The UK is currently trying to implement laws requiring age verification, for the purposes of child protection. I wanted to write something about it, so here is a pile of random links/issues/thoughts.
Here's a couple of short articles about the issues with this, written better than I could manage:
- Signal (Messaging App)
- Mullvad (VPN):
- Children's Society: Shows how the restrictions won't work, and will harm those that are most at risk, doing the exact opposite of what was intended.
- Open Rights Group
- The Guardian: Stating how the government wishes for operating systems to scan computers and phones for explicit imagery so it can be banned.
As someone who is trans, the government is trying their hardest to make my existence illegal. They are removing human rights and specifically requiring discrimination against trans people. The Online Safety Act allows the government to ban the transmission and viewing of anything that is illegal (e.g. anything in relation to proscribed organisations which I am un-able to name). How likely is it that they then include my own existence within these device scanning and age verification laws?
Note that I'm not trying to say that social media companies are innocent, far from it, with facebook, reddit, twitter, etc. all trying to be as addictive as possible to maximise their income, with little respect for the safety of their users.
How could I support legislation that is more restrictive than anywhere else in the world, worse than the Chinese firewall, the restrictions in Russia.
Security
How am I meant to trust that my ID will be safe, when it is uploaded to one of these identity verification websites. The idea behind them is that there isn't any ID or personal information stored, that everything is verified and then deleted. If that is the case, why are there data breaches with that information stored: 1, 2?
Weren't we all taught to not upload private information to the internet, to keep ourselves safe by not giving out ID? Yet google is attempting to make approved operating systems a requirement to use the internet, which means that the aim is that people cannot get around the identity verification, while still being able to use money or do their job.
Launching new tools. Like our AI tutors that we will roll out to the 450,000 children on free school meals
Keir Starmer, London Tech Week 2026
Its perfectly possible to get AI to agree to anything you want it to, no matter how bad, which can destroy people's mental health[1]. Maybe instead of introducing identity verification, we could just not introduce AI?
History
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
Article 12, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948
If we could foresee these issues in the aftermath of the Second World War, what has changed since then? Has the introduction of the internet really been so bad that we need to contradict the UDHR
But hey:
The show must go on!
Or must it?
Why must it go on?
To bring more people into this world?
Yet if anything happens, it is so easy for a government to just say that it won't listen to violent extremists that are preventing them from protecting children.
Plenty of news stories have been used for awful violent riots recently, see Southampton and Belfast just within the last month, both of which have been racially motivated, and encouraged by people being explicitly racist. How can you take action against something the government is doing, without them ignoring it?
It seems to me like people in the commons are celebrating their achievements and how the government is helping people, not seeing any other sides to this.
So this is how liberty dies. With thunderous applause.
Revenge of the Sith, George Lucas, 2005