I hope Over-16s be next.
Under-16s to be banned from social media, Starmer announces
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Re: Under-16s to be banned from social media, Starmer announces
#42Honest question: Is this about anything else than forcing all citizens to ID themselves to the government before using digital services?
Its wildly popular to the tune of 70% support amongst the general population? The HN bubble needs to realize that it's not that people don't care, it's that they really want this and also when it didn't work started complaining they wanted even more.
Agreed, surely politicians are good at aligning to what's popular.
A certain type of people thrived in 1970's East Germany too, saying to themselves that it was for the greater good.
Re: Under-16s to be banned from social media, Starmer announces
#43It's a dupe. Many comments here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48527766
Re: Under-16s to be banned from social media, Starmer announces
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, it's about the explicitly stated goal of getting kids to stop being harmed by the products of some of the largest advertising agencies on the planet that have resisted more subtle regulation for decades.
Yes, no doubt there is an obvious first-order reason for this. It's the second order effects that I think folks are rightly worried about, but it's easy to steel man.
Australian here, the under 16 ban was put in place early this year and I haven't ID verified for anything.
Re: Under-16s to be banned from social media, Starmer announces
#45For any Australians who are already living with this, how's it going over there? Would you say the policy has been a success or not?
It's been very good for encouraging teens to learn more about networking and using AI tools to fake IDs etc. It's not yet reached threshold levels that would actually likely see teen usage drop dramatically: A separate piece of research found that teens thought at least two-thirds of other teens would need to be off social media for them to give it up, too. [2] [1] March 2026: It’s official: Australia’s teen social m…
I feel like this was all part of the plan, put the laws in knowing the weak tech will be bypassed, and then slowly improve the tech to the point it's too much of a pain to bypass and most teens just don't bother and instead use platforms they can still access like IMs/group chats rather than instagram.
Re: Under-16s to be banned from social media, Starmer announces
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, no doubt there is an obvious first-order reason for this. It's the second order effects that I think folks are rightly worried about, but it's easy to steel man.
Australian here, the under 16 ban was put in place early this year and I haven't ID verified for anything.
I'm not sure that will bring a lot of relief to the concerned side as it implies you are being fingerprinted by all the websites that are subject to this verification rule.
Re: Under-16s to be banned from social media, Starmer announces
#47> The ban will therefore include platforms like Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X. > "We do not intend for messaging services like WhatsApp and Signal to be included in the social media ban." YouTube is a bit of a surprise here, but I guess with Shorts they put themselves in the same category as Tiktok, etc.
Yeah I don't think they've thought that through. YouTube hosts a mountain of educational content, e.g. the Khan Academy. That's now banned in the UK for under 16s.
It clearly hasn’t resulted in better educated children so doesn’t seem like a big loss. We have good free education with everything provided already. The idea that YouTube is required is silly.
Re: Under-16s to be banned from social media, Starmer announces
#48Re: Under-16s to be banned from social media, Starmer announces
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
This specifically doesn't ID anybody. It's not using the upcoming digital ID, it's just going to use the existing age authentication - eg, you just need to show your company is doing some sort of "serious" age verification (not just enter your DOB here) rather than actually checking identity. It's bad, shallow populism, but it's not some nefarious surveillance plan, as much as the yanks are going to paint it that way…
Not painting it any way, just asking. I'm in the EU btw, we're likely heading in the same direction from what it seems.
We have EUDI wallet which offers zero knowledge proofs
Re: Under-16s to be banned from social media, Starmer announces
#50Honest question: Is this about anything else than forcing all citizens to ID themselves to the government before using digital services?
As a Norwegian teen parent: Seeing all the issues cropping up which is /enabled/ (not saying caused) by social media, you don't need to look for ulterior motives. I believe these bans are honest attempts to fix real problems. Examples I know about include 12-year-olds selling nudes, teen experimentation with alcohol being replaced with cocaine because cocaine is so easily available (the issue is the scale and how wid…
Good point. Future historians looking back will likely consider 2015/2016 to be the point when we entered the social-media-epoch. Both Brexit and Trump where mainly social-media-driven phenomenon.