u16
The UK government announced yesterday that it would follow Australia and enact a social media ban for under 16s by the end of the year.
It's pretty infuriating for me that nobody is calling it what it actually is: Mandatory Age Verification. It won't be just 16 year olds that will be asked to verify their age - IT WILL BE ALL OF US.
What then? What happens next? If Australia is anything to go by, all the tech-savvy kids will still be on TikTok and Instagram by using VPNs.
What happens then? As we saw with the Online Safety Act, most age restricted websites can be bypassed with a VPN, so what happens to VPNs? The Labour government will go after VPNs, demanding they they are age restricted too.
Internet freedoms are slowly being eroded until Sir Keir Starmer The Kid Starver can sit in his little den, checking what every single inhabitant of the UK is browsing/streaming/chatting about. Nobody will be allowed a pseudonym, all internet activity will be monitored and regulated with IRL identities tied to all accounts. Keir will be there making sure nobody on the Morris Minor Owners Facebook Page is dissing his running of the country, or talking about Palestine.
I've seen people expressing disappointment at how authoritarian this Labour government is. "They're Lefties!" They say, "they should be all about personal freedom!"
People seem to have forgotten the unprecedented proliferation of CCTV in public spaces and the absolute explosion of GATSO speed cameras on British roads under the last Labour government. Tony Blair was well into keeping us under the thumb, he just didn't have the tools then.
All the while the social media companies that hosted material that led directly to the harm of under 16s are basically let off the hook. The government will stop the kids going online, don't you worry about that, Mr Zuckerberg sir. Just keep counting your billions whilst we protect the children. Oh, you have an age verification platform you want to sell us? Why that would be dandy.
Think Of The Children. What other horrors are going to be unleashed on the population in its name?