Attack was filmed and shared online prompting Elon Musk and others to call for anti-immigration protestsPoliticians from across the spectrum have called for calm after a knife attack in Belfast, Northern Ireland, prompted widespread shock and condemnation.There are fears that there could be widespread disorder after figures on social media including Elon Musk called for people to fill the streets in protest against immigration. The alleged perpetrator of the attack, which was filmed and shared widely online, was revealed today as an asylum seeker from Sudan. Continue reading...
Ofcom move follows concerns about misinformation and online claims over police response to Henry Nowak killingSocial media companies have been ordered to have emergency measures in place to stop illegal content going viral, as regulators battle to stop the type of misinformation spiral that circulated after the 2024 summer riots.Sites such as X, formerly Twitter, and TikTok will have to have a “crisis protocol” in place to intervene when the sharing of dangerous content begins to spike. Continue reading...
Trump administration says restrictions could impose ‘disproportionate’ burden on US tech companiesUK politics live – latest updatesThe White House has urged the UK not to impose a social media ban for under-16s, as it said restrictions could impose a “disproportionate” burden on US tech firms.In a submission to a government consultation on online safety, the US government came out against “prescribed one-size-fits-all government restrictions” and “blunt regulatory instruments” to address online harms to children. Continue reading...
In today’s newsletter: With Keir Starmer expected to announce Australia-style restrictions, further problems – including AI chatbots - are on the horizonGood morning. Keir Starmer’s expected speech next week about young people’s access to social media will be analysed as much for how it benefits the outcome of a certain byelection, as its safeguarding of children’s synapses.After issuing an ultimatum to tech firms yesterday to block children’s phones from sharing nude images, the government is expected to make another major announcement about social media within days. Briefings suggest it will stop short of a blanket ban on under-16s accessing social media. But it will still amount to radical regulation, with Downing Street insisting that Starmer is up for a fight with big tech.UK politics | Volodymyr Zelenskyy has revealed that he plans to invite King Charles on a state visit to Ukraine as early as this year, which would make him the most senior royal to travel to Kyiv since Russia’s full-scale invasion.Middle East | Fears of a return to a full-scale regional war in the Middle East eased on Monday as Israel and Iran said they had halted attacks on each other after an appeal from Donald Trump to “immediately stop shooting”.UK news | A report has found “widespread and concerning evidence” of bias and victim-blaming in the family courts – primarily disadvantaging women.US news | Donald Trump was loudly booed when he was shown on the video screens at Madison Square Garden on Monday night at the NBA finals.Unemployment | A government-funded pilot of “hyperlocal” job support in 10 neighbourhoods across England has shown “promising early signs of effectiveness”, including for young people, and could be scalable nationwide, a new evaluation has shown. Continue reading...
• Digital leaders from the D9+ group are advocating for a unified set of European rules to combat the harms associated with children's social media use.
• While there is a general consensus on the need for a common front, Estonia has raised specific concerns regarding the implementation of age verification checks.
• This effort matters as the EU seeks to standardize protections for minors across member states to prevent fragmented regulation and inconsistent safety levels.
Molly Rose Foundation says government should instead set strict safety standards for appsA rushed under-16s social media ban in the UK could unravel and families will be left to count the cost, a leading child safety charity has warned.The Molly Rose Foundation (MRF) said an age limit on the use of tech platforms could unravel, after a report that the prime minister, Keir Starmer, is to announce a ban on under-16s accessing “harmful” social media apps. Continue reading...
Investigation reveals more than 4.4 million people live in ‘news deserts’ that lack dedicated local reportingLocal social media groups are fuelling misinformation in areas with no reliable sources of news, according to an investigation that reveals the scale of fake news flowing to vulnerable communities across Britain.Misinformation was nearly three times more common in areas with little or no recognised local journalism, according to a study of tens of thousands of posts seen by the Guardian. Immigration and Islamophobia were the most common topics of misinformation across Facebook and X. Continue reading...
Research shows generations of children in England will grow up homeless unless government addresses council housing debt, charity saysIt would take more than a century to clear the social housing waiting lists in England at the government’s current speed of delivering new social homes, research by Shelter has shown.The housing charity found that more than 1.3m households are on a waiting list for a social home, but only 12,198 were built by councils, housing associations or private developers across England last year. This equates to an average of 110 households waiting for every new social home delivered, and it would take 119 years to clear the waiting lists if building continued at the same rate. Continue reading...
Technology secretary Liz Kendall says she is ‘very concerned’ about role of social media but will not be ‘bullied off’ XThe government is considering fresh action to halt the spread of misinformation during public crises, Liz Kendall has said, insisting she will not be “bullied off” Elon Musk’s X.The technology secretary was speaking after rioting broke out in Southampton over the police response to the fatal stabbing of Henry Nowak, a case about which Musk has repeatedly posted. Continue reading...
Party could struggle to push ratings as strategy increasingly focuses on views held by minority of voters, research findsReform UK is becoming increasingly reliant on socially conservative views for political support, and therefore could struggle to push its poll ratings much higher, a large-scale research project led by the leading psephologist John Curtice has found.A study of Nigel Farage’s party carried out as part of the British Social Attitudes report found that while Reform supporters were disproportionately more likely to be unhappy with politicians and public services, recent recruits had seemingly more robust attitudes in areas such as diversity and welfare. Continue reading...
• Unproven treatments, including ivermectin, vitamin D, and zinc, are being promoted on social media as cures for hantavirus following a recent cruise ship outbreak.
• While vitamin D and zinc are known to support general immune regulation, there is currently no hantavirus-specific clinical evidence to support their use for this disease.
• This trend mirrors the misinformation patterns seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, where therapeutic extrapolation led users to adopt unverified medical treatments.
• France leads all EU countries in the number of citizens challenging social media companies' content moderation decisions over the past year.
• According to a new report, France recorded 4,400 challenges, followed by Belgium and Italy, while other nations like Spain (3,000) and Germany (1,800) trailed behind.
• This trend highlights a growing push among European users to hold tech giants accountable for how they censor or remove digital content.
Kanishka Narayan says Australia’s pioneering law has contributed to national conversation under way in BritainThe UK’s online safety minister says he has spent a week in Australia learning the “practical lessons” of the country’s under-16s social media ban amid concern that many teenagers are bypassing the law.The British government is expected to announce a social media crackdown within weeks after a public consultation that could see the UK follow in Australia’s footsteps and restrict access to social media for teens – including age limits or changes to allegedly addictive design features – by the end of this year. Continue reading...
Local authorities deem UK arrivals to be children more than twice as often as border forces, Home Office data showsYoung asylum seekers in the UK are more than twice as likely to be assessed as adults by immigration officers than by social workers, according to home office data.Between July 2025 and March 2026, 4,320 initial age decisions made by immigration officials found just 1,363 new arrivals (32%) to be children. Continue reading...
Search takes place amid intensifying focus on separate allegations of influence peddling as problems worsen for prime minister Pedro SanchezSpanish police entered the ruling Socialist Party’s headquarters in Madrid on a judicial order to gather information on a possible illegal financing scheme, several news Spanish news outlets reported.A spokesperson for the Guardia Civil force told Reuters officers had entered the premises but did not disclose any further details since the proceedings are secret. Continue reading...
Age limits and changes to allegedly addictive design features could be in place by the end of the yearLabour is expected to announce a social media crackdown within weeks as the prime minister, Keir Starmer, on Tuesday said he would act “very, very quickly” despite splits between campaigners and child safety experts on what the new rules should be.New limits on social media access for children could be presented before the Makerfield byelection next month after an avalanche of responses to a public consultation have been analysed with the help of an AI system called Consult and an expert panel led by an eminent paediatrician. The consultation closes on Tuesday. Continue reading...
Ellen Roome, whose son, Jools Sweeney, was 14 when he died, wants a ban put in place for under-16sThe mother of a teenager who believes he died in a TikTok challenge gone wrong has said that Downing Street has been too slow to move towards a social media ban for under-16s, and accused the government of “kicking it down the road”.Ellen Roome, the mother of Jools Sweeney, 14, is among the families who will meet Keir Starmer on Tuesday as a consultation into the social media ban closes this week. Continue reading...
Former health secretary says he unsuccessfully argued for tougher action when in cabinetGood morning. The government has been consulting on whether to follow Australia and impose a ban on social media for under-16s, or whether to opt for other restrictions, and the consultation ends at 11.59pm tonight. Keir Starmer is expected to announce the government’s response soon afterwards. He has already said that there will be action of some sort. Last year ministers were sceptical about following the Australian example, but this is an issue where opinion – both in government, and in society more broadly – has been shifting very quickly.This morning Wes Streeting, the former health secretary who is running what is in effect a leadership campaign, has intervened. As the Guardian reports, he has said that a social media ban for under-16s “must be the start, not the end” and he has compared the sector to the tobacco industry.Streeting restated his claim that social media is like the tobacco industry and suggested that, just as tobacco bosses did in the mid-20th century, social media executives have been suppressing evidence about the full extent of the harm caused by their products. He said:What we’ve seen from Big Tech is behaviour akin to Big Tobacco … We know from whistleblowers that in the tech industry, among those who are responsible for designing technology, including social media platforms, that are changing every aspect of our lives, they know that the product they’re designing is addictive, they know that it is harmful, and the business model is orientated towards getting kids while they’re young, addicting them with the design features that are designed for addiction, to grab your attention and keep you on their platform for as long as possible.He said there was a “growing body of evidence” about the ways in which social media is harmful.And then we see the consequences beginning to emerge through the growing body of evidence about the impact of this technology on childhood, whether that is sleep, concentration, learning, health, wellbeing, including mental health.The harms are evident.He claimed governmments around the world had been “asleep at the wheel” on this issue. “Frankly, legislators, regulators, have been asleep at the wheel on this,” he said.He suggested that Keir Starmer had been “behind the curve” on this issue. While he was not overly criticial of the PM on this issue, suggesting that governments around the world have been slow to confront social media companies on this issue, he made it clear that he thought the Starmer government could have acted more quickly. He said that he was speaking out now because he was “liberated from the obligations of collective responsibility”. He said the arguments he was making in public today were the ones he was making privately in government, “in a number of cabinet committees and meetings”, and that he “pushed as hard as I could”. He said the government was now moving to a “better position”, but he suggested Starmer could have acted more quickly.To be fair to Liz Kendall, the science and technology secretary, she came into office [in September last year], she’s gripped this, she’s chosen to run a rapid consultation with the principle of how to implement restrictions, rather than whether. That’s all positive. And I trust Liz Kendall to act quickly following the closure of the consultation today.And we must, because, as I say, we’re behind the curve. Continue reading...
Former health secretary’s intervention comes as government closes consultation on age limits for social media platformsSocial media companies should be treated like the tobacco industry, Wes Streeting has argued, as he called for a ban on under-16s accessing certain platforms.Speaking publicly about the prospect of a ban for the first time since he left government, the former health secretary said one was needed because large technology companies were trying to dodge regulations. Continue reading...
Dangers include unintended pregnancies, taking unnecessary medication and missed diagnoses, say expertsMisinformation about perimenopause is putting women at risk of unintended pregnancies, unnecessary medication and missed diagnoses, experts have said.Awareness of menopause and treatments such as hormone replacement therapy (HRT) has been raised by efforts including a prominent documentary by Davina McCall. Continue reading...
Labour MPs and PR experts praise his refreshingly forthright approach that is a marked contrast to Keir StarmerUK politics live – latest updatesAndy Burnham’s fingers must be aching. Between pitching to become the MP for Makerfield, continuing in his day job as the mayor of Greater Manchester and going for his regular runs, Keir Starmer’s would-be challenger has also found enough time to reply to dozens of posts on social media.Since it became clear that Burnham planned to stand as a candidate in the Makerfield byelection last Thursday, allies have delighted in his snarky retorts on X, pointing to posts that combine humour with a passive-aggressive thumbs-up emoji as proof he is a natural, and refreshingly forthright, communicator. Continue reading...
Exclusive: 3,500 social homes could switch to private sector after companies run by Heylo Housing group go into administrationMore than £52m in public money earmarked for social housing is at risk after the partial collapse of one of the England’s fastest-growing housing providers.Two of the investment companies run by the Heylo Housing group, which is backed by the asset managers Blackrock, have gone into administration leaving the government regulator scrambling to find a rescue deal to protect taxpayers’ money and prevent 3,500 social homes switching to the private sector. Continue reading...
Campaigners warn against blanket restrictions and say focus should be on blocking teenagers from platforms with ‘risky’ featuresOnline safety campaigners have urged Keir Starmer to block under-16s from accessing social media apps that do not meet strict safety standards, instead of implementing a broader Australia-style ban.The NSPCC, Molly Rose Foundation and Smartphone Free Childhood said tech platforms should not be allowed to offer “risky” features to teenagers such as infinite scrolling, disappearing messages and push notifications. Continue reading...
Researchers found over 1,600 primates listed for sale on Facebook, TikTok and more over a six-week period in 2025A new report from leading wildlife and conservation organizations has revealed a sharp rise in the online sale of primates across major social media platforms in the US, raising concerns about wildlife trafficking, public safety and animal welfare.The report, titled Primates for Purchase: The Surge in Sales on Social Media in the US, was released Tuesday by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA), the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). Continue reading...
Tracker of attitudes towards artificial intelligence also finds almost half of the public would prefer to avoid itOne in three university students think AI will wipe out jobs so rapidly it will trigger civil unrest, according to a survey by King’s College London (KCL).Students are among the heaviest users of AI, the poll found, with 77% using it at least a few times a month – compared with 46% of workers – and 27% using it daily or almost daily. Continue reading...
Half of the teens who have been blocked say they are seeing less news than before – but they are not necessarily going back to traditional sourcesGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastAustralia’s social media ban is preventing teens from accessing news, a new study has found, with half of the teens who have been blocked saying they’re seeing less news than before.Two-thirds of under-16s have remained on social media platforms since the ban came into effect in December. But for those who were kicked off, the change has meant seeing less news than before the ban. Continue reading...
‘Polyclass’ of 6 million people consider themselves to belong to more than one social category, researchers sayMore than a third of Britons say they have changed social class, with upper-middle and upper-class people most likely to identify as belonging to more than one class, according to a survey.Working-class people were the least likely to say they had changed class or identified with more than one, with 70% saying they were in the same social category they were born into, the study by research firm Attest found. Continue reading...
Politicians still care about traditional media, but winning over people spending more of their lives online is the challenge for modern MPsGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastHe’s up before sunrise, pounding the pavement in a cap and running shorts. He’s still up late into the night, having slipped into a comfortable sweater while he checks figures in a darkened office by lamplight, fuelled by sugar-free Red Bull.It’s “decision week”, Jim Chalmers declares of the annual federal budget in a video that pinged around political group chats this week. The treasurer was keen to take people behind the scenes on social media. Continue reading...
• Nine Japanese political parties, including the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and opposition groups, agreed on Thursday to require social media operators to reduce disinformation, misinformation and slander during elections.
• The plan would push platforms to halt reward payments to users, respond faster to deletion requests, and label AI-generated content, with lawmakers aiming to pass legislation during the current Diet session.
• The move matters because Japan is trying to blunt online interference before unified local elections next spring, while also increasing transparency around how platforms moderate election-related content.
Home affairs minister Tony Burke says listing will stop group from organising and meeting, and may prevent more ‘horrific bigoted rallies’The government has banned neo-nazi group, National Socialist Network, also known as White Australia, as prohibited hate group, under legislation passed in the wake of the Bondi terror attacks.The listing will mean that activities including supporting, funding, training, recruiting and joining the group will constitute a criminal offence with a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison. Continue reading...
