“I ONLY SHARED A LINK…”

Working in Facebook’s Trust & Safety team taught me many things, including: when someone’s at risk of online coercion & extortion (financial, sexual, political) one thing that you DO NOT do, is throw fuel on the fire.

With that in mind, let’s watch this UK Terrorism Police video, circulating on TikTok & Instagram:

“I MIGHT GET A CRIMINAL RECORD…”

Cue an utterly terrified teenager with wailing sirens behind him, whose “mum couldn’t believe it” and “might not be able to go to college”

TO BE CLEAR, THIS IS BULLSHIT. IF THIS REALLY REFLECTS HOW COUNTER-TERRORISM LEGISLATION WORKS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM THEN IT NEEDS TO BE URGENTLY REFORMED:

WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?

This is right up there with “AIDS – DON’T DIE OF IGNORANCE!” and with the Twitter Joke Trial.

If you are telling a bunch of teenagers that having “shared a link” their lives are now essentially over, what the hell do you think they are going to do next?

• Happily get on with their lives in a mustn’t grumble kind of way?

• Think of the Police as their friend?

No; the emotional ones are going to harm or even kill themselves, much like the various servicemen killing themselves over sextortion — or, perhaps worse, this campaign will be used as evidence of a “hostile environment” of anti-terrorism policing and used to drag kids into crime, “Oliver Twist” style where they are practically dragged underground into an anti-establishment cult.

This is the most self-defeatingly, tone-deaf, patronising, patrician, misapprehensive and outright stupid anti-social-media campaign that I’ve ever had the horror to witness.

It should be cancelled and utterly reworked, in association with at least SOME civil society organisation which respects kids enough to not try scaring them into “good behaviour”.

They should apologise to the nation’s youth.