Newspaper about Online Safety Bill

[wilbursoot6969]

A newspaper on the bus about the Online Safety Bill If you can't read the smaller text, it says "devastating new report led by Molly charity shows tech giants are targeting millions of children with harmful content". The girl pictured there is Molly Russell. She killed herself a few years ago and after her death her father has been campaigning to remove content related to suicide and self-harm from the internet, after it was found she had viewed images about suicide on Instagram and Pinterest before her death. I don't want to disrespect a man who's lost his child. But with the way he misattributes the cause of her death, I have to say something. All media reporting about her suicide entirely blames the images she was viewing for her decision to kill herself. To suggest that Molly killed herself because of those is a disgrace to her memory. She was looking at those images because she was suicidal, she didn't decide to kill herself because she saw them. Yet all news articles about her entirely attribute her death to the things she saw on the internet, stating she wanted to kill herself because she saw posts about being suicidal on the internet, and her father has been campaigning to remove content about suicide online because he believes it caused her death. Claiming she killed herself because of the posts she viewed is an insult to her. She was already suicidal due to other things in her life, she was looking at those things because she felt that way. But of course, all the media outlets and her family completely ignore that and constantly campaign to remove posts like those from the internet and claim they are responsible for her death.

This is, of course, incredibly linked with the situation going on in the UK at the moment with the Online Safety Bill and the government trying to remove content about suicide from the internet, and trying to take down this website. They are just relentlessly trying to remove all things like this from the internet.

 

[Forever Sleep]

Yes- I agree with you. I feel terrible of course for families who lose people. Especially children but sometimes, I do wonder what they really thought of them. Do they really think their child was so utterly gullible and so impressionable that they fell under the influence of all this? Do they not realise their child actively sought this stuff out for a reason? And likely then lied to get into places like this?

I guess I do understand their fears that having information and even methods freely available may enable that person to act quicker- perhaps even impulsively- rather than think everything through.

I guess it's like gun law. I'm from the UK also- so, I haven't grown up with this idea that I should have the right to own a firearm. It makes sense to me though that- you give a wider percentage of the population access to guns- you're going to get more shootings.

To be utterly selfish about it though... I'm an adult without children. I guess I'm kind of tired of the arguments always surrounding minors and suicide. If you're that worried about your children- then parent them! I'm sorry but- restricting the internet for everyone for the sake of the children does annoy me. Would they give up alcohol and smoking because children take it up underage? No- they think it's their right to do those things. We have the right to research peaceful ways out when our governments would rather see us rot in a nursing home at the end.

 

[BrainShower]

For parents like this, if they don't blame it on someone else, then they might have to think about their own role in their child's demise.

A lot of people are simply incapable of doing that. I don't mean it's an excuse, but it will continue to happen.

I don't know why our society continues to let grieving parents browbeat us all on various things like this, drunk driving laws, stricter safety regulations, etc. They have a right to grieve, but not to dictate other's lives based on their feelings of grief.