NEW🚨: UK plans for social media age checks are stricter than many expected.
Ministers intend to require platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat, Facebook and X to use “hard” verification for new accounts from spring 2027.
Acceptable methods include passport or driving-licence upload, credit checks or facial age estimation.
The aim is to enforce a ban on under-16s after lighter checks elsewhere proved easy to bypass.
Long-standing accounts that already have a credit card attached or prior age verification may be treated as lower risk and avoid fresh checks. New sign-ups will not.
The rules sit under the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 and place the obligation on platforms rather than creating a single government social-media ID database.
The practical effect is that anonymous or lightly verified account creation becomes much harder in the UK.
Privacy groups note the data-security risks of handing identity documents to platforms; supporters argue the checks are necessary to protect children.
VPNs remain an obvious workaround.
Violence, violence, violence.
It's the only language they understand, let's become fluent in it. Not just the UK, every country for the good of the internet.
UK officials have now admitted that the under-16 ban will require *adults* to verify their age with a passport. And that the under-16 ban is the beginning, not the end point, of the online safety campaign.
This is why we’ve been warning about the coming risks to online speech.
I don’t give a fuck what Sam Altman declares. Why are we just letting these tech bros make these decisions for us? When did we all decide we don’t have any agency?
For anybody who doesn't know AI is only free because they need you to use it.
Once they have everyone dependent on it, it will become really expensive really fast.
Just like Uber, Netflix, Groceries...
The requirement to "show your papers" will only be effective if American websites agree to it.
Americans can, and should, refuse these unconstitutional British orders.
Congress can make it considerably easier for them to do so, by passing the GRANITE Act.
“We believe the world should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology.”
In a conversation for the first edition of Decoded, a new daily newsletter and podcast, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman talked with POLITICO’s @BrendanBordelon about trade-offs, AI safety, and how his company is different from Anthropic.
Subscribe to Decoded for the full conversation with Sam Altman: https://t.co/YHJJsDOQVh
A new study found that 99% of cat food is contaminated with lead, and over 90% had other heavy metals.
Almost no store-bought cat food was contaminant-free across 62 brands tested.
The music industry has asked the EU to add yt-dlp, an open source video downloader, to its Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List. IFPI's submission even names the volunteer developers who maintain it. It also wants Cloudflare, GoDaddy and Verisign on the list, because apparently the company running .com is now a piracy concern.
LaLiga has gone after NordVPN, ProtonVPN, ExpressVPN and Surfshark over affiliate blogs it never names or links to. A Spanish court already threw out its last attempt to fine NordVPN.
The Commission insists the list makes no findings of legal violations. It just tells the world which lawful tools the entertainment industry would like to see gone...
https://t.co/Pm0GR9qMDg
Simon has been found dead, reportedly from "suicide." RIP to Simon and to all whistleblowers who have died too young.
The truth about Lutnick will never die
We are not “broke” and “burnt out” we’re being robbed and exploited by the parasite class and being told it’s an individual failing and we just need to work harder.
This censorship and surveillance doesn't stay within the EU.
The Philippine government already tried and failed to get Reddit to remove criticism of politicians. They then fast tracked regulations like #ageverification, threatened Reddit and Discord and then banned the latter.