Governments around the world are increasingly turning to age gates to protect children from potentially harmful content and experiences online. Australia’s nationwide social media restrictions for children under 16 are part of a much broader push for age verification, with lawmakers and regulators in the U.K., European Union, and many U.S. states considering or implementing similar requirements.

The U.K. is preparing to follow Australia’s lead with its own social media restrictions for children under 16, while American states have increasingly pursued legislation requiring age verification at different layers of the tech stack. Some proposals would require social media platforms to determine the ages of their users, while others would push those requirements down to app stores and even operating systems.

These proposals have also raised concerns that more governments could eventually restrict the use of privacy tools like virtual private networks (VPNs) to prevent people from circumventing age restrictions. However, as we recently covered, eliminating those workarounds would require increasingly invasive forms of identity checking, network surveillance, and device control that are simply incompatible with a free society.

Preston Byrne, a technology lawyer qualified in both the U.S. and U.K. who has represented several American websites in legal disputes with foreign regulators, argued on X that the U.K.’s proposed restrictions would be no more effective than Australia’s. “Parliament enacted a law that won’t work,” Byrne posted. “Ofcom is proposing implementation rules that also won’t work. A law that is doomed to fail is not a good law.”

’s communications regulator, Ofcom, outlined four methods it considers capable of reliably establishing whether someone is at least 16 years old: photo identification matching, digital identity services, banking-based checks, and facial age estimation.

Source link