{"id":24226,"date":"2019-02-08T11:07:45","date_gmt":"2019-02-08T10:07:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=24226"},"modified":"2019-02-08T11:07:47","modified_gmt":"2019-02-08T10:07:47","slug":"why-has-it-taken-us-so-long-to-address-the-issue-of-harmful-content-on-the-internet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=24226","title":{"rendered":"Why has it taken us so long to address the issue of harmful content on the Internet?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>It&#8217;s good to hear that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/av\/technology-47166512\/instagram-self-harm-images-to-be-removed\">the news<\/a> that Instagram is now going to remove self-harm images and encouragement to suicide from its service. But why has it taken <em>so long<\/em> and why is the industry not adopting a more comprehensive approach to harmful content of different kinds?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Almost two decades ago, I became the first independent Chair of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.iwf.org.uk\">Internet Watch Foundation<\/a>. This did &#8211; and still does &#8211; a great job in tackling illegal content on the Net. But I could never persuade the industry to address the issue of harmful content which has since &#8211; predictably &#8211; become such a huge issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Once I ceased to be IWF Chair 13 years ago, I made <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/Internetregulation.html\">a series of speeches<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/convergence.html\">a submission to government<\/a> calling for action on harmful content. Since then, the Net has become a different creature with the advent of social media, so my practical suggestions would not cut it now, but the principles I advocated are as relevant as ever and the need for action is more urgent than ever. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s good to hear that the news that Instagram is now going to remove self-harm images and encouragement to suicide from its service. But why has it taken so long and why is the industry not adopting a more comprehensive approach to harmful content of different kinds? Almost two decades ago, I became the first [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24226"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24230,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24226\/revisions\/24230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}