As usual, this has nothing to do with protecting children. It is all about forcing people to identify themselves on social media.
Free speech in Europe is under serious attack.
Free speech in Europe is under serious attack.
If this is an attack on free speech, the war was lost 15 years ago, even in the USA. Of course, given what's going on in the US right now, one may well respond "yes, the US did lose sometime around then".
For now though, I'd be more worried about all the verifiers leaking PII due to vibe coding and competent attackers.
Europe doesn't really have a tech industry and the CCP has the balls to jail them.
IMO, that would be an improvement if it were so.
Rather, it is being exploited by tech bro billionaires, squeezing the population's ability to generate disposable income in the same way Malthusianism expects populations to always grow to the point of squeezing the environment's ability to supply food. That's much worse than "running" the country.
This identification is just a result.
A simple technical “ban” is dumb because it’s trivial to bypass, and doesn’t actually solve the problem. Kids are not stupid, they will happily find workarounds.
For example schools could facilitate this. Don’t allow smartphones on school property until children are in high school - only dumb phones allowed. Schools can educate parents early and heavily encourage a no social media policy at home. The only reason kids want to use social media because all the other kids are using it.
Not impossible to bypass, but nor is the current approach. Likely more effective in that it only requires compliance from a handful of entities operating commercially in your country rather than thousands of websites globally.
EDIT: Speaking as a European.
Free speech as understood in the US, like rooted in the First Amendment protection against government restriction, does not have a direct legal equivalent in Europe. Most countries balance expression against other rights like dignity, public order, etc...