This week Rachel de Souza, the Children’s Commissioner, has said she fears young people are becoming “intoxicated with extremism” via social media. Under-18s, she argues in a report on children being referred to Prevent, are increasingly fascinated by violence, gore and cruelty in a non-ideological context, thereby failing the threshold for potentially life-saving interventions. Much of de Souza’s previous work centers on the Southport disturbances, prompted by the murders committed by Axel Rudakubana two years ago. Now she’s added her voice to those demanding both changes to Prevent and stronger internet regulation.

De Souza is hardly a stalwart of the authoritarian Left blob. Appointed by the then-Tory government, her background is in teaching, not activist-adjacent NGOs. Nonetheless, her report chimes with wider establishment attitudes to internet regulation: governments of all stripes have long agitated in favor of “taming the Internet”. Indeed, working on the counter-terrorism internet referral unit during the Cameron era, I remember mandarins actively exploring the pros and cons of “network-level blocking” — a tactic favored by the Chinese Communist Party, whereby sites can be blocked at the internet service provider level, rather than on a single device or browser.

What, then, do de Souza’s recommendations suggest about Whitehall’s current intentions concerning Prevent, “online safety” and counter-extremism policy? For one thing, the report identifies valid structural weaknesses in Prevent, which focuses on people vulnerable to extremist ideologies. In cases such as Rudakubana’s, the report suggests that because he did not have a clear ideology, Prevent staff were precluded from making a proper “intervention”. This, however, raises further questions. What should replace Prevent? Would it become a catch-all adjunct of social services, focusing on “harm” of all kinds? Would it become an overly intrusive one-stop shop for teachers pathologizing “problematic” behavior?

For those concerned about a nannying “safeguarding state”, turning a child’s morbid fascination with gore into grounds for state intervention seems questionable. I’m old enough to remember moral panics around everything from fantasy role-playing games to “video nasties”. Current concerns, then, seem eerily familiar. Are de Souza’s views based on too narrow an evidence base? It’s possible to be vigilant to potential harm while recognizing Rudakabana as an outlier.

More concerning for internet privacy advocates are de Souza’s recommendations around online regulation. The report argues that the burden of proof concerning harm should fall on service providers demonstrating their platforms or products are safe for children, rather than having the authorities prove otherwise. Specifically, de Souza argues companies should be required to assess their algorithms and determine their potential contribution to radicalization. This argument requires further and no doubt expensive research: to what extent do algorithms drive radicalization or the propensity for violence, or do radically violent people simply seek such content in the first place?

De Souza’s recommendations are also laden with potential second-order effects — notably age-gating the entire internet and effectively destroying online anonymity in the UK. Although this report doesn’t delve into the technical issues around age verification, the direction of travel seems relatively clear. Support from the Children’s Commissioner for the Online Safety Act and the recent “Growing Up in the Online World” report strongly suggests that online anonymity for adults is of secondary importance to safeguarding. Again, this “direction of travel” is entirely consistent with Labour’s broader focus on internet regulation and disinformation, neatly summarized by the phrase “Kill Musk’s Twitter”.

This new report is more of a call to arms than a policy proposal. That is appropriate, given the negligible evidence base from which the Children’s Commissioner is working. Whether de Souza likes it or not, her safeguarding proposals are deeply entwined with wider arguments around internet freedom. To assuage her critics, she will have to do better than rely on mercifully rare cases such as Rudakubana, or partisan submissions by activist groups seeking influence over government policy.