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.

... Announced on a social media site owned by a man who encouraged Pogroms and generates CSAM for profit.

"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.

UK assuming everyone online is a child unless they are willing to have their passport leaked.

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.

I just wonder who the hell is asking for this from the population? Out of all the things that are being brought up as issues on either side (like immigrants, trans rights, energy, housing crisis, the wars etc) I've never seen this being brought up as the thing anyone has wanted.

How have we reached this level of "democracy" where even protesting is banned..

Pove you're not a child so your data can be sold to advertisers so they can continue to sell you stuff.

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.

" designed to be addictive ". So you think adults are somehow magically exempt from addiction?

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.

It's insane that they'll say it's designed to be addictive, and then just let the company keep doing that. Like maybe go after the entity producing the addictive substance directly then?

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.

Well, if they just ban the over 16s as well, then we’ll have something.

This has nothing to do whatsoever with protecting children. That is not the goal. This is anti-privacy, plain and simple. Discussing the merits of this plan as a child protection measure is agreeing to their framing of the discussion, it's agreeing to discuss it on their terms, and then you've already lost.

Here's a real counterargument: suppose we pass this, and the fascists win the election (I know, completely and utterly unimaginable, but bear with me). Now, organizing protests via social media (as it went in Tunisia, Egypt, Brazil, and so on) becomes impossible, because your actual identity is tied to your social media accounts. In the current climate the fascists will probably go after muslims first, so I hope you haven't said scary things like insh'allah on facebook, because the government has your name now. Are you gay? Better hope you haven't left a thirsty comment on the insta of someone of your gender, because the government will know.

Of course, we don't need to imagine some hypothetical fascist government. I hope you don't object to genocide and post about it online, because that can be declared support of terrorism at the drop of a hat, and that's illegal.

More like to deanonymize anyone who uses social media.

Thousands of people are already getting arrested every year in the UK over social media posts. Good thing the government cares so much about “protecting the children”, because their parents won’t be able to from jail if they say anything the Epstein class doesn’t like, especially now that every post will be conveniently linked to a verified identity. 🙄

Queer Harmer doesn’t seem to care about making trans children unhappy.

How do you get an entire population of adults to voluntarily scan their faces and submit them to Palantir?

Great. Now how are you going to do that without violating anyone's privacy?

Any government that oversteps so much that it thinks its role is as the parent, must be abolished.

If they wanted to do it properly they could take a leaf out of the pages from STOKITI or EDRI - but they don't want to do it properly. They just want to seem like they are doing something, while gathering data and profiteering at the same time. I would imagine Starmer and the rest of them have wet dreams about this shit and wake up with sticky cotton pyjamas every morning.

Social media needs to go away, fully. Not just for kids.

give children more time, security, and freedom to go up

So can trans kids access puberty blockers now or nah?

It changed the perspective on American imperialism and Israel for at least one generation in the US so I understand these villainous moves. Gotta keep Western narratives alive and unchallenged or else the dummies might wake up!

The streets are getting dangerous, it's forbidden to go outside

Why stop at 16

Get rid of all of it

We never needed it anyway

Typical. Punish the individual, but don't ever address the underlying social causes.

People better start remembering the 5th of November real soon.