Tag: think of the children

Meta raises specter of shutting down service to New Mexico in legal clash over child safety

Meta is raising the prospect of shutting down its social media services in New Mexico in response to a push by state prosecutors for fundamental changes to the company’s platforms, including Instagram, to protect the mental health and safety of children.

The possibility emerged amid legal gamesmanship in the runup to a bench trial next week on allegations that Meta poses a public nuisance. It’s the second phase of a case that already resulted in $375 million in civil penalties on a jury’s determination that Meta knowingly harmed children’s mental health and concealed what it knew about child sexual exploitation on its platforms.

Prosecutors are asking the court to order a series of changes to child accounts on social media aimed at reining in addictive features, improving age verification and preventing child sexual exploitation through default privacy settings and closer oversight.

Meta executives have emphasized that the company continuously improves child safety and addresses compulsive social media use. The company says its being singled out among hundreds of apps that teens use.

In a court filing unsealed Thursday, Meta said it was unfeasible for the company to meet a proposed requirement for 99% accuracy in verifying that child users are at least 13 years old, among other demands.

“As a practical matter, this requirement effectively requires Meta to shut down its services — for all users in the state — or else comply with impossible obligations,” Meta said in the filing.

Such a shutdown across a population of 2.1 million residents in New Mexico could silence personal communication on Meta’s immensely popular platforms, which also include Facebook and WhatsApp, and also impact their use for commercial advertising.

By withdrawing from New Mexico, Meta would satisfy any concerns about harm to children, but the message could appear intentionally hostile and might lead to unintended consequences, said Eric Goldman, codirector of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University School of Law in California.

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Australia’s Under-16 Social Media Ban Fails: 73% Ignore It

Australia’s under-16 social media ban has been in force for four months and the headline finding from a new working paper out of the University of Chicago’s Becker Friedman Institute is that around three-quarters of the teenagers it targets are ignoring it.

The paper, “Why Bans Fail: Tipping Points and Australia’s Social Media Ban,” surveyed 746 Australian teenagers between March and April 2026. Among 14- and 15-year-olds covered by the ban, only about 27% are complying. The other 73% are still using Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, X, YouTube, Reddit, Twitch, Threads, or Kick, the ten platforms the law designates off-limits to anyone under 16.

The Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2024 took effect on 10 December 2025, making Australia the first country to outlaw teenage social media accounts at the federal level.

More than a dozen other countries and numerous US states are now considering versions of the same approach. The Australian model places enforcement entirely on the platforms, which face penalties of up to A$49.5 million for failing to take “reasonable steps” to keep under-16s off their services. Teenagers themselves face no legal sanction.

The teenagers know this. According to the survey, only 22% of banned teens believe they personally face any consequence for using a banned platform.

47% correctly understand that the consequences fall on the companies. Awareness of the ban is near-universal at 86%. The teens aren’t confused about what the law says. They’ve simply concluded, accurately, that the law isn’t aimed at them.

Getting around the restrictions takes minimal effort. 75% of banned teens describe circumvention as easy or very easy.

The most common workarounds are the obvious ones: lying about age on verification prompts (57%), entering false birthdates at sign-up (44%), borrowing a parent’s or older sibling’s account (42%), and routing through a VPN (30%). 64% of 14- and 15-year-olds in the survey have not had their accounts removed at all. The platforms haven’t found them. A quarter of non-compliers report that a parent, older sibling, or other adult helped them sign up for a new account after a previous one was deactivated.

The researchers also asked teenagers a more interesting question. What share of your peers would need to stop using social media before you stopped? The average answer was 69%. Some teens placed the threshold even higher. The result holds across every way the question was framed, whether the reference group was age peers, classmates, the wider school, or “a typical person your age.” The numbers came out between 62% and 69% in every variant.

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Senate Panel Backs GUARD Act, AI Age Verification Bill

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted 22-0 on Thursday to advance the GUARD Act, a bill that would require AI chatbot companies to verify the age of every American who wants to use them.

The legislation, sponsored by Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, sailed through committee with a tweet from its author celebrating the outcome.

“My bill to stop AI from telling kids to kill themselves just passed out of committee UNANIMOUSLY,” Hawley wrote on X. “No amount of profit justifies the DESTRUCTION of our children. Time to bring this bill to the Senate floor.”

As usual, the framing is about children but the result is age verification/digital ID for everyone.

Under the bill’s text, a “reasonable age verification measure” cannot mean a checkbox or a self-entered birth date. It cannot rely on whether a user shares an IP address or hardware identifier with someone already verified as an adult.

We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.

What it can mean, the legislation makes clear, is a government ID upload, a facial scan, or a financial record tied to your legal name. Every user of every covered chatbot would need to hand one of those over before being allowed in.

The bill defines an “artificial intelligence chatbot” as any service that “produces new expressive content or responses not fully predetermined by the developer or operator” and “accepts open-ended natural-language or multimodal user input.”

That language reaches well beyond the companion apps the press conference focused on. It covers customer service bots, search assistants powered by AI, homework helpers, and the general-purpose tools millions of adults already use without proving who they are.

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UK Gov’t Promises More Social Media “Restrictions”

While embattled PM Sir Keir Starmer takes a pointless grilling on the even more pointless existence of Peter Mandelson, other members of his cabinet were busily paving the way for the next construction phase of our increasingly dystopian society.

Speaking to Sky News earlier today, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson promised…

“more action to keep young people safe online, including around social media”.

Which is delightfully vague.

Education Minister Olivia Bailey kept her cards similarly close to her chest, whilst trying to sound forceful:

“It is a question of how we act, not if, but to put this beyond any doubt, we are placing a clear statutory requirement that the Secretary of State ‘must’, rather than ‘may’, act […] We are clear that under any outcome, we will impose some form of age or functionality restrictions for children under 16.”

So we know they’re going to do something…we just don’t know what. And, if I had to guess, neither do Bridget or Olivia. Neither seems like the kind of people that get kept in the loop, and that flavour of waffle is usually the reserve of those who have no idea what’s going on.

Many commenters – both for and against – have interpreted this promised action as an Australia-style social media ban for children. Certainly, that’s what Conservative MP Laura Trott seems to think in her champagne-popping tweet:

…but the signs might be pointing in another direction.

After all, the Social Media Ban is practically on the books. It was introduced as an amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools bill, and has already passed the Lords four times. It could have become law already, but Ministers and MPs have repeatedly overturned the vote, declaring the need for further consultation.

Then, earlier today and coinciding with this government pledge to take action, the Independent published a report that suggests Australia’s social media ban doesn’t work.

Two thirds of Australian teens still using social media despite under-16s ban

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Louisiana Lawmakers Pass Bill To Send People To Jail For Smoking Marijuana Near College Campuses

Louisiana lawmakers have approved a bill that threatens to send people to jail for up to one year if they smoke marijuana within 2,000 feet of a school property—including a college campus.

The legislation from Rep. Gabe Firment (R) was passed by the House of Representatives in a 59-34 vote last week.

HB 568, which now heads to the Senate for consideration, applies to people who violate drug laws “while smoking, vaping, or otherwise abusing such controlled dangerous substance while on any property used for school purposes by any school, within two thousand feet of any such property, or while on a school bus.”

The pro-legalization Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) said the “incredibly draconian penalties” in the legislation threaten to reverse cannabis reform progress made in the state in recent years.

In 2021, then-Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) signed a bill decriminalizing marijuana by removing the threat of jail time for possessing up to 14 grams.

“HB 568 would make cannabis use a felony in huge swaths of urban and suburban areas. Two thousand feet is a little over ⅓ of a mile,” Kevin Caldwell, MPP”s Southeast legislative manager, said in an action alert to supporters. “In addition to mandatory incarceration of up to a year, the bill includes a fine of up to $1,000.”

“This is an attempt to bring back the draconian penalties that Louisiana was infamous for in decades past. This bill seeks to undo years of hard work by advocates for ending jail time for minor cannabis offenses,” he said. “Under this legislation, a student could be incarcerated for a year for consuming in a college dorm room.”

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Federal Judge Blocks Arkansas Social Media Law on First Amendment Grounds

A federal judge blocked Arkansas Act 900 today, one day before the law was set to take effect, handing the state its second courtroom defeat in the same fight over who gets to decide what people can see and say online.

We obtained a copy of the order for you here.

US District Judge Timothy L. Brooks granted NetChoice’s motion for a preliminary injunction, freezing enforcement of a statute that would have imposed strict liability on social media platforms for a growing list of “addictive practices,” forced default settings on anyone in Arkansas the platform couldn’t verify as an adult, and required platforms to build parental dashboards tracking minors who don’t even have accounts. The ruling came in the Western District of Arkansas, Fayetteville Division.

The First Amendment problem is obvious. The government wrote a law that restricts what platforms can say, who they can say it to, and when. It restricts what minors can see and post. Then it backed those restrictions with $10,000-per-day fines and rules so vague that platforms cannot tell in advance what will trigger liability. Each of those features is a constitutional problem on its own. Act 900 combined all of them.

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3 Disasters That Legal Weed Didn’t Unleash—Despite the Forecasts

Happy 4/20 to the millions of people across the country who celebrate, including much of the Reason staff. As someone who’s never been interested in pot—save for one summer in college—or drugs in general, I’ve always found the day a bit strange. But as I’ve grown older (and more libertarian), I’ve come to appreciate it as a celebration of personal freedom. 

I’m not the only one who has changed his mind. In 2025, 64 percent of Americans thought marijuana should be legal for both medical and recreational use (up from 31 percent in 2000), according to Gallup. Meanwhile, 40 states have legalized medical use of cannabis, including 24 that also allow recreational use. Late last year, President Donald Trump ordered that marijuana be reclassified from Schedule I to Schedule III under the Controlled Substances Act, putting it in the same category as prescription drugs such as “ketamine, anabolic steroids, and Tylenol with codeine,” explains Reason‘s Jacob Sullum.

Prohibitionists warned that legalization would have dire consequences. Here are some of their predictions that have yet to come true. 

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US Bill Mandates On-Device Age Verification

A bill introduced by Representative Josh Gottheimer in the House on April 13 would require Apple, Google, and every other operating system vendor to verify the age of anyone setting up a new device in the United States.

The legislation, H.R. 8250, travels under the friendlier name of the Parents Decide Act, and it is among the most aggressive surveillance mandates ever proposed for American consumer technology.

We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.

The press releases describing it lead with children. The text describes something much larger. To confirm a child is under 18, the system has to identify everyone else, too, and the bill builds the infrastructure to do exactly that.

This is child safety as a delivery mechanism for mass identification. The pattern is familiar by now. A genuine harm gets named, a sympathetic victim gets centered, and the solution proposed reshapes the digital lives of three hundred million people who were not the problem.

The Parents Decide Act follows that template with unusual precision. It takes the real suffering of real children and uses it to justify building a national identity layer underneath every device sold in the country, administered by two private companies, with the details to be filled in later.

The mandate sits in Section 2(a)(1), which obligates providers to “Require any user of the operating system to provide the date of birth of the user” both to set up an account and to use the device at all. Adults included.

There is no carve-out for grown users, no opt-out for people who simply want to turn on a phone without handing a date of birth to Apple or Google first.

The age check is the entry fee for owning a computer. What happens to that data afterward gets handed off to the Federal Trade Commission to sort out later. A federal bill that mandates identification as a condition of using a general-purpose computing device represents something the United States has not previously had, which is a national ID requirement for turning on a device.

Gottheimer framed the proposal at a Ridgewood news conference on April 2, standing outside the local YMCA with a coalition of allies. “With each passing day, the internet is becoming more and more treacherous for our kids. We’re not just talking about social media anymore — we’re talking about artificial intelligence and platforms that are shaping how our kids think, feel, and act, often without any real guardrails,” he said.

His diagnosis of the current system is accurate enough. “Children are able to bypass age requirements by entering a different birthday and accessing apps without any real verification. Kids can bypass age requirements by simply typing in a different birthday. That’s it. That’s the system,” he said.

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US Bill Mandates On-Device Age Verification

A bill introduced by Representative Josh Gottheimer in the House on April 13 would require Apple, Google, and every other operating system vendor to verify the age of anyone setting up a new device in the United States.

The legislation, H.R. 8250, travels under the friendlier name of the Parents Decide Act, and it is among the most aggressive surveillance mandates ever proposed for American consumer technology.

We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.

The press releases describing it lead with children. The text describes something much larger. To confirm a child is under 18, the system has to identify everyone else, too, and the bill builds the infrastructure to do exactly that.

This is child safety as a delivery mechanism for mass identification. The pattern is familiar by now. A genuine harm gets named, a sympathetic victim gets centered, and the solution proposed reshapes the digital lives of three hundred million people who were not the problem.

The Parents Decide Act follows that template with unusual precision. It takes the real suffering of real children and uses it to justify building a national identity layer underneath every device sold in the country, administered by two private companies, with the details to be filled in later.

The mandate sits in Section 2(a)(1), which obligates providers to “Require any user of the operating system to provide the date of birth of the user” both to set up an account and to use the device at all. Adults included.

There is no carve-out for grown users, no opt-out for people who simply want to turn on a phone without handing a date of birth to Apple or Google first.

The age check is the entry fee for owning a computer. What happens to that data afterward gets handed off to the Federal Trade Commission to sort out later. A federal bill that mandates identification as a condition of using a general-purpose computing device represents something the United States has not previously had, which is a national ID requirement for turning on a device.

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Xbox Now Wants Your Face to Let You Play Games You Already Own in Singapore

Singapore gamers who bought and downloaded Xbox titles years ago are now being told they need to prove they’re adults before they can keep playing them.

Microsoft has started rolling out identity verification requirements across its Xbox and Microsoft Store platforms in Singapore, demanding face scans, government ID uploads, or authentication through the country’s national digital identity system, Singpass.

The price of accessing games you already own is now a biometric selfie or a copy of your passport.

The trigger is Singapore’s Online Safety Code of Practice for App Distribution Services, a regulation from the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) that took effect on April 1, 2026.

The rule requires app stores to prevent anyone estimated to be under 18 from downloading apps rated for adults, including dating services and content with sexual material. Five storefronts are covered: Apple’s App Store, Google Play, Samsung Galaxy Store, Huawei AppGallery, and Microsoft Store (which includes Xbox).

Each company has chosen its own methods for compliance. The methods vary, but they all share one thing in common: they collect sensitive personal data that didn’t exist in the platform’s records before this regulation.

Microsoft announced its approach on March 17, 2026, framing the verification as optional, while making it mandatory for anyone who wants full access.

“Microsoft users in Singapore will have multiple options to complete age assurance for our stores, giving people flexibility while prioritising privacy,” the company wrote, listing those options as Singpass verification, “secure facial age estimation using a selfie,” or uploading “an official government ID such as a national ID, driver’s license, passport, or residence permit.”

The company describes this as a one-time process. What it doesn’t describe is who processes the data, how long it exists in transit, or what happens if the system holding it gets breached.

Discord learned this lesson last year when its own partner leaked user data. The company that promises to delete your face scan still has to receive it first.

Singapore residents have started receiving emails from Xbox notifying them about the verification requirement, prompting confusion and concern.

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