Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unless you're a politician, they're exempt.
They are quoting the book/movie the circle.
Oh that didn't click. Perfectly on point.
UK to require ID or face scan before you can make social media accounts
91–100 of 104 posts
Re: UK to require ID or face scan before you can make social media accounts
#92Re: UK to require ID or face scan before you can make social media accounts
#93The amount of propaganda attacks targeting the public, the social media companies have brought this on us themselves.
Re: UK to require ID or face scan before you can make social media accounts
#94It was never going to stop at just adult sites, and it won't stop with social media. I see s world where the ISP will be required to check your ID and "verify your age" because people were using vpn to circumvent these. Then it's not a stretch to see the government requiring all good citizens to "check in" with the government every month like someone out on parole. It would be exactly what they would love and like th…
You'll just have to provide a continuous RDP stream from your telescreen. That shouldn't be a problem, citizen.
Re: UK to require ID or face scan before you can make social media accounts
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
That includes hackernews right?
I would say yes. I would not give Ycombinator my ID to be able to post here. If they decided this site was for 16+ or whatever, and there was some privacy-preserving way to prove that, I might consider it. But not by sending them my driver's license.
You won't be sending ID to site operators. It all gets hoovered up by third party identity verifiers who can suffer a breach at any time.
Re: UK to require ID or face scan before you can make social media accounts
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You’re taking my argument to it’s extreme and giving it the least charitable interpretation. No. You believed it would be effective was the most charitable interpretation.
I think there will be a 50%-80% reduction in social media use by teens. This is good enough. There will always be people who get round the ban.
What happens when teens lives start getting properly ruined because they end up on the dark web or other sites? What about when the first teen commits suicide because they were lured into a honeypot vpn and their data used to blackmail?
Will you still be claiming that this is "good enough"?
Re: UK to require ID or face scan before you can make social media accounts
#97These laws exist because social media is extremely damaging to children, destroying their attention, exposing them to online bullying and extortion, and showing them horrific and traumatic content. Can anyone suggest a better way of protecting kids, other than age verification? People without teenagers often say that parents can restrict phone access and use parental controls. In reality most parents don’t do this be…
> These laws exist because social media is extremely damaging to children
There actually isn't much evidence of this. Most of the thrust for this hypothesis comes from The Anxious Generation, which was written by a moral psychologist as opposed to an adolescent researcher, and has been widely criticized by experts.
https://kidsplaytech.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Panic_Fi...
There is evidence that social media use is associated with poor mental health but the causation piece is contested. Most stories about social media harm are kids who were already struggling.
> Can anyone suggest a better way of protecting kids, other than age verification?
As far as protection from social media, the best solutions I've seen are:
- Antitrust and interoperability: people want social media, just not the toxicity. Give them a way to migrate to better platforms. CA tried this with the Digital Choice Act (AB 2169) but it got shot down by Big Tech lobbyists.
- Education: Teach kids how to be responsible with social media. There's a CA bill authored in cooperation with high schoolers doing exactly this: https://edsource.org/2026/social-media-ai-mental-health/7559...
- Privacy protection: rather that detect who's a child and protect only them from being tracked and surveilled, protect everyone.
IMO social media is a red herring. There are much more obvious sources of youth distress with far stronger effects in the data: poverty and economic hardship, abuse in the home, parental mental illness, drug abuse, marginalized demographics (e.g. LGBTQ+ youth have way higher suicide rates).
The kids would be way better served by things like universal healthcare, universal childcare, a better foster care system, etc.
Re: UK to require ID or face scan before you can make social media accounts
#98Re: UK to require ID or face scan before you can make social media accounts
#99These laws exist because social media is extremely damaging to children, destroying their attention, exposing them to online bullying and extortion, and showing them horrific and traumatic content. Can anyone suggest a better way of protecting kids, other than age verification? People without teenagers often say that parents can restrict phone access and use parental controls. In reality most parents don’t do this be…
> Can anyone suggest a better way of protecting kids, other than age verification?
I have children and can suggest a better way. You're not going to like it though.
You can't have children without a license.
"But who decides what the test questions are?! Who decides on the criteria?! Who watches the watchers?! What a dystopian nightmare!"
Jokes aside, is the DVLA a dystopian nightmare? There's an obvious set of requirements and test procedures that make sense for getting a driving license, whether we like it or not.
Similarly, there are obvious things most of us can agree make a good parent. E.g. Caring about the emotional health of a child, caring about the physical health of a child, etc. We can disagree on what "caring about mental well being means", but picking the lowest common denominator for the test is better than having absolutely no requirement whatsoever for _creating a human being_.
Re: UK to require ID or face scan before you can make social media accounts
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think there will be a 50%-80% reduction in social media use by teens. This is good enough. There will always be people who get round the ban.
What happens when teens lives start getting properly ruined because they end up on the dark web or other sites? What about when the first teen commits suicide because they were lured into a honeypot vpn and their data used to blackmail? Will you still be claiming that this is "good enough"?
He doesn’t really care about that, he just wants his life to be a little easier (and to track what the hoi polloi are up to by forcing them to cough up their IDs)