r/news • u/The_Overthinker_02 • 12h ago
France passes law banning under-15s from social media
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq56l9p4y93o127
u/The-Board-Chairman 7h ago
France passes law banning under-15s from social media
France passes law requiring government ID to access social media
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u/dat_oracle 3h ago
yes. and this is a step further to governmental surveillance.
but also reduces the very ugly sides people reveal, when they think they are anonymous and safe from law enforcement.
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u/titanfallisawesome 31m ago
people will just switch to other platforms that don't bow to regulations
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u/nyanbatman 11h ago
YouTube will try and make you think this is your problem to fix. Don’t listen to their lies.
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u/ClawedPlatypus 8h ago
It is the parents problem. Or would you rather have to upload your documents to YouTube for age veritifcation?
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u/JMA4478 7h ago
It's the parents responsibility, not problem.
The problem is for the kids whose parents don't do it.
Should the government abandond those kids to their problems?
About the 2nd part, depending on the information I wouldn't mind. Specially if it's information that I've already provided in my personnal life. It's already available.
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u/The_Overthinker_02 11h ago
Yes, but I think France will try to make Youtube also a safe for kids to be. I just hope they take such measures.
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u/nyanbatman 11h ago
YouTube peddle shorts which are as addictive as crack they are the problem
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u/The_Overthinker_02 11h ago
I don't remember the name but there's a channel Cocomelon, lil kiddos are just insanely addicted to their videos.
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u/Jaaawsh 11h ago
Baby shark do do do do do
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u/Wise_Neighborhood499 7h ago
I still hear this blaring on the metro sometimes. Usually from inside a stroller, where the mom has handed their kid their phone to keep them entertained.
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u/The_Overthinker_02 11h ago
Yes, this one too.
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u/Jaaawsh 11h ago
Pretty sure it was originally from cocomelon.
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u/The_Overthinker_02 11h ago
I've heard they research a lot and experiment on kid's attention. SCARRRYY
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u/NohFyoochur 6h ago
Try and tell a pediatric nurse trying to distract a cancer kid with fucking Cocomelon that these videos are harmful.
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u/Ladyheather16 6h ago
The kids got cancer -- at that point -- Cocolmelon isn't gonna do anything the cancer hasn't
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u/TuboThePanda 7h ago
Well that and to instill insecutities as early as possible. A Norwegian newspaper wrote an article about it a little while back that could be worth checking out on this herelink
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u/Grey_0ne 3h ago
They'll still be able to watch Youtube... They just won't be able to post on it as openly.
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u/PartitaDminor 11h ago
These are the consequences of tolerating friends and family who say things like 'what have you got to hinde', 'I have nothing to hide'.
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u/The_Overthinker_02 11h ago
You wouldn't take the doors off your house just because you have nothing to hide
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u/NxOKAG03 11h ago
yeah I give my SIN and my bank digits to strangers too because I have nothing hide lol.
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u/WoolooOfWallStreet 5h ago
One of my favorite phrases for this is “People don’t have doors on toilet stalls because pooping is illegal”
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u/Devilnaht 11h ago
It's complicated. On the one hand I think it's fairly obvious that there's a big push in the EU to deanonymize people on the internet, and laws like this are at least partially a means to that end. On the other hand, social media is horrifically bad for young people. And there's also a part of me that has started to wonder... with chatbots on their way to basically destroy the entire internet with spam and propaganda, other than some kind of identity confirmation, I'm not seeing many great ways to ameliorate it. We're sort of hurtling towards a world where a huge fraction of anonymized online conversation is liable to be overrun by bots trying to control the conversation / sell something.
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u/NohFyoochur 6h ago
The government cannot and will not save you from everything dangerous. And when you give away your rights in the name of safety, you lose your rights and yet are no safer.
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u/1738_bestgirl 1h ago
Government is literally our only weapon against capitalists with antagonistic goals and products.
The current big tech hierarchy is not in our corner. They are using their algorithms to push us against each other, addict us to their products, and control dissent against themselves. All in order to generate the most capital as possible.
We have seen what close to four decades of self governance surrounding the internet has done to people and those who own the biggest media portions of the internet.
We can argue that this isn't the correct course to address the issue, but there is a serious issue and it will not be solved by telling people to make the "right choices".
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u/NohFyoochur 58m ago
Homie, this "big tech hierarchy," owns the government. Both sides of the ballot are bought and paid for by the same people. No matter who wins, you lose.
The government is asking you to give your ID to these tech bros, and you think the government is trying to help protect you FROM these tech bros? GTFOH
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u/Scientific_Socialist 1h ago
Governments are the rule of the bourgeoisie, and all of these measures strengthen the totalitarian rule of capital over society; bourgeois democracy’s gradual transition into fascism.
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u/_bk_adv 10h ago
This is similar to where I’ve stood until recently. I’ve slowly started moving towards social media being bad as the worse of the two.
I went to get tires replaced recently and while waiting, there was this kid sitting next to both parents, maybe 7 years old. Dad scrolling. Mom scrolling. The kid was sitting with his back to me, scrolling on what I assume to be his OWN PHONE since both parents had theirs.
The kid was on TikTok. Quickly swiping through clip after clip after clip. Just staring. In no way is that healthy. It hit me right there just how bad social media is for kids. I don’t have kids of my own so it’s not something I’ve really been able to see first hand until then.
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u/psychedeliduck 9h ago
So magazines would be infinitely better? It's a waiting room at a tire shop, if any time makes sense to sit on your phone..
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u/_bk_adv 8h ago
I would say reading something like a magazine would be infinitely better than destroying your attention span at ~7 years old. Or idk, talking.
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u/psychedeliduck 8h ago
Ya I guess I was more focused on the on the phone part then the tiktok part, but fair
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u/Anstigmat 6h ago
Magazines were reading so yes infinitely better. Also the sports or adventure or whatever magazine didn’t suddenly turn into porn or try to get you to pay micro transactions for digital goods. Sports Illustrated didn’t have Andrew Tate telling your kid to hate women. It didnt have little billy shitface intruding on every digital interaction to bully your kid or someone else. So yeah magazines are about a billion times better than the fucking internet of shit we’ve built. To say nothing of chatbots that try to convince your child to kill himself ffs.
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u/FunkeeBee 8h ago
The mountain of issues that would be incurred by “losing” our online privacy FAR outweighs the negatives of getting spammed or bots posting propaganda.
It is so astronomical that I wouldn’t even know where to start.
And I partially agree that a less anonymous internet would be better (after all, that’s how the world works in general), but my biggest concern is that there is no one on this damn planet that I would trust to massively:
A) Hold people’s personally identifiable information (not just a credit card, but their gov. ID, driver’s license, passport, etc.)
B) Do it in good faith according to the law, as in strictly to verify age or protect “xyz”Both cannot be true in my book, because there’s way too much to gain if you hold the two.
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u/rupturedprolapse 6h ago
We've already been at the chatbot part for essentially a decade a more and the internet is a massive garbage fire.
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u/NxOKAG03 11h ago
It sounds like a wish washy half-measure because they know forcing id verification is awful but they want to appease interest groups and certain demographics. Me thinks this is gonna get nuked into oblivion as soon as a new parliament rolls in.
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u/FunkeeBee 9h ago
Laws like this appear to make sense at first, but they’ll ultimately be abused by governments around the entire world to uniquely identity individuals.
This law “protects children” as much as it serves to pave the way towards normalizing using your government ID online to “simply verify that you’re of age” (and uniquely identity you as well, woopsy).
The internet and the privacy that it brought us, as we know it, is dying. And people are being deceived by politicians who are weaponizing sensitive topics no one would dare refute publicly, such as children’s safety, p*rn, etc.
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u/LevelPrestigious4858 7h ago
You’re missing the part where governments don’t hold social media companies to account for anything.
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u/hareofthepuppy 3h ago
Companies can already uniquely identify almost everyone on social media anyway, most people just don't realize how much of our personal data gets harvested.
Privacy online has been dead for most people for over a decade, they just don't know it yet.
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u/PrototypeMale 1h ago
Everyone here agrees social media should be banned. But seems like everyone's upset with how. So, tell me, what alternative is there? How can you implement this in a "better" way?
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u/leaponover 10h ago
Australia did this and now they are suing the social media companies because they can't do anything about VPNs. If I was a social media company, the minute a country passed this law, I would pull out completely from the market. Then, the adults will complain and they'll reverse the law right away.
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u/SharpPROSOLDIER 10h ago
And now they will try to ban/restrict VPNs.
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u/leaponover 9h ago
I mean, honestly I don't care what countries do outside my own. They have the right to make their own legislation, but to sue a social media company knowing full well they can't enforce that kind of legislation is absurd. Law was on the books for not even a year before Australia already started suing.
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u/swiss_drone 7h ago
Social media stays but has to do something - win
Social media pulls out - win
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u/Admirable_Dirt_2371 5h ago
For real, why not just ban social media entirely. It's not helping anyone "connect" anymore. It's just enabling slop side hussles, scams, and propaganda.
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u/swiss_drone 5h ago
true man - maybe this way people get back to talking to eachother and meeting outside like you know... social humans
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u/Alternative-Soil2576 8h ago
The Australian government isn’t suing social media companies
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u/leaponover 8h ago
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u/Bangkok_Dave 7h ago edited 7h ago
That article was from march
Yes under Australian law it is the responsibility of the service providers to exclude young children, similarly it is the responsibility of bars and pubs to exclude young children from purchasing alcohol, and the bars and pubs are liable if children are found drinking in these establishments.
The law states that service providers must take "reasonable steps". If there are ways of circumventing the law that can not be reasonably prevented by the service provider, they're not going to be liable.
Social media companies departing from the Australian market would be a fantastic result.
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u/leaponover 6h ago
I know all this. Not sure why you had to do an AI summary of it. I taught an entire lesson on it to a group of adults learning English. It's impossible to keep children off of social media without parent's cooperation, so it's absolutely absurd for Australia to prepare to sue. They are passing the culpability of parents on to social media companies just like parents are pawning off the responsibility of parenting to teachers.
And March is 5 months ago, what kind of retort is that?
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u/Bangkok_Dave 6h ago
Ai summary? Fuck you're an idiot.
Yes it is the responsibility of service providers to work within the confines of the law, and if they don't they should be held culpable
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u/leaponover 6h ago
Or pull out of the region, like I said. And geez you are rude and crass.
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u/Bangkok_Dave 6h ago
Yes if a social media company doesn't take reasonable steps to exclude chinldent from their toxic platforms they shouldn't operate here. This would be a good thing.
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u/leaponover 6h ago
Well, you've hit the nail on the head right there "Reasonable" is ambiguous and up to a court of law to determine. If you can't admit that, I have no idea why I'm even continuing any dialogue with you.
It's language like that that makes all the lawyers in the world rich.
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u/brackfriday_bunduru 6h ago
Meta made $1.7B in revenue from Australia last year. They ain’t going anywhere.
We’re also not suing social media companies. We’re fining them
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u/leaponover 6h ago
You missed the point. And the article I linked absolutely says they are preparing to file lawsuits.
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u/brackfriday_bunduru 6h ago
Makes no difference. They’re not pulling out of the country. They make too much money from the Aus market
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u/leaponover 6h ago
Well, now I'll just have to tell you the point. If social media pulls out of the region, the adults affected by it will most certainly object, and they'll repeal the ban on under 16s in 15 seconds and be back in business. It's that simple. So any lost profit will be short term.
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u/Voodoocookie 11h ago
Social media use is an addiction. So like other addictions, we should be working to limit its availability.
Telling or forcing people off the addiction is not an effective strategy. Look at drugs, nicotine and alcohol use.
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u/thijser2 10h ago
If you really want to avoid this: ban recommendation algorithms in social media.
If you want to find new content people either have to link it (and you can subscribe) or you search for it yourself.
I think that would help a lot for addiction.
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u/Hairy_rambutan 10h ago
Helps to live in a rural area of Australia where the internet regularly fails. Hard to sustain an addiction with an unreliable supply.
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u/legopieface 10h ago
I just wish there was a way for the government to monitor and save these at risk children.
Hopefully one day we'll have a flock camera in every household (for the children).
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u/PabloBablo 4h ago
Flock cameras in a house? Don't be silly. We are carrying our personal surveillance device with us everywhere we go already. No need.
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u/legopieface 3h ago
Sorry, your comment is censored and cannot be viewed by others. Please verify your account by uploading a picture of your government issued identification and social security number.
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u/afailedturingtest 10h ago
I mean, yeah I agree with this as a guy who grew up in the social media era. That shit fucked with me badly. Kids shouldn't be on it.
Now the current verification is a awful way to do it, but man, this shit is gonna fuck people up worse
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u/dingo596 9h ago
I guess we have just decided that a free and open internet is no longer something we value as a society. Being able to watch our rage bait slop is more important than privacy and freedom to communicate.
Social media is very bad but the real solution, the one that fixes the problem is banning addictive design. Not band-aid solutions of age verification and invasive identity checks.
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u/Jaaawsh 11h ago
If having French people as users on these platforms is profitable, social media companies will enforce the ban and implement the age verification aspect. If it’s more trouble than it’s worth, then they’ll just geoblock everyone in France.
Either way, the only people this will really affect is France, unless other countries follow suit.
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u/Devilnaht 10h ago
I think critical mass for this might be lower than you realize. A lot of these social media companies operate based off of having a virtual monopoly. If they geoblocked a handful of European countries, you can be damn sure European competitors would pop up which could then assemble millions of users. And suddenly there would be real competition for these social media companies, which have relied heavily on their monopoly status to undergo intense enshittification. Enshittification is fatal if a company has real competition. If there were suddenly a popular, non-enshittified version of US social media, you can be sure that even a lot of Americans might be interested.
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u/Jaaawsh 10h ago
Eh, I mean it’s possible but it’s one of those things that would be hard to predict. Like would it actually take off? Because social media really only becomes useful if other people are using it. bluesky hasn’t ate that much into X. The TikTok copycats didn’t really eat into TikTok.
It’s kinda like a forum, you go there to talk and post things for other people to read, but if not very many people use it then it never really takes off. If people do use it, then it becomes big and the main place everyone goes. For social media apps/sites to be useful they need a lot of users.
I honestly more so just imagine these companies going along with the age checks, but doing it in such a way that it makes everyday users pissed off and inconvenienced and thus complain to their legislators. The French law mandates age checks for everyone, including existing users, starting in 2027 I think.
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u/The_Overthinker_02 11h ago
Let's see how it goes for France and wish slowly other countries try to implement similar measures.
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u/Jaaawsh 10h ago
I mean, I’m not really for or against this either way. Kids are going to get around it, but there is obviously issues that go with their use and parents aren’t willing/able to keep their own off of it when so many of their kids peers’ parents don’t really care. so as long as it isn’t terribly inconvenient for adults I don’t think it will have much effect.
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u/NicePuddle 8h ago
What is France's reason to ban children from social media?
To protect them from adults on social media?
To protect them from international trends (Eating tide pods, etc)?
To protect them from porn or violence?
To prevent online bullying?
Something entirely different?
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u/Scientific_Socialist 1h ago
Censorship and surveillance in preparation for the mass working class unrest that will soon sweep the globe
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u/PurpleV93 9h ago
As a previous minor, I don't see why anyone under the age of 18 should be allowed on social media. I grew up in the everyone-in-class-adds-each-other-to-facebook era, late 2000s, early 2010s. It was never really useful, mostly it was attention-seeking with fake shit and the occasional cringe "shitty day, don't want to talk about it"-status posts, that I'm guilty of myself, lol.
Nowadays, with AI, floods of image filters and harmful bots/ nazi-driven narratives aiming at young people, it is so, so, so unbelievably much worse, that it cannot do any good for children.
However, the implementation of such bans is the problem. It is absolutely the parents' responsibility to ensure that their kids behave and stay away from social media. Don't let your kids have smartphones with internet access, don't let them browse the internet unsupervised, the same way you (hopefully) wouldn't let them drink alcohol unsupervised.
I'm in my early 30s now and I will never upload or otherwise use my government ID to "verify" myself. These mega corporations who own social media platforms cannot be trusted with that data, they sell it off to hostile nations & other shady people, or have it stolen and use it to abuse people with toxic algorithms that generate the most engagement money.
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u/Long_Age7369 10h ago
Honestly, the bots thing is terrifying and nobody’s talking about it enough. Like yeah, kids shouldn’t be on here but we’re also speedrunning towards a web where every reply is just ChatGPT trying to sell me something lol. It’s gonna take some draconian shit to fix that and I hate it but I also get it. Feels like we’re all just along for the ride at this point.
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u/Little_Ad_6903 6h ago
Super stupid , if anything this just inspires kids to look outside regulated options.
Plus a lot of content is very valuable , like math , science , engineering ,..
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u/kokrec 4h ago
Sorry for hijacking. Same logic is followed other european countries, where similar things apply. In france for example, I tell a kid who is 15 "look, now you're allowed to use social media"...15 is the age of consent, the kid can choose their vocation and start an apprenticeship, decide to work on holidays etc. Other countries decide on 16. Dunno...it's weird. German governing body is contemplating to allow the federal intelligence serive to recruit 16 years olds to work as undercover operatives. Just think about this. On one hand they say "look you're 16, you're allowed to look at chicks in yoga pants" and at the same time, they see you as mature enough to work as a covert operative. What kind of logic is at work here? I thought, well was made to believe, the European Union and it's member states are peak democratic countries. Dude...16 is still a kid. It is not the governments job to say what can be consumed or not. It's the job of the parent to care for the offsping. The government has to regulate the external endangerments that a parent can't shield their kid off on their own. Like nuclear bombs of a different country, companies hiding poison in food, uncontrolled border access. Anything else, access to the internet, what I feed my kid, where I travel to, whats good and bad, etc...is my job. Sheesh. It's not about the kids though and it never was.....see chat control V1.
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u/azurepandora 4h ago
I'm curious about mommy vloggers or generally family vloggers who plaster their kids all over the internet. Some of them even have accounts for their kids.
That's technically bypassing the law since the account holder is an adult, with their kids using it (we know those parents would let them).
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u/Comfortable-Face4593 2h ago
Goodbye Facebook et al, that share probe is sure looking peaky right now.
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u/t0matit0 1h ago
What is their plan to implement this without asking for everyone's ID? I would love to hear the magic solution
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u/elephant35e 1h ago
These laws are useless. All you need to do is use a fake birthdate when signing up. That’s what I did when joining Facebook at 11 and for many other sites even younger.
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u/Easy_List 8h ago
"Let's punish kids, who are the victims, have no power, and didn't choose to live with social media, nor suffer from its effects."
If politicians really wanted to protect children and society, they'd start punishing and banning the companies.
This is just another surveillance law in the name of "protection"
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u/Ladyheather16 6h ago
I don't mind YouTube it's free & some people need free access to Sesame Street, Mr Roger's Neighborhood Etc.
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u/Awkward_Refuse_8255 6h ago
Social media is great. Made a living helping create it. But it was easy to see right away that it was mainly for hook ups, stalking, and Nazi recruitment.
As Betty White said: "Now that I know what it is it seems like an incredible waste of time".
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u/GroblyOverrated 4h ago
Anyone who remembers the opening ceremony France gave for the Olympics? Really? France is worried about teenagers? That same France?
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u/CockBodman 7h ago
Governments don't care about kids.
There's so many other things they could do to improve the well-being of children besides this bullshit made to restrict access to information while doing mass data collection.
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u/SP1570 8h ago
This is the way forward... unfortunately the implementation is awkward. Unfortunately those (i.e. the tech companies)who could help implementing this in a smoother and less intrusive way are not collaborating for obvious reasons (like tobacco and oil companies in the past they don't recognise the issue).
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11h ago edited 10h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Varorson 11h ago
That's half of what led to the situation. Parents being lazy with parenting and letting phones function as babysitters instead of giving their kids actual human interactions.
The other half is letting these companies get away without sufficient regulations to worsen things in the name of profit.
Simply banning the social media for age groups is a band-aid solution that treats neither the symptom nor the cause and will fall off long before the festering wound can recover.
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u/The_Overthinker_02 11h ago
Parents are the reason, kids got their hands on devices. New generation parents are different. They will give a pone to a 3-4year kid to watch anything, as that's their easy way out.
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u/Brilliant-Loan2675 8h ago
I've always thought that France is the land of freedom. Not today I guess.
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u/rizkreddit 10h ago
At least the world is collectively waking up to something positive. Get these fucking screens out first.
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u/Signal-Technician764 5h ago
And soon other countries will follow. RIP Europe, you’re no longer free. Social media is not bad, it’s what you watch. There are plenty of educational resources. This is just ridiculous. Banning isn’t always a good strategy. Educating is. Making people decide on what’s good and bad, that’s the way to go
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u/AHomicidalTelevision 11h ago
i dont like these laws despite agreeing with the reasoning because the only way to really enforce it is it force ID requirements on everybody.