🇬🇧 Starmer's turning the UK into an authoritarian dictatorship, where people are too scared to speak out
Its planned social media ban is being sold as child protection. Look closer and it affects every adult too.
To keep under-16s off X, TikTok, YouTube and the rest, everyone has to prove they're over 16. That means tying your ID to your accounts.
We've seen where this leads.
Under the existing Online Safety Act, sites like Imgur and several adult platforms simply blocked all UK users rather than handle the verification.
Civil liberties groups like the Open Rights Group are already warning about who holds that data and how it's protected.
Set that against a country with a track record of arresting people over online posts, and the worry writes itself.
When your name is attached to everything you say, you start watching what you say.
It's the oldest trick in the authoritarian playbook, the same instinct that kept people quiet under every communist regime of the last century.
Starmer calls it protecting children. Funny how the protection always seems to involve knowing exactly who said what.
And the people who do speak out and stand up, like Tommy Robinson? He was arrested under the Terrorism Act so police could seize his devices and see who he's been communicating with.
The UK is slipping into tyranny, and the voices that can speak out will soon be silenced.
Sources: NPR, The Register, @TRobinsonNewEra / Writers: Julie, Ian
🚨UPDATE : Not only may Keir Starmers social media ban be in breach of Article 8 it may now also be in breach of Article 10 of the ECHR.
And yes the ECHRs rights extends to children.
Media apps have responded to Keir Starmers social media ban:
YouTube:
“YouTube is a vital resource for young people, educators and parents. Blanket bans push kids out of such curated, supervised, beneficial experiences and towards anonymous, less safe services.”
Meta: (Instagram, Facebook)
“As we’ve seen in Australia, bans risk isolating teens from online communities and information, and driving them to unregulated alternatives that lack built-in protections and parental controls.”
Snapchat:
“Because the majority of time spent on Snapchat is in private messaging between friends and family, an outright ban that disconnects teens from those relationships doesn’t make them safer – it may simply push them to less safe platforms.”
Elon Musk: (X)
“This censorship law is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The real goal is to enable the UK government to track everyone.”
He also said today that the UK is a police state.
People *need* to understand this: the under-16 bans hit adults too.
Whether you’re 15 or 55, your ability to speak freely and anonymously online is at risk.
This. Isn’t. Just. About. Teens.