EU will seek to limit children's access to social media
rte.ie
rte.ie
HN has almost all of the features of a "social media" and a good algorithm. If you visit HN every day it is by definition addictive.
So the EU could ask for it to be age gated or blocked. This is not a simple problem and we are opening the Pandora box here.
Any self improving loop where the user is not in control, thats it.
If I subscribe to A and get more of A - thats fine.
If the algorithm detects that I spend 0.5 second longer on average looking at content with feature A and so decides to show me more of A - thats bad. At most it might be allowed to ask me if I want to subscribe to more of things with explicitly defined feature A, but even that assumes we are fine with collection of behavioural data like this in the first place and so it is a stretch already.
Transparency and control is what makes the difference here in my opinion.
Now that would be interesting because it should actually impact the algorithms used by platforms such as Amazon...
> addictive
"_useful_", for f.'sake, the term is 'useful'.
Only government opinion channels are allowed.
I think it would be better to instruct what the kids can and cannot see in social media rather than this age based blanket ban. In the same way we have with movies and video games we could have age ratings and then give the parents control over what child account can see what content and define how the algorithms get to work for specific age groups.
I expect we are going to see swings one way and another in the following years.
Why not wait the results of this? They allowed children get brainfucked for 9+ years. Whats one or two more years? If we need do something now just ban phones from schools, this had excellent results all over countries.
Then let's see if the harms still exceeds positives. Since seriously internet contains so much rich information and educative content. Not mention lots safe places for LGBTQ, which is being age gated behind 18+ for some reason. You cant even buy a flag without age verification. It's absurd.
On the one hand it clearly is necessary - we expect parents to do this but most are obviously failing (and I say this being a parent myself). Look what any 13 year old is doing on their phone or what disgusting horrors they encounter on the abyss of tiktok or Roblox.
On the other hand the means available to block access are too crude and seem to impinge on everyone's privacy. A shopkeeper checking the age to sell alcohol can look at your face, but an app cannot - so the solutions all seem to resort to quite invasive age checks.
I saw this related EU initiative a few weeks ago (also on HN) which seems to try to find a middle ground where you have to authorise ones and then can simply prove you are 18 without revealing any private info, but I do wonder how this holds up in practice - will the most-in-need-of-protection kids not simply get an adult to do a one-off signup for them?
https://www.euronews.com/next/2026/04/30/what-to-know-about-...
Don't give them ideas for scanning your face to check content.
"app": is it clear to them that some of us will not have smartphones?
"open source": this is the only reassuring part.
I am very much not a pro-social media person (this is a social media website, btw) but I am even less a nanny state person. EU loses plenty of support from the citizens of its constituent states when it implements these sorts of limitations, so I hope the benefits meaningfully improve quality of life.
Also, research is not a prescriptive cure, and it isn’t a neutral domain. It is valuable, but not as an unevaluated rubber stamp.
And the perpetrators of such damage should pay.
Absolutely not: it's objective. You "are doing it wrong". You must have a very naïve idea of that part of the Web. Read below.
> YouTube ... an essential, and irreplaceable part of the internet
Oh yes it is. It's the video half of it. And it means that "half" of the paramount intellectual contributions are there.
The "news" are there (the Springfield times and the Patagonian Mirror), the "intelligence" (the interview to the Prestigious, the interview from the Authority, the exchange from the Thinkers, the commentary from the Author, the piece from the Periodical...), the "institutes" (the Conference, the Presentation etc.), the "academy" ("""only""" the courses of the MIT, for example, and courses from many other Universities and free Professors), the "divulgation" (a large amount of divulgators of primary importance from 3blue1brown to Steve Mould, Lesics, Asianometry...), the inquirers and commentators in all areas and disciplines, the museum of the historical pieces that must be preserved out of preciousness and importance (from the voice of Freud to the lessons of Dirac), and a massive wealth of Arts and good entertainment.
The value of the above is beyond the scale; its attendance should be taken for a requirement.
A kid that grows up without access to that is something that must be disposed of, wasted, spoiled - "sorry kid, in the ditch. You have not been exposed to Culture, now you are valueless. These things must be absorbed early".
And beasts that restrict access to e.g. the _free_ lessons from the MIT are to be treated as less than beasts.
Restricting access to the latter does not impact privacy.
And which implementation of age verification would not cut off from the "restricted" side (including the "adult" part, i.e. exactly the part for the kids) of the Web the Normal People? Those that say "if my privacy is suspected to be impacted I will adoperate to cease life on Earth". I am not aware of a practical system that warranties privacy while performing age verification.
And: the implementation, "doing it right", should be the chief point of debate. Not the vile "for the kids", that already denounces that the proponents are scum. (Everyone is capable of pointing to a problem: adequate good /solutions/ are all that can exist for administrations.)
> deeply harmful to society
So are knives, and both forbidding cutlery to minors and impeding adult access to cutlery are signs that some societies are finished and requiring cessation.
The problem is doing it in a way that doesn’t removal all privacy.
The research they quote is not conclusive and probably paid for by the age verification groups.
So it is either mass hysteria or a conspiracy.