Wes Streeting says Starmer ‘behind the curve’ on under-16s social media ban – UK politics live

Streeting accuses social media companies of ignoring their 'moral duty' to protect children In his Today interview, Wes Streeting stressed that he was not just blaming governments for their failure to regulate social media companies more effectively. The firms themselves were also at fault, he said. double quotation mark Markets are great things. They drive innovation, creativity, new products, and many of the aspects of social media and technology more broadly have have been life changing in a positive way. But markets do not have a set of morals and values at their heart. That is where the public sphere comes in. That’s where government, and the state, has a role to play to make sure that markets are working to a set of rules that are in the interests of society as a whole. And I’m afraid what we’ve seen too often in relation to Big Tech is a model which is driven entirely by making the greatest amount of money as quickly as possible, without thinking through the consequences for society. And I think they have a moral duty to think more carefully about harm. And governments have a responsibility to act, particularly to protect children and young people from harm. Streeting is on the right of the Labour party and, in a leadership contest, this would be a problem because many party members identify more with the centre left. Social media is a good issue for him in this context because, by attacking the tech companies in this way, he sounds a bit more leftwing. …