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.
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.
give children more time, security, and freedom to go up
So can trans kids access puberty blockers now or nah?
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).
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.
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.
UK assuming everyone online is a child unless they are willing to have their passport leaked.
Just open the play store and count how many VPN apps are on the top list.
They are coming for VPNs too. The pillars of your privacy are under attack on all fronts.
If you think VPNs will save you then I suggest you look at China and see how well VPNs saved them.
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.
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
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.
Pove you’re not a child so your data can be sold to advertisers so they can continue to sell you stuff.
It’s great cos then those sites asking for ID will just lose tons of traffic and advertisers will be wasting their money
It’s not just advertisers by a long shot, they aren’t even the main customers in most respects now. Governments want all of that information and buy it, as do other commercial interests, including security consultants and contractors like Palantir.
Governments can use go betweens to buy the information too, China for instance, is likely getting every single piece of information sold by data brokers. The entire thing is a joke, on us, because it’s not about the kids, it’s about locking down the internet and crafting social scores based on everything we have said or done online and off run through half baked ai threat detection.
Starmer is a fascist cunt that will hand the government to openly fascist cunts, but yay, go team! /s
They might as well just introduce an umbrella ‘won’t somebody please think of the children act’. They’re moving very quickly from porn to social media, and the slope is starting to feel real slippery.
When has banning something never not worked?
People better start remembering the 5th of November real soon.
