monk

Maybe I am naive, but is Starmer going to ban VPNs too?

🚨 NEW: Under-16s in the UK will be banned from the following 10 social media apps TikTok YouTube Snapchat Instagram X Reddit Facebook Twitch Kick Threads

Other parents: “Thank God Keir Starmer has banned social media and YouTube for under-16s. Best thing he’s ever done.” Me, fully awake: “Don’t worry kids, I’ve got the VPN ready.” My children belong to me. Not the state. And that is non-negotiable.

Sixteen Year Olds Get the Vote. They Do Not Get X. Today Keir Starmer announced a ban on under-16s using ten social media platforms. TikTok, Instagram, Threads, Facebook, X, YouTube, Snapchat, Reddit, Twitch and Kick. Bluesky is not on the list. Neither is Discord. This matters because of what we know about both platforms, and because of what Australia did about one of them. Bluesky has publicly acknowledged a "predictable uptick" in child sexual abuse material as its user base grew, serious enough that it partnered with the Internet Watch Foundation to deal with it. Discord was the subject of an NBC News investigation that found hundreds of active servers being used to groom and exploit children, a finding its own chief executive called "horrifying." The Australian government, the model Britain says it is following, agreed with that assessment of Bluesky. It was added to the restricted list there in November 2025, with the same minimum age of 16 that applies to the rest of the ban. The UK's preliminary list does not include it. This is not a case of Britain simply replicating that approach. The policy has been described as "Australian-style" and "Australia-plus," going further on curfews and chatbot restrictions than the original. On the one platform with a documented child safety problem that the original restricted, Britain has chosen to diverge. That is not an oversight in a policy carefully benchmarked against another country's model. It is a choice. X, meanwhile, made the list. The government itself uses X. So do the Green Party, the Liberal Democrats and Your Party. None of them are leaving the platform, yet figures from all four have called for tighter restrictions on it or for it to be banned outright. What changed is not who uses the platform but what gets said there and who says it. Footage of the Belfast stabbing first spread on X to millions of people within an hour of it happening. The government's record on immigration, asylum and policing is challenged there daily, by people it cannot easily silence. Bluesky, by contrast, has become known as a space where that kind of challenge is rare. The platforms are not being separated by risk to children. They are being separated by how comfortable the political class is with what gets said on each. A government can claim this is coincidence once. The pattern across this entire policy says otherwise. Yesterday it emerged the announcement had been brought forward by weeks. Ian Russell, Molly Russell's own father, could identify no reason for that beyond the Makerfield by-election. Today it emerges the platform list does not track the evidence of harm, even when that evidence comes from the government's own template. Reem Ibrahim of the Reason Foundation has already asked the obvious question. Is this overt political censorship. Sources tell the Guardian the government may face judicial review over precisely this inconsistency. Then there is the contradiction nobody in government has addressed. Starmer has discussed extending the vote to sixteen and seventeen year olds, on the basis that they are mature enough to weigh arguments and choose a government. The logic of this ban is that the same sixteen year olds cannot be trusted to read X without the state intervening on their behalf. A government that believes both of these things at once does not have a coherent theory of childhood. It has a theory of which platforms it would prefer young voters not to encounter before an election. The timing was political. The platform list, sparing on its own template's terms the platform that most deserved scrutiny, is harder still to explain. This was never only about Molly Russell and child safety. It is about who gets to talk to whom, and when, in the run-up to an election this government is increasingly afraid of losing. "Bluesky has publicly acknowledged a "predictable uptick" in child sexual abuse material as its user base grew"

"You're just going to have to bear with me on this..." Technology Secretary Liz Kendall promises to come back with a solution to the social media ban's VPN get-around.

According to this Labour Government 16 and 17 year olds are mature enough to vote, but not to serve on a jury. That is an "adult duty" apparently. They are old enough to vote, but are now subject to a government-mandated social media curfew at 8.30pm. The only consistent thing about Labour's votes at 16 policy is the blatant party political self interest.

Some tricky conversations this evening about the impending social media ban. ‘I don’t even know who this government guy is’ ‘Keir Starmer’ ‘Keir Starmer, what does that mean’