Online teens, The Oscars and Pikachu
We've moved to Substack
We’ve moved to Substack
Thank you so much for signing up to this newsletter! You have chosen to spend time reading this email and that means a lot to us. We don’t treat that lightly.
This newsletter will now be hosted on Substack because:
We’ve updated our website (wohoo) and reassessed the platforms we’re using
We want to grow our audience and Substack helps us with that
Mailchimp will start costing us waaay too much soon and we don’t make any money from writing this
We are not accepting payments via Substack and will stick to Kofi
We have really considered our options, and we liked Horrific/Terrific's and Paris Marx’s takes on the ethics of using Substack. We haven’t taken this decision lightly but are open to chatting!
Now on with the show…
We will tell the kids if they are alright
This month, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK’s data watchdog, launched a major investigation into TikTok's use of children’s personal information.
It’s not the first time they’ve gone after TikTok. In 2023, the ICO fined TikTok £12.7 million for breaching data protection law e.g allowing an estimated up to 1.4 million UK children under 13 to use its platform in 2020, despite its own rules not allowing children that age to create an account. For context ByteDance made £92 billion in 2023 - so the fine hit 0.013% of their revenue. The largest fine I have spotted so far was €345 million from Ireland (who are also in a surplus thanks to the tax payments from Apple).
So what will this inquiry actually do. I’m not sure how much they feel these fines internally. The line that stood out for me is from John Edwards, the Information Commissioner, who said it would look at whether TikTok's data collection practices could lead to children spending "more time than is healthy" on the platform.
How are we deciding what is healthy? A lot of this conversation was kicked off by ‘The Anxious Generation’ by Johnathan Haidt, which details a few good arguments about what children are facing online, such as the reduction of play and a focus on structured sports. However, in a brilliant (but I appreciate long) breakdown by ‘If Books Could Kill,’ it’s clear that this book has some serious flaws, including generalisations, catastrophising, and failing to talk to any children.
So is ‘healthy’ just subjective and up to the household? According to Roadblox founder, David Baszucki, if parents aren't comfortable with the platform, then “don't let your kids be on Roblox." Sounds like an easy out for a founder whose platform a has come under a lot of safety scrutiny. A BBC investigation just proved how easy it is for under 18s on the gaming site to be contacted by adults.
We’re seeing a wave of countries trying to use legislation as a lever for control. Australia is banning social media for under-16s, whereas France and the Danish prime minister are pushing to keep them off until they are 15. The European Commission is considering an EU-wide inquiry on the effects of social media on young people’s mental health.
It feels like we don’t have an answer, but I do feel like more research should be done with young people, not just for them. Movements like CTRL ALT REFORM seem to be led by the young people themselves. More of that.
Catching them all
TWO Pokemon stories for you:
A Twitch streamer has created an AI model, Claude, and launched a stream to watch it play Pokémon Red and Blue. Spoiler alert - it’s not great. The AI was instructed to name the Pokémon it caught and immediately started being more protective of them in battle once it had named them. It’s very bad at navigating the map and spent three days stuck in Cerulean City because it couldn’t figure out the hedges. It’s been there a week and is now crashing out hard, implementing what it’s calling “the blackout strategy” to kill itself in-game, possibly as a way to get out of the dungeon. Yes, a AI model is trying to off itself to leave a Pokemon game.
Remember the summer of Pokemon Go? That hazy memory everyone thinks of as time of community. Well, it was also a summer of mass data collection, as Niantic, the company behind the game, announced that it is using data collected by its millions of players to create an AI model that can navigate the physical world. And now that company is being sold to a the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund, in a $3.85 billion deal. Yet there are no details about what is happening with the location data of Pokémon Go’s 100 million players, or how location data collected in the future will be handled moving forward.
Anora? I barely know her.
Anora, a movie about a sex worker falling into a wild relationship with the son of a Russian oligarch, won Best Picture at the Oscars. And people are being very normal about it.
I liked the film - Mike Maddison is great, and Sean Baker is one of the most interesting film makers depicting America today. I don’t think is his best work, that award going to the heartbreaking Florida Project. But it’s an interesting film that has a lot to say about capital, wealth, power, and sex. And it’s funny, with a provocative ending that does anything but glorify her journey.
I understand that any movie that receives the best picture will typically face a wave of “discourse”. And I’m not saying there isn’t anything valid to discuss here. There are some union disputes, they didn’t use an intimacy coordinator and a sex worker claims they stole elements from her work.
But for some people, just seeing sex work depicted on screen is enough for people to loose it, claiming that the movie “glorifies prostitution,” or that Baker supports LibsOfTikTok and the IDF because he follows their X accounts.
I’ve read different opinions from sex workers about the movie, including those featured in the film and think it’s best summed up by “Baker isn’t treating sex workers badly, the US does—and he is simply holding up a mirror to that” from Tilly Lawless.
One more thing
The arrest of a pro-palestine student is setting a horrific precedent for other protesters
And finally, an incredible male living space
