UK to ban social media for kids under 16, may impose overnight curfews
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Nigel Farage is a truly disgusting human being, but he's right in that it will mean ID verification becomes the norm for Internet access in the UK. And no future government is going to put that genie back in the bottle.
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Luckily in most other countries corruption isn't at that level yet.
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It's utterly terrifying how governments immediately pivoted towards the panopticon as soon as it became even remotely possible.
I can very easily see a future where I, a middle-aged adult, am effectively cut off from accessing the Internet--not because of an outright ban, or because of a lack of technical expertise, but because I steadfastly, adamantly refuse to upload any form of personal identification to the Internet so that governments and big tech can tie all of my online activity together--I'm reluctant to use even the current methods of tricking age verification, because I simply do not want to hand over my privacy. Even with the current "what's your birthday" checks I refuse to provide my actual birth date, I'll just enter in random dates/months/years that are old enough for whatever I'm looking for.
I'd much rather buy a book and play whatever physical games I still have available.
I can very easily see a future where I, a middle-aged adult, am effectively cut off from accessing the Internet--not because of an outright ban, or because of a lack of technical expertise, but because I steadfastly, adamantly refuse to upload any form of personal identification to the Internet so that governments and big tech can tie all of my online activity together--I'm reluctant to use even the current methods of tricking age verification, because I simply do not want to hand over my privacy. Even with the current "what's your birthday" checks I refuse to provide my actual birth date, I'll just enter in random dates/months/years that are old enough for whatever I'm looking for.
I'd much rather buy a book and play whatever physical games I still have available.
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Really? you can ban a huge segment of the population from using the sites and you can force the entirety of the population to provide ID to access these sites, but somehow you can’t do anything at all when they allow racism and misogyny and violence to flourish, misleading and radicalizing their user base and undermining the very concept of truth?
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For how long the western world mocked China's social credit system, looks like the UK has decided to join in the overbearing monitoring, and many others are looking to join in. 1984 was supposed to be a cautionary tale, not act as a blueprint.
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." - Benjamin Franklin
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." - Benjamin Franklin
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farage is a miserable POS, but he's not wrong about "Digital ID via the back door". painful to write "not wrong" about him, but that's a big genie to uncork. no bright ideas on this end, this is a very difficult problem. if i had my way, these bans would be until 18, but how you get there without breaking lots of important privacy barriers is a mystery.
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Too late. Students all day in class pressing multiple choice squares on screen and watching the equivalent of “Ow my ballz” and then graduating as functional illiterates.
Its on purpose authoritarian governments work best when you have an uneducated population.
Its on purpose authoritarian governments work best when you have an uneducated population.
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Cutting off kids from communities from which they might learn about their gender or sexuality is part of the point, not an unintended consequence.
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In the UK, 16 year olds can join the military and will soon be able to vote, yet the government will be making sure they're off social media by their bedtime.
I'm sure it won't backfire at all to bring in a whole new cohort of voters right as you're sticking them with a law aimed specifically at them that they're really gonna hate.
I'm sure it won't backfire at all to bring in a whole new cohort of voters right as you're sticking them with a law aimed specifically at them that they're really gonna hate.
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Not just that...But:
- The internet stuff was never built to be age-gated in the first place, from first principles.
- The reality no one wants to admit...kids go to the internet to fill a void of interaction and belonging. The problem isn't and never has been the social media--it was the awful state of the community and world the kids find themselves in--where digital interaction and entertainment is better, or more available, than real life.
- That coupled with maniacal consequences-averse billionaire CEOs bent on knowingly addicting kids to their products, brought us to where we are.
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The irony being that Starmer announced this on Twitter, which is the UK government's preferred
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Ineffective non-solution for an almost entirely imaginary problem.
Government is buying in to a moral panic that the actual experts (with solid research to back them up) tell us isn't actually a problem in the first place - and telling us that in fact the "solution" is a much bigger problem than what the pearl-clutching "save the children" activists are screaming about.
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edit: missing words
Government is buying in to a moral panic that the actual experts (with solid research to back them up) tell us isn't actually a problem in the first place - and telling us that in fact the "solution" is a much bigger problem than what the pearl-clutching "save the children" activists are screaming about.
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edit: missing words
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Aside from all the reasons we all know this is dumb, what happens when my online coursework for a class includes an embedded youtube video of volcanos?
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They're so out of touch they don't even understand that their "solution" to "the problem" is actually harmful to the children they're so vigorously "protecting" from the latest moral panic.
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Yes, and no.
Yes, these bans can be defeated.
But kids are not very tech savvy. Oh, sure they play all day on their toys. But when it comes to nuts and bolts shit, the percentage of them who have a clue is pretty damned low. Just because you USE tech, doesn't mean you understand all of the nuances enough of it to defeat a general ban.
My sample size for that statement is about 1000 people who use social media, most of whom twit or face ONLY because their peers do. Not because the content itself is much of a draw. And all of them are actually over 18 (since I don't belong to any groups that accept anyone YOUNGER).
Then again, a "ban" wasn't really the point. The point is to reduce the number of minors accessing these sites. THAT, it will do, and probably quite successfully. Yes, you'll get savants helping their peers defeat it, but that won't likely be the norm. Reduction of traffic by minors to these sites is probably going to be significant in the UK, even if it's only cut in half.
Some folks here seem to think that if you don't fully eliminate the problem, it's not worth trying.
How many kids saved from the toxic influences of all of those site does it take for it to be worth it? Even if it's just a minor percent of them, IMHO, that's better than nothing.
Life without any of the listed websites is perfectly livable. And it's likely to be better (or at least a lot less toxic) without them.
Well, shit, shoulda read further. This isn't the way to deal with the issue.
The idea has merit. The methodology sucks, though.
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The fact that they're trying to push these bans in a way that tracks adults says a lot about their motivations and what they intend on using this for in the future.
The UK isn't exactly known for treating trans people with human dignity.
The UK isn't exactly known for treating trans people with human dignity.
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Some of the proponents of these "protective" measures likely are thinking exactly this, and quietly smug at how they've managed to co-opt this moral panic for their own ends.
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From the article quoting EFF:
I believe most believe have long ago given up the shiny goggles calling social media a transcendental experience. But, more importantly, there is no world where I would rather Meta teach a 15 year old sensitive topics than, say, Wikipedia, or honestly any other platform.
I believe most believe have long ago given up the shiny goggles calling social media a transcendental experience. But, more importantly, there is no world where I would rather Meta teach a 15 year old sensitive topics than, say, Wikipedia, or honestly any other platform.
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I wonder what the politics of people growing up with this will be like; I don't think UK politicians seem to release that the Internet has already destroyed pre-Internet life.
Loneliness, depression and anger are likely to follow considering all of the adults, the news, and technical education has moved onto social media sites.
Loneliness, depression and anger are likely to follow considering all of the adults, the news, and technical education has moved onto social media sites.
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Except he didn’t.
I’m not a fan of Starmer but thankfully he follows protocol and doesn’t just randomly communicate policy change via social media
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The problem isn’t that young people (or older people for that matter) use social media per se. The problem is how the social media they use (or should say the ones most easily available to them) actually work, promoting constant engagement, mindless scrolling, increasing polarisation and the spreading misleading or simply untrue statements
If they instead legislated strong controls on algorithmic services making sure that it does not operate to make people “addicted” to its use, forcing the supplier of such services to comply or force truly draconian fines, social media use might actually be fine. But why would they do such a sensible thing?
If they instead legislated strong controls on algorithmic services making sure that it does not operate to make people “addicted” to its use, forcing the supplier of such services to comply or force truly draconian fines, social media use might actually be fine. But why would they do such a sensible thing?
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Exactly. They don't want to fix these harms for everyone, including children and adults.
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The problem with all of this is that instead of the government saying “no, it’s the parents who didn’t enable any of the protections they are demanding are wrong” and instead decided they needed to implement technical restrictions that adults need to show their face to a Chinese AI company to look at porn.
That said, some of the things they are going after on a “feature” basis are objectively good things they could do without the overbearing age and identity gating of the internet:
They could go further and make tech companies’ algorithms speech, and thus make them responsible for their recommendations. But Ofcom isn’t there yet.
It’s a horrid mixed bag. I see too much bad in with the objectively good, so I err to oppose it on privacy/liberal grounds.
That said, some of the things they are going after on a “feature” basis are objectively good things they could do without the overbearing age and identity gating of the internet:
- Banning stranger chat (god, the worst when I have to find a new way to get people to stop talking to me. Sign me up. Especially on LinkedIn)
- Banning loot boxes (gambling, designed to creat addiction just like slot (fruit) machines)
- Banning infinite scroll (I know a lot of us would love to see a return to feeds you could curate on Instagram)
They could go further and make tech companies’ algorithms speech, and thus make them responsible for their recommendations. But Ofcom isn’t there yet.
It’s a horrid mixed bag. I see too much bad in with the objectively good, so I err to oppose it on privacy/liberal grounds.
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I’m not saying it wasn’t posted to X I’m saying it wasn’t first announced on X which seemed to me to be the implication in the post
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I don't understand the reaction to this thread. In the UK it's widely accepted by most people that the current addictive algorithms of things like tiktok are fundamentally altering the development of today's children, and adults, but Starmer won't go that far. They spend hours infinitely scrolling, and there is no suprise why there is so many problems at school and in their social life.
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chaos215bar2
Ars Praefectus
I think people might be giving lawmakers here a little too much credit in assuming they don't know what they're doing. They're doing two extremely important things with this regulation:
- They're being seen, very publicly, to be doing something. Whether it's effective is beside the point. "Saving the children" always earns some votes.
- They're getting the proverbial camel's nose in the tent when it comes to online ID verification. As has been said, that genie is going to be near impossible to put back in the bottle once it's normalized.
Because actually solving this problem is hard, and means going after entrenched companies worth billions for business practices that everyone pretty much knows are deeply harmful, but which are simultaneously extremely difficult to definitively prove in a statement that can be boiled down into a sound byte. That being that exposing people to a constant stream of lies and vitriol, which no one can be bothered to moderate properly for various monetary and political reasons, pushes people towards polarized extremes and results in political and social toxicity that affects everyone, even adults, and ultimately destroys civil society.
In other words, this regulation is, for the most part, working exactly as intended. What's intended just isn't quite what it says on the tin.
At least, that's my extremely cynical take. But recently, it seems that every time I think I'm being too cynical, the reality is that I'm actually not going far enough.
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Apparently governments are unable to regulate social media companies so in response to voters' pleas, politicians are regulating access to social media.
It's what I'm doing too. My kids here in the US won't have social media until 16. Hopefully not ever.
It's what I'm doing too. My kids here in the US won't have social media until 16. Hopefully not ever.
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The problem with expecting parents to do that...is most parents are digitally incompetent. And come home zapped from their day job before needing to be a parent. That combined with social media companies all having different means and extents to which parents can control their kids online behaviors.
We here on Ars--probably all know how to manage our LANs and enforce site access and time...We're abnormal, alas.
I don't have a good answer here. I'm with the EFF on this, and this law ain't great...OTOH people like Zuckerberg and his empire are mining the world and promoting conflict to boost engagement numbers. Ugh. No good answers.
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And the children will get around the bans. So those suffering will be Adults in the UK.
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The lengths governments will go to in order to avoid properly regulating tech companies.
Social media is a problem for adults too but governments don't want to address the issue because that means actually having to stand up to the companies that control them without the carrot of "users will be forced to give you even more of their data".
Social media is a problem for adults too but governments don't want to address the issue because that means actually having to stand up to the companies that control them without the carrot of "users will be forced to give you even more of their data".
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ubercurmudgeon
Ars Praefectus
I have always used Unix time 0. I like to think others do likewise, and it creates a spike that anyone who cares to plot the birth dates in their database would notice.
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