As government looks to regulate Facebook and Instagram, it starts a fight that could decide how we live

There has, for years, been one thing that just about all of the tech industry agrees on: regulation is coming. Recently, they have even realised that it's necessary. But if there is one thing that has split tech behemoths, politicians and the public apart more than perhaps any other issue, it's what that regulation should look like. Now the UK government thinks it has alighted on an answer, offering perhaps the first comprehensive attempt to limit the harm that technology companies are doing to the people – in particular the children – who use them. For the most part, the solution they have chosen focuses on shifting the responsibility for content that appears on the site onto the people who run them.