#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

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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

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 #News #Privacy

“Soon it will be virtually impossible to be online in the UK without handing over identity documents or biometric data to unregulated companies.”

The social media ban means EVERY user has to prove they're over 16. This puts millions at risk of their personal data being hacked.

🗣️ ORG's @JamesBaker.

https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366644294/Big-tech-must-introduce-age-checks-to-support-UKs-under-16s-social-media-ban

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

RE: https://social.openrightsgroup.org/@openrightsgroup/116753407017940135

Paging Simon Harris and pals.

#MastoDaoine #SocialMedia #ChildRights #DigitalRights #Article19

This petition against the social media ban is taking off https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/757233 #stopkillingtheinternet #socialmedia please do sign and share under the #stopkillinginternet even if it’s a Gov one!

We already restrict our kids access to the internet. No government necessary!

I do agree kids under about 14-15 should be kept far far away from social media and user generated content. But age verification is not the way, parents need to enforce it if they want it, not a state ordered digital ID.

#ageVerification #digitalID #surveilance #kosa #socialMedia

Where Real Online Music Reviews Happen
#musicianresources #MusicianTips #socialnetworking
#SocialMedia https://muz4now.com/2026/where-real-online-music-reviews-happen

U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has announced plans for a social media ban for under-16-year-olds, following in the footsteps of Australia, Canada and Brazil. The embattled leader said: "We’re giving children their childhoods back."

Euronews has the details:
https://flip.it/rfxmq8

#SocialMedia #KeirStarmer #OnlinePrivacy

Dear businesses: If you use X as your primary social media platform, I cannot read what you post without also having an X account. Therefore, I will never see your posts. You’ve also alienated many others who might be interested in what you post.

Almost all of these enshitified, centralized platforms lock you out completely without having an account. Screw that.

The Fediverse is so good that legacy, centralized social media feels like a digital ghetto.

#Fediverse #SocialMedia

Surveillance has harmful effects on cognition and identity - deeper research and social knowledge is needed to foster healthy communities.

#ai #surveillance #surveillancecapitalism #socialmedia #blackposts #darkpatterns #privacy #privacymatters

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Text describes the harmful effects of surveillance on cognition, identity and mental health.

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

184 were active today.

Some accounts, that were active today are
@28kanala (BAQ)
@arrasategoiena (BAQ)
@appgefahren (GER)
@kuketzblog (GER)
@WinFuture (GER)

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

Built by @mho

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

Elon Musk’s role was ‘instrumental’ in the Belfast riots, researchers say.

The newly crowned world’s first trillionaire is once again facing criticism over the violent narratives he amplified on his platform X.

“Musk’s amplification has been instrumental, contributing 64 million views”.

https://mediafaro.org/article/20260613-elon-musks-role-was-instrumental-in-the-belfast-riots-researchers-say?mf_channel=mastodon&action=forward

#Belfast #Riots #Musk #SocialMedia #Politics #FarRight #UK

As the Western world increases mass surveillance, censorship, and authoritarianism, Sri Lanka is doing the right thing and going in the opposite direction.

https://www.dailymirror.lk/breaking-news/Online-Safety-Bill-to-be-repealed-this-month/108-342777

#west #western #westerners #surveillance #censorship #authoritianism #fascism #srilanka #freedom #freedomofspeech #internet #web #www #socialmedia

Cool cool cool. Good times out here I guess... 😒

"When dozens of #Jewish girls emerged from a storm drain in #Nyack, #NewYork, Wednesday after becoming lost on a #school trip, local officials described the episode as a fortunate ending to a potentially dangerous situation.

On #socialmedia, however, the incident quickly drew a slew of #antisemitic comments.

“They can’t help it. Roaches and rats love the sewers,” wrote one #Facebook user on a post by the #Rockland Daily.

“Those tunnels were promised to them 3,000 years ago,” another user wrote, referencing the common online antisemitic phrase ridiculing the Jewish connection to #Israel.

Many of the comments also referenced the 2024 incident at the #Chabad-#Lubavitch movement’s world headquarters in #CrownHeights, #Brooklyn, in which a group from the movement attempted to dig an unauthorized tunnel beneath the building.

“From the tunnels in Brooklyn to the tunnels in nyack! The black coats never disappoint[...]"

https://www.jta.org/2026/06/11/united-states/after-dozens-of-jewish-girls-get-lost-in-ny-creek-tunnel-antisemitic-comments-follow-online

Please take note of the following letter from church leadership. For a copy of the PDF, please email church@bedfordviewmc.co.za

#announcement #SocialMedia

For our visually impaired followers, the letter reads as follows:

IMPORTANT NOTICE

Bedfordview Methodist Church has been made aware of a social media account that appears to represent or be associated with the church.

We wish to clarify that this is not an official Bedfordview Methodist Church platform. Any content published on such an account does not represent the church, its leadership, or its values.

We encourage members and the wider community not to engage with, share, or amplify content from unofficial accounts claiming to represent the church.

For accurate information and official updates, please rely only on the church's recognised communication channels.

Here are links to our official social media platforms:

FB: https://www.facebook.com/bedfordviewmethodistchurch
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bedfordview_methodist_church/
Youth: https://www.instagram.com/bmc_youth_bedfordview/
Mastodon: https://mastodon.africa/@bedfordviewmc

Thank you for your support and understanding.

Issued by the Leadership

Bedfordview Methodist Church

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A letter from Bedfordview Methodist Church leadership, on official stationery, with text as written in the post

RE: https://mastodon.social/@fediversereport/116737751838277621

🔥 Must read. @laurenshof finds words for what it going on and about governments, which dont find words for what is going on.

"The world’s first trillionaire is openly saying that he wants to overthrow a foreign government, in plain text, for all the world to see. And the response has been nothing?"

#Belfast #socialmedia #fediforum #savesocial @hakendran

IFTAS boosted

Connected Places » 🌐 2026-06-12
@fediversereport@mastodon.social

New from me:

After Musk helped create the permission structure for this weeks riots in Belfast, the UK government announced "no change" to its policy on X. This non-response is stranger than it looks: Weber defines the state by its exclusive right to use, threaten, and authorize force, and European states are visibly conceding the latter two. That has direct consequences for a movement that pitches open protocols as the path to European sovereignty.

https://connectedplaces.online/reports/fr166-no-change/

RE: https://mastodon.social/@_elena/116735947449480607

A warning from Elena on W Social & @EUCommission.

Why would an institute like the European Commission ever want to 'rent' a social media account instead of owning their own server is beyond me.
If you're not the owner you do not control your messaging. We cannot verify the validity & authenticity of your message, which is quite important for political institutions I'd say. It can be done correctly, e.g. the Dutch government's social.overheid.nl server.

#Politics #EU #WSocial #SocialMedia

Elena Rossini 🌈 » 🌐 2026-06-12 / 2026-06-12
@_elena@mastodon.social

Dear Fedi friends,

Apologies for another toot about #WSocial but I am genuinely shaking right now.

The @EUCommission and its president Ursula von der Leyen have recently migrated their ATproto (Bluesky) accounts to W Social.

I cannot fathom why they would pick a private enterprise whose leaders didn't even have ATproto accounts 3 months ago... and who are so open to having their users' data mined to train European AI models.

My articles on them:

🔗 : https://blog.elenarossini.com/tag/w-social/

Wow. Just wow.

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a screenshot from clearsky.app that shows that the European Commission's ATproto PDS was migrated to the W Social servers 41 hours ago

Alt...

a screenshot from clearsky.app that shows that Ursula von der Leyen's ATproto PDS was migrated to the W Social servers 21 hours ago

"Billionaire Elon Musk’s Grok AI violated Canada’s privacy laws and, at one point, generated more than 6,000 sexual deepfake images per hour, Canada’s privacy commissioner found.

“The investigation has found that X Corp and xAI violated Canada’s federal private sector privacy law by launching the Grok AI-powered image generation tool without implementing appropriate safeguards at the outset,” privacy commissioner Philippe Dufresne said in a press conference in Ottawa Thursday.

“This lack of protection allowed users to create and share sexualized deepfakes largely targeting women and children,” he added.

Dufresne launched an investigation in January to examine the proliferation of sexualized deepfakes created by Grok and shared on the X social media platform.

“According to researchers, Grok was at one point generating well over 6,000 [sexualized] images per hour,” he said, adding that “millions” of sexual deepfakes were created."

https://globalnews.ca/news/11899687/grok-sexual-deepfake-report/

#Canada #AI #GenerativeAI #Grok #DeepFakes #SocialMedia #Twitter

How and Why to Fight Back Against #SocialMedia Bans

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/06/how-and-why-fight-back-against-social-media-bans

#privacy #AgeVerification #SocialMediaBan

Age verification ...

#privacy #privacymatters #ageverification #socialmedia #surveillance #dataskydd #dataprotection #gdpr #deepstate

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A meme related to age verification on the Internet

" #Russia has effectively outlawed the public expression of #childfree views. #Women now face heavy fines for discussing a wish not to have #children, or even for candid #socialMedia accounts of difficult #birth s or #postpartum #depression...

The Health Ministry, it added, has introduced mandatory questionnaires for #teenagers; a #girl who indicates she does not currently want children is referred to a psychologist for 'corrective' #counseling"

https://united24media.com/world/russia-revives-soviet-era-controls-to-police-womens-bodies-and-futures-19654

#womensRights

Online harms bill to include #SocialMediaBan for children under 16: Source

https://globalnews.ca/news/11894610/canada-social-media-ban-teens-online-harms-bill/

#Canada #politics #SocialMedia #AgeVerification #privacy #cybersecurity

How and Why to Fight Back Against #SocialMedia Bans

Several U.S. states are pushing to ban young people from social media entirely. This marks the latest wave of #censorship bills masquerading as “children’s online safety” measures, with states like #Massachusetts , #Idaho , #Minnesota , #NorthCarolina , #SouthCarolina , #Illinois , and EFF’s home state of #California leading the charge.

Just a few years ago, lawmakers supporting age-gating laws insisted their efforts were narrowly targeted at limiting young people’s access to adult content.
#agegating #ageverification
#privacy

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/06/how-and-why-fight-back-against-social-media-bans

Polymarket's chief marketing officer, Matthew Modabber, has been using his personal PayPal account to send money to influencers including far-right creator Nick Shirley, anti-trans Fox News contributor Riley Gaines, and progressive commentator Brian Krassenstein. Those creators have gone on to promote Polymarket, without disclaimers to indicate they've been paid. Here's more from @politico.

https://flip.it/EoMkkJ

#Polymarket #SocialMedia #ContentCreators

Mainstream Media is Already Lying About Age Verification

It took one day for the word to get out about a forthcoming age verification bill and the lies are already being published.

https://www.freezenet.ca/mainstream-media-is-already-lying-about-age-verification/

#Censorship #News #Privacy #Security #AgeVerification #Canada #journalism #Media #NationalPost #SocialMedia

#TashaKheiriddin: Carney should be applauded for social media ban
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/tasha-kheiriddin-carney-should-be-applauded-for-social-media-ban

"I believe in personal freedom but also in science, and in protecting kids from harm. And every day, we see more evidence of the damage social media does to children." She has links in the article...

1/3

#SocialMedia
#NationalPost

My own view, is that we should wait a year or two to see how Australia's project of banning children from #SocialMedia works out.

Social media does some good, including for children. It has negative effects too, including for adults. It's tricky to see how we could ban it only for certain groups.

There's no need to rush into drastic measures.

I do completely agree with the last part of the column: "parents could act on their own and buy their kids no phone, or just a “dumbphone”".

3/3

A Canadian government source has told @globeandmail that a social media ban for children under 16 is on its way. It reportedly includes measures on AI chatbots as well as provisions that would allow kids back on social media if platforms make adjustments according to a new digital regulator's standards. Broadly, what do you think of social-media bans for youngsters? Tell us your nuanced views in the comments if you have them. [Gift link]

https://flip.it/RTLkGt

#Canada #Technology #SocialMedia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CA_hmtuAPTY

[copypasta]

Did the Algorithm Change Your Decisions? | How Your Feed Was Engineered

Right now, somewhere on the internet, a video is being uploaded.

Within seconds, a system that no one elected, no one audits, and no one fully understands decides whether anyone else will ever see it.

Sometimes, it decides no one should.

And that’s the end of it.

In this episode of Plain Meaning, we examine how the modern internet quietly transformed from a system designed to deliver information… into one that decides what information exists for you at all.

It didn’t happen all at once.

It happened step by step.

Feed by feed.

Platform by platform.

Until nearly everything you see online is filtered through a machine making decisions on your behalf.

We trace how:

• Social media moved from profile pages to infinite feeds
• Facebook’s News Feed shifted from chronological to algorithmic control
• Advertising—not user experience—drove the need to control timing and visibility
• “EdgeRank” introduced the first large-scale automated editorial system
• By 2016, every major platform—Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube—had adopted algorithmic feeds
• Recommendation systems replaced direct navigation across the entire internet

But this isn’t just a story about technology.

It’s a story about incentives.

Because once platforms controlled what you saw, they didn’t just control engagement.

They controlled attention.

And once attention became the product, the system began optimizing for something far more powerful than clicks.

We examine what happened next:

• How foreign influence operations exploited algorithmic feeds during the 2016 election
• The role of Cambridge Analytica and its parent Strategic Communication Laboratories in psychological targeting
• The scale and strategy of Russia’s Internet Research Agency
• How fake local news accounts built trust before deploying disinformation
• Why most influence content wasn’t political—but divisive
• How algorithms amplified all of it without distinction

And then we go further.

Because 2016 wasn’t the end of the story.

It was the beginning.

We look at how:

• Algorithmic systems shape not just what you see—but how you think
• Platforms reward emotional, extreme, and addictive content
• Foreign-owned platforms introduce new geopolitical risks
• Systems like ByteDance’s TikTok operate differently across countries
• The same algorithmic architecture can produce completely different realities depending on its objectives

This episode is not about one platform.

It’s not about one political party.

And it’s not about one country.

It’s about the system itself.

Because the algorithm isn’t just recommending content.

It’s acting as an editor.

And most of the time, you don’t even realize it’s there.

By the end of this video, the next time you open a social media app, you’ll understand:

Why your attention isn’t fully yours.

Why the world you see isn’t necessarily the world that exists.

And how to recognize when a machine—not you—is deciding what matters.

#Algorithm #SocialMedia #DigitalMedia #YouTube #Facebook #Instagram #NewsFeed #TikTok #Twitter

[/copypasta]