This week's events expose an error by the last government in its final design of the Online Safety Act 2023: the failure to impose duties on platforms in respect of content called "legal but harmful".

To explain: When in force, the Act will require platforms to (among other things) deploy proportionate measures to prevent people from encountering "priority illegal content", to use proportionate systems and processes to minimise the time for which any "priority illegal content" is present"; and to mitigate and manage the risk of the service being used for the commission or facilitation of a "priority offence". See s.10.

In the future we will look back with amazement at the fact that political parties had to seek and receive huge sums of money from rich people and companies. It is just so obviously an engine of corruption, or the risk of corruption, or the appearance of corruption.

Wanting to make sense of the Elon Musk takeover of Twitter? I've been writing about the unaccountable power of digital technology for years.

summary: the problem isn't Elon Musk. It's the *idea" of Elon Musk In my recent book The Digital Republic, I argue that the challenges posed by the tech industry are not the result of a few bad apples, but of our failure to *govern* technology properly. Here's the Preface:

Buckle in while I tell you about a waking nightmare that happened to me this morning. I was walking along the street, minding my own business. I turned a corner and saw, out of the corner of my eye, a man crossing the road to where I was. He heading in the same direction.

A long and slightly silly thread about debating and something I learned from it.

When I was a kid, I was a pretty serious debater. Ran the school club. Competed at weekends. Went to summer camp. Eventually captained the England schools team. I learned an extraordinary amount as a school debater. I still think about my experiences all the time.

Debating teaches bad habits as well as good ones, but it unquestionably helped me to find my voice, my personhood.

Barrister cross-examination faces: an anthology.👇🏾 “Is it possible you’re mistaken about that?”