Brits call for VPN ban for minors to curb Online Safety Act loopholes August 20, 2025 A majority of Britons believe children under 18 should be banned from using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) following a recent surge, a survey has found. Research from YouGov found that 55 per cent of the public supports a ban for minors, while only 20 per cent think they should be allowed to use them. This [...]
The luxury market’s betrayal of Gen Z August 16, 2025 In 2022, Gen Z and Millennials accounted for the entirety of the luxury market’s growth. The latest data, however, shows something of an exodus of younger buyers: Around 50m customers – about an eighth of the base – left the market last year, “in particular” the younger ones, according to Bain’s latest luxury report. A [...]
Peter Kyle defends UK free speech record after US report attacks Online Safety Act August 14, 2025 Tech secretary Peter Kyle has pushed back against a damning US government report accusing the UK of backsliding on human rights and curbing freedom of expression under Labour. The annual State Department dossier, published on Tuesday, warned that Britain’s human rights record had “worsened during the year” amid “serious restrictions on freedom of expression”, and [...]
Why the Online Safety Act has become a political nightmare August 11, 2025 The UK’s Online Safety Act, which came into force on 25th July, was conceived with the noble aim of protecting children from harmful online content. It mandates that web service providers implement “highly effective” age verification measures to prevent minors from accessing material that promotes suicide, self-harm, eating disorders, or abusive behaviour, as well as [...]
Jess Carter, the Online Safety Act and a problem that won’t go away July 26, 2025 Online racist and misogynistic abuse of Lionesses defender Jess Carter during the Women’s Euros echoes that faced by Bukayo Saka, Marcus Rashford and Jadon Sancho after the men’s Euro 2020 final. The Online Safety Act 2023 aimed to make the UK the world leader in this area, so why are we still asking how to [...]
MPs slam Online Safety Act as ‘not up to scratch’ July 11, 2025 The UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA) is failing to protect the public from the spread of harmful misinformation and must be urgently overhauled, MPs have warned in a damning new report. In findings published Tuesday, Parliament’s Science, Innovation and Technology Committee (SITC) said the OSA – which began to take effect earlier this year – [...]
TikTok to create over 500 UK jobs as major plans revealed June 9, 2025 TikTok is to create more than 500 UK jobs and open a second office in London, it has been revealed. The Chinese-owned social media firm has confirmed its UK workforce will expand to 3,000 by the end of 2025 and it will open a new 135,000 sq ft office in London’s Barbican. The group already [...]
Gen Z investors reliant on LinkedIn and TikTok finfluencers for advice May 28, 2025 Gen Z has led the charge in a growing trend of using social media for investment advice, according to new data from Charles Schwab. Over 70 per cent of Gen Z use social media and financial influencers – dubbed finfluencers – when making investment decisions, the data suggests. LinkedIn was valued as the top social [...]
X down as thousands report issues with social media platform May 24, 2025 The social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, experienced an outage on Saturday as users reported issues with the site. According to service monitoring site Downdetector, thousands of users in the UK experienced problems accessing the app and website. The site, which tracks user experiences and outages across different websites, showed that the issue [...]
Wikipedia mounts legal fight over UK online safety rules May 8, 2025 The Wikipedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia, is fighting back against the UK’s online safety rules, seeking a review of some of the requirements of the act. The platform wishes to be in the threshold of a ‘category one’ service – a label reserved for platforms facing the strictest levels of user safety duties. This status [...]