Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Ten years ago, Baroness Beeban Kidron had a clandestine cup of tea with a tech executive, whom she refers to as a \u201cDeep Throat\u201d. \u201cEverybody in Silicon Valley knows that they\u2019re hurting kids,\u201d the insider explained. \u201cThey know that people are coming for them\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009but at the moment, there\u2019s money to be made. In Silicon Valley, it\u2019s routinely referred to as the \u2018lost generation\u2019.\u201d It galvanised Kidron\u2019s efforts to curb Big Tech. \u201cI was angered, outraged, insulted. And whenever I get tired of doing this, I think, \u2018Lost generation\u2019?\u201d Gazing intently from round tortoise-shell glasses, Kidron punches out each word: \u201cOver. My. Dead. Body.\u201dThis conviction has driven the 63-year-old to campaign for over a decade for age-appropriate design and protections for children on websites, messaging services and apps, and more recently on artificial intelligence protections for the creative industry. We are meeting as the release of Netflix\u2019s drama Adolescence has intensified anxiety over teens and toxic online culture, while questions are being raised about the robustness of the UK\u2019s new Online Safety Act.Through her work, Kidron has met many bereaved parents and seen \u201ca lot of violence, child sexual abuse, things that are really horrible\u201d. Has she never been tempted to return to her successful past career as a director of documentaries and films, including Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason? No, she shakes her head. \u201cPolitics is as creative as making films.\u201d Witnessing the \u201cunbridled power residing in those tech companies\u201d represented by Meta\u2019s Mark Zuckerberg, Google\u2019s Sundar Pichai and X\u2019s Elon Musk, to name but a few, at the US presidential inauguration earlier this year only strengthened her determination. \u201cUnless you\u2019re really trying to do something worth doing, why get up in the morning?\u201d she says.Kidron fizzes with energy as she joins me in a green leather booth in her \u201chappy place\u201d: the brutalist surroundings of the Mediterranean restaurant Toklas. Located off the Strand, it is on her walk from her Islington home to the House of Lords \u2014 where she sits as a crossbench peer \u2014 and owned by her friend, Matthew Slotover, co-founder of the art fair Frieze, who comes over to say hi. After dithering over the menu we decide to eschew main courses and order all the starters. We begin tucking into thick hunks of sourdough, alongside the topic of her decision to switch careers \u2014 \u201csort of an accident\u201d.It dates back more than a decade to her work on a documentary. Intrigued by the impact of smartphones on teens, she chronicled their porn consumption, status anxiety and cyberbullying in InRealLife, released in 2013. A tech expert\u2019s observation that on the internet, all users were deemed equal proved pivotal as the director realised the logic was that kids were being treated as adults. \u201cI tried to talk to politicians. I talked to some of the tech companies, children\u2019s charities. I talked to all sorts of people. No one was interested. They thought I was a middle-aged woman who didn\u2019t get the new rock \u2019n\u2019 roll.\u201d Kidron is at pains to say she is not harking back to wooden toys \u2014 a point she reiterates several times over the course of our meal. \u201cI\u2019m not frightened of [tech]. I love the stuff.\u201d But she wants to dispel its mysticism and put it in its place. \u201cIt\u2019s a tool.\u201dThe concern about children online led her to set up a charity, 5Rights, in 2012. That same year, she was appointed to the House of Lords. \u201cI always want to start walking before I\u2019ve worked out where to go.\u201d I tried to talk to politicians. I talked to some of the tech companies, children\u2019s charities. No one was interested. They thought I was a middle-aged woman who didn\u2019t get the new rock \u2019n\u2019 rollDirecting was surprisingly good preparation for politics: both require bullishness. \u201cI came from films in an era where there were virtually no women directors,\u201d she notes. There are other similarities. People think film is \u201cglamorous, but it\u2019s about creating a collective vision. It\u2019s about talking to the money and the head of a studio, and maybe a movie star who\u2019s being paid millions, but also bringing with you and articulating your vision to someone who\u2019s moving the camera. It\u2019s about making something out of nothing for an audience in your imagination.\u201dKidron is proud of increasing the age of maturity online from 13 to 18. Her amendment to the Data Protection Act requires tech companies to default children\u2019s accounts to private and switch off geolocation services, among other measures, and led YouTube to turn off default autoplay for kids and TikTok to curb push notifications for users aged 13-17. But, more significantly, it showed that \u201cyou can change the design for social reasons \u2014 in this case, kids\u201d. Some of these measures were adopted and introduced across the globe. It proves that countries can make demands of Big Tech, she says, citing Brazil\u2019s efforts to bring X to heel over accounts that spread misinformation.The waitress brings over the first three of our starters, delicate and fresh dishes with broad beans and chicory, which taste like spring. Kidron does not \u201cwant to spend lunch defending the Lords because there\u2019s a lot that is indefensible\u201d. But she has found it collaborative, bringing deep expertise from scientific, educational, legal and health backgrounds. \u201cThe division is between people who understand the technology and those who don\u2019t, rather than on any ideological basis.\u201d Such support has been vital as Kidron has pushed for further legislation, dealing with multiple tech and culture ministers. Measures from the resulting 2023 Online Safety Act will be introduced in phases, with some coming into force this month, requiring tech companies to comply with regulations, including hiding children\u2019s profiles from strangers, or face fines of up to \u00a318mn or 10 per cent of global revenues, whichever is greater. Additional measures will come in the next few months. What does she think about it? I spear a mouthful of grilled carrots and labneh while she considers her answer.\u201cI\u2019m not happy. The [Conservative] government made a huge mistake when they just didn\u2019t make it a very simple duty of care approach\u201d, which would have made tech companies responsible for their products. Instead, it has been diluted: \u201cMultiple secretaries of state, officials, the Commons and Ofcom [the regulator] all weakened the bill. Rather than saying, \u2018What is the problem we are trying to solve?\u2019\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009[they] felt their job was to balance the interests of tech with those who use it. But where is the balance between an adolescent kid and a platform that spends billions of dollars to keep their attention?\u201dWe are, she says, in \u201cthe age of denial\u201d, where power and profits are increasingly concentrated in a handful of US companies \u201cthat do not need to live in our communities or care about their outcome\u201d. She is nervous about the UK rolling back safety provisions as part of a trade deal with the US.Kidron apologises for conversationally veering all over the place. \u201cYou ask me one thing and I go off.\u201d Children\u2019s rights and tech are vast subjects and she wants to fit in as much as possible. One of her greatest frustrations is tech\u2019s insistence that age verification is complex. \u201cPreposterous.\u201d If Mars is within Big Tech\u2019s sights, why not a child\u2019s age?As a woman in politics wanting to impose social responsibility on Big Tech, she stays off social media for fear of trolling, though that has not stopped her from receiving threats, which she has reported to the police. When she started advocating for children\u2019s online rights she felt isolated, but that has changed, as tech whistleblowers such as Frances Haugen at Meta have revealed the secrets of the trade. Where is the balance between an adolescent kid and a platform that spends billions of dollars to keep their attention?Sadly, demands for change have also come from bereaved relatives. When I say that Kidron has worked with parents bearing unimaginable grief, she interrupts: \u201cUnfortunately, imaginable.\u201d Their campaigning for a safe digital world for children has been \u201cgenerous and moving\u201d, she says, and has ensured that coroners can access information from tech companies after a child\u2019s death. Efforts by Ian Russell, the father of 14-year-old Molly, who died by suicide in 2017 after being shown a barrage of self-harm and suicide content, intensified pressure on the government. \u201cThe compassion of those people makes me want to cry,\u201d Kidron says. \u201cI have sat with them at dinner and looked around [and] realised I was the only person at the table who [still] had all [their] children, and I found that really challenging.\u201dThe weight of the tech industry is enormous, she says, and its tactics can be insidious. \u201cIf you look at the history of lobbying [by] tobacco or the gun lobby, they do all the same things. They don\u2019t always attack you directly but try [to] cast doubt. They put money into research. And then their research casts doubt. There are some very unhealthy relationships with government. They\u2019re taking advice from a very narrow set of people. It\u2019s a combination of arrogance and bad practice.\u201dThe waitress arrives with our next round of starters, translucent slices of sea bream, small pieces of fried skate and deep red tomatoes. \u201cIt\u2019s like a second meal,\u201d Kidron says, pledging to text her husband, Lee Hall, the writer for stage and film, including Billy Elliot, to say that she won\u2019t be eating later.Doesn\u2019t blaming Big Tech absolve parents of responsibility? Such an argument is straight out of tech companies\u2019 playbook, she replies. \u201cThey go, \u2018Let\u2019s have a really toxic project, put it in the hands of the kids, and then we\u2019ll tell you to control it.\u2019 It\u2019s not the parents\u2019 fault.\u201d The risk is that we let \u201cElon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg be Mum and Dad\u201d.Kidron is not advocating phone bans, touted by the Smartphone Free Childhood global parent movement, but restraints on business. \u201cThe thing you post your homework on, ring your mum from, carries your bus pass, your cash card, that is your camera \u2014 every part of your life is allowed to be deliberately addictive. Why are we letting that happen?\u201d That is not an argument for permissive parenting. \u201cDo not be frightened to parent,\u201d Kidron says. In her own home, she imposed an unpopular rule on her kids: a ban on fizzy drinks.The week we meet, the Netflix drama Adolescence, about a 13-year-old boy accused of murdering a female pupil, has stirred a conversation about the \u201cmanosphere\u201d across the world, with its co-writer, Jack Thorne, taking to the airwaves, calling for radical action to address tech. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer told the House of Commons: \u201cIt\u2019s important that across the whole House that we tackle this emerging and growing problem.\u201d Has Kidron watched it? \u201cIt is fantastic,\u201d she says, choosing her words carefully \u2014 she is also frustrated. \u201cWhat a failure of government and governments. Why do we have to wait for TV programmes to tell us things?\u201d There is a double irony too here, she says, that the fragmented nature of news media, due to tech\u2019s cannibalisation of the industry, means that \u201ccollective watching\u201d is relatively rare.I worry we are in danger of catastrophising about digitally savvy teens, ignoring their humour, intelligence and creativity. Yes, some boys look to the misogynist Andrew Tate, but they are more aware of sexual politics than in the past. Kidron agrees to an extent, but stresses the online risks. A few months ago, she was called by a lawyer dealing with cases of young males who did not know that \u201cstrangling a girl wasn\u2019t OK. They are victims just like the girls.\u201dKidron\u2019s creative background makes her well placed to defend Britain\u2019s cultural industries, pushing for their right to retain copyright in an age of AI companies scraping content. A member of the advisory council for Oxford university\u2019s Institute for Ethics in AI, she is furious that the government\u2019s preferred option is to legitimise \u201cstealing from copyright holders on behalf of the AI companies\u201d.Again, she stresses she is not anti-tech. \u201cI am really interested in AI. It will be a huge part of our future.\u201d But she does not believe that big players should ride roughshod over the creative industry to make the UK attractive to AI companies, pointing out that some smaller UK companies pay for copyright and \u201cobserve the laws of the land. We\u2019ve got IP, a lot of big brands with very, very, very long histories. Why would we have a policy that uniquely benefits a handful of players outside the UK?\u201dIt would be easy to draw a straight line from Kidron\u2019s involvement in politics to a period when she could not speak because of problems with her vocal cords, and had to write in a notebook to communicate, just as she started at secondary school. Did she feel disenfranchised? \u201cWhat kid didn\u2019t?\u201d It was not just that she was silenced but was forced to observe. \u201cI really understood about power, who\u2019s heard and who\u2019s not heard. If you\u2019re silent and watching, you see all the machinations.\u201dHer father, Michael Kidron, was an economist who co-founded the International Socialists with her aunt and uncle, working with her mother, Nina, at radical publishers Pluto Press. Their personal inheritance, she says, was not their politics but their idealism, giving her the sense that \u201cyou have to imagine the world as you\u2019d like it to be and start walking towards it. It\u2019s the idea that you can change things.\u201dWe simultaneously groan and lust for the fat mozzarella ball with anchovies that arrives at our table. I suggest a doggy bag. \u201cIt\u2019s a fine idea,\u201d Kidron says.In her silent months, Kidron developed an interest in photography, later working weekends at the Photographers\u2019 Gallery shop in London, where she was introduced to the American photojournalist Eve Arnold. At 16, she went to work for her as an assistant. All these years later, Kidron\u2019s affection is palpable for her \u201cvery funny, very quick, very bright, very naughty\u201d mentor, who taught her that \u201cthe work is not done until it\u2019s done. It has no time. It has no rhythm. It has to work.\u201d We\u2019ve got IP, a lot of big brands with very, very, very long histories. Why would we have a policy that uniquely benefits a handful of players outside the UK?Kidron still packs a bag, according to Arnold\u2019s lessons, which includes shoes to run in and an outfit to wear to a palace. It was Arnold who suggested she move into television and film. \u201cI\u2019m really happy for that period of my life.\u201d Kidron loved making movies: the actors, the scale and the smell, the early mornings on set, being called \u201cguvnor\u201d by the crew, returning to documentaries whenever she felt that Hollywood had removed her from the \u201creal world\u201d.Reflecting on her move into politics, she says: \u201cWhen I think about this part of my life, the number of people who have written to me and said, \u2018You\u2019ve given me hope\u2019 or \u2018You gave me confidence\u2019.\u201d This was crystallised by a Canadian boy who thanked her for curbing TikTok\u2019s night-time notifications, and told her: \u201cI graduated because of you.\u201d Her voice becomes slightly shaky. \u201cI just felt, \u2018Wow.\u2019\u201dShe looks at the time and realises with horror she\u2019s half an hour late for her next appointment, just as the waitress arrives with our leftovers. I implore her to take them and she picks up the brown paper bag. \u201cIt may be that others have an easier ride because [of your campaigns]\u201d, she says. \u201cOr that they succeed where you fail, or they leap over and lead you. There\u2019s always someone else.\u201dEmma Jacobs is a features writer at the FTFind out about our latest stories first \u2014 follow FT Weekend on Instagram and X, and sign up to receive the FT Weekend newsletter every Saturday morning<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Ten years ago, Baroness Beeban Kidron had a clandestine cup of tea with a tech executive, whom she refers to as a \u201cDeep Throat\u201d. \u201cEverybody in Silicon Valley knows that they\u2019re hurting kids,\u201d the insider explained. \u201cThey know that people are coming for them\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009but<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-255792","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255792\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}