Adrian Weckler

speaker

6,116 appearances 43 recordings 9 series first heard Jan 2026 last heard 6d ago

Adrian Weckler’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 43 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 12.

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The Big Tech Show · The uncomfortable truth about banning under 16s from social media · 18 Jun 2026 podcast

Now, there's all sorts of issues with that.

But JJ Clarke is here with me in studio.

And JJ, there are a couple of things.

What has struck me about this debate

I'm probably in the minority here, but I'm very cognizant of the fact that most experts in this area, and I mean child protection experts, say that bans don't work and they won't work.

And I'm just going to quote to you

from one or two of them.

So Noleen Blackwell, who is the online safety coordinator of the Children's Rights Alliance, she said this week in response to the UK social ban, she commented that after several months of investigation and testimony on what is needed to be done on the regulation of online platforms and the improvement of safety online in the Oireachtas Committee,

Not a single expert witness recommended a ban.

Now, this is the online safety coordinator of the Children's Rights Alliance saying this.

She added that there is not sufficient evidence that a ban is going to work.

There's another organization called Cyber Safe Kids.

And Alex Cooney, who's the CEO of that organization, said simply designating a shortlist of mainstream platforms, however well intentioned, creates a false sense of security for parents and will not be sufficient to make the online world safer for children.

And there's a whole load of other organizations that have effectively echoed that.

In other words.

Experts in this field say that a social media ban, what they're kind of saying without saying it literally, it's a populist shallow move that makes politicians feel better, but doesn't actually get to the heart of the matter.

And the heart of the matter is how do you keep kids safe online if they're going to go on to social media or we're going to try online?

Isn't the better way to try and force the tech companies, the social media companies to change their algorithms, change the recommender systems, change the kind of content that you get automatically if you're a 15 year old kid signing up for Instagram or YouTube or TikTok and without them knowing almost anything else about you within within.

a few minutes, you're starting to see fight videos and you're starting to see graphic content and you're starting to see manosphere related content.

And isn't that the way to to actually tackle this?

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