Author: tio

This week, politicians in the UK pushed forward with plans to eviscerate privacy and free speech on the internet by announcing a ban on social media for users under 16 that is set to take effect in Spring 2027. 

The UK government continues to falsely characterize this policy as a necessary response to growing concerns about online harms for young people. In reality, much like the Online Safety Act, it will cause more harm than it will prevent. 

Users of all ages are burdened with proving their age before accessing content, with social media platforms such as Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and X included in the ban. There remains no reliable, privacy-preserving method of verifying the age of every internet user and methods vary from one platform to the next.

Young people will not simply be protected from being contacted by adults or endlessly scrolling—they’ll also lose access to educational videos on YouTube, local events on Facebook, and potentially cut off from distant friends and family. 

Public policy must be effective, proportionate and respectful of fundamental rights. Young people deserve better than a policy built on panic, and all internet users deserve a safe and free internet. A social media ban generates headlines, but it will not solve the problem. 

A Brief History of Age-Gating in the UK

Age restriction proposals in the UK date back to a decade ago, when the proposed Digital Economy Bill was put forth to (among other things) restrict young people from accessing pornographic websites. While the Digital Economy Act of 2017 passed without age-based restrictions, it laid the groundwork for later age verification measures.

Over the next few years, age checks for porn websites were announced then delayed several times. But it wasn’t until a consultation under the 2016-2019 May government and the 2020 publication of the Online Harms Whitepaper that age verification became a broader idea.

In 2023, the UK passed the controversial Online Safety Act, establishing powers that could weaken privacy protections and freedom of expression for internet users worldwide. In July 2025, the government implemented age assurance measures on sites hosting “harmful” content. 

And despite politicians affirming repeatedly that the Online Safety Act would solve all of the problems with online safety, this year they decided it in fact did not go far enough. American social psychologist and The Anxious Generation author Jonathan Haidt—who has called for age-related social media bans around the world, despite significant scientific doubt about his research—met with the UK Health Secretary in February to push for the ban.

In March, politicians introduced plans for a social media ban into the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill to “prevent children under the age of 16 from becoming or being users” of “all regulated user-to-user services,” to be implemented by “highly-effective age assurance measures”—effectively banning under-16s from social media. 

When this proposal came before the House of Commons, MPs defeated and proposed their own amendment: enabling the Secretary of State to introduce provisions “requiring providers of specified internet services” to prevent access by children, under age 18 rather than 16, to specified internet services or to specified features; and to restrict access by children to specified internet services which ministers provide. 

But the social media ban does not stop there. The provision also requires internet service providers to limit the time kids spend online, and has rules about who can contact them online. These extreme rules will take decisions about using technology away from families and put them in the hands of government regulators. 

The history of this proposal shows that the UK government has repeatedly returned to the same flawed idea: restricting access to online services by requiring age checks for everyone. But the fundamental problems have not changed. There is still no widely available way to verify age online without compromising privacy—but even if there were, broad restrictions on social media will inevitably limit access to lawful speech, and valuable online communities, and arts and culture.

This week, EFF joined Foxglove, Human Rights Watch, and 60 other organizations in writing to the UK’s Minister of State for Border Security and Asylum, Alex Norris, raising serious concern about the Home Office’s decision to deploy Facial Age Estimation (FAE) to assess asylum-seeking children from 2027. 

The letter points to four key concerns:

Discrimination 

As with most face estimation and recognition tools, there is ongoing bias in the deployment of these technologies. With FAE, many have highlighted its baked-in failures and discrimination, particularly in relation to women and people of color. Evidence shows that FAE is most accurate for estimating the ages of Eastern European men, but even then it consistently produces errors. The Home Office itself noted “that FAE performance can vary depending on ethnicity” and skin tone. 

Inaccuracy

The Home Office has admitted that FAE systems are imprecise for analyzing 16-to 18-year-olds, with even the “top systems” having an “error margin of around 2.5 years here.” This is exactly the age range for which the Home Office has chosen to deploy this technology. And this error margin will be widened yet further because children seeking asylum often suffer from trauma-induced aging. 

Lawfulness of Use of Children’s Data

Major concerns exist around the lawful basis on which the Home Office, or its chosen third-party FAE vendors, could have sought consent to collect and process photographs or data from asylum-seeking children to train this system. Further, there is no clarity on the images and/or data that this technology has been trained on. 

Lack of Necessary Disclosure 

The Home Office claims “extensive testing has already been carried out across diverse groups, including different ethnicities, genders and age ranges, indicating promising performance and accuracy.” But these purported “promising” results have not been published, nor have any Equality or Data Protection Impact Assessments. 

The letter continues by requesting clarification on several key questions regarding these concerns. EFF and partners have provided the UK government 21 days for a response, and we urge the Home Office to take on this uphill task in good faith and release the information.

You can read the letter in full here. 

With no serious debate, including on proposed amendments, Canada is blazing full speed ahead with Bill C-22, which would threaten encryption and increase surveillance. Also known as the Lawful Access Bill, Bill C-22 is currently moving forward quickly to a vote despite the many, many criticisms civil liberty groups and the tech industry have hurled at it.

As we’ve discussed before, Bill C-22 is dangerous on multiple levels. It pushes for requirements for metadata retention, expands information sharing with foreign governments, and establishes a mechanism that allows Canada’s Ministry of Public Safety to demand that companies create backdoors, effectively breaking encryption. That mechanism was a key facet of Part 2 in Bill C-22, and the government prevented it from being independently debated.

In a deep analysis of the bill, Citizen Lab and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association detail every one of flaws of this proposal, concluding that most elements are unsalvageable. 

A wide range of tech companies agree. Signal, Apple, Google, and several VPN providers oppose the bill, and some have said they’d likely be forced to either cut Canadians off from certain features or shut down services in Canada altogether.

The Canadian government wants this dangerous, complicated, overreaching bill passed before June 19. Bill C-22 is riddled with privacy problems that affect millions of people. It should be debated and studied fully, not jammed through on an arbitrary deadline. 

OpenMedia is offering a tool for Canadians to contact their elected representatives about the bill. Actions taken on OpenMedia’s website are governed by OpenMedia’s privacy policy, not EFF’s.

EFF is grateful for SerpApi’s generous support, helping us fight for your rights to speak and access information online. SerpApi has been giving to EFF every year since 2018, and alongside our 32,000 individual donors, their gift is critical to keeping up the fight.

Whether in the courts, halls of power, or broader policy debates, we appreciate the work this support has made possible over the years. Some examples:

• We sued the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Department of State to stop an unconstitutional social media surveillance program to identify and punish individuals who express viewpoints the government disagrees with.
• We helped develop the Santa Clara Principles, a framework to reign in overbroad content moderation so that all users are treated fairly and offered consistent tools for recourse if their speech is censored by tech companies.
• In the whitepaper Unfiltered: How YouTube’s Content ID Discourages Fair Use and Dictates What We See Online, we pushed back on YouTube for silencing individual creators in the interest of protecting a small number of giant copyright holders.
• We stood with whistleblowers and dissidents persecuted for their online speech.
• We continued the fight to protect Section 230.

We live in an era when lawful speech and the right to access information are being targeted by Big Tech and governments around the world that are hostile to dissent. Free speech online is core to EFF’s mission, and SerpApi’s support will help us continue the fight to protect everyone’s right to free expression.