"Oh no, this is terrible" cry the social media sites, while working out just how much your passport details and home address are worth to advertisers.
this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2026
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Age verification and identification is not the same thing.
It will be.
Zero knowledge proof is a thing, but we all know that's not what they're going for.
I'm not entirely sure how that's panning out in Aus (a quick search suggests it's a flop, but the sources aren't great). I think the general consensus is that it's not as enforceable as they hoped.
We are moving towards an era of a more locked down web in the UK. The main flag here is "robust age verification" - i.e. we're moving from "you must provide ID to view adult material on social media" to "you must provide ID to use social media".
One can quickly see "your id must be retained and linked to your account to reduce crime" and "any officer of the law may view this ID to better support crime reduction" slipping in over the next 20 years or so.
Overall, this feels like another Trojan horse to move towards a China-style de-anonymised web. Bad move all around really.
Oh, there's pretty solid data about Australia. A large percent of kids are still using social media because the ones who no longer use it are the ones whose parents won't let them use it, which is of course the same group as the ones whose parents always had that power. But we have heard from some vulnerable minority kids who now no longer get access to the support that they used to have. And that's really f***** up.
those kids socialising other ways. social media isnt socializing anyway
Of course! Whyever didn't the bullied queer kids or the kids in abusive households or the kids living in remote areas think of that? I bet they'd feel so silly if you told them they should just find support networks elsewhere 🤦♀️
there were support networks before the giant social media companies. and they didnt harvest your data!
In a lot of cases (like the ones I already mentioned!!) there weren't!!!
sure there was. you dont need big corporations to have support networks on the internet
Believe it or not, those support networks on the old internet were still using social media. Whether or not a medium for interacting with other people socially is owned by a big corporation has no bearing on whether or not it is a kind of social media, and it hasn't escaped my notice that your shifting of the goalposts here has not made any actually existing policy proposals aimed at getting youths off it any less harmful in any meaningful sense.
people hosted their own forums. that didnt require big companies. im not shifting any goalposts. you are simping for big companies who harvest your data and aim to keep you addicted and in echo chambers. all to sell ads that tell you you arent good enough as you are, to sell you stuff.
You're right, and it's failure will be the excuse to deprive us all of more of our privacy and autonomy.
To fucking no sane person's surprise.
you mean we have privacy now? you know these social media companies already gave info on you even if you dont sign up.
its good if social media companies cant get kids into doomscrolling
They don't have a copy of my passport and a video of me holding it. They also don't have a 3D scan of my face, which is what all these age verification companies want from you. They literally use AI while you are filming yourself to 3D scan your face for the Palantir database.
dont use social media then. the less that use it the better
If I can still access your profile an hour from now and it's not deleted, you're full of shit.
It's been 7 now.
so?
You are indeed full of shit, that's all :)
i never said me
You have the means, ways and most importantly, it is still legal to obtain privacy, though, right?
yeah just dont use it
If only I could be this naive. First of all this isn't going to do much to prevent kids from getting online unless the measures to prevent it become absolutely oppressive. And secondly the bare minimum check requires you to give even me information to the social media companies. And I guarantee they won't be held accountable if kids find a way to bypass whatever measures get put in place. And of course adults are just as addicted to it as kids but I guess they don't matter.
If the goal was to reduce the amount of people addicted to social media the solution would be to regulate how social media functions not regulate access to social media. What is being suggested is stupid. You can't ban things on the internet.
you cant ban things but somehow you can regulate? lol
You can't ban car crashes. You can regulate car manufacturers to install seatbelts to minimize injury.
" designed to be addictive ". So you think adults are somehow magically exempt from addiction?
All drugs to be legalized when?
Taking drugs have negative effect on others
Social media needs to go away, fully. Not just for kids.
@MartianRecon @Tarambor You're saying this on a social media platform right now, technically. Killing social media would kill the Fediverse too.
A forum is not 'social media.' This is the most braindead literacy comparison there is.
As a parent I think this is a GOOD first step. Reason: it is much easier to get my kids off social media if I can tell them it is prohibited, and I’m convinced it will improve their grades (amongst many other things).
As a parent you could tell them its prohibited anyway. You can literally block access to it.
Fuck Keir Starmer
I'm all for it. The internet is unregulated, and it has a direct impact on people's consciousness, it dictates what they think about.
Therefore, our minds, our emotions, our impulses and intentions are also unregulated.
My only concern is that this is a rather lazy approach when all it took was good digital literacy.
Edit: reading that back I'm putting over the wrong message. Our minds shouldn't be regulated directly, what should be regulated is those who have the power to influence them. Otherwise, we're no more free than if our minds were regulated.