within the chavista system, not an outsider takeover or institutional rupture. The personnel and chains of command sitting inside this supposedly new architecture are not new. Informal structures built over a decade do not dissolve with a reshuffle among the same political elite.

Informal actors are not parallel to the formal system, but intertwined with it, which presents a complex practical consequence to the investors. Companies entering these zones will negotiate, in practice, with all of them at once: the local political boss, the garrison commander asking for vacuna, the colectivo that controls the access road, the gestor who can speed a permit, the sindicato, the guerrilla commander. The single regulator is a fiction.

What communities remember

These are not communities without prior experience of extraction. Many have decades of it, enough to have formed hard views about what operators promise, what they deliver, and what gets left behind. Those views were then tested against a decade of watching investment withdraw, oil spills go unaddressed, and industry jobs disappear.

The environmental record is severe and specific. Aging pipelines and wells around Lake Maracaibo, once the engine of the Venezuelan oil industry, have left slicks visible from the air, fishing communities along its shores watching their catch collapse, and a persistent green bloom of algae fed by untreated sewage and hydrocarbon residue. In mining regions, studies have found that up to 90% of Indigenous women in the Orinoco Mining Arc carry dangerously high mercury levels. These are not abstract concerns. They are the lived experience of the population any operator will meet.

The damage is also in the memory of being told it would be different. Communities have seen “openings” before. A senior humanitarian, who has spent years working on community engagement throughout the country, put it to me while I was writing this piece: “There is deep political skepticism in the communities. Many do not believe that this time will actually bring lasting reforms, and that hardens their initial positions. Even well-intentioned and hopeful promises can be met with radical distrust.”

Sanctions, fiscal terms, and reservoirs can be modeled from afar. The social landscape of a specific Zulia oilfield town or a Bolívar Indigenous territory cannot.

For an operator arriving with standard community-engagement  language, the problem is not that the offer isn’t understood. Other versions of it have been heard before, and the probability it fails to hold is being priced in.

Skepticism in Venezuela also comes pre-supplied with vocabulary. Almost three decades of State rhetoric have framed foreign extractive capital as imperial extraction (saqueo, entrega). People do not have to believe the framing to use it. Many will reach for it because it is the only available vocabulary for criticizing a returning company. The corporate language that lands well in a boardroom across an ocean arrives into a discursive space that has been filled for a generation.

None of which prepares an operator for the deepest mismatch. Where the State has withdrawn from basic services, foreign companies will not be received as purely economic actors. They will be received as potential substitutes for the State and expected to provide what the hospital, the school, the utility, and the municipality no longer do. A company arriving to play a bounded role (taxes, permits, a defined social investment envelope) may find the limits it has drawn around itself are not recognized on the other side of the gate. Conflict may rise not because the company has done something wrong, but because the role it is willing to play is smaller than the role it is being asked to fill. And past experience tells people that the only leverage they have, when promises don’t hold, is disruption.

The carpentry problem

In their 1984 book El caso Venezuela: una ilusión de armonía, Moisés Naím and Ramón Piñango argued that Venezuela had lived for decades in an unsustainable harmony, oil revenue papering over political frustrations. Today there is no harmony and there is no illusion. The arbiters are weaker than they have ever been. The redistributive cushion is gone.

In a 2024 retrospective, Naím and Piñango named a specific mode of failure: the neglect of what they called, in a deliberate understatement, la carpintería, the carpentry. The unglamorous work of implementation, where plans either succeed or quietly fall apart. Small, dismissed flaws in execution had repeatedly proved fatal. When everything was a priority, nothing was.

This is where the current opening risks repeating the failure, transposed from public policy to private investment. A former senior executive at a major international oil company recently told me that the industry’s preference for offshore projects in Venezuela is shaped to a meaningful extent by a desire to avoid the social dynamics on land, not only by reservoir quality. Sanctions, fiscal terms, and reservoirs can be modeled from afar. The social landscape of a specific Zulia oilfield town or a Bolívar Indigenous territory cannot, and the speed of the opening is pulling capital past the groundwork that determines whether a project actually runs.

The contracts will be signed in Caracas and approved in Houston or London. They will fail or hold somewhere else: at the gate of a refinery in Anzoátegui and on the road into a mining town, in front of a hospital that hasn’t run a power generator in a year. The plans are moving faster than the country they describe. That is the carpentry. That is where the projects will come apart: not on the page, but among neighbors more changed, more skeptical, and more demanding than the plan assumed.

Fake online advertisements and social media groups are luring people in Jordan with promises of “quick profits” from cheap gold with sellers disappearing once funds have been transferred or customers defrauded with counterfeit and substandard metals, Jordanians tell Al Jazeera.

Mohammed Nassar said he was quoted a price for gold lower than local market rates due to an “online store” claiming it was exempt from manufacturing fees, government licensing costs or shop rents.

The Jordanian shopper transferred the money to secure what he thought was a bargain before the website disappeared and Nassar realised he had become the victim of a scam.

In another case, a young woman named Tala Al-Habashneh told Al Jazeera that she bought gold through a social media platform after agreeing with the seller and transferring the promised amount.

On closer examination of the product, she found that her gold was counterfeit, mixed with other metals and lacking any official stamps or invoices to prove its origin or carat.

Tala immediately filed a complaint with the Cybercrime Directorate of Jordan’s Public Security Directorate. The case is pending.

Government monitoring

Wafaa Al-Momani, assistant director general for Regulatory Affairs and director of the Jewelry Directorate at the Jordan Standards and Metrology Organisation (JSMO), told Al Jazeera that the institution is the only entity in the kingdom responsible for monitoring precious metal jewellery – such as gold, silver and platinum – and overseeing jewellery trading.

All imported jewellery is examined and stamped by the JSMO before being released onto the market, she said, while local workshops are also required to submit jewellery for inspection and verification before it can be sold.

Al-Momani said her organisation has received some complaints about companies, websites and social media groups engaged in fraud by “promoting the buying and selling of gold, especially broken gold [used or damaged], through unlicensed individuals”.

The JSMO is monitoring sellers engaged in fraud in coordination with security authorities to prevent jewellery from being sold outside licensed shops.

Al-Momani said the JSMO is tightening oversight of gold shops and sellers in the kingdom and said any store found selling unstamped jewellery or violating legal standards will face legal penalties but also warned Jordanians that buying gold through unofficial channels “does not guarantee that the jewellery conforms to legal standards or carats”.

Adornment and treasure

Rabhi Allan, the head of the Jordanian Association of Jewelry and Goldsmiths, explained that gold remains a traditional means of saving and investment for Jordanians as well as an accessory, quoting the popular saying: “Gold is an adornment and a treasure.”

However, he described the sale of gold through social media as “alien to Jordanian society” and stressed that transactions of this “cash commodity” should only take place via official shops with invoices clearly stating the weight, carat and labour costs of the product.

He said the association had filed complaints with the Cybercrime Directorate against unlicensed and anonymous sites, noting that these pages “appear and disappear without warning”, a situation that leaves victims without the ability to secure their consumer rights.

The association has documented numerous complaints and court cases resulting from gold sales conducted through social media platforms that often use edited or fabricated images and fake offers to attract buyers.

Others offer gold at prices significantly below market value to lure buyers, but the product sold is often counterfeit, nonexistent or contains far less of the precious metal than advertised.

He urged citizens to buy gold only via licensed and accredited shops that display official prices and issue proper invoices to protect buyers’ rights.

While questions have been raised about whether some gold sales conducted through social media could be linked to illegal activities, Allan said the cases monitored so far appear to be “individual incidents that do not amount to money laundering”.

Security warning

The Cybercrime Unit of the Public Security Directorate also warned citizens against buying gold through social media advertisements and confirmed that the body has received multiple complaints of fraud linked to the trade.

Colonel Amer Al-Sartawi, Public Security Directorate spokesperson, told Al Jazeera that the grievances ranged from cases where money was wired to fraudsters who subsequently disappeared without delivering the promised gold to incidents in which buyers received counterfeit pieces made from other less valuable metals, such as copper or iron.

Al-Sartawi urged citizens not to deal with such pages and to buy gold exclusively from licensed and accredited shops.

SACRAMENTO — State elections officials warned voters Tuesday to send their mail-in ballots in early following changes at the U.S. Postal Service that has led to slower mail service throughout California.

Atty. General Rob Bonta and Secretary of State Shirley Weber said vote-by-mail ballots should be put in the mail at least a week before the June 2 election.

The officials also cast skepticism about social media posts that urges Democrats to vote “late” and to rally around one candidate in order to ensure a Republican doesn’t win. The posts are similar in wording and have spread on Facebook in the last week.

Bonta said the posts, which were brought up by the Times at a news conference in Sacramento, could be “misinformation” or “disinformation” and “potentially unlawful.”

“Get your ballot in the mail at least a week early,” he said. “You want to make sure your vote is counted. And the misinformation that you’re referencing is the misinformation we’re trying to combat.”

Voters using the postal service to mail their ballot within a week of the election should go inside the post office and ask that their ballot be postmarked, or can drop off their ballot at a secure voter box, officials said.

The new guidance follows sweeping changes made at the United States Postal Services last year that has reduced the number of trips to pick up mail at post offices in mostly rural areas in the country, including California.

A Times analysis of last year’s November special election found that there was a significantly higher number of mail-in ballots that arrived too late to be counted compared to the 2024 election.

Rural counties saw some of the biggest increase in rejected ballots because they came in too late, The Times found.

The changes to the postal service are nationwide, but are particularly relevant in California because the vast majority of people vote in the state using mail-in ballots.

Voters who mail a ballot on election day, or even two days before, may not see their vote counted because it will arrive too late, Bonta told reporters.

“You want your vote to be counted, I want your vote to be counted,” Bonta said. “If you vote earlier, you maximize that possibility that it will.”

Vote-by-mail ballots are considered late if they are not postmarked on or ahead of election day or if the postmarked ballots do not arrive within seven days of the election.

Weber’s office also said it would look into a recent trend of social posts that urge California Democrats to “vote late” in the June 2 election.

The posts, which have appeared on Facebook and Instagram, are similar in wording, and tell Democrats to hold off from voting early to ensure that two Republican don’t make the two top spots, and to rally around one Democrat.

California’s primary election system allows the two candidates who received the most votes to advance to the November election, regardless of party.

With many Democrats crowding the ballot this year, some Democratic leaders have expressed concern fear that two Republicans — businessman Steve Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco — will take the top two spots because Democratic voters will be splintered among the party’s top seven candidates.

The validity of the social media posts are under scrutiny.

One post on Facebook last week, for instance, purports to be written by historian Heather Cox Richardson. The post warned voters not to vote until after all the debates in California have concluded and the front-runner is clear.

Richardson told the Times she’s not connected to the post. “I didn’t write it and we can’t figure out who did,” she said in an email. “I haven’t— and won’t— take any position in a primary.”

The last statewide election in California was closely watched after the U.S. Department of Justice said would monitor polling sites in some California counties following a request by California Republican Party officials.

However, the election proceeded without any incident.

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday sent a letter to elections officials in the state’s 58 counties that highlighted recent legislation mandating that California ballots be counted within 13 days, instead of 30 days. Newsom thanked the elections staff for their work and urged a speedy vote count.

“We must acknowledge that the longer the voting count takes,” Newsom wrote, “the more mis- and disinformation spreads.”

Videos from a tournament kit reveal photo shoot and images from training sessions highlighting Team Melli’s preparations.

Iran’s preparations for the FIFA World Cup appear to be on track, as social media posts from the team’s official account hint at an upcoming tournament kit reveal and show the squad training at an undisclosed location.

Videos posted by Team Melli’s Instagram account on Monday showed players taking part in a photo shoot for what appears to be Iran’s home kit for the World Cup.

Iran are in Group G of the World Cup and will play all their games in the United States, which is cohosting the tournament with Canada and Mexico.

Several members of Iran’s squad, including first-choice goalkeeper Alireza Safar Beiranvand and winger Milad Mohammadi, were shown wearing a new kit in a series of social media posts.

The Team Melli account also posted photos from training sessions, which have been held in Iran before the squad travels to Turkiye for three friendly matches before the World Cup.

The Asian giants’ participation in the tournament became uncertain after the US and Israel launched a war on Iran on February 28, with Iranian officials questioning the US’s role as host and President Donald Trump suggesting Team Melli’s players may not be safe if they travel to his country for the championship.

However, recent statements by FIFA president Gianni Infantino and Iranian football officials have reaffirmed the country’s participation in the World Cup.

Infantino confirmed that Iran will play its games in the US in his opening remarks at the FIFA ⁠⁠Congress in Canada on Thursday.

“Let me start at the outset. Of course, Iran will be participating at the FIFA ⁠⁠World Cup 2026. And of course Iran will play in the United States of America,” Infantino said.

Trump later said he was “OK” with Iran playing in the country.

“If Gianni said it, I’m OK,” Trump told reporters ‌‌at the White House. “You know what? Let ‌‌them ‌‌play.”

Football officials in Iran have outlined the team’s training and preparations for the tournament, which include camps at home and in neighbouring Turkiye before travelling to the US.

“The first phase of the preparation period will end with an intra-team game on Wednesday,” assistant coach Saeed Alhoei told Iranian sport news outlet Varzesh3.

The game will be held at a stadium, and the players will wear official match kits, with an international referee and video assistant referee technology (VAR) to simulate tournament-like conditions.

Alhoei said the squad will depart for Turkiye on Monday for their final leg of preparations before travelling to the US in June.

Team Melli will kick off their ‌‌campaign ‌‌against New Zealand in Los Angeles on June 15 before taking on Belgium at the same stadium on June 21.

“We will have three friendly matches, two of which will probably be against [local] club teams and behind closed doors, and the third against an African team,” Alhoei said. “It is a quality team that can be a good simulation for playing against African teams.”

Iran will face Egypt in their final group match in Seattle on June 26.

On Monday, Iran suffered a significant ⁠⁠blow after it was confirmed that winger Ali Gholizadeh had suffered a season-ending knee injury while playing for his club Lech Poznan in Poland.

Gholizadeh, who would have started on the right ⁠⁠wing at the World Cup, was stretchered off the pitch against Motor Lublin last Saturday, and tests later confirmed he had torn the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee.

“Gholizadeh will face surgery ⁠⁠in the coming days, followed by several months of rehabilitation,” the club said in a statement.

Distraught onlookers caught the moment a monster truck lost control at a car show and plowed into spectators in Colombia, killing at least three people, including a 10-year-old girl. Around 40 people were injured.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday gave students their biggest free speech victory in decades, ruling that a disappointed high school cheerleader could not be punished for a social media post on Snapchat that included profane words.

In an 8-1 decision, the justices said a Pennsylvania school district violated the 1st Amendment when it suspended Brandi Levy from the cheerleading team in response to her post.

The court in an opinion by Justice Stephen G. Breyer said her words may have offended school officials, but they did not otherwise disrupt the school. And he said courts should be skeptical of efforts to discipline students for what they say or post on their own free time.

“It might be tempting to dismiss B. L.’s words as unworthy of the robust 1st Amendment protections discussed herein. But sometimes it is necessary to protect the superfluous in order to preserve the necessary,” he wrote in Mahanoy School District vs. B.L.

Only Justice Clarence Thomas dissented and said he does not believe students and children have such protected rights.

American Civil Liberties Union lawyers who represented Levy welcomed the outcome.

“Protecting young people’s free speech rights when they are outside of school is vital, and this is a huge victory for the free speech rights of millions of students who attend our nation’s public schools,” said David Cole, legal director of the ACLU.

The incident in this case occurred in May 2017, when Levy was in ninth grade. She graduated in 2020 and is now a freshman in college.

“The school went too far, and I’m glad that the Supreme Court agrees,” Levy said in a statement. “I was frustrated. I was 14 years old, and I expressed my frustration the way teenagers do today. Young people need to have the ability to express themselves without worrying about being punished when they get to school. I never could have imagined that one simple snap would turn into a Supreme Court case, but I’m proud that my family and I advocated for the rights of millions of public school students.”

Her case posed a question that has divided courts in recent decades. Are students entirely free to say what they wish on social media — even if it includes vulgar, harassing or racist comments — or can they be disciplined by school officials?

During the Vietnam War, the Supreme Court ruled in 1969 that students retained their free speech rights when they went to school, so long as their protests did not cause “substantial disruptions” there. But that landmark ruling in Tinker v. Des Moines has provided little guidance for how to view a student’s posts on social media.

Breyer’s opinion did not set a clear rule or say students are always protected for what they post. But he said those from “off-campus will normally fall within the zone of parental, rather than school-related, responsibility. …When it comes to political or religious speech that occurs outside school or a school program or activity, the school will have a heavy burden to justify intervention.”

The case began when Levy learned she had been passed over for the varsity cheerleading team.

On a Saturday afternoon, she took a photo of herself and a friend with their middle fingers raised and posted it on Snapchat. She included a caption repeating the F-word for “school … softball … cheer … everything.”

The post could be seen by 250 of her friends, including other cheerleaders, and they in turn showed it to the two cheerleading coaches for Mahanoy High School in central Pennsylvania.

They decided she had violated team rules that required showing “respect” to others and avoiding “foul language,” and they suspended her for the year from the junior varsity squad.

She and her parents appealed the decision to school officials and the school board. And when that failed, they sued in federal court, alleging a violation of her 1st Amendment right to the freedom of speech.

A federal judge ruled for Levy, who said her Saturday afternoon posting did not disrupt her school. The U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia agreed and ruled the school’s authority did not extend to off-campus speech.

TV star Simon Cowell’s fiancée Lauren strongly believes social media MUST be made safe for our children. 

The US socialite, 48, is a determined campaigner for tougher curbs.  

Her passion for change is driven by her sons – Adam, 20, from a previous relationship and 12-year-old Eric with music mogul Simon – plus the anguish of parents who blame online content for their child’s death.  

This week, the Government finally agreed to bring in stronger, age-based restrictions for under-16s following pressure from grieving mums and dads. 

Here, Lauren – who does not allow Eric to use social media – explains why more needs to be done . . .  

WHEN I heard what had happened to 14-year-old Jools Sweeney, it broke my heart. 

SICKO SNARED

Moment smirking ex-Spandau Ballet singer arrested for raping & abusing 6 women

home truths

Katie Price says she’s never had one-night stand but sister calls her a ‘liar’

After he had been playing ­happily with his friends one afternoon, his mother Ellen Roome came home to find his lifeless body in his bedroom. 

Jools was one of several British children who died in 2022 having seemingly copied a deadly challenge shown on TikTok. 

I thought, “God forbid, this could have been my child”. 

My youngest son Eric, 12, isn’t much younger than Jools was, and my eldest Adam, 20, is close to the age Jools would be now. 

Since then, myself and Simon have met Ellen, who is a remarkable woman taking on the big tech giants. 

Ellen is one of the parents behind a campaign called Raise The Age, which wants the restriction on access to social media to be raised from 13 to 16. 

The policy was opposed by the UK Government, but they finally saw sense this week and agreed to introduce stronger controls on what young people can and cannot do online.  

There is no issue more important to parents right now. It’s what everyone cares about.

Making social media safe is the topic that dominates all my parent group chats.  

In our family we have already made up our minds. 

Me and Simon won’t allow our son Eric to access social media. 

We recently gave him a brick phone so he can communicate with his friends by text and WhatsApp. 

A lot of his friends use Snapchat, but I said no to that platform because I believe it is one of the least safe products. 

Eric is fine with that decision because we have had so many ­discussions about the dangers. 

But a lot of parents are not aware of the risks, particularly on seemingly innocuous sites such as Discord, Pinterest and CapCut. 

It is unreasonable to expect ­parents to monitor everything their children do online. 

Instead, it should be the government which keeps them safe. 

The evidence we hear is sick.

The tech companies knew their ­platforms were addictive and yet they kept going, inventing new ways to keep our children hooked.  

Some told our politicians that their products were safe, even though their own internal research showed they did not believe it.  

In my opinion, these firms put profits ahead of children’s safety, and that is absolutely unacceptable.  

We have seen groundbreaking court cases in the US which ruled that these platforms were intentionally designed to be addictive and were endangering children.  

Our children could not wait any longer because they were dying as a result of what they saw and experienced online. 

This movement isn’t about a total ban on the internet.

It is about a restriction on unsafe and harmful social media.  

We want an end to infinite scrolling where children are sent ­material they did not ask for, and an end to strangers being able to message them.  

Those firms that make their products safe will be available — those that don’t must restrict access by law or face massive fines. 

I met with Lord Nash, who has been calling in the House of Lords for tougher controls on social media. 

It was his pressure which forced the Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson to commit to implementing social media restrictions for under-16s. I hear people saying that restrictions won’t work because children will find workarounds.  

However, we haven’t given up on age restrictions for alcohol just because some children still get their hands on booze.  

When seatbelt laws were first passed, many people ignored them. 

But eventually, the message got through that they save lives.

Now, it is natural to strap in safely. 

The Government U-turn doesn’t mean the fight is over.  

Far from it. 

We need to keep the pressure on them to act quickly. 

Our children cannot wait years, because they are dying every month as a result of what they see online. 

I made a vow to Ellen, who I consider to be a close friend, to not give up until social media is safe for our children. 

I have huge respect for the families that are campaigning for this change.

They know it won’t bring their children back. 

But they want to do everything in their power to stop anyone else experiencing these horrors. 

April 16 (UPI) — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer put the big five social media firms on notice Thursday that he was considering state intervention, including the nuclear option of a ban, if they did not do more to protect children from being harmed by their products.

Starmer warned executives from Meta, Snap, Google, TikTok and X at a meeting in Downing Street that something had to give, saying a ban on children accessing their platforms would be “preferable to a world where harm is the price” for social media use.

“Things can’t go on like this, they must change because right now social media is putting our children at risk. In a world in which children are protected, even if that means access is restricted, that is preferable to a world where harm is the price of participation,” said Starmer.

“I am determined we will build a better future for our children, and look forward to working with you on this. I do think this can be done. I think the question is not whether it is done, the question is how it is done,” he added.

Executives attending the meeting included Google U.K. managing director Kate Alessi, Markus Reinisch, a public policy principal at Meta, and X’s global government affairs director Wifredo Fernandez.

TikTok was represented by Alistair Law, director of public policy for northern Europe, while Snap was represented by Europe president Ronan Harris.

Starmer put to the firms the negative impacts of social media use on children’s ability to concentrate, their sleep, relationships and the way they view the world that have been flagged by parents and child experts.

“It’s clear to me that parents aren’t asking us for tweaks at the edges, they’re asking us whether a system that clearly isn’t working for children should be allowed to continue at all. Companies have to grip this and work with us to do better by British children,” he said.

No. 10 had earlier acknowledged that some of the tech firms had “stepped up” by disabling autoplay of videos for children by default and providing better tools to parents to limit the amount of time their children spend looking at screens, but took a much tougher line at Thursday’s meeting.

Starmer’s Labour administration has previously pushed back on pressure from parents, educators and child safety advocates for an Australia-style ban for children younger than 16 on fears it could drive them onto the dark web and make them more vulnerable when they eventually begin using the apps by hindering development of their digital skills.

Most social media sites operating in Britain do not permit children younger than 13 to use their products.

However, in the past three months, Starmer’s administration has twice been forced to use its House of Commons majority to override two efforts by the House of Lords, the upper chamber of Parliament, to amend a government bill to include a ban for children younger than 16.

The most recent of these was on Wednesday in which the government defeated the Lords’ latest attempt to force through a ban, but with a reduced majority from the previous vote on March 10. More than 240 of 650 MPs either failed to show or abstained.

In January, 60 Labour Party backbenchers signed a letter urging Starmer to bring forward a ban.

The government managed to fend off the first challenge in March by launching a three-month public consultation on how to proceed with anticipation inside his administration growing that Starmer will yield to pressure for a ban when the findings are published in the summer.