this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2026
198 points (99.5% liked)
Technology
81078 readers
4048 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
And your point is? Creating an id check doesn’t increase the potential risk, the government already has all the data.
My question is, why do you want underage citizens to use social media platforms that a) have been proven to be damaging to their psychological health b) farm their data and store it far from our control c) don’t add anything to our economy.
Care to explain? Because it really fascinates me.
I don't want them to use it. I agree with all your points.
I strongly disagree that mandatory ID on the net is the solution to this.
It also fascinates me that you'd think putting such a tool, with all the trouble it could cause if our countries stop being democracies, in the hands of government as a purported solution to children being on social media. That's throwing out the baby with the bathwater
The tool already exists and is used for serious stuff (dealing with the treasury department, police, banks, bond auctions), the only difference is you would be forcing mainstream social media platforms to get an OK from that government’s platform.
Sorry but if you can’t trust your country’s system as a legitimate large scale shield then there is no possible defense against multinational conglomerates and at that point you’re better off just going bunker prepper, I don’t really know what your point is. Democracy doesn’t stick in low trust societies.
There are other ways to ban social media for minors that don't go through full fledged online IDs for everything. But you seem to want to ignore that, it's a false dichotomy.
Banning social media for minors (or better yet, opaque algorithmic feeds for everyone) = Good.
Trying to achieve that by giving overreaching powers to a government, that can be used as a tool of oppression when democracy wavers = very bad.
As for low trust societies, mate, I've been gassed, beaten up and shot at with rubber bullets by riot police in Spain, for the egregy crime of peacefully protesting. It's a country where the memory of the dictatorship, and it's power structures, are still very much alive. Francoism never fully left
Creating an id check does increase the risk, it would be an additional attack surface.
Social media may be dangerous, but I feel it should be supervised by the parents and that the government should provide the parents with good tools to supervise them. I do not like the idea of having websites being able to verify my identity, if it were to come to that I'd hope it would be for something more reasonable than protecting children from social media. I may prefer outlawing social media altogether at that point.
The id check already exists, they’re just planning on forcing social media companies to go through it.
In an ideal world social media would be decentralized and free of commercial purposes, just a public square. The stuff these people offer wrapped in social media is highly addictive, that’s basically where all the internal R&D goes.
My point is, I really doubt banning social media is democratically viable. It would get revoked shortly. Best thing we can realistically do is put in place the usual barriers and limitations we have developed over the years for other similar products and services: age, disclaimers, taxation, fines, and so on.