Which is the idea, especially assuming it also targets the decentralized networks like the Fediverse. Like, will self-hosting Fediverse instances, and self-hosting anything at all even if it's completely offline suddenly be criminalized there?

And what about open-source OSes like Linux and BSD? Will those also be targeted or will websites start blocking those OSes in UK borders now?

They're 100% going to come for VPNs as well.

VPNs are next on the chopping block.

Corporations and the government will still be allowed to use them, but they'll outlaw VPNs for average citizens.

The worst part is they will use "free" VPN apps. You think botnets are bad now? Wait till a billion kids install these apps on their phones.

When privacy is criminal, only criminals will have privacy.

That's the thing. I'm not only perfectly fine with getting anyone under the age of 16 off the Internet, I'd also like to see everyone under the age of 21 off the Internet. But it has to be done in a way that utilizes the strength of modern technology and protects our privacy. It's extremely doable to achieve this, and governments know this, but getting kids off the Internet is not what the government is trying to do.

The government can probably id kids anyway through their parents

A dumb populace is easier to control.

But no Discord.

Yeah that seems extreme. I wouldn’t mind if they only took away the comments section

Well of course social media wins this one, they're paying big money to influence policy over there too! It's no coincidence, but they have A HUGE influence in many countries. I watched a video on this very thing. It's long by detailed and good.

https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-a-post-american-enshittification-resistant-internet#t=869

In defense of the UK government, they didn't ban protesting the genocide in Palestine, they banned expressing support for a specific organisation which protested the genocide in Palestine by breaking into a military base and damaging equipment. It's an important distinction, and to claim otherwise is spreading misinformation.

That said, this ban is very short sighted and seems out of touch, I expect it'll just create a social divide between those who find a way around it and those who don't, which may be worse than the problem they're trying to solve.

Well, the cancer isn't social media, it is the data harvesting. That should be regulated to hell.

We've been waiting for someone like that for a long time. I can't even remember the previous actually-competent politician.

They know.

Right this is all about old people feeling safe, it has NOTHING to do with reality and it is shocking people like you are aggressively willing to endorse the destruction of things that were vital lifelines for people just because it gives you good feelings.

edit I took the sarcasm bait hook line and sinker lol

Ehhh... The sharp implement battles have kinda always been there. Knifepoint didn't earn it's nickname for nothing.

And the kids have graduated to using VPN; which I believe has always been the endgame for the govt. How many times have they tried to ban encryption?

"The laws of mathematics is well and good, but we respect the laws of Australia here" - Some knob that somehow managed to become PM

Wildly undemocratic.

if only there's a kids version of it... that somehow has even more addictive algorithm than the adult version...

It has a comment feature

Occasionally I think it’s weird how it used to just be this place to upload random videos for people to see, and now it’s all pricks with pencil mustaches narrating into a light ring and building a “brand”, and adverts and paid promotions. I think the last thing I bothered to upload was some idiots in armour battering the shit out of each other in a field.

If we agree social media can be harmful, then why is it an age question and not changing it at its source for everyone like removing infinite scroll. All this does is normalise ID checks for social media so that when the kids are old enough to be on it, they don't see an issue with assigning their ID to their online activity. At the same time we have people getting arrested for protesting which is meant to be a human right.

Where is your hard evidence? You don't know what you are talking about and you are going off the vibes of a moral panic to make the choice to attempt to massively censor public discourse... while you are on the fediverse of all places!?

We note three main findings from our review. First, these studies do not include children or adolescents. Across the studies, not one study reported a mean age of participants below 18. Only eight included any participants under 18, and all of these studies recruited from university human subjects pools or university mailing lists, meaning participants likely were college students. The youngest participant reported in any study was 16 years old. This means that we do not have findings from the populations that these bans are targeting.

Second, these studies' brief length of intervention and frequent use of social media reduction instead of restriction may limit the relevance of their findings to long-term, complete bans at the population level. Social media restriction periods ranged from 1 day to 3 months, with half of the studies imposing the restriction for 1 week or less. The mean length of restriction across all studies was 16.3 days. Furthermore, just 21 out of 40 studies implemented full social media restriction in the experimental condition. That means that the other 19 out of 40 studies tested a partial social media reduction, not a full restriction protocol. Participants in partial reduction studies were allowed to use social media every day up to a predetermined limit. The brief length and frequent use of partial reduction further limit the external validity of the findings with respect to informing anticipated impacts of long-term, complete bans.

Third, even if we were to extend these findings downward to adolescents, there is little evidence to date that impacts would be practically meaningful or even positive in direction. In the meta-analyses of these data to date, average effects have been indistinguishable from zero (Ferguson, 2024) or small in size (ḡ = 0.17), leading authors to conclude, “Restriction is likely not the most effective method of improving subjective wellbeing in today's digital age” (Burnell et al., 2025, p. 11). Neither meta-analysis found any evidence that length of restriction or extent of restriction (full vs. partial) moderated the effect sizes (Burnell et al., 2025; Ferguson, 2024). However, both meta-analyses found evidence that older age was associated with greater benefits of social media restriction (Burnell et al., 2025; Ferguson, 2024).

Across the 40 studies identified in our review, while most studies documented a positive impact, eight studies found null results, and eight studies found decreases in wellbeing resulting from social media restriction (see Table 1). The vast majority of the effect sizes were small (for a comprehensive analysis, see Burnell et al., 2025). Notably, participants were not masked to their experimental condition and trials were conducted in a context where people are told that social media is bad for one's wellbeing and that taking a break will lead to improvements. Therefore, it is surprising that the average impacts of the experiments were not more positive due to the fact the study designs were biased toward finding positive impacts.

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/developmental-psychology/articles/10.3389/fdpys.2026.1805989/full

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/06/how-and-why-fight-back-against-social-media-bans

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/06/internet-age-gates-are-growing-global-threat

How would politicians get their class A drugs delivered if they banned under-16s from Telegram?

They say that they intentionally aren't targeting messaging services, so Telegram might be exempt.

This would capture user-to-user platforms, whose purpose is to enable social interaction and which allow users to post material, alongside algorithms. 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.

That being said, I'm a little fuzzy on how this is targeting communicating with strangers, since I'd imagine that more people do that via messaging platforms than, say, YouTube:

In a move to protect children online and address the scale of the challenge, the government will also go further than a blanket ban on social media with world-leading blocks on harmful functions such as livestreaming and stranger communication with children for under-16s. These restrictions – which together with the ban go further than any other country – will apply to a wider range of online services, including on gaming sites.

That's a good point on Rumble, though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumble_(company)

Rumble, Inc. is a Canadian-American online video platform, web hosting, and cloud services business[8][9] headquartered in Toronto, Canada, with its U.S. headquarters in Longboat Key, Florida. It was founded in 2013 by Chris Pavlovski, a Canadian technology entrepreneur. Rumble's cloud services business hosts Truth Social, and the video platform is popular among American conservative and far-right users. Rumble has been described as "alt-tech".

Rumble received investment from venture capitalists Peter Thiel, Vivek Ramaswamy and JD Vance in May 2021, with that round of funding valuing Rumble at around $500 million.[21] In October 2021, Rumble acquired Locals.[22] On December 14, 2021, Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) announced that it entered a "wide-ranging technology and cloud services agreement" with Rumble in a statement that also stated that Rumble would operate part of Truth Social as well as TMTG.[23]

According to a June 2021 article from Slate, "Pavlovski has recently become more outspoken in accusing Big Tech of censorship and now actively courts prominent conservatives and intellectual dark web figures to join Rumble."[50] It also hosted Truth Social as of June 2022.[62] In August 2021, Rumble reached agreements with former Democratic Representative Tulsi Gabbard and The Intercept founder Glenn Greenwald to start posting their videos to the site.[63]

As of August 15, 2022, Rumble reported 78 million monthly active users (MAU).[64] That month, after being banned from most other platforms for hate speech and harmful conduct, kickboxer and social media personality Andrew Tate began posting on Rumble. Tate's move coincided with a significant increase in downloads of the Rumble app.[65][66] Other prominent figures to join in 2021 include far-right podcaster Nick Fuentes, who has become one of their biggest streamers.[67]

And in that vein, gab.com:

https://gab.com/

You won't find Gab on the Apple App Store or Google Play. We've been banned since 2017 for refusing to censor speech that Big Tech demanded we remove. But you can still get our app on your phone—and it works just as well as any native app.

Freedom of Speech & Reach

All First Amendment protected speech is welcome. No algorithmic throttling or shadow banning like other platforms.

Battle Tested

A decade of standing strong against censorship. Banned from app stores, banks, and payment processors—and still here.

Being banned from app stores for nearly a decade shows how serious we are about defending free speech. We also reject all foreign censorship demands and data requests for so-called "hate speech" from foreign nations. On Gab your speech stays protected and we have the scars to prove it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gab_(social_network)

Gab is an American alt-tech microblogging and social networking service. Widely described as a haven for far-right and alt-right users, Gab has attracted users and groups who have been banned from other social media platforms and users seeking alternatives to mainstream social media platforms. Founded in 2016 and launched publicly in May 2017, Gab claims to promote free speech, individual liberty, the "free flow of information online", and Christian values. Researchers and journalists have characterized these assertions as an obfuscation of its extremist ecosystem.

And 4chan, while I'm on that:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c624330lg1ko

The UK online safety regulator Ofcom has fined the US messaging platform 4Chan a total of £520,000 for failing to comply with various aspects of the Online Safety Act.

It includes £450,000 for failing to put in age checks to prevent children from seeing pornography on the platform.

However, a lawyer representing the company - which has previously said it won't pay such fines - has responded to the demand with an AI-generated cartoon image of a hamster.

In a follow-up post on X, 4Chan's lawyer Preston Byrne wrote: "In the only country in which 4chan operates, the United States, it is breaking no law and indeed its conduct is expressly protected by the First Amendment."

The latest image is not the first picture of a hamster lawyers for 4chan have sent in reply to Ofcom

Like, if part of the net effect winds up being a transfer of Britain's children and teenagers from websites that care about and follow British regulations to websites

some of which are hard right

that do not care about British regulation, it will be interesting.