‘If these social media apps were an air fryer, they would have been recalled’: digital campaigner Beeban Kidron on Big Tech

Acclaimed British film-maker, peer and social activist Beeban Kidron is sitting at a desk in the House of Lords when we meet, virtually, to discuss Users: How Big Tech Took Control and How to Fight Back, her astute new book looking at technocapitalism in all of its terrifying complexity. 

While we're talking, the setting with all its idiosyncrasies perfectly brings out different aspects of Kidron's roles and personality: when the hustle of the Lords bubbles into the background, she says “sorry, this is offending my sensibilities as a film-maker”, shifting her camera to change the background. At another point, she pauses to stand up, before explaining “apologies, someone walked through who we are supposed to stand for” (and then laughs, saying that the person in question then told everyone not to bother). 

Kidron’s talents and interests are many and varied, and she manages to be equally passionate about all of them. She’s the director who brought us the film classic Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason and the acclaimed adaptation of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. But around 2012 she turned her attention to social activism, with a particular focus on online safety for children. Her non-profit 5Rights Foundation works to develop policy and regulatory solutions to the dangers children face on social media, gaming websites, porn platforms and other nasty corners of the internet. Her new book is both a manifesto and a roadmap, an accessible explainer and an energising call to arms. Kidron is brought to the brink of tears in our conversation, such is the strength of her passion for, and commitment to, protecting children online.

Her advocacy is also, she told me, for all the women who feel that they're not beautiful enough in the age of Instagram. It’s for the people who have become bitter enemies with family members because they've taken opposite sides of a political issue, engineered by the algorithm. It’s for the workers who lose their jobs to AI – perhaps not realising that this happens not because of a failure of theirs, but because the extreme wealth of tech billionaires depends on it.

What do you think of the UK’s ban on social media for children?

The one thing I would like to be clear about is we shouldn't be banning brands. It’s not worth living in a world in which Volvo and Porsche must stop at 60mph but Mini Coopers can go without any brakes. And that’s what we’re saying by banning brands or products: saying no TikTok, no Instagram, but actually we're going to allow Facebook to do all the same things. That is a preposterous idea. 

If these apps were an air fryer, they would have been recalled by now. If they were a gas boiler, they would have been recalled by now. They are dangerous, they are hurting kids, they are depressing kids, and they’re killing kids. Whatever the product is should be safe for use. And that's just a sort of a principle. Once you start thinking about it like that, the whole world becomes easier to imagine.

What advice would you give to the incoming prime minister?

There are three things that have to just be principles. Kids are kids, and they should be safe, they should be private. I also want to see Andy Burnham protect creators, British intellectual property, British workers in the workplace, and really think creatively about how we can use technology in our communities to enrich our communities. And finally – and I think this is going to be really the battleground of the future – we've got to invest in our own infrastructure and we've got to recognise that data is part of that infrastructure. Whether it is NHS data, geospatial data, CCTV data – unless we control the data, then we are controlled. It's not a choice between regulation and no regulation. It's a choice between regulation according to UK law and values and the terms of service of Silicon Valley. That's the choice.

What do you think of companies such as Palantir?

What we're seeing is an increasing dependence on companies like Palantir, like Microsoft, like OpenAI. And the government does a deal and the deal looks good on paper, but what happens is it's an extraction of data and it's a creation of dependency. And there is quite a lot of evidence at this point that these deals are not in the national interest. 

You talk a lot about the addictive mechanisms of these tech platforms. Could you tell us about that?

The MO of the digital world is to create a compulsive addiction towards any given product. It's important to remember this is not an accident, this is not a sidebar: this is the point. And they hire the brightest minds in behavioural psychology to do it. The whole thing is a machine of compulsion. 

Cut to a little boy in their bedroom playing a game that's been heavily engineered to keep him there. And the mum or dad calls: “Come for dinner”. But everything in that body, his whole emotional, physical being has been hacked to keep him there.

How can individuals take back their agency?

Firstly, we can start using tech as a collective tool – fix a time for your friends, don't be endlessly available. Leave your phone in the hallway, have some time off. But also things that people don't think about – like you don't need to follow everyone, just pick three people to follow and, when you're bored, get rid of those three and follow three others. Or: one app in, one app out. 

And finally, we can use our vote. Ask your MP: are you going to walk through the lobby on this issue? Because I will give you my vote if you do.

In the book, you write “the Blairs, funded by Oracle and Palantir, are eyecatching exemplars of a system of power not mediated by elections, but by proximity, family connections, and capital”. Can you tell us more about that?

I give the example of the Tony Blair Institute because it got £275m from Larry Ellison, and if he was an MP that would be against the law. We have laws on political interference. Larry Ellison, for those people who don't know, is a tech billionaire. His company, Oracle, has oversight over vast swathes of government data all over the world, and that is their business. And then the Tony Blair Institute is going around saying the government must open up to tech. So I think we should put a pin in that before it gets too toxic. 

And what do you think about accountability for individuals – Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk or Sam Altman?

No man should ever have that much power. I actually represented some Meta shareholders and I won the vote at the annual general meeting, and Mark Zuckerberg used his shares to block me. So I had a majority vote, but the way it is set up is that Mark Zuckerberg has 60% of the vote. So there is nothing that can win against him. At that time, Meta was used by two-thirds of the world's population. And I think it's sick that one person might have control over how two-thirds of the world population live. I don't really care which one person. I don't think that that would be very healthy even if it were me. 

What do you think we should be doing around child sexual abuse material?

I want to say to all the sufferers and all the survivors that what we have allowed on our watch is a travesty, and that I decided a long time ago which side I was on. And you know, there are a few things in life that should be red lines. So my answer to your question about child sexual abuse is to ask a question back of society, which is: why do we not have zero tolerance to child sexual abuse? 

The fact that our politicians, our leaders, our tech leaders, our regulators, are able to say in public that they must weigh this against something else: against profit, against availability, and so on … We are morally bankrupt if we're weighing this up against someone's bottom line. 

What about the film industry and AI? Are you worried about it? 

I'm worried about AI and all the creative industries in a number of ways. I've taken a huge stand about the fact that these models have been built on the back of work that they have stolen. But on top of that, AI does a nearly very good job on a lot of things. But it can do it much cheaper. And so my biggest worry is that we lower the bar and we settle for “nearly good”. The whole point about art, creativity, stories, is mad excellence, the mad pushing of your precise view, which is just a tiny bit different from everybody else's precise view. And that's the bit that AI can't do, because AI is the sum total average cut of what's been before. So you can’t get it to do something spectacular. 

My biggest worry is that we’ll have a lot of almost good, or nearly good or even very good, but not meant.

That leads me perfectly into my next question: is there a piece of art that has inspired you recently?

The film Sirat. It's incredible. Twice in the movie, it makes a move that you could not imagine on paper that anyone would have the gall to do. It becomes a sort of a poem about the value of life, although it starts off feeling like something else altogether. I was blown away. 

If you were given a million pounds right now to do good, how would you spend it?

I would do something very, very specific that would allow kids to have a real-world experience. I’d spend it all on theatre tickets or taking them to a football game. Let them have a mad, fabulous day, with ice cream and entertainment, in real life.

What would you say to someone who's struggling to feel optimistic right now?

The most important thing is to think about the world and what you can do to make it better, and not necessarily for yourself, but for someone else. I am not a religious person, but I do think that doing service brings you more comfort and joy than necessarily looking after yourself. And one of the tricks of modern life has been to make us very interior. So maybe just take the spotlight off yourself and see what you can do, and see how that goes, see how you feel, and then do it again. I do believe you have to put your own oxygen mask on before you can help anyone else, but I think there is something in walking forward as you want to be and believing in the world as you want it to be, that actually magically transforms it. And I think that's just a joyous fact.

Users: How Big Tech Took Control and How to Fight Back is published by WH Allen (RRP £22; buy it at a discount at the Nerve Bookshop)