How tech companies reacted to UK social media ban

On June 15, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced that the UK government would ban under-16s from accessing social media and enforce stricter age-gating mechanisms to protect children from the harms and risks of social media and the internet. You can read MediaNama’s reporting here: [ Press conference | Public consultation ]

Here is how social media platforms, experts and civil society groups have reacted to the UK’s proposal of banning social media access for children:

Signal would exit the UK if it had to ‘verify’ its users:  “We would rather exit a market than undermine the technical guarantees that people trust for their privacy. That doesn’t change based on jurisdiction, it doesn’t change based on year, and it’s not something we take lightly. We’re not just flexing or being recalcitrant,” said Signal President Meredith Whittaker in Bloomberg’s The Mishal Husain Show. Explore more here: [ Interview clip | Full statement ]

Surveillance attempts in the guise of child protection, Signal states: “Keir Starmer announced what seems to be a fairly hasty proposal to implement nudity scanning as a mandatory feature on all devices sold or used in the UK, where you could only opt out if you provided some sort of verification that you were above a certain age threshold. There are very few technical details on that system. But our position—on client-side scanning, the debate that circled the Online Safety Bill (now Act)—is that this constitutes very dangerous mass surveillance. Having a scanning system on your device that is purportedly designed to detect nudity can easily be weaponized by governments for political speech or other content,” she further added.

How are other social media companies reacting to the UK’s proposed social media ban? Predominantly, social media and communication platforms have argued that outright social media bans will leave children in less regulated or unregulated spaces without parental controls, leading to more risks and harms. Some of the statements made by the big tech companies are: 

• Snapchat says bans will push children to less safe spaces: “Because the majority of time spent on Snapchat is in private messaging between friends and family, an outright ban that disconnects teens from those relationships doesn’t make them safer – it may simply push them to less safe platforms,” according to an official spokesperson quoted by CNN. However, it also said that it ‘supports government efforts to protect people online.’
• Meta also believes that bans will drive children to unregulated platforms without parental controls: “Bans risk isolating teens from online communities and information, and driving them to unregulated alternatives that lack built-in protections and parental controls,” according to the official spokesperson quoted by Time Magazine.

• YouTube also believes that blanket bans will push children to less supervised and anonymous…