“The circumstances of Molly’s death are far from unique. Technology plays a role in almost one-quarter (24%) of deaths by suicide among young people aged 10 to 19, equivalent to a lost young life every week.” ‘Pervasive by Design’: The Molly Rose Foundation.

Last Thursday Channel 4 screened the documentary film ‘Molly Vs The Machines’, the tragic story of Molly Russell who took her own life in 2017 aged 14. When the Coroner’s Court came to hear the case in 2022 (5 years of obfuscation from the platforms) the conclusion reached was: “Molly died from an act of self-harm while suffering from depression and the negative effects of online content.”

Here’s a Cog Blog post from the time of that 2022 verdict.

I suppose this moment had to come eventually. This blog has steered away from the ‘Is YouTube TV or not’ debate on the basis that to me it makes as much sense as arguing whether or not a direct mail piece for my local pizza place is a newspaper, given that both are printed on paper.

But here we are. The debate rumbles on, an example of how the great debates of our industry have degenerated from things that matter to things that really don’t.