alt Hacker NewsThe UK's new under-16 social media ban will cause more harm than it prevents
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If governments want to set up online age gates, they should be responsible for providing an electronic ID system and enable privacy preserving age verification (zero knowledge proofs)
"This week, politicians in the UK pushed forward with plans to eviscerate privacy and free speech on the internet by announcing a ban on social media for users under 16 that is set to take effect in Spring 2027."
Is "social media" the internet
Does "social media", i.e., "Big Tech", preserve privacy or eviscerate it. "Internet privacy" is been in direct conflict with their "business model". They engage in sweeping data collection and mass surveillance of internet users to support invasive "personalised" ad services
It seems like most people engaging in "free speech" on "social media" are not anonymous, not really interested in "privacy"
In many cases, they "share" their every thought
40 ways to share information over the internet without age verification
This is old and could be updated with more
Canadian federal govt just pushed thru a slew of similar legislation - absolutely unprecedented assault on privacy, tools for tracking everyone all the time, minimally constrained, giving broad leeway to a three-person unelected body to implement the actual details.
Related petition to be debated in parliament: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/757233
About 2 million adults in the UK don't have government-issued photo ID. Certainly many 16-17 year olds will have trouble verifying their age. They're blocking huge sectors of the UK population from being able to use the internet normally.
I'm frustrated with how the various internet freedom orgs have handled this over the years.
The writing was on the wall for years - it's not the 90s anymore and some compromise on anonymity and verification is coming. Frankly for good reason - I think the social utility of Big Social is massively negative, and even more so for kids.
That was the shot of orgs like EFF to help shape the debate in a good direction. Zero knowledge proofs, anonymity preserving age checks, good govt regulation on this etc.
Instead they all dug their heels in, refused to give an inch or even engage in the debate. If you wanted anything other that a Toresque utopia then you clearly want Big Brother to keep tabs on everything, and you're probably a moron who thinks you have "nothing to hide".
So they vacated the space while Mumsnet users came to the only logical conclusion: let's ban social media for kids, with whatever method comes to their mind. Scanning their ID, face scans, fingerprints connected to a government DB ran by the cheapest contractor - who knows how this will materialise. And I kind of can't blame them. The adults of internet privacy vacated the room because they said everyone else in the room is too stupid. So they left and left the stupid people in charge.
Am I right in thinking that the EFF doesn't launch any legal campaigns inside the UK (but they offer support to those who do)
Is there a UK version of the EFF that fights in the courts against this lunacy or does it not quite work the same in the UK as it does in the US.
There's no defending social media, not for adults, not for kids, ever.
It's a toxic trap which will do absolutely nothing good for and to its users.
Keep the kids away from it, doesn't take an Einstein reincarnate to realize that.
The EFF believes the ends (freedom) justify the means (access to everything good and bad for everyone). Governments are pragmatic, not fundamentalist.
This article addresses the technological flaws in age verification, then says “but even if there were, broad restrictions on social media will inevitably limit access to lawful speech, and valuable online communities, and arts and culture.”
If the EFF care about freedom above all else (a reasonable position) muddying the waters with half-baked age verification isn’t perfect arguments is just sloppy.
Why does the freedom matter above all else? That’s what voters need to be convinced of.
Couple of Months latter kids will have vipe coded their decentralized sm version that's here to stay.
When will politicians understand how and why the internet was build?
"Under-16 social media ban" sounds narrow. In practice it means building an age-checking layer for the whole web, then hoping it only gets used for children.
I do believe social media should be verboten for younger people, although I believe it should be enforced by good parenting rather than legislation. That said, we live in a society, and sometimes that means our libertarian ideals don’t work on the large scale. I reserve judgement for the people of the UK, their government isn’t without its serious faults, but less regulation doesn’t seem to be the panacea Reagan and Thatcher sold it to be.
Just ban all social media, no need for consent, no need for age detection BS.
Honestly I would love to see a ban on social media in general, for all ages (or more specifically, content that's algorithmically feed and reliant on ads/engagement). Take out Tinder and gambling while you're at it.
EFF are way off base here - this isn't "free as in free speech" but "free as in giant corporations are free to fuck people up the arse".
[dead]
*to billionaires
but snark aside, society needs to have a big conversation (meaning political) about what is good and what is bad about what should really be understood as the 'connectivity revolution' of the last 10-20 years.
Big tech is deathly afraid of these experiments having a good outcome.
This is a horrible straw-man of the situation which somewhat conveniently manages to sidestep any real acknowledgement of the genuine harm and its scale.
Terrible article.
> they’ll also lose access to educational videos on YouTube, local events on Facebook, and potentially cut off from distant friends and family.
Cmon, if you’re trying to make the case for how essential social media is for children under the age of 16, please find some better examples. As if there are no other sources of educational content online than YouTube and anyone who has left Facebook knows the last two points are simply not true. This is so weak from the EFF.
I am all for it. UK has a big problem with organized pedofile crime, and this may prevent it.
> they’ll also lose access to educational videos on YouTube, local events on Facebook, and potentially cut off from distant friends and family.
How in the world did kids ever survive before social media? Miracle of god keeping them sane every second of their miserable deprived lives. Seriously, this is such a bad argument for something that is a return to a previous known good state versus being a new state. No proof provided that social media makes any of these better versus either pre social media approaches or modern alternatives.
The EFF is very wrong on this one. Some things are bad and we should keep children away from them.
The whole idea of this is broken, since so much of our collective knowledge is locked away in YouTube/Reddit. It's making a law against children in libraries because there are adult books in it.
They are really underestimating the harm of being on these platforms causes.
These platforms are the digital equivalent of heroin if heroin always came with either nazi or bolshevik propaganda.
They are entirely focused on the axe they rightfully have to grind the whole age verification debacle they are not seeing the bigger picture.
The major social media companies are undermining the foundations of our societies for ad revenue and giggles.
Keeping teens out is a huge step in the right direction.
Probably an unpopular view, but why not fix the issues with social media.