We can’t politely ask big tech to slow down. We are going to need to innovate ourselves so we can keep up with the digital revolution.

The work I have done on the Online Safety Bill has brought home to me quite how far behind we are on digital regulation.  Nearly 20 years since Facebook’s launch, five years after the government first proposed an online safety bill, it has finally become law.

Anyone with teenage children knows that we have been way too slow to hold social media companies to account. Much though these technologies have enriched our lives they can also cause real harm, and we all know we should have acted sooner.

You could say this has always been true of major innovations.  It took the best part of a century from when the first car went into mass production (1886) for seatbelts to be invented (1959) and then made mandatory for all UK passengers (1991).  And in the early days of regulating cars, we went down some pretty dead ends, including the Red Flag Act which required a man with a red flag to walk 60 yards in front of any self-propelled vehicle, which in turn was restricted to 4 miles per hour.  

But the challenge all countries face today is that we definitely don’t have 100 years to distinguish between red flag laws and seatbelts.  Digital technology is moving too fast, is too all pervasive and too powerful already for that.  

For too long, tech companies have told us that it’s too early to regulate, that regulation will hamper innovation, that regulation must be global (aka don’t rush into this locally).  It’s certainly true that banning technology that you are scared of won’t work.  The technology will always find a way through.  Think of the Ottoman Empire banning the printing press or German boatmen sinking the first steamboats on the Rhine.  

But I believe the era of tech regulatory exceptionalism is over.  In no other sector would we countenance companies or governments selling us all products without establishing whether they have unintended consequences. From toys to medicines to power stations, we have health and safety regulations.   We also have sector regulators where markets tend towards concentrated network power.  As AI, quantum computing, and who knows what else change the way we live our lives we know that we will need laws that set out the rules of the digital road.

Every other sector of the economy has had to change the way it operates to take advantage of the opportunities and address the fundamental challenges that digital brings.   Parliament is no different.  We can’t politely ask big tech to slow down. We are going to need to innovate ourselves so we can keep up with the digital revolution. There is a parallel here too with past technology revolutions.  Parliament played an enormous role in helping Britain navigate the first industrial revolution, to drive economic growth AND build a fairer and more inclusive society.  We need to be every bit as radical, (and a lot faster!) as our predecessors were in the 19th century if we are to really benefit from the digital revolution.