UK: Under-16s to be banned from social media, Starmer announces
2d 10h ago by lemmy.world/u/Tarambor in technology from www.bbc.co.uk
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.
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.
To fucking no sane person's surprise.
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
It’s not about that though is it? There’s a world of difference in SM companies knowing what I like to look at (Tools and steam engines mostly) and them having access to my actual address, my actual date of birth, my actual current face…
Do you even know the extent of things they know and what that information allows them to derive about you? They know the patterns of life of billions of people. You're just a pattern to match with everyone else just like you.
Exactly. It’s more than enough.
They don't have a copy of my passport and a video of me holding it. They also don't have a 3D scan of my face, which is what all these age verification companies want from you. They literally use AI while you are filming yourself to 3D scan your face for the Palantir database.
dont use social media then. the less that use it the better
If I can still access your profile an hour from now and it's not deleted, you're full of shit.
It's been 7 now.
so?
You are indeed full of shit, that's all :)
i never said me
Rules for thee, none for mee.
You were in the background of a picture uploaded to the net. You are shadow profiled. This problem doesn't go away because you've turned away from it to bury your head in the sand.
If only I could be this naive. First of all this isn't going to do much to prevent kids from getting online unless the measures to prevent it become absolutely oppressive. And secondly the bare minimum check requires you to give even me information to the social media companies. And I guarantee they won't be held accountable if kids find a way to bypass whatever measures get put in place. And of course adults are just as addicted to it as kids but I guess they don't matter.
If the goal was to reduce the amount of people addicted to social media the solution would be to regulate how social media functions not regulate access to social media. What is being suggested is stupid. You can't ban things on the internet.
They don't care if kids do since that isn't the purpose, just the excuse.
you cant ban things but somehow you can regulate? lol
You can't ban car crashes. You can regulate car manufacturers to install seatbelts to minimize injury.
you ban under 16 from driving
So what's your point? That cars don't need a seatbelt because we've banned kids from driving? Actually what you're doing is just proving my point. For starters that ban doesn't stop 16 and under from driving, it's just something that will be used to punish someone after it has happened. At best it's a deterrent because law-abiding citizens (including children) are less likely to break the law but I've personally seen kids take a car for a joyride and crash into someones yard so the ban isn't going to stop anyone who really wants to go and drive. And more importantly it doesn't really address the core problem which are collisions and crashes. Despite the ban adult people still end up in crashes. What does help are all sorts of regulations that car manufacturers have to adhere to make sure that the damage is minimized. Instead of having your brains splattered all across the road you might end up with a concussion instead.
And the same applies to social media. Banning kids from social media isn't going to do anything about the addiction or mental health problems social media causes to people. It won't even stop kids from using social media because kids are smart and if they want they will find a way around the ban. Now I'll compromise a bit and say that banning kids from social media isn't the worst idea because kids are more impressionable and social media might have a much bigger effect on a young mind. But if the goal is to improve the mental health of kids you also have to target the social media companies and regulate them to make sure their impact on mental health is minimized. Not only would that help kids but that would also help adults.
You have the means, ways and most importantly, it is still legal to obtain privacy, though, right?
For now. We've already seen behaviors become culturally suspect simply because they became uncommon. Not too far from vilification from there, then fear mongering, then criminalizing. I worry the value of us not having privacy is too profitable to withstand the effort to remove it.
yeah just dont use it
We have more than we will and for some of us, who made the sacrifices and took steps, more than others.
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”.
And then from there to you must provide ID to use your device and eventually you can only run (state-approved OS) on your device, assuming thin clients tied to rented servers, which would be then tied to your ID, don't take over and kill off personal computing first.
Oh, there's pretty solid data about Australia. A large percent of kids are still using social media because the ones who no longer use it are the ones whose parents won't let them use it, which is of course the same group as the ones whose parents always had that power. But we have heard from some vulnerable minority kids who now no longer get access to the support that they used to have. And that's really f***** up.
those kids socialising other ways. social media isnt socializing anyway
Of course! Whyever didn't the bullied queer kids or the kids in abusive households or the kids living in remote areas think of that? I bet they'd feel so silly if you told them they should just find support networks elsewhere 🤦♀️
there were support networks before the giant social media companies. and they didnt harvest your data!
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.
I bought a BlackBerry in 2007/2008, and to get on Facebook I needed to show my ID in an o2 shop. This is all that is required. This is suspicious in the very least.
o2?
Phone/network provider.
I tried to visit a porn site from Australian VPN server and was prompted with age verification bs.
... Announced on a social media site owned by a man who encouraged Pogroms and generates CSAM for profit.
Oh the hypocrisy.. The fascists live on it, and no one bats an eye.
...and that is why we need the ban! /s
"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.
...and certain government agencies using corporate fronts.
And that fucking Eye of Sauron.
And then they get “hacked” and don’t know anything about it.
Age verification and identification is not the same thing.
It will be.
Zero knowledge proof is a thing, but we all know that's not what they're going for.
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.
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.
It is possible to create anonymous age verification. I doubt the UK will pursue, but it is possible. Check out what Denmark did.
You only get ID’d for alcohol if you look like a kid
Depends on the place
And when you do get carded, they look at your license, check the date, and hand it right back.
This is true for most places. There's nothing stopping a creep from memorizing more than they should, but that's of course an edge case.
While uncommon, there are places such as casinos that take everyones ID and use an ID scanner to add them to a local, or not local, database. Places that do that really are no different from websites that want to ID. Except with a website you'd provide it once, and at those facilities you have to have it scanned each time you go in.
But a blanket request on everyone to ID themselves by default is just not the way.
I couldn't agree more. It's a terrible idea and is going to spell disaster for many people. I am not arguing we should have websites collect IDs, my argument is about whether age verification on websites should exist in any form, even if it's securely setup. Many people here think age verification is strictly a problem of parenting, and I think that's an absurd argument.
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).
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.
One could argue that kids can go to shops that sell also alcohol, but I can get the logic.
Problem is that a parent cannot check on their kids 24/7, so maybe having a check other than the parent could be a good idea.
Stores should absolutely check for ID since there is no way for them to verify that the parents did their job.
A kid circumventing internet controls should not lead to charges against the parent. What a shit take.
Just dont have a kid so they dont have to work for the worst of us to pay rent to the worst of us. Also, no prison time!
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..
Capitalism always trends toward fascism, this is nothing new.
Fascism begins the moment a ruling class, fearing the people may use their political democracy to gain economic democracy, begins to destroy political democracy in order to retain its power of exploitation and special privilege.
- Tommy Douglas, Canadian politician
You don’t press a button and an old society disappears and a new one is born next morning at seven o’clock. Society is changed organically, you slough off the old and the new takes the place. You do what you can for people and work for change. And I don’t mind how hard people want to push. But I’ve no patience with people who want to sit back and talk about a blueprint for society and do nothing about it. I got that in Chicago.
- Also Tommy Douglas
Nothing new, and yet we still do need to talk about it.
Absolutely! I did not want to lessen the conclusion, instead I urge to look at the historic and economic context so it becomes clear this is no accident.
OAPs who don't understand how the internet or young people work and Age Verification companies.
Emphasis on age verification companies and other beneficiaries…
This is quite popular amongst parents where I am. There's also a big local push to avoid kids having smartphones before they're 13. Hopefully by that point they're mature enough to have a better understanding of what they're being exposed to, and are better equiped to know when to turn to an adult if something is upsetting or worrying them online.
Notably this isn't about restricting access to the internet, as kids have many other ways to get online at home, school, a friend's house, or even the library. Instead it's about ensuring they aren't exposing themselves to things they aren't ready for without an adult to guide them.
ETA: A lot of kids are pretty keen on this too, especially if they have had a bad experience online. The idea that none of their peers has a smartphone or social media means there's less peer pressure too.
Thank you for the perspective.
I'm surprised parents think this is helping the issue though. I remember being bullied in school and going home after being beaten by other kids, before the time the internet became broadly available or smartphones existing.
Not that I don't think bullying is a problem, rather that this is duct tape with a side of privacy violation for everyone with barely a thought about how to even do the age verification well.
We are not seeing anything about funding the educational system, trying to attract more teachers, aiming for smaller class sizes, funding activities and clubs or more support for parents to spend time with their kids.
I remember being bullied in school and going home after being beaten by other kids
Now imagine that that beating carries on when you get home, albiet on a different form. Kids gang up on each other online at least as brutally as in the playground. Limiting access to social media removes the peer pressure to put yourself in harms way, and removes the bullies' ability to access their victim. It is absolutely not a perfect solution, as you, say bullying happened before the internet, but it does go sone way to ensuring kids have some form of sanctuary without being pressured into leaving it.
The second, and, if anything, more horrific, issue is the amount of grooming that goes on online. There is an Ofsted report Review of sexual abuse in schools and colleges that talks about this is more detail. Ideally this is the sort of problem that would be dealt with by social media companies, but unless, and until, it is, it is safer to avoid children accessing these networks unaccompanied.
this is duct tape with a side of privacy violation for everyone with barely a thought about how to even do the age verification well.
Age verification is a thorny question, and I'm certain there is no perfect answer. No smartphones for under 13s is a fairly easy first step. Children that young can't enter into a contract anyway, so the parents, or another adult have to be involved. Smartphone free childhood is a voluntary pledge, but multiple schools in the area are encouraging their parents to sign up.
Age verification for social media is trickier, but I actually quite liked the bill that was moving forward in California, which just had your device send a flag saying you were either; under 13, 13-16, 16-18, or 18+. That way, services have no excuse for serving up inappropriate content. As always, it's not perfect. In particular, there are questions about who is responsible for ensuring the flag is set correctly. I think they went astray here, and it should be the owner of the device who controls it, unless it is explicitly made for children, in which case the 18+ flag should not be available.
We are not seeing anything about funding the educational system, trying to attract more teachers, aiming for smaller class sizes, funding activities and clubs or more support for parents to spend time with their kids.
Absolutely, this is a huge problem. The VAT imposed on private school fees is supposed to be ringfenced for this sort of thing, but it's not enough. We should be putting much more into educating and safeguarding our next generation.
I had the opposite problem. I had very few friends IRL, and wasn't happy. I made a lot more online. Had social media been banned for children, I'm not sure how my life would have gone.
I think the issue is not so much social media inasmuch it's abilities for parental and user controls lacking (or being unbalanced), or algorithms promoting severe polarisation and radicalisation towards fascism.
That and the cost of living as well the ginormous malevolent oligarch class, which affect all the above. Those are the root issues.
It'd be better to addres those.
It is a good point about the bullying never stopping, but there are other ways to look at it as well. For example, online communities can be the escape for kids and a way for them to find support and friends if for some reason they are unable to in person. Sure the bill says they're aiming not to block chat, but it's not always a clear cut (e.g. discord, also not universally good or bad either).
I also wonder if removing the social media and the online bullying aspect will simply increase the ferocity of the in-person aspect, or even the overall depth as bullies may assign blame to their victims for them losing access to services.
I agree with the rest of your points, unfortunately it's evident the goal is not to protect kids but to remove anonymity and cater to the oligarchy - otherwise the government would be pushing social media sites to moderate themselves and service providers to give parents tools for this (or age verification in a manner that doesn't expose your identity outside of your device aside from the age group flag)
It should have the Zuck riding the horse. He's the one pushing for this so the advertisers know if they are showing ads to people and not bots on his platforms.
He definitely isn’t. He already knows. This is 100% governments wanting to crack down on free speech. Look how many people the UK government already jails for social media posts.
Nah it is Netanyahu who is riding Keir directly and whipping him at the same time. What a pathetic excuse of a human. Next extension of this will be to jail anyone who says free Palestine in the internet. Such a convincing way to prove there is no genocide lol.
I have a digital ID and use it all the time. What's wrong with it?
Imagine you have a strong opinion against some known ongoing genocide. Would you feel safe expressing yourself online about it? Or imagine that your country takes enough turns to become a dystopian nightmare, which for slme reason is extremely common nowadays.. would you feel safe speaking against your own government?
What does any of this has to do with digital ID? I'm using digit ID to access government services and sign documents, not to express my opinions online.
If you use it to access government services it's a thing, but using it to block the underaged from accessing social media it's a very different situation.
If you use credit cards to block underage from accessing social media it's also a different situation. Do you have a credit card?
Yes, but i dont use it to open up an online forum. The problem isn't the identification itself but when and why do i need to be identified. I thought this was clear.
This conversation is becoming silly. If you dont value your privacy online, thats your thing. I would drop internet usage to the minimum if i ever need to identify myself to use trivial shit like gaming or accessing social media.
And I don't use my digital ID to open online forums.
Sorry, i edited my comment on the way and didnt thought you would see it so quickly.
But we arent debating the existance of IDs but their implementation for accessing social media. Nobody would argue the usefulness of credit cards identifying who is doing the purchase, or as you said, using it to validate a signature.
The problem is the usage not the IDs themselves
The problem is the usage not the IDs themselves
I agree but the general attitude seems to be "digital ID bad!", without ever going into any details. People on lemmy are simply scared of digital IDs without understanding what those do.
You’ll have to use it to express your opinions online. That’s the problem, and the whole point of it. They government want to know exactly what every person says on the internet.
My country had digital ID for 20 years. You're saying they introduced it only to force age verification decades later? Because they want to do age verification using the EU proposed method, not using our digital IDs.
Why does it have to be originally introduced with oppression in mind? Why not realize it provides a nice framework for it and use it instead? US toyed around with the idea of ID verification for anything that connects to internet. It is probably not going so smoothly. This could as well be a smaller experiment. We are talking about a goverment that jails eighty year olds for saying free palestine, not hard to imagine them wanting to do the same in the internet. It is crazy how far rabid zionist lobies can push goverments into oppressing their citizens.
Many things can be used for online identification and oppression, for example credit cards or cellphones. Why singe out digital ID? Are you going to fight against credit cards and cellphones as well or just digital ID?
Neither credit cards nor cellphones can not be used for the particular kind of oppression mentioned in my post definitely not en masse. They definitely can not be as efficient as ID verification for any kind of oppression. So cellphones and credit cards actually add some value to your life while NOT being very efficient oppression tools. ID verification won't add anything to your life while harboring capacity for being a very efficient oppression tool. Bad apps in cellphones can violate alot of aspects of your privacy but still not nearly as efficient as a goverment having direct access to online activity tied to a digital ID. So your examples aren't really relevant.
You're just scaremongering. You're equaling digital ID (which is a very useful tool) with universal online ID verification. Those are not the same things. You can have digital ID without mass ID verification (like I do) and you can have age and ID checks without digital IDs (like in UK). It's like being against law enforcement because police is used to create police states. Yeah, it's hard to create a police state without police but not every country with police is a police state.
Your country clearly doesn’t have the type of digital ID that we’re talking about, does it?
What digital ID are you talking about? I have the type which I can import into my browser and use it to identify myself when accessing web sites.
Is it mandated that you use it on every social media site, like Lemmy or Reddit or YouTube?
No. Because digital IDs are not used only for that. So you, like everyone else, are not really against digital ID but against universal identification?
Universal identification via digital ID is what this is about. You’re trying to split hairs.
These laws are going to require you to verify your identity using a government issued digital id.
Why don’t you use your real name on Lemmy?
What for?
We don't believe you otherwise.
That's ok, I don't care if you believe me or not.
As your username. Why don’t you use it?
Because it would be boring?
Not because you want to be anonymous? What’s your name? Address? Phone number?
That’s what the government want to be able to tell. They want to be able to arrest you because you said something they didn’t like, no matter where you say it on the internet.
No, that's not it. If I wanted to be anonymous I would not use seflhosted instance tied to my personal domain, would I?
So what’s your name/address/phone number?
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.
Maybe ban algorithmically-delivered content? So, for example, consider YouTube. The only way to get content would be to search for videos or to subscribe to individual channels. You can still have a user-curated experience, but that curation must be actively done by the user. This would at least prevent feed algorithms selecting for engagement and rage.
I would rather target the worst practices of social media companies in general, rather than try and keep kids from them. It's not like adults aren't harmed by this stuff either.
As I said, hold the corporations accountable. It was never about children in the first place.
This is my biggest issue with it.
Social media has become a blight on society on all levels. Not just children.
But, there's a lack of education or push for children, and adults too, to be smarter online. They're just instituting laws and legislation and pushing the onus on corporations to comply.
Sounds good at face value but doesn't factor in smaller companies who are unable to afford the changes needed to comply (resulting in the pulling out of a region) or they institute dodgey 3rd party verification systems that will just on-sell your data.
Then, there's the world of dodgey VPNs that kids and people have rushed to. Also, as other people have said, children have found work arounds for age verification.
So, what's the point? What did we actually achieve? I sometimes defer to the old addage of never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity. Sometimes I feel it's more like naievity or good intenaions being controlled by malicious forces.
I don't know.
What I feel though is that it just doesn't feel like it's truly about the children. If it is, there should be a whole lot more factored into this.
Instead it feels like a half baked plan being sold to us as being for the children.
It's a moral panic being co-opted by those in power. (Ironically, many of those in power being predators themselves, especially here in the US where they're a major political party 🙃)
Some I can think of off the top of my head:
- The Patriot Act
- COINTELPRO
- The Satanic Panic and resultant legislation
- The War on Drugs
Legitimate concern gets amplified to a moral panic and then legislation is quickly put forth but is never tested or thoroughly understood. And given that most legislation today is written by lobbyists...well 🤷♂️
I'm sure stupidity is a part of it, but that might be a bit too convenient. It's usually some genuine intention that then gets swept up and captured by malicious infrastructure. They know what they're doing. They're narcissists, unempathetic, and the most willing to exploit. Capitalism in a nutshell.
That's why I'm saying hold the parents and the corporations accountable. Peel back data collection and restrict algorithmic content altogether. Enforce/provide parental education for online technologies and children. Basically, pay attention to your kids, be interested in them and their lives. The infrastructure exists on these social media platforms to restrict and monitor access, as well as it exists at the router level and at the device level as well. It's the parents who purchase the device and provide internet access. Would we be ok with in home governmental inspections on all of us so that kids can't have access to a gun or alcohol? No, it's up to the parent to protect their child from danger. Why is this any different? Why should we all give up our privacy?
First step would be to ban social media from using algorithm suggestions all together.
how do you enforce this without removing anonymity?
That's the point - you don't.
Another factor is making executives of those companies personally responsible for all the havoc they have created while only thinking of their profits. Do that, make the penalties tough enough, and the problem ia fixed.
Pove you're not a child so your data can be sold to advertisers so they can continue to sell you stuff.
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
It’s great cos then those sites asking for ID will just lose tons of traffic and advertisers will be wasting their money
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.
This was never about protecting the children. That's just an excuse to further promote mass surveillance and to exempt companies from responsibility for the additive design of their products and services. It's easier and more rewarding to penalize the users.
Yep. I've since deleted it, but I had to verify my identity on my FB account, which i'd had since 2008. Math is a thing 🙄.
If parents dont care or approve of their kids using social media then the kids will keep doing it. Its still important that the top officials in government are warning adults that its not safe for children there, because some people dont know or won't trust anyone else.
The problem was thinking it was okay for kids to be on social media, and this fixes that. People on here keep saying the problem being fixed is how to prevent every child from getting on social media, but thats not what's happening.
This also allows us as a society to punish parents who break these laws or allow their children too. We have to be able to signal to each other in society when something is harmful, whether it affects autonomy or not.
If kids want to be on social media badly enough, they will find a way regardless of approval and permission from their parents. They get banned from Meta and TikTok, they just band together and move to an app not on the list. I agree that people need to know if something is harmful. All the effort and money going into a ban, would've been better spent on media literacy and education on how algorithms work, and the addictive nature of some platforms. This is the reason why none of my kids are interested in most social media. Because they know how awful it is. YouTube is a bit more grey, IMO. I filter out shorts for my kids, but they've learned a lot of stuff over the years. Yet Roblox isn't banned? That should've been top of the list. Identity verification is a privacy and security nightmare. People should not be required to provide their identity to participate in discussions, or even worse, use their own device.
If we actually cared about society in general, we would behave differently. This is a result of the fuck-you-get-mine mentality that thrives in America. There are plenty of people here that don't care about their neighbors, at all.
You only see outrage come from people affected firsthand, because everyone else thinks they are too smart/rich/successful to possibly fall victim to the same systems as the stupid/poor/lazy people.
You bring up a great point about focusing on youtube and letting roblox slide right by. Plenty of parents made that mistake, but the truth is that almost no online platform is safe for children to meet strangers in.
I'm not sure what the best way to restrict access to adults only is though, but it does seem the current attempt is the best we've come up with so far. Its incredibly invasive, and I simply won't use products that require age verification, so I'm hoping this leads to a better solution. Perhaps another country will figure out an idea and we can copy it.
Wao, you really believe this too, don't you? Kids are smart enough to circumvent most barriers you put around them. No amount of government bullshit is going to keep them from doing something they are laser focused on doing. Now, parenting does have a chance to keep them from harm (a CHANCE) if the parents put on the effort and are raising their kids with values.
You have to be a special type of moron to believe tour own post, honestly.
Even the parents that have degrees and jobs in tech have trouble keeping ahead of all this stuff, because there is far more money and manpower put behind making these products as abusive as possible. Sure, I'd like everyone to be as knowledgeable as us on the subject, but that's not practical. Social signaling has a place for broader society even if it ends up hitting people it won't affect.
Parents are only one side of the equation, with the other being the social media companies themselves. These laws make it so they have to stop offering their services to children, just like I would expect laws to prevent a corner store from selling tobacco or alcohol to minors.
I get that, and it would be a fair assessment if it wasn't because the real problem here is that parents are not parenting, plain and simple. This is yet another part of this that the social media and tech companies are using to their advantage. They get people hooked, that we agree on. Then they lobby for all this surveillance and forced identifications that uses... (Drumroll) companies owned by the same tech giants, in partnership with the other giants. Now they have made it illegal to not provide them with your data and identity, while removing many underage individuals from the equation. Win-win for them, as their liability drops, and now they can serve more ads directed at each individual, effectively increasing the price advertisers are willing to pay, increasing their revenue. There is absolutely no way to keep children out of any platform without full identification, its that simple. Then the same governments that are pushing this have access to all this data as well, which makes them basically all-knowing about every single person in the population.
There is no universe in which any of this is a good thing. Look at the whole picture, and it's not the UL, it's every country in the world doing this, at different levels, with varying level of success and oppression.
These are only some of the many reasons why I will never agree with something like this.
The answer is convincing people that the major social media services available now are bad for everyone regardless of age. For some reason this type of understanding tends to start with the most vulnerable people affected, until we finally admit its bad for everyone. These laws only punish those who use social media and those who provide it as a service, which should reduce social media use in general to a degree, so I'm for it.
Ideally for me, social media wouldn't exist in the way it does today. If we did have it at all, it would be extremely localized as a means to connect neighbors to one another. Something that would benefit society in some way.
" designed to be addictive ". So you think adults are somehow magically exempt from addiction?
Adults are allowed to choose to become addicts.
but we still regulate harmful addicting substances, no?
For children yes, and when it affects others safety like with drunk driving. If an adult wants to fuck off in the woods and become an addict, thats entirely acceptable. Apparently some adults think that when we protect vulnerable people that we are taking their freedoms away.
If you're referring to me, you have the very wrong end of the stick.
The irony is in admitting this shit is harmful and addictive...but uh, only for those too young to monetize.
I think its well known its addictive for everyone, but profit and convenience are the most important things to Americans, so here we are.
There are definitely plenty of addictive substances which are banned in the UK
And plenty that are not. What's your point? Ban alcohol, cigarettes and sport bets?
My point is exactly what I said. I don’t know how much clearer I could have been, TBH, if my post is read in the context of the three proceeding it
Are they though? Can you buy heroine in the UK freely? Aren't Chinese and Russian media channels banned in the UK?
Being an addict isn't illegal, possessing illegal drugs is. Plenty of legal ways to be an addict if you insist though.
Fair point. But using social media means spreading social media among other addicts.
I think you raise a fair point, can you participate in social media without affecting others in a negative way? My guess is scale is a big issue. If social media was just our neighbors together in a forum using technology to improve our communication, that would be a positive overall I'd think.
Tools aren't really bad on their own, it depends how we choose to use them and what goals we try to achieve with them.
All drugs to be legalized when?
Taking drugs have negative effect on others
Like when I smoke weed and my wife wants me to do the dishes? Yeah, that's not happening while I'm high.
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?
All social media is designed to be addictive, though. It’s their entire business model.
Lemmy and the whole Fediverse is social media. What do you think social media is?
Lemmy is addicting naturally, not being fed slop via an algorithm.
That's the problem with this panic. Everybody is using a different definition of social media. You and the other guy don't hate social media, you hate Meta, X, and TikTok. And the government hates that too but also defines the Fediverse and forums in general, plus video games and anywhere else you might talk to another human being as social media as well.
So if you're on a social media site like Lemmy or Piefed and you're complaining about how evil and addictive social media is, the government is going to read that and think "My god! This poor person is in trouble! They're screaming for my help! I must pass a law to ban Lemmy and liberate Derpgon from they're horrible addiction to the Fediverse! That's what Derpgon wants!"
Its a webforum, not a social media.
Social media is places that revolve around shit in your real life no one cares about. Facebook, Instagram,Tiktok,Etc.
Reddit and the Fediverse are listed in the Wikipedia article about social media as social media:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media
Social media is media where people can socialize.
First of all, Don't blatantly lie about the very thing you are linking to. It is not listed as social media.
They simply say some people (mostly idiots) refer to it as social media.
So thats already points on you for intentionally and willfully misrepresenting information.
Also the entire article is bunk cause it calls Mozilla and Minecraft social media. Which is stupid. Because Mozilla is a fucking company that makes a browser, and Minecraft is a goddamn game.
Second of all, You can wrongly refer to something as social media all you want.
I can write Fuck You on a brick and throw it through your window, and just because I Call it Macaroni refer to it as social media, doesnt magically make it social media.
First of all, Don’t blatantly lie about the very thing you are linking to. It is not listed as social media.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media#Decentralization_and_open_standards
"While the dominant social media platforms are not interoperable, open source protocols such as ActivityPub have been adopted by platforms such as Mastodon, GNU social, Diaspora, and Friendica. They operate as a loose federation of mostly volunteer-operated servers, called the Fediverse."
The problem isn't me wrongly referring to Lemmy and Reddit and other forums as social media. The problem is pretty much the entire world doing it. So until that gets fixed, it's probably best not to call for the destruction of social media.
and a large part of that is the up/down vote systems, and other gamifications of human interaction.
And they've spread out of social media into many other website types.
All it does is extremify human interaction and is a major component in why we're at the point we are right now with right wing extremism and fascism on the rise.
Get rid of these systems, and let people just communicate with eachother without having to appeal to a hive mind to tell people who gave up thinking if somethings good or bad based on votes/reactions/etc
I think it's insane because social media is addictive because being social and communicating with fellow human beings is addictive. That's what you and me are doing here and why we find it so pleasurable. That is not a bad thing.
It's a bizarre lesson to drill into our children's brains that this is a negative thing. I assume they don't really know what social media is and see it as distinct, more like the one way communication of comic books, rock n roll, and other media moral panics, and they assume children will too. But what will happen to the next generation is that they will see all forms of human interaction as horribly addictive, amoral, and unhealthy.
The algorithm is the problem
The engagement-based algorithmic feed is the problem. Kids being able to talk to strangers is also an issue, but that isn’t because of addiction, and I personally think public chats should just be opt-in with the expectation that the parents will actually do their job and teach their children not to talk to strangers.
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.
On the other hand everyone think that social media are dangerous for the children so something need to be done.
I am afraid that you cannot have children protection without some sort of control
Personally, I'm of the view that a blanket ban is simply not going to work, and comes with all the same problems of the online safety act, mostly that the government, or the companies they employ to verify ages, simply cannot be trusted with that information. If control needs to be implemented, it should be in having mandatory parental control options, but ultimately I believe it to be the job of the parents to utilise them, not the government.
Personally, I’m of the view that a blanket ban is simply not going to work, and comes with all the same problems of the online safety act, mostly that the government, or the companies they employ to verify ages, simply cannot be trusted with that information.
Government already has your informations, problem are the companies. But in the end I think that the only viable option to have some sort of decent check is that the company try to verify the age with the government, which only answer yes|no.
If control needs to be implemented, it should be in having mandatory parental control options, but ultimately I believe it to be the job of the parents to utilise them, not the government.
Parental control failed time and again. In the end the problem are not the kids who follow what the parents say, but the others. And nowadays it seems that parents, first and foremost, are more than happy to let social media to keep their kid occupied.
As you say, the government already has that information, so while people might not be happy about that, it does seem a semi-reasonable way of confirming age. But the current plan is the reverse of that, with the government asking companies to conform age using a third party, which not only will definitely be using it for advertising purposes, but is more likely to get hacked, and all the information make it into even worse hands.
The problem with a ban in response to poor parenting is that it just disincentivises both the parents and children who have been doing it right until now, because if they'll lose access all the same then what was the point of doing otherwise until now. And what would be the point of doing it right in future.
And what would be the point of doing it right in future.
I do the right thing because it is the right thing and not because I expect something in return. Then I may contest the law because it is stupid or I can follow it to the letter to show how stupid it is.
In the end people that do the right thing will continue, like parents who don't give a damn will continue to don't give a damn about it.
As do many people, but there are plenty others who will see this as being punished for doing the right thing, and will be less inclined to do so going forward. Whereas if this was addressed properly, it would continue to incentivise people who need that nudge to keep doing the right thing, whilst also pushing those less inclined to do the same.
I guess what I'm getting at is, this is just a terrible way to address a legitimate problem. Which seems to be the way this government operate.
There are innumerable far more dangerous things we teach them to protect themselves from. Which who knows could come in handy once they turn 16
True, but in my opinion social media are not seen as dangerous by a large part of the population, so nobody think that they should teach kids to protect themselves from them.
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.
More like to deanonymize anyone who uses social media.
I think there’s a rational argument for saying anonymous social media is what Russia, China and other dictatorships use to undermine and affect public opinion, to be fair.
I’m not saying therefore anonymity shouldn’t be allowed. I’m just saying there’s a nuance here…
Homegrown capitalists and the states they control are far more profligate and effective at social media manipulation than either Russia or China. Don’t forget that it was Facebook and Cambridge Analytica that made Brexit happen, not Russia or China. Although I guess you did say dictatorships, so that includes the dictatorship of capital that rules the west.
Myeah, sure, maybe, maybe not. But whatever the source, anonymity does enable well-resourced actors to affect opinion change.
It will only be deanonymised for UK citizens though (and any other country that applies some sort of ID verification). Any Russian LLM bot can still spread lies in the internet claiming to be from the UK so no problem solved there.
Worst yet, today it is deanonymisation "because think of the children", tomorrow it is putting people who say "Free palestine" in social media to prison.
anonymous social media is what Russia, China and other dictatorships use to undermine and affect public opinion
You talk from the past. Nowadays bots are less anonymous than real people.
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.
and the fascists win the election
Mate….the fascists won the election. How can they push these laws and you still can’t see that?
The people who been calling everyone else fascists are the same people who have been begging every social media site, forum, and company for MORE CENSORSHIP for the last 5+ years. You wanted this because you thought it would only harm people you disagree with. You thought wrong.
People throw the word fascists around so loosely these days… it diminishes its meaning.
You wanted this because you thought it would only harm people you disagree with. You thought wrong.
Don't talk to me like I'm some liberal.
Any government that oversteps so much that it thinks its role is as the parent, must be abolished.
How do you get an entire population of adults to voluntarily scan their faces and submit them to Palantir?
By banning them from the Internet
Aren't they already scanned? Don't know about the UK but in modern countries there are cameras everywhere
Great. Now how are you going to do that without violating anyone's privacy?
That's the neat part - they don't.
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.
Queer Harmer doesn’t seem to care about making trans children unhappy.
No see you ban puberty blockers and then ban social media so they don't find out that diy exists before it's too late!!!
It's perfect! .
.
....Ahahahagagahahhabab 😭😭😭
Trans kids are just a tool that harmer uses for his fascist laws.
People better start remembering the 5th of November real soon.
if the goal was to actually protect kids, it wouldn't be a problem.
however, this isn't supposed to protect kids, it's supposed to protect corpofascists.
It's actually funny how some years ago The Great Chinese Firewall was a thing that we looked at as some horror. Yet very soon in the Western countries the Internet will be by passport only. China won't probably implement this as they likely already know everything they want about their users.
Why stop at 16
Get rid of all of it
We never needed it anyway
Social media needs to go away, fully. Not just for kids.
It should be regulated like gambling
That would be lovely.
It should become social again. No faking and manipulation at the penalty of criminal punishment.
It was great when it was a small pod of your close friends sharing stuff together.
But now it's just an algorithm that shows you what you want to see by people pushing products and flat out lying. It's done. It needs to go away.
Said a person or AI on a social media...
this is a forum. Which, is totally different. You can't be serious.
The streets are getting dangerous, it's forbidden to go outside
Anything to avoid parents actually .... parenting their children. Just like making weed illegal stopped everyone from smoking it! :D Same with alcohol.
Making weed illegal created a causa belli for an uncountable number of police stops and searches.
Oh yeah they wanted to mess with minorities and hippies
And guns! Making them illegal did nothing for people using guns to murder each other!
… oh wait.
Typical. Punish the individual, but don't ever address the underlying social causes.
Capitalism
give children more time, security, and freedom to go up
So can trans kids access puberty blockers now or nah?
Considering youths are the most prone to protest, this is not about their protection at all
Where and when can I protest this in-person?
Protest the government? Welcome to The List.
Fuck Keir Starmer
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.
that was a good example.
So the police do checks when something seems off, they get a tip or just random checks (which could just be them looking at feeds) so everyone follows the law and parents has the biggest responsibility to make sure the kids follow the law/rules/ban/stay safe.
I like your solution, I would add that we should also add education about internet security (the things you wrote) in the curriculum. And also educate/inform parents at the school yearly or something like that as part of it.
Wouldn't the last one (algorithm) be what they kinda try to do now (like Discord blocks you from 18+ stuff) and that is why they need to know your age so kids won't se some stuff that adults can?
How can you verify that someone is of age without the problem with privacy?
That's the neat part!
Awww come on. Come up with some fun ideas!
There are no bad ideas, this is a safe space.
It is when we put them in action they could be bad (we have seen some versions already).
Why protect the children from rape gangs and stabbings when you can protect them from youtube and tiktok instead.
Why not both? Social media has had a negative effect on the youth, it sucks.
Social media has had a negative effect
on the youth, it sucks.
FTFY. Algorithmic social media owned by American big tech is a net negative for anyone involved, save the billionaire owners of these platforms. If you feel like banning something, ban algorithmic social media in its entirety. Deny these networks to operate in your country, full stop.
Just don't give me that crap about "social media bans only for under-16s", which is just a pretext for introducing identity verification and killing anonymity on the net.
Exactly, we have people against people because of this situation when the actual focus should be corpos. There are agruments which support such bans; however, the one thing they forget is who is the victim and who is the abuser. Because last time I looked, the abusers should be banned not the victims.
But even with that in mind, age has no place here, because the induced ageism is the entire drive of this entire law and movement.
Fascists are experts in dividing people and diverting the blame.
Alcohol has a negative effect. Historically it has not gone well when countries have tried to ban alcohol.
Adults can make their own decisions. They can consume things that are bad for themselves. They can smoke, they can drink, they can gamble. Kids, including teens, do not have brain developed enough to comprehend the consequences for their decisions. They might understand the words you're saying if you try to explain the consequences, but they wouldn't fully grasp the magnitude.
Not to mention there is 100% more damage done to a developing brain. It changes the way their brains function that does not happen when someone starts using social media only as an adult. The same goes for drinking, gambling, and smoking is just bad for everyone.
In adulthood, social media use is also linked to activation in the brain’s reward centers, but two key differences may lessen harm, Prinstein said. First, adults tend to have a fixed sense of self that relies less on feedback from peers. Second, adults have a more mature prefrontal cortex, an area that can help regulate emotional responses to social rewards.
https://www.apa.org/news/apa/2022/social-media-children-teens
ban algorithmic social media in its entirety
You want the government to define an algorithm? Sorting by newest first is an algorithm... It would just be a ban on social media, which I can guarantee nearly everyone on this site would call absurd as well.
Classic example of an strawman. Blame it all on the booze.
If anything, it would be an example of false equivalence. I don't think it is, to be clear. But definitely not a "classic" example of strawman.
Well, I can definitively agree on that.
Yeah I agree with all of that. There is more appetite for the youth ban is all. I dont want verification and believe there are huge risks for government over reach here, but I think the goal of getting kids off social media is brilliant.
Same reason smoking bans are generational, its easier to pass.
Plutocracies with total informational control of it's citizens produces far more harm than kids having freedom online as per their parent's direction.
But no, surrender to the government to protect the kids, I'm sure the plutocracy will keep them as safe as they plan on keeping your investments.
Social media has fueled and enabled the authoritarian power grabs across the globe.
I am not surrendering to the government by supporting the idea that children should not be accessible to everyone all the time. I do thinkparents should be more involver in their childs life online ad offline but there are reasons why governments say you can beat your kids, withold food, allow them alcohol, etc.
There are reasons the government wants to force everyone to link their id and likeness to their ip address and accounts online, and it's not the kids.
How fucking dense are we taking the government at their word while they bring the trojan horse inside the walls of liberal democracy. In the UK at that, a country that has in fact fallen farther than the US in many respects. But it's cool because it's "our" guy doing it! Cancelling the right to protest, jury trials, surrendering citizens to tech and instituting a dystopian hellscape where peter thiel and his ilk craft secret social scores that will determine everything about your life, what jobs you will get, loans, prices charged, police and court treatment.
Fucking sheep.
You made a lot of assumptions there and im not interested in explaining myself to someone who lacks the capacity to converse
Those are presumptions, correct ones. Get your head out of the asses of the suits on tv telling you how things are, it's not that way, it's the other way. You might already know that and are playing us on here though. Either way, you are the problem, trusting the wrong people, or worse.
Presumptions imply evidence, of which you have none to support your claims. But the confidence speaks volumes.
GTfO.
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. 🙄
Thousands? Source?
I’ve seen various articles stating 30 arrests a day over social media posts. Here are a few:
https://nypost.com/2025/08/19/world-news/uk-free-speech-struggle-30-arrests-a-day-censorship/
Except the number cited isn't for social media posts. It's all arrests under section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988, which covers far more than social media (as you can probably guess, given social media didn't even exist in 1988.)
That includes arrests for threatening phonecalls, sharing indecent images (child porn and the like - you lot who bang on about Epstein all the time are meant to be against that, right?) - and not only on social media - stalking and harrasment adjacent offenses like nuisance calling, and a whole host of other offences completely unrelated to social media.
In other words, it's complete bollocks. And all from one woeful newspaper 'story'. Congratulations for providing an excellent example of how one right-wing rag with an agenda can confect a story, then have it cited by a load of other 'sources' that don't do anything beyond cutting and pasting the original lie, and then suddenly you've made a whole new fact.
Fair enough. The sources I cited aren’t exactly going above and beyond to prove the claim of 30 people arrested per day by linking to any raw data sources, or even claiming they themselves reviewed the arrest data. I’d like to at least see a day’s worth of examples of people who were arrested and why. It’s quite possible it would mostly be threats of violence and other legitimate reasons for arrests like you stated.
Unfortunately, the data doesn't appear to be collected in a systematic way across the whole country, but one police force - West Yorkshire Police - does have data going back long enough for a trend, at least for the arrests on the Communications Act.
For West Yorkshire Police, the arrests under the Communications Act are pretty much constant from 2008 (around 200) to 2024 (actually a little lower, 152).
Given the changes in social media penetration over that time (things like the iPhone and Twitter barely even existed in 2008,) for the rate of arrests to have remained constant throughout I would suggest strongly indicates that there is a very strong element of "absolutely nothing to do with social media" in those numbers The Times quoted.
The numbers for the Malicious Communications Act are less easy to parse, because they don't go back far enough, and also they show a massive drop in the last 6 years.
All of this of course could be slightly moot - because in 2023, a new act (the Online Safety Act) was passed which specifically relates to "arresting people for their social media posts" [TM Musk et al].
In 2024, West Yorkshire Police made 5 (five! Count them! Hell, you could invite them all round to your house for dinner) arrests under the OSA.
"Thousands" of people are categorically not being arrested for their social media posts in the UK every year. Or even every decade.
“Thousands”…
Don’t do Musk’s propaganda job for him. The far-right are doing well enough in the UK without people like you amplifying their lies for them
that’s not at all true. please don’t be so gullible
70% of Australian children get around the ban. And besides: https://blog.rebeltechalliance.org/sm-ban-bad-idea/
What about if social media takes personal responsibility for what their platform does and stop making it addictive? Stops pushing anger inducing stories?
Social media would become a ghost town.
No it wouldnt. It'd be a .001% reduction in users.
If you want social media to become a ghost town, ban bots/AI
Can they even do it? AI nowadays can reliably parse captchas, present themselves as adults, with little effort they'll even present documents and "real" photos
I mean if people can figure out bot accounts and make lists of them just by looking at them, I'm pretty sure the companies that see 25000 accounts all connect from the same IP address can figure it out.
if people can figure out bot accounts
That's a big IF and most of the times they don't.
25000 accounts all connect from the same IP address
That's just not how it works.
They could but it's symbiotic. Social Media churns engagement using bots, which generates ad revenue.
Not to mention that large Social Media companies like Meta are almost certainly filtering out bot content to train LLMs on.
They obviously don't want to do it. But my point is that I think they actually can't.
I mean Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Cloudflare definitely can't filter real people from AI. Documents photos, real time videos, those are even easier for AI to fake than to the real people to make them.
That brings us to the good old sms to a physical sim card purchased in a real shop with human face and document check. And that also will be spoofed in like 6 months.
Full digital ID. Then the only for AI to get in is to steal a real human's identification.
Many civilized countries already have some system like this in place for critical stuff like banking, online healthcare, etc.
Funny how this is being imposed on the population at large, but the same politicians pushing it are exempt. So self-sacrificing that they will put their children and grandchildren in peril to protect ours. They're heroes.
the same politicians pushing it are exempt
Because they're all over 16?
Right
This is based, adults next.
When has banning something never not worked?
RIP Minecraft live lol
Now how does banning social media give children a fairer chance growing up and adulthood. It's just putting blindfolds on children so they it takes longer for them to learn what they should be complaining and uncooperative with
Cowards. Ban it for everyone if you think its so bad, like you have tobacco. At least be consistent with your completely wrong draconian police state loving boot sucking prohibition ideology.
We ban alcohol, violent films, lottery tickets, over the counter medicine for children and not for adults.
When is the Two Minutes Hate being instituted then?
They already have that in the US, but it's a 24 hour news entertainment network.
Is this enforceable? I'm shit with tech so idk
I mean not entirely. Kids who are tech savvy or dedicated or even just kids who are fine with "borrowing" their parents' laptops and using social media on that. Etc.
But I do think that for a lot of kids it'll put up enough of a barrier to reduce their usage and access to it immensely.
The biggest barrier to Internet access is simply having a device with an Internet connection. Everything after that is a question of configuration.
What I'd consider the bigger fallout from this decision is the need to check the identity of people over 16. This is a backdoor method of imposing Internet ID on the entire population.
I fully support the battle against attention-consuming energy vampires but I'm afraid this is probably not going to work practically.
Really interesting they push for that the day of the report of investigation regarding rape gang and how the gouvernement didn't protect children en even enable harm toward them. Trully disgusting. Really hope they get prosecuted by the next gouvernement
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.
Apparently they count Youtube as social media
No more SML for British kids.
Don't put on a fake mustache when asked to take a photo to verify age.
It’s be great if it was actual practicable.
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!
Children should only learn about the world through verified BBC state propaganda content.
TikTok, Insta, and all these forms have enabled kids to see the reality of life. Instead of banning social media, ban advertising and targeting children.
what are you smoking bro? you sound like a meta and google simp
Unpopular opinion: GOOD
I think you should make the first step here and upload a selfie video waving your ID around to prove that you are old enough to be on the fediverse/lemmy. Otherwise we must assume that you are under 16 and ban you from all instances.
I 100% agree with that view but honestly if losing lemmy means we lose Facebook, Insta, and the rest of pure online cancer then so be it.
What? They are still there, but they and their ID verification companies have even more data to sell.
If the authentication system is similar to a 2FA, where I store my ID information on my mobile phone for instance, and the seller website requires just an authentication token (or code), I'll happily use it, as it would fit my security terms and requirements. Otherwise, I simply won't use that service. Fair and square. What of this approach is too tough to get?
You will see for yourself soon enough that you will have to upload your ID or 3D scan your face if you live in one of those garbage countries. Those ID verification companies admit that they are only 95% accurate at estimating user age, which means that 5% of your population is now barred from accessing websites that they should have access to, which should be completely unacceptable in a normal world.
Have a tech question as a teenager? Good fucking luck trying to beat the reddit age verification. Want to refresh your knowledge of how to give first aid? Guess what, fuck you. Need help with school work? Guess what, it's all on YouTube. Researching a sensitive topic? Age gated, restricted, banned.
If you give your little kids smartphones that's your fucking problem, not mine!
You will see for yourself soon enough that you will have to upload your ID or 3D scan your face if you live in one of those garbage countries.
What country do you live in? And, if you don't live in any of those affected countries, why should your opinion be more valuable than the one of the people living in it?
Those ID verification companies admit that they are only 95% accurate at estimating user age, which means that 5% of your population is now barred from accessing websites that they should have access to, which should be completely unacceptable in a normal world.
And that's an IMPLEMENTATION concern. A legit one, but still relevant just on how the system is implemented, not on the purpose on the system by itself.
Have a tech question as a teenager? Good fucking luck trying to beat the reddit age verification. Want to refresh your knowledge of how to give first aid? Guess what, fuck you. Need help with school work? Guess what, it’s all on YouTube.
That's a seller problem. Each of them already offers a limited version of their content if you don't login. Youtube has a Youtube Kids portal too! If the legislation is in place, they would do whatever they could to offer a sanitised version of their content to underage or not identified users.
Researching a sensitive topic? Age gated, restricted, banned.
Why should a teenager do it without guidance? Quite the opposite, the risk is to find just bad advice. This argument gets me even more convinced.
If you give your little kids smartphones that’s your fucking problem, not mine!
Yeah because that's how kids reason, isn't it? If you forbid something to them they absolutely won't go to their peers and friends to get access to that, will they?
What country do you live in? And, if you don't live in any of those affected countries, why should your opinion be more valuable than the one of the people living in it?
There is some sense in that; however in this case this is completely absurd. Do human rights violations not matter? Because thats what's happening here, there are also wars which fit right in your logic, is that out of our concern too?
I'm certainly against people forcefully planting their beliefs and culture (I.e. Christianity, or other "superiors" who think their ethics are true) in other places. But honestly, if you believe things like genocide (which is included In your logic) is non of our concern, as long as its in a different country - then there is no point even continuing to read your entire post.
This is the internet, an international place. Everyone's informed opinion is valuable here, regardless of country.
But Youtube Kids fucks over everyone, even those who are not a kid. Google's Youtube for example automatically deletes the comment section if it even remotely thinks your video is aimed at children. So content creators instead have to get creative and insert unneccessary violence/gore (like Cas van de Pol does), to avoid this.
If your kids go to peers to have social media access, then why don't you host gatherings for the kids and friends that are social media-free? You know, the ones that existed before internet?
It can also be enforced differently. On schools, there are social media bans that work without infringing privacy.
Guess how they figured it out? They simply confiscated mobile phones until school was over.
This is the internet, an international place. Everyone’s informed opinion is valuable here, regardless of country.
Possibly, but I have enough time spent on the internet to smell the malicious intent if someone anywhere else in the world makes some negative remarks against decisions taken by a sovereign country or their society.
But Youtube Kids fucks over everyone, even those who are not a kid. Google’s Youtube for example automatically deletes the comment section if it even remotely thinks your video is aimed at children. So content creators instead have to get creative and insert unneccessary violence/gore (like Cas van de Pol does), to avoid this.
And having a good rigorous way to restrict adult-only content at account master data level could be a good technical solution.
If your kids go to peers to have social media access, then why don’t you host gatherings for the kids and friends that are social media-free? You know, the ones that existed before internet?
It can also be enforced differently. On schools, there are social media bans that work without infringing privacy.
Guess how they figured it out? They simply confiscated mobile phones until school was over.
I have already said what I think about this, and I quote that I agree with anyone who says that kids should be guided and assisted on social media in the right environments, or in a way to find the right spaces to express themselves (with hobbies, sports, group activities, whatever), and I’ll vote for anyone who could do anything on that purpose. But we can also imagine flying cars at this point.
Agree. And any professional working or dealing with children would agree.
And, for anyone who is telling: "lEt ThE pArEnTs dO tHaT!11|!!", please put yourself in that situation. Would your parents have been able to set rigorous and effective checks on the media you accessed in your youth? And even if so, the conditions in which a teenager lives today are different than the ones you experienced: average time spent with families is decreasing, the average time that teenagers spend in touch with their peers (not necessarily in person, but also via IM) is increasing, and therefore also the peer pressure. Also, what about those kids with absent parents? What about those kids with toxic or incompetent parents?
Sure, I agree with anyone who says that kids should be guided and assisted on social media in the right environments, or in a way to find the right spaces to express themselves (with hobbies, sports, group activities, whatever), and I’ll vote for anyone who could do anything on that purpose. But we can also imagine flying cars at this point.
As a person supporting "professionals" you seem quite dead set on supporting what literally is fascism. Your last paragraph doesn't make this any better.
Fuck that shit. I'm not a kid and don't want people spying on me.
Just make the parental controls much easier to set up, have media literacy lessons instead, and that would help far more.
You can quite literally set up screentime for your children easily. So why not do that? Why not mandate that a children's phone must have a limited amount of screentime?
People with absent parents still require a caretaker, so then those. And those that have toxic/abusive parents... well, how is it going to improve for them if they can't find help online? If they're prohibited from going outside?
No, I think we should address it by the root; the polarisation and fascist radicalisation, caused by algorithms promoting hateful content, caused by billionnaires' growing exploitation of the proletariat, by which they steer social media to their own whims.
That needs to be kicked out.
Fuck that shit. I’m not a kid and don’t want people spying on me.
I don't want the gOhVehRnMEeNt spying on me when I drive111! Why should I show a valid Driving Licence when I'm in my car! My car my choice of driving!
Just make the parental controls much easier to set up, have media literacy lessons instead, and that would help far more.
You can quite literally set up screentime for your children easily. So why not do that? Why not mandate that a children’s phone must have a limited amount of screentime?
People with absent parents still require a caretaker, so then those. And those that have toxic/abusive parents… well, how is it going to improve for them if they can’t find help online? If they’re prohibited from going outside?
They would definitely need more guided help. But if professionals who offer this kind of guided help are the first ones on supporting these initiatives, why it's so tough to understand their opinion on the matter?
No, I think we should address it by the root; the polarisation and fascist radicalisation, caused by algorithms promoting hateful content, caused by billionnaires’ growing exploitation of the proletariat, by which they steer social media to their own whims.
That needs to be kicked out.
Oh, finally a solution I could 100% sign for! I would definitely approve that, but how would you explain it to the same people that now are yapping about freedom of expression? Wouldn't they complain about censorship also in that case? And trust me, I agree with you, but I'm already foreseeing people on Shitter (or any other right-wing most favourite Social Network) rallying against it.
As a parent I think this is a GOOD first step. Reason: it is much easier to get my kids off social media if I can tell them it is prohibited, and I’m convinced it will improve their grades (amongst many other things).
As a parent you could tell them its prohibited anyway. You can literally block access to it.
How many of your kids have your tried this on?
Dont be crying when your kids leave you without contact one day. Also because it is easier, it don't automatically make it a good choice - your kids are not machines.
How many kids have your tried raising yourself?
Why aren’t you parenting them on this topic then? Beside the parenting bits you can also put in place technical measures to filter out what they can access… reasonably so. And when they break out of those controls it also means that they are smart enough to take on the internet anyway.
Don’t be beligerent, matey. Get some kids first, then see how it works out ;-)
I have two… I kind of see… I’m not claiming expertise but « matey » isn’t on his first trip…
Crazy to see that you feel the need to downvote my answer...
Why not explain to them how to safely navigate the internet, and tell them that if they ever encounter something strange, they can speak to you? Why not put up blockers yourself? Or not give them access to social media in the first place?
Do you have children yourself?
Best case scenerio; in school they will just hear of a way to go around the block and use these sites while you not noticing and having a false sense of security. Worst case scenerio, they will find another dodgy social media website that does not enforce these verifications and be exposed to much more horrible content than main stream social media. Blanket bans are almost always less efficient than a parent getting digital literacy and imposing these rules by custom methods.
I'm all for it. The internet is unregulated, and it has a direct impact on people's consciousness, it dictates what they think about.
Therefore, our minds, our emotions, our impulses and intentions are also unregulated.
My only concern is that this is a rather lazy approach when all it took was good digital literacy.
Edit: reading that back I'm putting over the wrong message. Our minds shouldn't be regulated directly, what should be regulated is those who have the power to influence them. Otherwise, we're no more free than if our minds were regulated.