Debate only works if it is disciplined by ethics. The failure to regulate the digital revolution is the great mistake of our age
A teenager this week harangued Britain’s chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, in the street as a liar, and then posted his attack on TikTok. It was, said Boris Johnson and Matt Hancock, “completely unacceptable”. The boy’s mother frantically apologised, explaining her 15-year-old son had “a keen interest in public affairs and politics”. His PlayStation would be confiscated.
At that point my screen switched from a Westminster street to a Moscow one. There a man was saying much the same of Vladimir Putin, whereupon a thousand security guards seized him and beat him up. In Washington at the same time ex-president Donald Trump was also being silenced, this time by the moguls of Twitter and Facebook from his 88m followers.
