Hopefully that gets scrapped. If Burnham wants to truly show that he’s a different kind of politician that would be a good way to demonstrate it very quickly. Not that I have a great deal of hope.
I quite like the idea. The peer pressure to use social media as a kid is real. I’m glad that whenever I have kids, they won’t have to face that (I would have banned it for them anyway)
As with most things to do with government the idea isn’t necessarily the problem, it’s the fact that their mandating something that isn’t really realistic, simply because they don’t understand how technology works.
The issue is if they are banning people under a certain age from using social media then how do the companies know whether you can access the content or not? So now they ask everyone for ID. And you just know that the contract for verification has gone to the lowest bidder, who will put zero effort into security and they’ll absolutely most certainly will be a data breach.
That’s also assuming a data breach is required for it to be bad. What’s to stop them from using this to tie a person to activity? Then it makes it really hard to view things your country/employer/etc might not want you to see, for fear that there will be consequences for it.
If it was just a magical switch, to ban people under a certain age from social media, I’d be for that probably. It isn’t though. At best, there are consequences that effect everyone. At worst, this is a backdoor to push through internet tracking legislation.
Yeah that would pretty much be enough. Allow reporting of underage accounts and ban enough would probably make it boring enough for most to not bother. Yes some will get past, but if the majority are not that kills half the reason to even use the platform in the first place.
Reporting underage accounts is already a thing. I agree, it would just be best to kill it. Personally, I think internet restrictions should be handled by the ISPs and by parents, with default parental controls switched on, disclaimers, and even possible legal threats about allowing your children to access restricted platforms. Possibly have schools enforce the social media ban as well. (Ie, they can punish you for simply owning a social media account)
Whenever you see the words “social media ban” you need to substitute them for “mandatory ID checks for adults to use the internet,” because that’s the only solution they have to enforce the ban for children.
We don’t want to provide our IDs so that we can be associated in perpetuity with every brain fart that we post to MySpace or whatever people are using these days.
Online pseudonymity is important for a functioning democracy. When people fear consequences for expressing their political opinions, this leads to the chilling effect.
The ban is not about children, it’s about everyone, and it’s about our freedom to speak freely online.
I’m all against the ban but a separate government run app that checks your ID and only passes a “yes/no” to an app requesting if the user is an adult is a valid way I think? That’s at least anonymous and the only data is a useless boolean.
Yes that would be the best way to implement it. But that requires effort on the part of the government and they ain’t going to do that so instead they’re just going to give the contract over to some company that totally 100% definitely deletes the photos after verifying. We’ve heard that before.
Then can I ask why you’re against the ban? We know that social media has a negative effect on children, we know they have particular difficulty stopping use on their own, and we know that kids are very often more tech savvy than their parents, so a ban from the parents won’t necessarily be effective. My primary concern with bans has been the privacy incursions, but if that’s out of the equation, it seems pretty similar to age-based tobacco, marijuana, alcohol, or gambling restrictions to me.
I’m well aware that politicians try to make these bills seem reasonable though, so there’s a good chance I’m missing some of the consequences. I can also understand (though respectfully disagree) if you’re just maintaining consistency and you’re also against other age-based restrictions.
Edit: at least one of the obvious drawbacks is that any website with a comments section is included, but I’m still interested in the inherent negatives about an ideal bill
I don’t think sheltering people from something teaches anything. People are resourceful too so probably won’t be long until there’s a workaround. And enforcement costs a lot of money.
Just don’t think it’d work.
[…]it seems pretty similar to age-based tobacco, marijuana, alcohol, or gambling restrictions to me.
Weed isn’t legal to buy in the UK, so we can ignore that one, as you don’t need to use ID.
As for tobacco, alcohol and gambling, these are based on “If you visually look under 25 years of age, we’ll ask for ID to prove that you’re over 16/18 etc”.
If you go into the shop, and visually look 30 or 40 years old or whatever, no ID is required.
If you show ID, the person in the shop looks at the ID, then gives you it back. The interaction ends there.
They don’t care what your name is. They don’t store the ID. They don’t record that “this person with this ID bought these things”. They don’t create a database of who you are, what you buy and cross reference it with other things you do, places you go etc. They don’t follow you home and see what you do with the alcohol/tobacco/gambling - they leave you alone, none of their business.
Online scanned ID is stored, databased, cross-referenced, attached to online accounts, bank accounts, mortgage accounts etc permanently.
Say for example, “Reform” become the next UK Government. In local councils, they’ve been trying to ban/cut funding to/actively oppose “gay stuff”, “woke stuff”, “trans stuff” and “autistic stuff”. They want to crack down on things like “women’s rights”, “trans rights” etc.
Suppose that’s our next Government?
Suppose they’ve got a database of passports and photos and addresses of everyone who’s ever said or done anything gay/“woke”/autistic/trans?
Was it worth it?
Instead of just putting fucking parental controls on admin accounts on phones and computers?
I’m sorry, maybe I wasn’t clear. I’m well aware of the privacy concerns and that’s the main reason I don’t support these bans.
The person I was responding to suggested that they could be implemented without privacy infringement, but they still didn’t support them, so I wanted to know their reasoning.
No worries, it’s kind of a silly question, because there’s definitely no “ideal” version of this ban, but these bills have such significant propaganda associated with them, I’m interested if there are other big problems that are more hidden.
It’s not about privacy it’s about the government getting involved in private citizens business and using the justification of “think of the children” as an excuse.
I don’t think the opposition is anything to do with restricting young people’s access to poisonous social media - the problems are in application:
Applying it to any and all possible websites which have a comment section
Instead of local computer admin account options, which could be implemented safely at home and easily complied with by any website, large or small, they’ve chosen to go with the same method as their porn ban - every person over that age must upload a scan of their face, a copy of their passport etc etc and freely give this information over to proven untrustworthy websites
All these websites must use “authorised age checking technology” from “our list of approved vendors” who are not trustworthy, and sell on the data.
Even if those were secured, once people have normalised “please scan your face” on websites, it’s very easy to set up a scam site to trick photos and IDs out of people. Horrific security risk for everyone in the country.
Anyway, the face scanning software is easy for large corporate websites to put in place, plus they get extra data gathering for free! This is difficult for smaller hobbyist websites to put in place, so it’s easier for them to simply block the UK, like many already do.
Basically, the social media ban would include things like Lemmy, or small obscure hobby forums, and using them would be illegal (for website and user) unless they could be tracked to your scanned face and photo ID.
So if, in future, I were to say something like “Israel is not 100% correct about everything” on Lemmy, that can be easily tracked back to my name, face and address - and currently, that carries a risk of imprisonment as a “terrorist”.
Basically it’s literally nothing to do with kids at all, and simply part of a larger plan to destroy any privacy or anonymity on the Internet.
And this bullying thing, is that a new thing that never happened before the internet? The bans are this generations “video games cause violence” stupidity. You are only looking at negatives, never mentioning the positives things about the internet, I say the internet because the ban includes YouTube, which is hardly social media and is already incredibly censored.
You probably wouldn’t be able to comment on this post if Ofcom gets wind of the UK lemmy instance, because the owner would have to shut it down.
Here’s what a more responsible person than me has to say about social media bans (machine translated with small edits from German):
Protecting children and young people must be a top priority. In the same way, children and young people also have rights that extend to the digital space: the right to access to the media, the protection of data and privacy, but also to the protection against violence and exploitation as well as the right to freedom of expression and information.
If children and young people are banned from using social media platforms, there will always be some or maybe even many that circumvent the bans. When these adolescents encounter dangerous or traumatizing things on the Internet, their inhibition will be much greater to talk about it and seek help. This will also be known by the adults who contact these children and young people on the Internet and put pressure on them. Cybergrooming, i.e. the initiation of contacts out of sexual interest, is already an enormous danger and we have to do everything we can to enlighten and offer help and not to slam the doors here.
In addition, it is problematic when young people are completely shielded from large parts of the Internet. They need to learn a responsible approach to it, and not only when they have turned 16 or 18 and can then be confronted with everything that can be found on the net without preparation. This only postpones the problems to a later date.
Children and young people also receive meaningful, interesting and socially relevant information via social media platforms. There is no daily newspaper in many families. Adults we young people receive information and news via social media. The media has adjusted to this and offers a lot of content there.
In rural areas, in the event of illness or for people with certain disabilities, social media is an essential means of keeping in touch. The same applies to people who have left their homeland and have contact with family and friends via social media. I think taking these opportunities from young people is wrong.
Also, the practical implementation is not as simple as it seems: in order to identify a certain age group, the age of everyone on the net must be checked. There are different options for this. This can lead to the platforms collecting even more data from all of us and, on the other hand, they are also error-prone. This means that some young people continue to have access and some adults do not. Both are problematic.
He fucks off before having to deal with his social media ban…
Hopefully that gets scrapped. If Burnham wants to truly show that he’s a different kind of politician that would be a good way to demonstrate it very quickly. Not that I have a great deal of hope.
lol
I quite like the idea. The peer pressure to use social media as a kid is real. I’m glad that whenever I have kids, they won’t have to face that (I would have banned it for them anyway)
As with most things to do with government the idea isn’t necessarily the problem, it’s the fact that their mandating something that isn’t really realistic, simply because they don’t understand how technology works.
The issue is if they are banning people under a certain age from using social media then how do the companies know whether you can access the content or not? So now they ask everyone for ID. And you just know that the contract for verification has gone to the lowest bidder, who will put zero effort into security and they’ll absolutely most certainly will be a data breach.
That’s also assuming a data breach is required for it to be bad. What’s to stop them from using this to tie a person to activity? Then it makes it really hard to view things your country/employer/etc might not want you to see, for fear that there will be consequences for it.
If it was just a magical switch, to ban people under a certain age from social media, I’d be for that probably. It isn’t though. At best, there are consequences that effect everyone. At worst, this is a backdoor to push through internet tracking legislation.
Most people don’t like how they are doing it - Papers please.
If it was just changing the current 13+ rule to 16+, then I would be all for it.
Probably even just less extreme measures by banning accounts that are obviously kids
Yeah that would pretty much be enough. Allow reporting of underage accounts and ban enough would probably make it boring enough for most to not bother. Yes some will get past, but if the majority are not that kills half the reason to even use the platform in the first place.
Reporting underage accounts is already a thing. I agree, it would just be best to kill it. Personally, I think internet restrictions should be handled by the ISPs and by parents, with default parental controls switched on, disclaimers, and even possible legal threats about allowing your children to access restricted platforms. Possibly have schools enforce the social media ban as well. (Ie, they can punish you for simply owning a social media account)
Why are people so against this social media ban?
Bullying is rife in schools, social media is very problematic and ‘no phones’ just doesn’t cut it
Whenever you see the words “social media ban” you need to substitute them for “mandatory ID checks for adults to use the internet,” because that’s the only solution they have to enforce the ban for children.
We don’t want to provide our IDs so that we can be associated in perpetuity with every brain fart that we post to MySpace or whatever people are using these days.
Online pseudonymity is important for a functioning democracy. When people fear consequences for expressing their political opinions, this leads to the chilling effect.
The ban is not about children, it’s about everyone, and it’s about our freedom to speak freely online.
I’m all against the ban but a separate government run app that checks your ID and only passes a “yes/no” to an app requesting if the user is an adult is a valid way I think? That’s at least anonymous and the only data is a useless boolean.
It sounds simple when you’re not a mathematician or cryptographer, but the academic study of these systems reveals that it’s probably intractable:
Privacy-Preserving Age Verification and Its Limitations - Steven M. Bellovin
Cory Doctorow wrote an article shortly after this paper released that explains the situation quite well: https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/14/bellovin/#wont-someone-think-of-the-cryptographers
Yes that would be the best way to implement it. But that requires effort on the part of the government and they ain’t going to do that so instead they’re just going to give the contract over to some company that totally 100% definitely deletes the photos after verifying. We’ve heard that before.
Then can I ask why you’re against the ban? We know that social media has a negative effect on children, we know they have particular difficulty stopping use on their own, and we know that kids are very often more tech savvy than their parents, so a ban from the parents won’t necessarily be effective. My primary concern with bans has been the privacy incursions, but if that’s out of the equation, it seems pretty similar to age-based tobacco, marijuana, alcohol, or gambling restrictions to me.
I’m well aware that politicians try to make these bills seem reasonable though, so there’s a good chance I’m missing some of the consequences. I can also understand (though respectfully disagree) if you’re just maintaining consistency and you’re also against other age-based restrictions.
Edit: at least one of the obvious drawbacks is that any website with a comments section is included, but I’m still interested in the inherent negatives about an ideal bill
I don’t think sheltering people from something teaches anything. People are resourceful too so probably won’t be long until there’s a workaround. And enforcement costs a lot of money. Just don’t think it’d work.
Weed isn’t legal to buy in the UK, so we can ignore that one, as you don’t need to use ID.
As for tobacco, alcohol and gambling, these are based on “If you visually look under 25 years of age, we’ll ask for ID to prove that you’re over 16/18 etc”.
If you go into the shop, and visually look 30 or 40 years old or whatever, no ID is required.
If you show ID, the person in the shop looks at the ID, then gives you it back. The interaction ends there.
They don’t care what your name is. They don’t store the ID. They don’t record that “this person with this ID bought these things”. They don’t create a database of who you are, what you buy and cross reference it with other things you do, places you go etc. They don’t follow you home and see what you do with the alcohol/tobacco/gambling - they leave you alone, none of their business.
Online scanned ID is stored, databased, cross-referenced, attached to online accounts, bank accounts, mortgage accounts etc permanently.
Say for example, “Reform” become the next UK Government. In local councils, they’ve been trying to ban/cut funding to/actively oppose “gay stuff”, “woke stuff”, “trans stuff” and “autistic stuff”. They want to crack down on things like “women’s rights”, “trans rights” etc.
Suppose that’s our next Government?
Suppose they’ve got a database of passports and photos and addresses of everyone who’s ever said or done anything gay/“woke”/autistic/trans?
Was it worth it?
Instead of just putting fucking parental controls on admin accounts on phones and computers?
I’m sorry, maybe I wasn’t clear. I’m well aware of the privacy concerns and that’s the main reason I don’t support these bans.
The person I was responding to suggested that they could be implemented without privacy infringement, but they still didn’t support them, so I wanted to know their reasoning.
Ah, got you. Apologies for my rant :)
No worries, it’s kind of a silly question, because there’s definitely no “ideal” version of this ban, but these bills have such significant propaganda associated with them, I’m interested if there are other big problems that are more hidden.
If it’s done like Australia, it’ll only be for big tech platforms. If you care about privacy, you wouldn’t use them anyway.
It’s not about privacy it’s about the government getting involved in private citizens business and using the justification of “think of the children” as an excuse.
You’re right that social media is poison, but the true solution is IMO to hold its owners to account for their harms.
How exactly (realistically)?
New legislation with teeth.
Multinational corps are getting too powerful, many of them can credibly threaten entire nations. It’s well past time they were brought to heel.
I don’t think the opposition is anything to do with restricting young people’s access to poisonous social media - the problems are in application:
Applying it to any and all possible websites which have a comment section
Instead of local computer admin account options, which could be implemented safely at home and easily complied with by any website, large or small, they’ve chosen to go with the same method as their porn ban - every person over that age must upload a scan of their face, a copy of their passport etc etc and freely give this information over to proven untrustworthy websites
All these websites must use “authorised age checking technology” from “our list of approved vendors” who are not trustworthy, and sell on the data.
Even if those were secured, once people have normalised “please scan your face” on websites, it’s very easy to set up a scam site to trick photos and IDs out of people. Horrific security risk for everyone in the country.
Anyway, the face scanning software is easy for large corporate websites to put in place, plus they get extra data gathering for free! This is difficult for smaller hobbyist websites to put in place, so it’s easier for them to simply block the UK, like many already do.
Basically, the social media ban would include things like Lemmy, or small obscure hobby forums, and using them would be illegal (for website and user) unless they could be tracked to your scanned face and photo ID.
So if, in future, I were to say something like “Israel is not 100% correct about everything” on Lemmy, that can be easily tracked back to my name, face and address - and currently, that carries a risk of imprisonment as a “terrorist”.
Basically it’s literally nothing to do with kids at all, and simply part of a larger plan to destroy any privacy or anonymity on the Internet.
And this bullying thing, is that a new thing that never happened before the internet? The bans are this generations “video games cause violence” stupidity. You are only looking at negatives, never mentioning the positives things about the internet, I say the internet because the ban includes YouTube, which is hardly social media and is already incredibly censored. You probably wouldn’t be able to comment on this post if Ofcom gets wind of the UK lemmy instance, because the owner would have to shut it down.
Here’s what a more responsible person than me has to say about social media bans (machine translated with small edits from German):
[source in German]
It didn’t happen, bullying didn’t follow you home. If the ban is like Australia’s, then small sites will be fine.