I had planned to publish this in a few weeks, but events over took me…
Elon Musk has been conducting a campaign against the British Government since the far right riots last summer.
His latest obsession is Muslim grooming gangs, and the apparent refusal by Jess Phillips, the Minister of State for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls to hold a public inquiry. These accusations of child sexual abuse inevitably trigger of outrage, mostly from men who are quick to defend women even if those women do not want their kind of protection.
Phillips is on solid ground refusing a public inquiry; such a public inquiry has already taken place led by Professor Alexis Jay. It was set up by Theresa May, however subsequent Conservative Prime Ministers publicly undermined it:
Professor Jay reported in October 2022, at the point at which the Truss administration was collapsing, and the the Conservative Government ignored it’s findings. The new Labour Government has agreed to implement them, albeit not as fast as I might have liked. The appointment of a Minister of State for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls was one of the recommendations.
The UK has a serious problem with child abuse. Not from historic Muslim grooming gangs, but from an explosion in on-line grooming and sexual exploitation. The growth of social media has been a key enabler of this abuse, while cuts in police budgets mean that people committing these offences on line are almost never prosecuted. On line grooming and child sexual abuse in the UK has been effectively decriminalised. It wasn’t until the Jay report that the Criminal Justice system realised how negligent they had been:
In 2023 the British Government did finally act. It passed the On-Line Safety Act which becomes law in 12 weeks time. This is a huge problem for social media companies, especially X/Twitter which is already facing court cases around the world for the dissemination of child sexual abuse images. The On-Line Safety Act isn’t perfect by any means, and in a couple of weeks I will explain why I think it is a poor piece of legislation, but it is a key moment in Governments pushing back against social media companies to protect children.
These attacks come at a time when Meta/Facebook/Threads/Instagram are following X/Twitter in removing restrictions on misinformation and extreme content.
The furious attacks by Musk on the British Government are a warning to the UK and any country that dares put it’s citizens and it’s children ahead of his profits, or restrict his whims in any way.
This won’t be the end. If Musk continues to have a say in the Trump administration he will ensure that any trade deal between the US and the UK involves the UK accepting US standards for on line regulation. Which in the future is likely to be no regulation to protect users at all.
This is a fight. It is a fight between truth and reality against disinformation and lies.
But it is also a fight between social media companies whose profits depend on facilitating child abuse, blighting children’s lives and spreading hatred, and Governments who want to protect children, and the general population.
If you are on the side of Elon Musk, or the cynical right wing politicans riding on his increasingly deranged coat-tails, you aren’t fighting to protect children. You are fighting for the abusers.
After all if Musk cared so much about sexual assault he might have thought twice before backing a sex offender for President.
For those who missed it before I have covered this story on several previous occassions:
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