The UK's new under-16 social media ban will cause more harm than it prevents • Hacker News Board

Re: The UK's new under-16 social media ban will cause more harm than it prevents

#11

Post by iLoveOncall » Fri, Jun 19, 2026, 10:29 PM UTC

bob001 wrote: post #5

> they’ll also lose access to educational videos on YouTube, local events on Facebook, and potentially cut off from distant friends and family. How in the world did kids ever survive before social media? Miracle of god keeping them sane every second of their miserable deprived lives. Seriously, this is such a bad argument for something that is a return to a previous known good state versus being a new state. No proof…

So because humans used to survive in caves eating raw meet we should go back to that?

Re: The UK's new under-16 social media ban will cause more harm than it prevents

#12

Post by CuriouslyC » Fri, Jun 19, 2026, 10:31 PM UTC

The whole idea of this is broken, since so much of our collective knowledge is locked away in YouTube/Reddit. It's making a law against children in libraries because there are adult books in it.

Re: The UK's new under-16 social media ban will cause more harm than it prevents

#13

Post by big85 » Fri, Jun 19, 2026, 10:31 PM UTC

About 2 million adults in the UK don't have government-issued photo ID. Certainly many 16-17 year olds will have trouble verifying their age. They're blocking huge sectors of the UK population from being able to use the internet normally.

Re: The UK's new under-16 social media ban will cause more harm than it prevents

#14

Post by bob001 » Fri, Jun 19, 2026, 10:32 PM UTC

iLoveOncall wrote: post #11

bob001 wrote: post #5

> they’ll also lose access to educational videos on YouTube, local events on Facebook, and potentially cut off from distant friends and family. How in the world did kids ever survive before social media? Miracle of god keeping them sane every second of their miserable deprived lives. Seriously, this is such a bad argument for something that is a return to a previous known good state versus being a new state. No proof…

So because humans used to survive in caves eating raw meet we should go back to that?

Ah a strawmen augment. This is comparing two specific states. If you’re admitting that the two states of pre and post social media are the same by virtue of resorting to a strawmen then glad we agree.

Re: The UK's new under-16 social media ban will cause more harm than it prevents

#15

Post by herghost » Fri, Jun 19, 2026, 10:32 PM UTC

This is a horrible straw-man of the situation which somewhat conveniently manages to sidestep any real acknowledgement of the genuine harm and its scale.

Terrible article.

Re: The UK's new under-16 social media ban will cause more harm than it prevents

#16

Post by odiroot » Fri, Jun 19, 2026, 10:32 PM UTC

ungreased0675 wrote: post #4

The EFF is very wrong on this one. Some things are bad and we should keep children away from them.

Some things, like invasion of privacy, are bad enough, that we should protect all citizens from it, independent of age.

Re: The UK's new under-16 social media ban will cause more harm than it prevents

#17

Post by CuriouslyC » Fri, Jun 19, 2026, 10:32 PM UTC

ungreased0675 wrote: post #4

The EFF is very wrong on this one. Some things are bad and we should keep children away from them.

I'm all for protecting kids from facebook/insta/snap/etc, they have love hate relationships with all of those, but YT is a bridge too far, is's more a knowledge sharing platform than a social network.

Re: The UK's new under-16 social media ban will cause more harm than it prevents

#18

Post by infotainment » Fri, Jun 19, 2026, 10:34 PM UTC

ungreased0675 wrote: post #4

The EFF is very wrong on this one. Some things are bad and we should keep children away from them.

The answer, IMO, is simply banning all algorithm-driven social media, for everyone and not just kids.

This conveniently sidesteps the identity/privacy arguments, makes it much easier to enforce, and would present an even greater net benefit. There is no benefit to algorithmic social media at all, and everyone would be better off without it.

Re: The UK's new under-16 social media ban will cause more harm than it prevents

#19

Post by AJRF » Fri, Jun 19, 2026, 10:34 PM UTC

Am I right in thinking that the EFF doesn't launch any legal campaigns inside the UK (but they offer support to those who do)

Is there a UK version of the EFF that fights in the courts against this lunacy or does it not quite work the same in the UK as it does in the US.

Re: The UK's new under-16 social media ban will cause more harm than it prevents

#20

Post by big85 » Fri, Jun 19, 2026, 10:36 PM UTC

ungreased0675 wrote: post #4

The EFF is very wrong on this one. Some things are bad and we should keep children away from them.

We have parental controls on devices. The change forced by the UK government is to give control to corporations, instead of the parents.

Parents are much better at knowing their own kid's age than corporations are. Teens keep fooling the age verification (pointing the camera at a video game character, using fake ID, even drawing beards on their face with a pen). But they aren't going to fool their own mother, and they don't need to trust ID verification startup with photographs of everbody's teenage kids to do it.