Brussels is trying to trick you.
For the last year, EU leaders from across the continent have been pushing for a ban on children using social media. Such a ban, likely to apply to those aged 15 years and younger, is something the likes of Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, French leader Emmanuel Macron, and Taoiseach Micheál Martin all say is needed to keep our kids safe.
That every other effort to control for online harms has proven futile. That we now have no other choice.
The line seems to have worked. An Ipsos poll published in February indicates as many as three in four Irish people now back the proposal.
However, when it was announced that Ireland would be one of the first to implement the EU’s new COVID-style age-verification passes, much of the public reacted with shock and horror. Like this development came completely out of left field. Like they had not been consulted.
Such people fell for the trick. They believed a ban on children using the likes of X and Instagram would operate like magic. Like social media companies could use some form of telepathic power or vibrational energy to determine which of their users are adults and which are toddlers addicted to Baby Shark and Fortnite dances.
No. Banning children will require sites to prove that every single one of their users is an adult or face massive EU fines, which can amount to up to 10 per cent of a company’s global annual turnover depending on the regulation involved.
That, in turn, means requiring each and every user to produce some form of identification proving as much. And this ID will have to be digital in nature.
Why, though? After all, some banks allow you to just take a picture of your ID to open up an account. Could social media platforms not just do that?
Leaving to one side that I do not want to give Mark Zuckerberg my passport, it has become totally clear that such a method of personal verification does not work in the vast majority of cases.
In 2021, China implemented a partial ban on children playing video games, limiting each and every under-18 in the Communist state to just three hours of game time each week. This system was enforced by state-owned entities using a mix of physical ID verification and biometric measuring, forcing kids to scan their faces should they want to go online.
Not only was this an awful invasion into the privacy of the country’s most vulnerable, it simply did not work. According to data gathered by China since the ban, nearly four in five young gamers in the country actively circumvent the restrictions. Some buy fake accounts online. Others rob or borrow the ID of an older friend or family member. Some even use live images from video games to trick biometric scanners into thinking they are older than they actually are.
This last method of bamboozling age verification has already crossed the Eurasian continent. Following the implementation of the UK’s Online Safety Act, popular voice call platform Discord implemented a partial requirement for UK users to scan their faces to access the platform’s full feature set.
Within hours of the measure’s implementation, users were holding their phones up to their televisions while they got video game characters to perform the various algorithmically required gestures for them. Within days, custom software aimed to bypass the security feature was also developed, enabling gamers to largely ignore the Starmer government’s digital controls.
But even if tech companies could figure out a way of using physical IDs or biometrics to verify users, there is significant evidence suggesting they would rather exit any market asking them to do so instead.
Multiple US states have recently implemented a requirement for websites distributing pornography to verify their users are of age. This, legislators argued, was now required in order to protect American children.
However, instead of implementing any checks, many porn platforms have opted to ban all computers and smartphones inside the state from accessing their products instead. Some on the Right have suggested that this is evidence that the porn lobby is not about money at all, but instead a satanic plot to force images of naked women onto children.
The reality is far simpler. The porn industry is about making money. And forcing them to scan IDs is a very fast way for them to do the exact opposite.
Verifying a physical ID via a smartphone image is both difficult and expensive. Doing so in a way that does not risk such sensitive information potentially leaking to criminal actors — and becoming liable for very steep fines and civil lawsuits as a result — is even trickier.
The US states that insisted on the porn verification did not provide such companies with any publicly backed solution to these issues, saying that it was the job of the porn providers to sort that out.
So they crunched the numbers, and quickly figured out it would be cheaper to just leave those states.
These fears are far from unfounded. Remember Discord? Well, following the implementation of the UK’s OSA restrictions, the platform suffered a data breach, which saw as many as 70,000 people’s IDs fall into the hands of hackers. This is despite the company having formally insisted it had figured out a way of scanning such documents that was totally secure for users.
Well, they always say that, don’t they? It’s very rarely true.
In short, if you want to sort the kids from the adults online — especially in a jurisdiction as fine-happy as the EU — the vast majority of companies will only do so if the method of doing so is state-backed. Of course, this won’t make things more secure for users. Government databases are just as easily hacked as those held by the private sector. But for the companies, at least, it means they can avoid blame.
And for the government, to whom fines mean nothing, it also means they can track not just children online, but adults as well if they really want to. I’m sure that is just a coincidence, though.
But, well, if there is a sudden uptick in “hate” or “misinformation”, it would be irresponsible for Brussels not to expand online monitoring further. At least according to Martin and friends.
Let’s face it, Brussels is trying to pull a fast one on the public with its push to ban children from social media. And so far the public seems to have bought it.
So too, disappointingly, have the civil rights orgs. Even those who are supposedly on the Right — or at least critical of Europe’s current censorship push — have come out to back this EU plot. Free Speech Ireland, which I personally served as a director for until recently, appeared to back EU calls for a ban in March, with the organisation suggesting that it would somehow prevent governments from using children’s issues to control online speech.
“A frank discussion needs to be had about the rights of people under 18. A future in which minors are banned from social media platforms is a healthier and safer future,” they claimed.
This seems to betray a painfully common misunderstanding of the digital world and its technical limitations. One that has enabled Brussels to push through this form of digital monitoring through the back door.
So what can be done? A push towards greater tech literacy on the Right is certainly in order. FSI is no outlier. Numerous orgs across both Europe and the United States have tried to push digital free speech angles without an understanding of the technology underpinning them. If these groups wish to actually help push for positive change, they are going to have to become more familiar with how it can be brought about.
They will also need to become far more familiar with how censorship could be stealthily introduced by bad actors, especially governments.
Because if they don’t, Brussels will just keep tricking them. And if they can have the wool pulled over their eyes by Brussels, what hope does the general public have?