Consumer advocates demand Safety by Design for all instead of social media bans

The vzbv investigated Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube: Addiction-promoting mechanisms and dark patterns endanger minors despite the DSA.

https://www.heise.de/en/news/Consumer-advocates-demand-Safety-by-Design-for-all-instead-of-social-media-bans-11341975.html?wt_mc=sm.red.ho.mastodon.mastodon.md_beitraege.md_beitraege&utm_source=mastodon

#DigitalServicesAct #Facebook #Instagram #Netzpolitik #Snapchat #SocialMedia #TikTok #Verbraucherschutz #YouTube #news

The good, the bad, and the ugly of running a fediverse server for the past four years, from @gfsc.

"Rather than getting mad at Bluesky for taking over the debate, the fediverse needs to look at itself and ask who it’s including, who it’s excluding, and how it can actually become a transformative social network, rather than a technological toy for computer programmers."

https://gfsc.community/why-we-discontinued-our-mastodon-server/

#fediverse #SocialMedia

Published at #IRRJ: "Beyond Hostility: Detecting Subtle and Overt Forms of Online Conflict with Multi-Objective Learning" by Oliver Warke, Joemon M. Jose, and Jan Breitsohl. #Hostility, #OnlineConflictDetection, #SocialMedia, #BehaviourAnalysis, #KnowledgeDistillation, #Transformers, #NLP

https://irrj.org/article/view/25366

The UK just banned social media for children under 16, effective Spring 2027. Nine in 10 parents backed it. Critics say requiring everyone to prove their age creates new privacy risks. https://indigoprivacy.com/subscribe #privacy #socialmedia #uk #children #indigoprivacy

The UK just banned social media for children under 16, effective Spring 2027. Nine in 10 parents backed it. Critics say requiring everyone to prove their age creates new privacy risks. https://indigoprivacy.com/subscribe #privacy #socialmedia #uk #children #indigoprivacy

#UK Official Promises Statements 'Around VPNs' and Further Teen Restrictions on Chatbots and #SocialMedia

https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/06/21/2052213/uk-official-promises-statements-around-vpns-and-further-teen-restrictions-on-chatbots-and-social-media

#VPN #SocialmediaBan #AgeVerification #privacy #politics #LLM #AI

Rock band Sons of Legion can thank the power of social media and music platforms for going viral last year. The independent Nashville-based band embarked on a 50-city sold-out tour and opened for Jelly Roll. Now, band members find themselves fighting AI impersonators, AI romance scammers and rapidly-generating AI music proliferating on the same social networks they owe their success to.
https://flip.it/0ETvIx

#SocialMedia #AI #Music

Banning under-16s from social media won’t protect them. It could actually put them in MORE danger.

Young Greens Chair Ellie Byrne explains why a blanket social media ban is bad policy, and who it really lets off the hook.
👇

#OnlineSafety #YoungGreensNI #NolanShow #SocialMedia

#Meta lobbies Congress for protection from child-harm lawsuits

https://www.reuters.com/world/meta-lobbies-congress-protection-child-harm-lawsuits-2026-06-18/

#KOSA #AgeVerification #privacy #SocialMedia

UK plans to ban social media for under-16s by 2027, covering major platforms like TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and X under new safety rules. 📵
The policy includes mandatory age verification, possible overnight curfews, and stricter limits on livestreaming and stranger contact features. 🔐

🔗 https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/06/uk-to-ban-social-media-for-kids-under-16-may-impose-overnight-curfews/

#TechNews #Europe #EU #UK #SocialMedia #Privacy #OnlineSafety #AgeVerification #DigitalRights #CyberSecurity #Policy #Safety #Kids #Children #Internet #Governance

I just published "Why come to Mastodon?"
https://medium.com/@stuart_ml/why-come-to-mastodon-24a6c62a868b

#socialmedia #mastodon #bluesky #x #medium #article #Fediverse #tech #technology

Small steps. Very small steps.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jun/18/uk-attorney-general-tells-staff-stop-using-x-disinformation-concerns

#SocialMedia #X #Twitter #UKPol

The #UK’s New Under-16 #SocialMediaBan Will Cause More Harm Than It Prevents

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/06/uks-new-under-16-social-media-ban-will-cause-more-harm-it-prevents

#SocialMedia #AgeVerification #privacy #cyberscurity #politics

I have a choice between yard work and posting a news roundup on what's happening in the Canadian social media space. Because I'm lazy, and a bit sore from golf yesterday, the news summary won the coin toss.
I'll loosely focus on social media platforms but there will be associated news as well that I think is important. There will be some messaging that the #MastodonCanada community can use in communications with your local politicians.

#SocialMedia #DigitalSovereignty

"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."

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/06/uks-new-under-16-social-media-ban-will-cause-more-harm-it-prevents

#UK #SocialMedia #DigitalRights #AgeVerification #Privacy #Censorship

#Meta Lobbies #Congress For Protection From Child-Harm #Lawsuits

Meta has lobbied the U.S. Congress for legal immunity from child-harm claims tied to social media products such as #Instagram , as it faces thousands of lawsuits from young users and their families, according to a source familiar with the matter and proposed legislative language reviewed by Reuters. If adopted by lawmakers and passed into law as part of the #KidsOnlineSafetyAct (#KOSA ) under consideration in the U.S. Senate, such a provision could undermine thousands of lawsuits against Meta and other online platforms over harms to #children.
#socialmedia #security #privacy #childharm

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/06/18/2342227/meta-lobbies-congress-for-protection-from-child-harm-lawsuits?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed

On #Mastodon there are now
420 verified accounts from #news organizations in
21 languages and on
121 instances.

255 were active today.

Some accounts, that were active today are
@igd_news (ENG)
@publicdomainrev (ENG)
@macrumors (ENG)
@HalifaxExaminer (ENG)
@lucire (ENG)

Find the whole list on:
➡️ https://fingolas.eu/fediverse/overview.html

Built by @mho

#MastodonMigration #SocialMedia #Fediverse #Media #Press #Newspaper #TwitterMigration #Newstodon

Indie Email Marketing: Real World vs. “Experts” #indiemusic #musician #musicianresources #MusicianTips #SocialMedia

Indie Email Marketing: Real Wo...

The UK plans to ban under-16s from major social media platforms by spring 2027, with age checks that could require more biometric and identity data. 🔒
Australia’s similar ban has seen many teens bypass restrictions, raising questions about privacy and the effectiveness of age-based enforcement. ⚖️

🔗 https://proton.me/blog/uk-social-media-ban-privacy

#TechNews #UK #SocialMedia #Privacy #AgeVerification #OnlineSafety #Proton #DataProtection #Surveillance #DigitalRights #Security #Policy #Technology #Internet #Freedom

How to create an account on #WSocial in 13 easy steps:

1️⃣ choose a username
2️⃣ choose a password
3️⃣ choose your interests
4️⃣ download the #WIdentity app to your phone (two options: Apple AppStore or Google Play Store)
5️⃣ scan a QR code
6️⃣ create a PIN code
optional: enable biometrics; re-enter PIN
7️⃣ choose whether you simply want to verify that you're human or if you also want to verify your name
8️⃣ choose the verification method (automatic photo review, request a manual review or scan your passport chip)
9️⃣ scan your passport's picture page
1️⃣0️⃣ scan your passport's chip
1️⃣1️⃣ take a selfie
1️⃣2️⃣ scan a QR code to link the W Identity to your W Social account
1️⃣3️⃣ enter your PIN code

Congratulations, you're verified*!

(* for two years)

Demonstration in all its simple glory here:

📺​: https://inv.nadeko.net/Vcq4MiabpEQ

Please save this toot as reference if you ever hear somebody say that IT'S TOO COMPLICATED TO JOIN THE FEDIVERSE BECAUSE YOU NEED TO PICK A SERVER 🤡​

#SocialMedia

This is pretty important for peoples #socialmedia and online #account security.

With age verification laws requiring your id, or other ways of verification, it's more important then ever to use #2fa for everything. The risk of your identity getting into peoples hands is increasingly more likely to happen online just for having an online presence. If you have an id verified account all it takes is a data breach.

Being on an obscure service isn't enough if it still uses the same #ageverification providers.

I.d breaches has already happened with Discord and other known names.

#twofactorauthentication

⚠️ Surveillance-linked GDP growth is destroying social values, privacy, human rights and our climate.
- social values: creating dark patterns, algorithmic manipulation, black posting
- privacy: biometric psychography, smart glasses
- human rights: genocide in gaza
- climate: collapse of AMOC
#surveillancelinkedGDP #privacy #mentalprivacy #physicalprivacy #GDP #humanrights #socialmedia #blackposting #smartglasses #amoc #climatecrisis #genocide

Alt...

The text states that by tackling surveillance-linked GDP growth, we will benefit from both lower privacy breaches and also achieve climate justice.

#UK to require ID or face scan before you can make #SocialMedia accounts

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/uk-to-require-id-or-face-scan-before-you-can-make-social-media-accounts/

#privacy #cybersecurity #politics #AgeVerification #SocialMediaBan

#wsocial was announcing a top-down approach to get their #network working & they are doing it

In the #Blick article #AnnaZeiter explains why #AliceWeidel & other #Nazis are welcome to her #socialmedia #platform https://www.blick.ch/digital/anna-zeiter-bringt-twitter-alternative-w-social-auch-alice-weidel-ist-willkommen-id22026157.html

wSocial tries to become a new #Tech #empire by pulling on their personal networks & riding the problematic term of #European #Sovereignty

#Lobbying the #rich & #powerful seems to pay out in the #EuropeanUnion ¯\(°_o)/¯

Alt...

Screenshot of the BLICK article on WSocial and Anna Zeiter

Reblog of Aral Balkan and Elena Rossini

This is a bit of thoughts about Elena Rossini article and Aral Balkan explanation of these strange decision by EU commission to move to W Social instead of Eurosky project.

Reblog via Aral Balkan

“My fear is that W Social is just another for-profit Big Tech startup that happens to be based in the EU. We don’t need that. We don’t need more European surveillance capitalists and people farmers. We need ethical alternatives working for the common good.”

– Yours truly, in @_elena’s excellent expose on W Social.

https://blog.elenarossini.com/w-social-public-institutions-and-the-theater-of-european-digital-sovereignty/

Do read the article to the end, especially noting the bit about the composition of their board of advisors, which includes an ex-Google AI lead and an ex-Paypal Chief [Violate Your] Privacy Officer who now works at Tools for Humanity (Sam Altman’s “Sci-fi dystopia? Hold my beer…” identity farming startup that wants to scan your eyeballs).

#WSocial #EuropeWashing #PrivacyWashing #BigTech #peopleFarming #surveillance #capitalism #EU #ATProto #fediverse

Enough of quotes and references. Here is my own bit.

I find this EU commission is very concerning. It looks a bit illogical at first. Like turning 180 degrees, compared to starting a fediverse server, for example.

Automation of propaganda via so called “AI” become the “9/11 of the internet” – an event that eroded trust and made life more difficult for everyone via stricted security checks everywhere – from bank account open procedures to security checks at airport. I see same thing here. Trust between people is being eroded and everything looks suspicious, especially everything or everyone new. “Is this an AI slop?” is what first comes to mind to many people so often these days. So I guess this is how W social sold the carrot to the donkey of EU politics. They promised that every account there is a human. The EU commission puts very strong attention into verification there. It claimed to do so for sake of children safety, but may be real goal of de-anonymization of the internet is a bit different – to expose AI bots and automated propaganda agents because they can’t provide an ID document, pass a selfie check or give a real payment details. There are experiments already when at least some of these checks passed more or less automatically. But so far I don’t know yet about the widespread use of things like that.

So here we are again. For sake of filtering bots out as they used to spread disinfo and pro-dictatorship propaganda en masse in automatic way, EU ready to impose age checks and identity collection over everyone. Eroded trust for sake of security. This is not just a some evil conspiracy – this is a result of social experiment abusing second time the same traits of state-based governance. For sake of security it always prefers centralized, “well defined and well controlled” solution like id data collection and deanonymization of the internet over less centralized and “vague” solution as to improve society immunity against disinformation, especially regarding elections. Such measures assume improving immunity of every single person to disinformation, at individual level. Becoming own feed self-moderator. “But this is so hard to do!”, said politicians and did what they do best or what they taught to do: introduced more rules, checks and complicated compliance procedures everyone will have to obey now, like a criminal whose guilt has been proven in court.

Internet will be deanonymized. it will become less usable for organizing and activism. People will seek VPNs at first, but later they will be outlawed or adapt (by embedding age checks into them, by need to perform age check to be able to use them). People will return to the roots, and will have to turn their eyes and ears to their local communities they live in. Some people in marginalized groups can be unlucky as in case of real danger they can end up in situation where there is nowhere to go, nobody to scream “HELP!!!!” to. The single thing we can hope on that some informal decentralized mutual-aid networks would be created and being underground they still be reachable for those who need the help.

Whistleblowers, investigative bloggers and other activists exposing crimes committed with use of state resources and via state apparatus actually will end up in an absurd context when they can’t use safely internet to spread their investigations and findings.

Most of the time I read about that coming de-anomization of the internet, everyone speaking about collecting identity data from people who visit social media and other websites via dedicated “third-party” service.

But eventually the goal to eliminate bots away from the internet will end up with need to do identity-collection over people who own website names, who rent ip addresses, compute, storage, and bandwidth for websites to work. So it will end up being much more widespread thing, not regarding social media and other “stuffed with people” websites.

Regarding elections, I still not sure whether deanonymization of internet will keep automated disinfo agents at bay. Lets see for how long W Social and “verified internet” will stay untouched from automated agents invasion.

Error happened.

The UK’s Teen #SocialMedia #Ban Is Political Theater, Not Child Safety Policy - https://www.techdirt.com/2026/06/16/the-uks-teen-social-media-ban-is-political-theater-not-child-safety-policy/ "
This is not thoughtful policy. This is not considered policy. This is not protecting children. This is a desperate politician with no clue how any of this works announcing nonsense to grab headlines."

#UK to ban #SocialMedia for kids under 16, may impose overnight curfews

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/06/uk-to-ban-social-media-for-kids-under-16-may-impose-overnight-curfews/

#privacy #cybersecurity #politics #AgeVerification #SocialMediaBan

#UK’s #SocialMediaBan for children: the #privacy problems #Australia already exposed

https://proton.me/blog/uk-social-media-ban-privacy

#SocialMedia #AgeVerification #politics #cybersecurity

#UK unveils sweeping #SocialMediaBan for users under 16

https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/15/uk-unveils-sweeping-social-media-ban-for-users-under-16/

#privacy #SocialMedia #AgeVerification #cybersecurity #censorship

@Mx_Shankly He died on Sunday and it's a screenshot here on Monday. Why do you care about a hashtag so much? You're not one of those who thinks they own something following a #, are you?

#hashtag #copywrong #helicoptercrash #photomonday #photosunday #screenshotmonday #silentsunday #silentmoneday #screenshotsunday #nobodyownsahashtag #RIP #AlexandreSouza #RIPOliverTree, #LucasAVignale #GasparPrim #LucasFrota #Brazilian #Brazil #fotomontag #fatalities #monsterdon #copyleft #monday #socialmedia

Alt...

An aerial view shows firefighters working at the site of a helicopter crash in the Recreio dos Bandeirantes neighbourhood in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on June 14, 2026. At least six people died in Brazil on June 14 after two helicopters crashed in western Rio de Janeiro, after a suspected mid-air collision, firefighters said. RIP Alexandre Souza, Brazilian pilot RIP Oliver Tree, American singer-songwriter and rapper RIP Lucas A. Vignale, Argentine director and screenwriter RIP Gaspar Prim (Gaspi), Argentine YouTuber and streamer RIP Lucas Frota (Lucas Brito Chaves), Brazilian music producer

The social media ban for under 16s is interesting as it feels like a low-stakes admission from government that social media use can be highly problematic.

The reasons for this are in the design of the platforms, and I would argue that it's probably not the under-16s who are most at risk from its most pernicious harms.

I don't think many under-16s were rioting in Southampton and Belfast over the last couple of weeks. That unrest was almost entirely social media-generated. #socialmedia

#UK may ban #SocialMedia for children under 16

https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/14/uk-may-ban-social-media-for-children-under-16/

#SocialMediaBan #privacy #AgeVerification #censorship

Every time I see a commercial on TV I enjoy seeing how many of the 7 tools of propaganda get used. The Ontario government commercials are a lovely source of this. Also the CHIP reverse mortage. And the hearing aid ad. (Their celebrities are so well known they have to subtitle who they are now)

Someone might have fun making a BINGO card for this!

follow along here https://www.elmcommunicationsllc.com/post/the-7-tools-of-propaganda-and-how-to-spot-them

#Propaganda #OnPoli #CriticalThinking #SocialMedia

On #Mastodon there are now
420 verified accounts from #news organizations in
21 languages and on
121 instances.

244 were active today.

Some accounts, that were active today are
@ElSaltoDiario (SPA)
@ComputerBase (GER)
@mondiaalnieuws (NLD)
@FTM_nl@social.ftm.nl (NLD)
@lucire (ENG)

Find the whole list on:
➡️ https://fingolas.eu/fediverse/overview.html

Built by @mho

#MastodonMigration #SocialMedia #Fediverse #Media #Press #Newspaper #TwitterMigration #Newstodon

UK"banning" SM for under-16s and requiring the rest of us to be carded. https://social.openrightsgroup.org/@openrightsgroup/116753407107394975
openrightsgroup@social.openrightsgroup.org - Banning under-16s online restricts access to information while creating huge privacy risks.

Instead the UK government should target the root cause of online harms.

#socialmediaban #socialmedia #starmer #stopkillinginternet #ukpolitics #ukpol #onlinesafety #ageverification #digitalid #privacy #censorship

The government has ignored calls to regulate age verification companies to ensure our sensitive data is protected.

Instead it has expanded ID checks to multiply the risks.

But the actual cause of harms is off the hook – how platforms use our data to monetise our attention.

Sign the petition ⬇️

https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/break-big-tech

#stopKillingInternet #StopKillingTheInternet #socialmediaban #socialmedia #ageverification #onlinesafety #privacy #censorship #ukpolitics #ukpol #dataprotection

With the worldwide wave of social media bans on major platforms aka digital verification, I wonder if we'll see an influx of people to the #fediverse

🤞🤞🤞 Here is hoping <3

#SocialMedia #Privacy #Ageverification #SocialMediaban #new