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EU Rules Would Ban Kids Under 16 From Social Media (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader sends word of new data protection rules up for vote in the European Parliament which would make it illegal for companies to handle the data of children aged 15 and younger. Currently, such data processing is prohibited only for kids 12 and under. This would affect European teenagers' ability to use Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and many other social media services. This amendment has been opposed not only by the tech companies involved, but by many child safety experts as well:
Janice Richardson, former coordinator of European Safer Internet network, and consultant to the United Nations' information technology body, the ITU and the Council of Europe said: "Moving the age from 13 to 16 represents a major shift in policy on which it seems there has been no public consultation. "We feel that moving the requirement for parental consent from age 13 to age 16 would deprive young people of educational and social opportunities in a number of ways, yet would provide no more (and likely even less) protection." Larry Magid, chief executive of ConnectSafely.org, said: "It will have the impact of banning a very significant percentage of youth and especially the most vulnerable ones who will be unable to obtain parental consent for a variety of reasons."
The actual rules are that if the member states don't set an age limit, the default is 16. Individual member states thus can have lower age limits.
You're assuming that's something they actually need. They don't. People in general survived just fine before social media became a thing. It's not a necessity.
The ban is about third party companies (adults) handling data of people under 16. So if a Social Media product was P2P, or e2e encryption and was unable to snoop on it's users, then it wouldn't be an issue. I'd like to see this extended to all people under 120.
Yes, because gay kids seeking support online is valueless, right?
They still can seek support online, also without parental supervision. This ruling only states that Facebook, or any other company or organisation, cannot require them to divulge their personal details (at least not without parental consent). And yes, that does sound like a good thing to me, especially for kids that may be insecure about their sexuality.
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The easy and obvious solution would be to not require fucking logins for everything. You should know. You posted anonymously.
Yes, as usual this is just more anti-EU tosh from Slashdot.
The EU isn't banning kids from doing anything, it's banning companies from harvesting personal data on kids who aren't old enough to give consent to have their data harvested.
The fact that means social media would have to stop providing the service to kids under 16 is a function of the fact sites like Facebook insist that they must collect personal information. Kids will still be perfectly well allowed to use such sites if they can use anonymous aliases, and if their data isn't harvested to build a profile on them. They can still advertise to them, it just can't be based on personal data.
The fault here is entirely on social media companies for insisting that they should be able to collect every bit of personal data about every person no matter what. As you say this law actually protects kids not old enough to give consent more than anything - a social media site requiring personal data is a far greater risk to a kid than a site that allows them to provide no personal data because there's always a risk that that personal data will be leaked.
This is actually less restrictive than America's COPPA which has been active for 15 years now, the only areas it's more strict is in the fact it uses an age of consent of 16 instead of 13.
I don't see the problem here, but as usual big tech abuses it's hefty media presence to play the victim and blame the EU again.