Tim Hardwick:
The British government will introduce a ban on social media access for all users under 16 years of age, set to take effect in 2027.
[…]
The plan goes further than a similar ban introduced in Australia. It will cover major platforms Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and X. An exhaustive list has not yet been released, but Starmer said the rules will apply to services “whose purpose is to enable social interaction and which allow users to post material.”
Messaging apps like WhatsApp and Signal are not covered by the ban, and most social media platforms already require children to be over 13 to create an account and use their services.
Max Goldbart (Hacker News):
So-called AI ‘romantic companion’ chatbots – designed to simulate sexual relationships or roleplay with users – will have to enforce a minimum age of 18 and the government will also be looking in more detail at overnight curfews and breaks in infinite scrolling for under-18s, with more detail coming in July.
[…]
The government said it will “learn the lessons” from Australia’s experience by introducing more highly effective age assurance measures to support compliance, making it far harder for children to bypass safeguards.
Ax Sharma (Hacker News):
In practice that means anyone opening a new account will likely have to prove they’re over 16 by uploading an ID or passing a facial age scan, the same checks that adult sites serving UK visitors have implemented since July 2025 under the Online Safety Act.
Long-standing accounts are largely exempt, but signing up fresh now triggers verification, effectively ending anonymous account creation in the UK.
James Rodger (Hacker News):
New VPN rules are set to be issued by the Labour Party government as part of the under-16 social media ban. The government has not revealed any plans to regulate them, but ministers have said details about action alongside the social media ban, including regarding VPN use, will come in July.
Paige Collings and Jillian C. York (Hacker News):
There remains no reliable, privacy-preserving method of verifying the age of every internet user and methods vary from one platform to the next.
Young people will not simply be protected from being contacted by adults or endlessly scrolling—they’ll also lose access to educational videos on YouTube, local events on Facebook, and potentially cut off from distant friends and family.
[…]
The provision also requires internet service providers to limit the time kids spend online, and has rules about who can contact them online. These extreme rules will take decisions about using technology away from families and put them in the hands of government regulators.
Cory Doctorow (Hacker News):
The problem is, there’s no such thing as “age verification” for the internet. What we call “age verification” is actually mass surveillance, so invasive and pervasive that it makes the ad-tech industry’s commercial surveillance look like some kind of cypherpunk darknet pirate utopia[…]
[…]
Any attempt to save kids from online harms should start with saving kids from online surveillance, but that’s the opposite of what we’re doing today. After decades of failing to pass and enforce privacy controls for the internet, those same governments are breaking all land-speed records to pass “age verification” laws that make privacy illegal[…]
Anonymous (Hacker News):
Lots of US states, European countries, and Australia have introduced “age verification” regulations. They present it as the classic “save the children” talking point, but it’s really just a precursor to attribution of speech, particularly attributing your words to your real identity.
Sean Hollister (via John Gruber):
Azdoufal is the security researcher who used Claude Code to help discover that every DJI Romo robot vacuum cleaner and a million baby monitors and security cameras were embarrassingly easy to hack. This time, he says he discovered over 985,000 photo IDs sitting on the public internet for any half-decent hacker to steal.
[…]
Traditionally, you’d need to provide a photo ID every time you wanted to get into a club. But with the verification system, the receptionist can pull up your stored identity documents and check if your face matches. There’s also an optional app called PuffPal that lets clubs scan a QR code for faster entry.
But when Azdoufal decompiled that PuffPal app, he explains in his report, he discovered that Nefos had no meaningful level of security.
Previously:
Update (2026-07-01): Craig Grannell:
I find it incredible that the UK government is about to create a cliff edge where teens will simultaneously be able to access social media and vote, having had no experience of the latter and with scant understanding of how algorithms work.
Update (2026-07-08): James Ball (via Nick Heer):
There are almost no truly public spaces on the internet. Everywhere we congregate is privately owned, even if it operates as a public space. But we seem somehow content to accept them as fiefdoms in their own right, beyond the reach of government. Instead of demanding that they function as safe and pleasant public spaces for all of us, we are asking our governments just to ban teenagers from them.
[…]
It is one thing to ban our children from one park when there are others nearby. It is quite another to ban them from every public space when there are no others on offer.
[…]
I am skeptical as to whether social media is as dangerous as some of its critics say. I am even more skeptical as to whether it is particularly dangerous to teens and young people. […] The central facet of my argument in this post is that wherever you land on the matters of the harms of social media, a ban for teenagers is the wrong response. If the harms are overstated, the policy is unnecessary. If they are not, it is an abdication.
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