'We're appeasing the tech bros': Beeban Kidron, from film-maker to lawmaker
2/20/202648 min
What links Bridget Jones to social media regulation?
The answer: Baroness Beeban Kidron. In 2004 she directed the Bridget Jones sequal. 20 years later, she became one of the most vocal campaigners for regulation of social media and tech in the UK.
She joins Nick in the Political Thinking studio to tell her story, from joining Marxist dinner parties in her childhood home, to filming and living with the protesters of Greenham Common in the 1980s.
Today, she has strong words for Keir Starmer's government, and is pushing for law-changes from her seat in the House of Lords.
Producers: Daniel Kraemer and Flora Murray Editor: Giles Edwards
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Transcript preview
First 90 secondsSpeaker 10:00
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Speaker 2· Soundbite0:03
[upbeat music] If there was a big red button that would just demolish the internet, I would smash that button with my forehead.
Speaker 3· Soundbite0:13
From the BBC, this is The Interface, the show that explores how tech is rewiring your week and your world. This isn't about quarterly earnings or about tech reviews. It's about what technology is actually doing to your work, your politics, your everyday life- And all the bizarre ways people are using the internet. Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
Nick Robinson· Host0:38
[upbeat music] Hello, and welcome to Political Thinking. One middle-aged woman against Silicon Valley. That's how my guest on Political Thinking this week was described by none other than her husband. Baroness Beeban Kidron has spent the past thirteen years warning about the unregulated, concentrated commercial power of giant US tech companies. She led the campaign to force them to alter their products to protect children, but now she wants them to go much further, and indeed, to protect us all. A multi-award-winning documentary maker, director of TV dramas like Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, and the Hollywood blockbuster, the sequel to Bridget Jones, she now directs events in the real world from her seat in the House of Lords, where she's a crossbencher, that is, not a member of any political party.