55
'Major step forward': French lawmakers approve social media ban for children under 15
(www.france24.com)
this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2026
55 points (96.6% liked)
Privacy
50045 readers
782 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The world is all doing this in a coordinated fashion because social media is causing many, well-evidenced problems.
Social media is indeed causing many probs.
Destroying privacy on the internet is not the way to fix those.
Their solutions suck, I agree. These are designed by people who don't understand the role social media plays in people's lives in 2026. They should use parental controls for age-inappropriate content and require age verification to get algorithmic recommendations (to discourage people from doing so, if nothing else).
But the problems are real, and that is the driving force behind this globally coordinated campaign of legislation. It's not some shadowy cabal of malicious people, it's a genuine worldwide crisis.
You’re dreaming. The reason they are doing this is surveillance of the population.
None of this is about online safety. It's not age verification, it's ID verification.
Exactly. As Louis Rossmann says, don't accept the premise of assholes
It literally is.
IIRC a lot of big tech are lobbying for these laws. Raises barrier of entry for competitors, and makes it easier to harvest more accurate data from users.
There are well-evidenced problems, sure. But what these governments think are the well-evidenced “problems” versus what you think they are, are two very different things.