This weekend Mr Russell can only wait to see whether his warnings have been heeded. There are signs Monday\u2019s announcement may leave a lot of the details to be filled in, with talk about a \u201cdirection of travel\u201d rather than a definitive plan.<\/p>\n
For Mr Russell, the memory of Molly is his family\u2019s central motivator in reforming tech. \u201cShe was only 14 when she died, but she was an extraordinary individual who had so much to offer. It\u2019s particularly painful to consider what she might have been doing with her life by now, that she never got the chance to do,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause Molly was that caring, compassionate, and brave person, she never liked to be the centre of attention, but she would stand up for what she felt was right, quite vociferously if she needed to.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we carry her memory with us every day of our lives, and the drive that Molly would have used to call for a safer online world, had she still been alive, as I have no doubt that she would be doing, remains a part of us and helps keep us going.\u201d<\/p>\n
A Downing Street spokesman said: \u201cWe have undertaken a thorough consultation and will set out next steps in due course.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cThe prime minister has been clear that the status quo is not good enough and we need to do more to protect children.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not about politics – it is about protecting children.\u201d<\/p>\n
An Ofcom spokesman said: \u201cSo far Ofcom has driven some of the strongest changes of any online safety regulation in the world, from widespread age checks to grooming protections for children.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve launched investigations into over 100 sites and apps and already imposed \u00a35 million in fines \u2013 including against a prominent suicide forum.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the job is far from done and we share Ian Russell\u2019s concerns that tech firms have not done nearly enough to reassure parents that they are putting children\u2019s safety first.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve made clear that companies need to go much further, including taking swift action to make their feeds safer for children.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere services fail to comply with their duties, we\u2019ve shown that we won\u2019t hesitate to act.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This weekend Mr Russell can only wait to see whether his warnings have been heeded. There are signs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":641110,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[102,420,160075,216256,1906,6623,50,16506,229,224,5438,9728,208138,56,225,54,55],"class_list":["post-641109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-health","tag-keir-starmer","tag-live-priority","tag-makerfield-by-election","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth","tag-news","tag-ofcom","tag-politics","tag-social-media","tag-standard","tag-suicide","tag-sunday-telegraph-news","tag-uk","tag-uk-news","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=641109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/641110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}