Under-16s will be banned from using social media, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has announced.
Starmer says social media is making children unhappy, making it easier for bullies to abuse children, and is “designed to be addictive”. A ban would give children more time, security, and more freedom to grow up - as well as more opportunities, he adds.
“That is all any parent wants. They want to know that Britain will be better for their children, that they will get a fair chance,” the PM says in a speech in Downing Street.
Starmer adds that the government is “not prepared to compromise” on the safety and happiness of children - and that includes in the regulation and enforcement of this ban. He says the government has listened to and learned from countries like Australia, where a similar ban has already been introduced.
They learned from countries like Australia huh? Australian here, did they learn how much its not working 😂🙄! None of my kids have anything other than YouTube, but my 9yo knew how to get around it. He doesn’t because he just watches in a browser with ad blockers and we monitor it. My high schooler reports the many and varied ways kids just changed where they go online to continue their crap. Do I think under 16s should be on social media, no. But identity verification is not going to fix that.
This was never about protecting the children. That’s just an excuse to further promote mass surveillance and to exempt companies from responsibility for the additive design of their products and services. It’s easier and more rewarding to penalize the users.
Social media is absolutely addictive and making people unhappy.
But how do you enforce this without removing anonymity?
Once again, they’re going the corporate/government friendly route of surveillance. Ban VPNs, age vefification, soon we’ll be required to use biometric checks to access the internet.
These chucklefucks will do anything other than attempt to solve the problem. Which is more education and help for parents while holding parents and the corporations accountable. But that would cost money rather than having lobbyists and donors fund them even more so 🤷♂️
It all comes back to capitalism.
First step would be to ban social media from using algorithm suggestions all together.
Maybe ban algorithmically-delivered content? So, for example, consider YouTube. The only way to get content would be to search for videos or to subscribe to individual channels. You can still have a user-curated experience, but that curation must be actively done by the user. This would at least prevent feed algorithms selecting for engagement and rage.
I would rather target the worst practices of social media companies in general, rather than try and keep kids from them. It’s not like adults aren’t harmed by this stuff either.
As I said, hold the corporations accountable. It was never about children in the first place.
This is my biggest issue with it.
Social media has become a blight on society on all levels. Not just children.
But, there’s a lack of education or push for children, and adults too, to be smarter online. They’re just instituting laws and legislation and pushing the onus on corporations to comply.
Sounds good at face value but doesn’t factor in smaller companies who are unable to afford the changes needed to comply (resulting in the pulling out of a region) or they institute dodgey 3rd party verification systems that will just on-sell your data.
Then, there’s the world of dodgey VPNs that kids and people have rushed to. Also, as other people have said, children have found work arounds for age verification.
So, what’s the point? What did we actually achieve? I sometimes defer to the old addage of never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity. Sometimes I feel it’s more like naievity or good intenaions being controlled by malicious forces.
I don’t know.
What I feel though is that it just doesn’t feel like it’s truly about the children. If it is, there should be a whole lot more factored into this.
Instead it feels like a half baked plan being sold to us as being for the children.
It’s a moral panic being co-opted by those in power. (Ironically, many of those in power being predators themselves, especially here in the US where they’re a major political party 🙃)
Some I can think of off the top of my head:
- The Patriot Act
- COINTELPRO
- The Satanic Panic and resultant legislation
- The War on Drugs
Legitimate concern gets amplified to a moral panic and then legislation is quickly put forth but is never tested or thoroughly understood. And given that most legislation today is written by lobbyists…well 🤷♂️
I’m sure stupidity is a part of if, but it’s usually some genuine intention that then gets swept up and captured by malicious infrastructure.
That’s why I’m saying hold the parents and the corporations accountable. Peel back data collection and restrict algorithmic content altogether. Enforce/provide parental education for online technologies and children. Basically, pay attention to your kids, be interested in them and their lives. The infrastructure exists on these social media platforms to restrict and monitor access, as well as it exists at the router level and at the device level as well. It’s the parents who purchase the device and provide internet access. Would we be ok with in home governmental inspections on all of us so that kids can’t have access to a gun or alcohol? No, it’s up to the parent to protect their child from danger. Why is this any different? Why should we all give up our privacy?
Typical. Punish the individual, but don’t ever address the underlying social causes.
Where and when can I protest this in-person?
What about if social media takes personal responsibility for what their platform does and stop making it addictive? Stops pushing anger inducing stories?
I think this is a very interesting topic. How can you verify that someone is of age without the problem with privacy?
Would you go to a kiosk or something and buy a code that is not bound to you as a person but the person who works there have verified that you are over 16? So it will kinda be like a steam code except they need to check your actual age with a valid identification (that is only shown to the person) and that code will be bound to an account when claimed. If it is per account then that could also make it annoying for kids to create multiple accounts if they aren’t of age.
How else could you do it without needing to trust someone to keep your identity safe?
Throw your ideas at me!
And we do not need perfect, look at alcohol consumptions, that is illegal for kids but some find their ways anyway. It just needs to be annoying so most don’t do it or do it less
A better example for me is driving, we don’t let children drive, millions of children have access to cars, there’s no age gate on the ignition.
Ultimately its the parents that stop kids driving.
Ban kids from using it. Then treat it like a public health problem and educate everybody on the problems, how to identify misinformation, keep themselves safe etc. And require the companies to provide the tools parents can use to protect their own kids. Parental controls exist but i feel they aren’t widely used because it’s difficult and complicated.
I’d go further and start regulating the use of algorithmic feeds for everybody but that’s probably harder to achieve.
Great. Now how are you going to do that without violating anyone’s privacy?
That’s the neat part - they don’t.
“Oh no, this is terrible” cry the social media sites, while working out just how much your passport details and home address are worth to advertisers.
give children more time, security, and freedom to go up
So can trans kids access puberty blockers now or nah?
… Announced on a social media site owned by a man who encouraged Pogroms and generates CSAM for profit.
Oh the hypocrisy… The fascists live on it, and no one bats an eye.
…and that is why we need the ban! /s
The voters need to understand they aren’t doing this to “protect children”. They’re afraid to vote against it because they’ll look like they don’t want to protect children. We need to let them know we see through the ruse, and we won’t punish them at the polls for voting against this shit, but we will for passing it.
I am in favor of keeping kids off of social media, but I think the method of ID verification as default is entirely wrong.
Parents should ultimately be responsible for the activity of their child. If you can’t trust your child to use the internet/social media responsibly, they simply should not be given access to smart devices.
If a kid gets onto social media and does stupid things there, go after the parents for neglect. The same would happen if I wasn’t supervising my 8-year-old and they sneak off to vandalize someone else’s property.
At most, maybe conversations could happen with ISPs to standardize an optional whitelist system for home consumers with children to block access to key social media domains for unapproved devices, but that’s as far as I’d go. Empower parents with better supervisory tools to be more involved, no need to violate the rights of everyone else.
Parents should ultimately be responsible for the activity of their child. If you can’t trust your child to use the internet/social media responsibly, they simply should not be given access to smart devices.
When people say this, I always think about how we ID for alcohol. If it’s the parents responsibility, they should never let their kid be able to go to the store to buy alcohol in the first place. The store shouldn’t have to ID people. Except most people don’t make this argument. I suppose if you agree with that statement, then you’d be consistent.
If a kid gets onto social media and does stupid things there
The stupid thing is using it. It’s bad for kids development. It’s not dissimilar to drinking. You could blame the parents if the kids got into the alcohol in their own home, but the same would also go for kids using their parents social media accounts.
Empower parents with better supervisory tools to be more involved, no need to violate the rights of everyone else.
I know I have been playing devil’s advocate for online ID, but I think it will be implemented in a way that is a privacy nightmare and am not in favor of the way it’s being done. However, is anonymity a right? Before 1980, nobody really got anonymity unless you authored something under a pseudonym, which we can still do. When people were outspoken about civil rights violation, they were often just out there in the public as themselves. Sure they could wear masks, but you couldn’t hide like you can on the internet.
The internet has allowed both for more anonymity than ever and also more tracking of people than ever. I do think it’s coincidental that this is coming at the same time as the birth/growth of AI, but it does kind of serve a convenient second purpose of validating humans (or at least you know that a person is using an AI to post on their account). It’s unfortunate that it’s a benefit, but we live in an age where people using social media/the internet now have to constantly question their reality and if people are even real. I don’t see a good solution to that without violating our previous expectations of privacy.
If age/human verification going to be done, I think it should be done correctly. Age verification could be done through Zero Knowledge Proofs where it only verifies your age and nothing else. I think one day our ID’s will have rotating security keys built into them that will be used both for in person and online verification. You’d be able to decide what information is provided to the website, so that if they only wanted to know “Are you 21+” it would only provide a YES or NO, and that’s it. I’m sure there will be some online method for doing the same thing before then, but it’d need to be tied to some form of biometric verification like a fingerprint or else it could be used maliciously. The most likely scenario is we start off by using phones to tie the ID to the person, and have the phones require some form of biometric lock.
All that to say, we are realistically headed towards a future where the the anonymity we were used to will be no more. At least for any website that doesn’t want AI spam. While just uploading pictures of our ID’s to websites is a terrible idea, it’s what the idiots in charge will likely have us do as this new process starts. If they’d let the smart people take their time to do it right, the whole thing wouldn’t be nearly as bad.
You only get ID’d for alcohol if you look like a kid. I haven’t been carded in years. And when you do get carded, they look at your license, check the date, and hand it right back. No copies are saved to a database that could get leaked who-knows-where.
If a social media site is concerned that a user may be underage, I’m fine with them asking for some sort of verification. But a blanket request on everyone to ID themselves by default is just not the way.
But scientific studies suggest alcohol physically toxic to kids! Social media is…
Well…
Also shown to be toxic. Like, measurably dangerous to your health.
(And I agree about the IDs. Honestly this should be done for alcohol too).
When people say this, I always think about how we ID for alcohol. If it’s the parents responsibility, they should never let their kid be able to go to the store to buy alcohol in the first place. The store shouldn’t have to ID people. Except most people don’t make this argument. I suppose if you agree with that statement, then you’d be consistent.
One could argue that kids can go to shops that sell also alcohol, but I can get the logic.
Problem is that a parent cannot check on their kids 24/7, so maybe having a check other than the parent could be a good idea.
Stores should absolutely check for ID since there is no way for them to verify that the parents did their job.
A kid circumventing internet controls should not lead to charges against the parent. What a shit take.
Well, if they just ban the over 16s as well, then we’ll have something.
I’m not entirely sure how that’s panning out in Aus (a quick search suggests it’s a flop, but the sources aren’t great). I think the general consensus is that it’s not as enforceable as they hoped.
We are moving towards an era of a more locked down web in the UK. The main flag here is “robust age verification” - i.e. we’re moving from “you must provide ID to view adult material on social media” to “you must provide ID to use social media”.
One can quickly see “your id must be retained and linked to your account to reduce crime” and “any officer of the law may view this ID to better support crime reduction” slipping in over the next 20 years or so.
Overall, this feels like another Trojan horse to move towards a China-style de-anonymised web. Bad move all around really.
We are moving towards an era of a more locked down web in the UK. The main flag here is “robust age verification” - i.e. we’re moving from “you must provide ID to view adult material on social media” to “you must provide ID to use social media”.
And then from there to
you must provide ID to use your deviceand eventuallyyou can only run (state-approved OS) on your device, assuming thin clients tied to rented servers, which would be then tied to your ID, don’t take over and kill off personal computing first.Oh, there’s pretty solid data about Australia. A large percent of kids are still using social media because the ones who no longer use it are the ones whose parents won’t let them use it, which is of course the same group as the ones whose parents always had that power. But we have heard from some vulnerable minority kids who now no longer get access to the support that they used to have. And that’s really f***** up.
those kids socialising other ways. social media isnt socializing anyway
You’re right, and it’s failure will be the excuse to deprive us all of more of our privacy and autonomy.
you mean we have privacy now? you know these social media companies already gave info on you even if you dont sign up.
its good if social media companies cant get kids into doomscrolling
They don’t have a copy of my passport and a video of me holding it. They also don’t have a 3D scan of my face, which is what all these age verification companies want from you. They literally use AI while you are filming yourself to 3D scan your face for the Palantir database.
dont use social media then. the less that use it the better
If I can still access your profile an hour from now and it’s not deleted, you’re full of shit.
It’s been 7 now.
so?
It’s not about that though is it? There’s a world of difference in SM companies knowing what I like to look at (Tools and steam engines mostly) and them having access to my actual address, my actual date of birth, my actual current face…
If only I could be this naive. First of all this isn’t going to do much to prevent kids from getting online unless the measures to prevent it become absolutely oppressive. And secondly the bare minimum check requires you to give even me information to the social media companies. And I guarantee they won’t be held accountable if kids find a way to bypass whatever measures get put in place. And of course adults are just as addicted to it as kids but I guess they don’t matter.
If the goal was to reduce the amount of people addicted to social media the solution would be to regulate how social media functions not regulate access to social media. What is being suggested is stupid. You can’t ban things on the internet.
you cant ban things but somehow you can regulate? lol
You can’t ban car crashes. You can regulate car manufacturers to install seatbelts to minimize injury.
you ban under 16 from driving
So what’s your point? That cars don’t need a seatbelt because we’ve banned kids from driving? Actually what you’re doing is just proving my point. For starters that ban doesn’t stop 16 and under from driving, it’s just something that will be used to punish someone after it has happened. At best it’s a deterrent because law-abiding citizens (including children) are less likely to break the law but I’ve personally seen kids take a car for a joyride and crash into someones yard so the ban isn’t going to stop anyone who really wants to go and drive. And more importantly it doesn’t really address the core problem which are collisions and crashes. Despite the ban adult people still end up in crashes. What does help are all sorts of regulations that car manufacturers have to adhere to make sure that the damage is minimized. Instead of having your brains splattered all across the road you might end up with a concussion instead.
And the same applies to social media. Banning kids from social media isn’t going to do anything about the addiction or mental health problems social media causes to people. It won’t even stop kids from using social media because kids are smart and if they want they will find a way around the ban. Now I’ll compromise a bit and say that banning kids from social media isn’t the worst idea because kids are more impressionable and social media might have a much bigger effect on a young mind. But if the goal is to improve the mental health of kids you also have to target the social media companies and regulate them to make sure their impact on mental health is minimized. Not only would that help kids but that would also help adults.
You have the means, ways and most importantly, it is still legal to obtain privacy, though, right?
yeah just dont use it
I’m in Australia and it’s shit for everyone. The whole thing was basically conceived by SportsBet so they could advertise on social media with impunity.
My kids are on more social media platforms than I am. So are all their friends. It hasn’t slowed anything in that regard.
I can say, none of the shady bootleg porn sites have implemented blocking. So there’s always that.
I’ve survived so far without doing a face scan or ID check. Most of my social media accounts are over 16 years old anyway.
Next 20 years? Next year pal. Not just the police either. Just because they don’t tell you about it doesn’t mean it won’t happen sooner. You could organize to try and stop it, just a thought.
Already a member of the EFF, and I teach privacy to my students and coworkers already.
It’s more a rearguard than a fight at this point - most Brits are too distracted to care.
Just a heads up, the other one ( teyrnon from shitjustworks) who commented to you, promoted strongmans and such authoritarian measures, to fight authoritarianism.
You guys and us both in the US. I know it. We can win, if we organize. We are set against each other, but that is only because we don’t have a populist leader.
“If it continues long enough, even a reign of terror may become a fondly remembered period. People believe they want justice and wise government but, in fact, what they really want is an assurance that tomorrow will be very much like today.” - Terry Pratchett
It’s a good quote, and it tells you a lot about the idea of organising to forcefully change things. Change comes through education, patience, kindness, and self-sacrifice; it comes from teaching people that tomorrow can really be better. It’s never quick, it’s rarely (if ever) a great leader who brings it about, and it’s never such leaders who pay the price.
I bought a BlackBerry in 2007/2008, and to get on Facebook I needed to show my ID in an o2 shop. This is all that is required. This is suspicious in the very least.
o2?
Phone/network provider.
I tried to visit a porn site from Australian VPN server and was prompted with age verification bs.
The streets are getting dangerous, it’s forbidden to go outside
