For more than a decade, UK governments have introduced successive child safety measures, responding to public concern about the availability of content that is either unsuitable or harmful to children, or due to harmful interactions ranging from bullying. Yet at each stage, the measures have delivered far less than was expected. Meanwhile, as online problems appear to escalate, the measures imposed seem more and more extreme, and even politicians admit that they’re likely to be less than fully effective. What is going on?

• Anti-immigration protesters torched buildings and vehicles in Belfast on Tuesday evening and blocked roads, a day after a stabbing allegedly by a Sudanese refugee, captured in a graphic video that shocked the country.
• British prime minister Keir Starmer described the attack, which took place in north Belfast late on Monday evening, as “sickening”. Video of the incident was shared widely on social media.
• Police charged a Sudanese man late Monday over a knife attack that left one person with serious neck and head wounds. The suspect, whose name has not been released, was with attempted murder, possession of a bladed weapon in a public place and making threats to kill. The 30-year-old man is due to appear in court on Wednesday.
• Michelle O’Neill, the first minister of Northern Ireland, slammed the protests and urged calm. “Groups of masked men burning families out of their homes is nothing less than disgusting cowardice,” she said on X. “Racism, intimidation and violence are wrong wherever they occur. There can be no excuse and no justification for these attacks tonight. No one wants to see this on our streets and I again appeal for calm”.
• The leaders of Northern Ireland’s five main political parties issued a joint statement condemning the incident, saying “there is no place in our society for this kind of brutality”.
• US tech billionaire Elon Musk had earlier retweeted a post by anti-immigration activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon – also known as Tommy Robinson – adding: “Only by protesting REPEATEDLY and LOUDLY will there be any change!!”.
• As anti-immigration figures, including Reform party leader Nigel Farage and Restore Britain leader Rupert Lowe, demanded details about the attacker, the interior ministry confirmed he was a Sudanese refugee with a residence permit valid until 2028. Northern Ireland police chief Jon Boutcher said he had arrived in the UK in 2023 via Paris and Dublin.
• Tensions were already high in Britain after violent skirmishes last week in Southampton, southern England, over the police handling of the murder of a young white student stabbed to death by a British Sikh man.

Toot

A Labour MP who was “humiliated” after an AI tool generated fake images of her in a bikini is suing Elon Musk’s tech company.

Jess Asato was targeted earlier this year after criticising the chatbot Grok, which was being used to create fake sexualised images of women and children.

Online users manipulated photos of her using the tool, which is operated by xAI, making a deepfake image of her in a bikini and a video showing her being drugged and prepared for a sexual assault.

The MP for Lowestoft - who has long worked on tackling violence against women and girls - also highlighted other horrific cases including some women’s images being used to make deepfake pornography or a photo of a Jewish woman being manipulated to put her in a bikini in Auschwitz.

Essex libraries have been banned from promoting LGBTQ and Pride events by the county council’s new Reform UK leadership.

The diktat comes at the start of Pride Month: a four-week celebration of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ+) communities.

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Trans women must be barred from female toilets, changing facilities and sports teams, new official guidance is to state.

Bridget Phillipson is expected to confirm on Thursday that official guidance will state what businesses and public bodies must do under the law to protect single-sex spaces.

The guidance follows last year’s Supreme Court judgment that trans women, who were born male, are not legally women for the purposes of the Equality Act.