The UK's under-16 social media ban is already hitting the wall everyone warned about.
Children's safety matters. Nobody serious is arguing otherwise.
But a blanket ban backed by age checks creates a much bigger question: how do you prove your age online without building Identity gates across the internet?
Once every platform has to check who you are, the pressure moves from child protection to infrastructure: IDs, face scans, Bank's's checks, third-party verification, data trails, breach risk, and a quieter internet where anonymity becomes harder to defend.
And the practical problem is obvious. Young people will route around bad rules. They always do. The danger is that they get pushed away from visible, moderated spaces and towards stranger, less accountable parts of the web.
Protect children by making platforms safer. Stop addictive design. Give parents better tools. Fund digital literacy. Punish companies that ignore harm.
But do not sell mass age verification as freedom.
Are we protecting children, or normalising ID checks for the whole internet?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaS11IbNpOc
#UKPolitics #OnlineSafety #Privacy #DigitalID #FreeSpeech #Decentralisation #SelfSovereignty
Children's safety matters. Nobody serious is arguing otherwise.
But a blanket ban backed by age checks creates a much bigger question: how do you prove your age online without building Identity gates across the internet?
Once every platform has to check who you are, the pressure moves from child protection to infrastructure: IDs, face scans, Bank's's checks, third-party verification, data trails, breach risk, and a quieter internet where anonymity becomes harder to defend.
And the practical problem is obvious. Young people will route around bad rules. They always do. The danger is that they get pushed away from visible, moderated spaces and towards stranger, less accountable parts of the web.
Protect children by making platforms safer. Stop addictive design. Give parents better tools. Fund digital literacy. Punish companies that ignore harm.
But do not sell mass age verification as freedom.
Are we protecting children, or normalising ID checks for the whole internet?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaS11IbNpOc
#UKPolitics #OnlineSafety #Privacy #DigitalID #FreeSpeech #Decentralisation #SelfSovereignty