“There is no such thing as the Digital Age of Consent.”

My post on part of the ‘Growing up in the Online World: a national consultation’, interpreting the proposals, and ‘emergency style’ DfE govt powers.

jenpersson.com/there-is-no-...

#onlineSafety #AV #DigitalID #SocialMediaBan #AgeVerification

At our Annual Conference, Antonio Weiss will join a panel discussion exploring AI & Public Services—including how to balance operational efficiency with the imperative of public trust & social values.
📅 Thursday 26 March 2026
🕛 12:00—13:15
📍Cambridge & online
🎟️ www.bennettschool.cam.ac.uk/conference

Congratulations to @jenitennison.com on her appointment as Chair, and @antonioweiss.bsky.social on becoming a member of the Responsible AI Advisory Panel, established by the Government Digital Service (GDS). Hear them speaking at two of our forthcoming events ⬇️

Wrt HITL / automated decision making as part of AdTech RTB. Do you know if Real-time bidding has been accepted or rejected as “automated decision making with significant effect” anywhere formally yet?

I had the pleasure of being a witness at the Joint Committee on Artificial Intelligence of the @oireachtasnews.bsky.social this morning, to talk about AI, truth and democracy: www.oireachtas.ie/en/press-cen...

Resist ‘dangerous and socially unacceptable’ age checks for social media, scientists warn Computer scientists are campaigning against the global march toward age checks online.

Governments should halt plans to roll out age checks on online services until privacy and security concerns are addressed, hundreds of academics said today.

The warning comes as countries around the world move to bar children from social media.

Hackers Expose Age-Verification Software Powering Surveillance Web Three hacktivists tried to find a workaround to Discord’s age-verification software. Instead, they found its frontend exposed to the open internet.

Hacktivists tried to find a workaround to Discord’s age-verification software, Persona. Instead, they found its frontend exposed to the open internet, and that was just the beginning.

www.therage.co/persona-age-...

Booking is now open for the Bennett School of Public Policy Annual Conference

Speakers inc. Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham, & keynote João Vale de Almeida, former senior EU Ambassador 

🗓️26 March 2026
🕙10:00-18:30
📍Churchill College, Cambridge & Online
🎟️ bennettschool.cam.ac.uk/conference

EdTech at the crossroads of pedagogy vs profit | LSE Event YouTube video by LSE

Missed last Thursday’s LSE lecture? #EdTech at the Crossroads: #Pedagogy vs. Profit" is now available.

Our panel tackled the digital shift in #schools and how commercial models impact children’s privacy.

📺 Watch: youtube.com/watch?v=HNG7...

🎧 Listen: www.lse.ac.uk/lse-player/e...

EdTech at the crossroads of pedagogy vs profit | A discussion 6.30pm Thurs 20 Nov |Sandra El Gemayel Baroness Kidron Julian Sefton-Green Rhys Spence| Ticket Required | Free public event at LSE

👨‍🏫 EdTech is transforming education.

Join us next Thursday 6.30pm as Sandra El Gemayel, #BaronessKidron, Julian Sefton-Green & Rhys Spence discuss what a #childrights-respecting, pedagogically-sound vision for #EdTech looks like.

See more 👇 www.lse.ac.uk/events/edtech
@sonialivingstone.bsky.social

Datatilsynet giver 51 kommuner alvorlig kritik i Chromebook-sag Datatilsynet udtaler alvorlig kritik og advarer samtidig kommunerne i forhold til, hvordan de gør brug af Googles produkter i folkeskolen.

Denmark. The Data Inspectorate expresses serious criticism and warns municipalities about their use of Google's products in primary schools, including the use of sub-data processors outside the EU.

www.datatilsynet.dk/presse-og-ny...?

FYI @jenpersson.com @risu.bsky.social

AI is Destroying the University and Learning Itself Students use AI to write papers, professors use AI to grade them, degrees become meaningless, and tech companies make fortunes. Welcome to the death of higher education.

"This is the final stage of corporatization: public education transformed into a delivery system for private capital."
www.currentaffairs.org/news/ai-is-destroying-the-university-and-learning-itself

I keep saying that when the first deep fake is made of a child and the image comes from a school site,,, we might see change

@jenpersson.com @defenddigitalme.bsky.social

The Trouble with the Data Bill and Children’s Data Part 1: The Trouble with the Data Bill and Children’s Data Will the Data Use and Access Bill fall at the final hurdle? The popular consensus on ping-pong is no, but the government’s int…

Part 1: The Trouble with the (UK) #DataBill and Children’s Data

A growing expectation to treat children’s data differently from adults’ brings with it new challenges in #DataProtection law.

Among other things.

jenpersson.com/the-trouble-...

Looking forward to contributing and participating in this tomorrow, #CILIPData25 in a talk on "Children as (copy)rights holders: canaries in the coalmine?" and panel with really interesting questions to challenge us in the afternoon.

A clip from the introduction to a 2024 press release about academic research on school children's photos on social media, by Dr Claire Bessant

Hard agree defenddigitalme.org/2024/01/28/c... When I reviewed via spawning.ai/have-i-been-... there are lots of school pupils' photos. Was told recently a school is being held to ransom for pupil photos. Work by Dr Claire Bessant @ Northumbria is still ongoing www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

This weekend, we've a little Easter egg for dystopian fiction fans. Or is it?

"You are a Year 10 pupil at Horizon Academy. You didn’t sign up for the new system. No one asked for your permission. But your school bought it anyway. What do you do?"

Choose wisely in our Twine.

#HappyEaster2025 1/8🧵

Really excited about our #ChildrensRights Group annual lecture on 13/03 w/ @sonialivingstone.bsky.social on #childrights & the #digitalenvironment - with brilliant panelists @jenpersson.com, Data, Tech & Black Communities' Tracey Gyateng, CRiN's Leo Ratledge & our own Kay Firth-Butterfield.
Join us!

A card to accompany the blogpost: School pupils’ ‘sex survey’ data offered to researchers: Opt out fails children on reuse of ID and research https://defenddigitalme.org/2025/02/05/school-pupils-sex-survey-data-offered-to-researchers-opt-out-fails-children-on-reuse-of-id-and-research/ Where the headline text is on the right of the card below the Defend Digital Me logo and superimposed on a transparent background image of a government building, Scottish flag, question marks and shadow of a child, all below 'the hand of the state' and zeros and ones in white on pink.

School pupils’ ‘sex survey’ data offered to researchers: Opt out fails children on reuse of #ID and Local Authorities’ survey

defenddigitalme.org/2025/02/05/s...

#Scotland #Health #Wellbeing #DataBill #DUABill #CWBSBill #DataProtection #privacy #AI #Copyright Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Scottish school pupil 'sex survey' data offered to researchers The answers are being advertised for use by external researchers without the explicit consent of children or parents.

BBC News - Scottish school pupil 'sex survey' data offered to researchers - BBC News
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Politics Chat: January 26, 2025 YouTube video by Heather Cox Richardson

"...because you don't need to reinvent the wheel." www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUww... Very good. And quite right that these matters are non-partisan. Thanks for sharing the pointer.

Those who wish to read, can find and read it.

I'm not familiar but if it's already being done, all the better.

You seem to have all the experience needed to map and document the actions and effects. Evidence will be required. Use your network for crowdsourced verifiable content. eg reporting of what was shutdown, funds cut, programmes ended etc. Immediate effects. Media. Long term expectations. Archive links

In the 900 page Project 2025 Mandate for Leadership, Five Eyes is p217. (Broadly all of Section 2, Ch.7).

Cambridge leads governmental project to understand impact of smartphones and social media on young people Cambridge researchers are leading the first phase of a new research project that will lay the groundwork for future studies into the impact on children of

My team has got news!

Looking forward to working on this with great team members and collaborators across the UK ⬇️

www.cam.ac.uk/research/new...

Ignoring the role of time in Data Governance The words we use to define data In the 2021 Defend Digital Me report, The Words We Use in Data Policy: Putting People Back in the Picture, we examined why public conversations about personal data o…

Ignoring the role of time in Data Governance.

A blogpost on why we must ensure any public policy or #AI creating inferences of meaning are built only on data that are correct, used within the context in which the meaning intended at source is valid over time. jenpersson.com/ignoring-the... #DUABill

Something missing from your bio, sir?

Italy Flag GIF Alt: Italy Flag GIF

Here comes the starter.