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All the pro-freedom arguments ring hollow and insincere to the wider world.
From an outside perspective, the tech industry/community has repeatedly demonstrated that it's actually very pro-surveillance and child exploitation. From that same outside perspective, another argument of 'hey, we have to combat all attempts at protecting children to avoid surveillance' just sounds like self-serving lies.
You can argue that the tech world is not a monolith, but it looks like one from a wider societal perspective, and often the conflicting calls are coming from the same exact sources. Every AI company, for example, bleats about the potential harms of AI while chasing after them headfirst.
If you want to argue against this kind of legislation, you need to repair a lot of lost trust first.
> If you want to argue against this kind of legislation, you need to repair a lot of lost trust first.
Not trusting tech companies, or companies in general, is simply the correct attitude, so that's not happening.
I don't feel your typical person feels the tech industry is somehow "pro child exploitation" though. I'm not even sure how one could be in that camp, in practical terms.
I feel like if there's a bad actor... this kind of legislation just ignores it / the problem.
Meanwhile kids will still find ways to do what they wish online and it will be hidden... adults exposed to these same bad actors.
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)
Who is "government" Is it not the people? The people don't want this crap. It's a few zealots with their motives that are pushing this down society.
Zero knowledge proofs don't accomplish the ID checking that the governments want.
The reason all of these improvised ID check systems require you to do things like submit a video of you moving your face around (which has its own problems) is because they want to get closer to proving that the ID you submit is actually the ID of the person holding the phone, not just some ID (or zero knowledge proof) you copied from the internet.
That is what I have been saying: we need ZKP! I highly doubt they will implement it though.
Implementation detail. Fine companies that allow minors access and they'll find a way to verify age by themselves.
For liquor for example I don't think the govt actually specifies that you shall check ID they specify that you shall not sell to minors.
It's coming to European Union citizens. Any day now.
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.
"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
C'mon ppl, nothing new. China, N. Korea, Iran, Russia ... to some extent Turkey. So what? Adapt. We've been there before.
Probably an unpopular view, but why not fix the issues with social media.
I really wish we could just pass "common sense" laws. Like, you just can't use addiction to make money, full stop. You can't use any kind of trickery in marketing, in particular anything trying to circumvent people's rational brain and preying on the weak animal brain underneath. Marketing and advertising would be gone overnight - good riddance -because anyone can write an honest advert.
The problem with us is we get stuck in local optima and we just can't get out. We're like ants in a death spiral. It takes some enormous external shock to get us out, like a world war. Even a financial crisis or global pandemic isn't enough any more, unfortunately. Individuals just can't accept less and no leaders appear to be able or willing to explain to the concepts of global optimisation or long term plans etc. So we get stuck with shit on top of more shit.
Banning or regulating algorithmic feeds would be an excellent start.
This is the start
This is the best thing to do IMO
Related petition to be debated in parliament: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/757233
These never ever accomplish anything
There is nothing good on the internet for kids. If we ban kids from the internet this will all go away. Make a smartphone every bit as regulated as alcohol or cigarettes or sexual intercourse. If a parent is found providing their kids alcohol, cigarettes, sex, or internet, we have to hold them accountable and rehabilitate the kids from their traumatic experience. These parents deserve serious prison terms, and those victimized kids will need to be institutionalized as they are now traumatized for life (plus their parents are deservedly now serving decades in prison for child abuse).
Why are we pushing our kids onto the internet? There is nothing there for them. Any politicians pushing for kids internet access are probably doing it for nefarious reasons in my opinion. The internet is not really all that safe for adults either, why are we pushing kids onto it?
I was afforded limited exposure to alcohol and sex starting around age 13, and I've got a vastly healthier relationship with the two than the rest of my society.
I think the internet, however, is a much greater threat to growing minds.
I don't think internet puritanism imposed by government will protect anyone.
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Banning kids from alcohol, cigarettes, and sex sure did work. I can't think of a single kid I went to school with that did any of these things (and certainly not me). All those laws and rules were absolutely effective in preventing us as kids from doing them. /s
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.
Use *social media normally. Social media != The Internet. They’ll be able to use 99.9999% of the internet just fine.
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.
This does seem to be more of an effort to bring digital ID in via a backdoor - the proposal is less "under 16 social media ban" rather "over 16 will need to provide id to use social media"
I'd prefer that we had some standardised governmental endpoint that can authorise against a site for us, rather than use multiple individual methodologies to prove
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.
A society whose individuals needs government laws to make good "choices" is probably doomed
The only possible law is making bigco social media less addictive, and better controls for parents
But maybe this is UK just exercising some soft power, since they have no tech to speak of
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.
"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.
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?
“ But the social media ban does not stop there. The provision also requires internet service providers to limit the time kids spend online, and has rules about who can contact them online. These extreme rules will take decisions about using technology away from families and put them in the hands of government regulators. “
I’m not sure that “there are rules on who can contact children online” is “extreme” for anyone outside of hyper libertarian circles.
The EFF needs to start engaging with actual real world, because it’s intransigence on the issues being caused by unfettered internet usage mean it is unable to prevent bad solutions being proposed.
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.
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".
Just ban all social media, no need for consent, no need for age detection BS.
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.
*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.
> 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.
Big tech is deathly afraid of these experiments having a good outcome.
I am all for it. UK has a big problem with organized pedofile crime, and this may prevent it.
The EFF is very wrong on this one. Some things are bad and we should keep children away from them.
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 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.
Have you taken a look at kids nowadays? They look like fking zombies glued to their smartphones and wireless headphones. I go walk my dog, and not a single kid tries to play with it - only people of my age (40s) do.
We’re raising a generation of completely emotionally detached robots. There’s something deeply wrong and unsettling, and it’s happening in plain daylight.
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.