Counter online censorship and digital surveillance. Subscribe today 👇
- Tweets 10,051
- Following 1,304
- Followers 52,930
- Likes 5,681
Florida is now the most aggressive state in America when it comes to pushing digital ID. It already bans social media for anyone under 14, and a federal appeals court just let that law take effect.
In September, the Attorney General asked a court to force age verification on ChatGPT.
In October, he went after Meta for the same thing.
Then Discord was sued for not scanning private messages thoroughly enough.
Now he wants age checks built into your phone’s operating system and the app store itself.
Every app download in the state would start with proving how old you are. He promises the checks will be privacy-protective. He has not said how.
Discord’s last experiment with ID checks leaked over 70,000 government IDs.
41
159
406
5,400
Albo on November 19th
The 90s is back...
This weekend, the Australian media’s response to a man charged with causing serious injury to an MP is to suggest a culprit is…Grand Theft Auto.
Just based on the fact that he played one of the most popular games ever made.
The same game hundreds of millions of people have played without running anyone over.
This is the worst form of journalism: pure insinuation manufactured to call for control of media and entertainment.
Made with AI
2
9
141
1,925
The 90s is back...
This weekend, the Australian media’s response to a man charged with causing serious injury to an MP is to suggest a culprit is…Grand Theft Auto.
Just based on the fact that he played one of the most popular games ever made.
The same game hundreds of millions of people have played without running anyone over.
This is the worst form of journalism: pure insinuation manufactured to call for control of media and entertainment.
10
62
233
6,746
British Government energy decisions are now sensitive content. Minors must prove their age to read about them.
"Age verification" is a reckless system that censors large swathes of the internet.
Online safety update: you can’t find out about the Jackdaw decision if you’re under the age of 18
9
255
1,025
9,545
Reclaim The Net retweeted
They're so sensitive to public criticism they can't even allow comments on a post talking about switching over to standard time.
27
161
2,890
26,412
Be a small town politician.
A child puts bunny ears on your photo and comments on how you dress.
So mad you report it to the police.
Cops show up at the child's house.
Causes international outrage.
Now the bunny pic is in the New York Post.
And your Google results are just rabbit ears forever.
292
5,268
50,816
763,402
France’s interior minister said this week that social networks are becoming a "real problem" and that the government has the option of suspending them. Within a day, the French had made bitchat the number one social networking app in the country.
Bitchat runs over Bluetooth, hops from phone to phone, and needs no internet, no phone number, and no central server. You can’t switch it off at the network level because it doesn’t use the network.
reclaimthenet.org/france-bit…
9
80
206
3,754
Better idea: pro-censorship politicians just stay off social media permanently instead of trying to restrict it for everyone else.
Tomorrow, I’ll be unplugged from my social media channels.
I’m doing it for Mac Holdsworth.
For every Australian child who’s encountered online harm.
And for the parents who deserve a safer digital world for their kids.
5
91
546
6,225
UK speech regulator Ofcom wants the power to block websites in the UK before it has finished investigating them. Its chief executive compared this to putting a prisoner on remand. The website is the prisoner, and nobody has proved it did anything.
The regulator also wants a lower bar for court orders that cut sites off from payment providers, ad networks, search engines and ISPs. It wants “proactive technology” to detect illegal content too. That category includes foreign interference, which UK law says can be committed by presenting information misleadingly even when all of it is true.
Ofcom admits it can’t collect most of the fines it hands to companies abroad. Its answer is more power.
Then MPs got to VPNs. The committee chair worried teenagers would dodge the under-16 social media ban. Dawes said there isn’t much anyone can do “short of taking action against VPNs” and called that a decision for the government.
reclaimthenet.org/uk-ofcom-c…
40
158
566
58,550
New Mexico just won $25 billion from Meta, and most coverage will call it a privacy case.
(Facebook told users they were in control while handing their data to partners, then redefined “misuse” so it never had to tell 2,000 apps’ worth of victims.)
The rest of the verdict is something else.
The jury also punished Meta for saying it didn’t profit from “misinformation” and “hate speech,” which turns the case into a fine for not deleting posts fast enough.
The math is worse. The state multiplied each statement by every Facebook user or resident in New Mexico, and nobody had to prove a single person saw it, relied on it, or was harmed. When every unremoved post can become a per-head penalty, platforms will learn one lesson, and it is to delete more.
reclaimthenet.org/meta-new-m…
3
31
91
2,038
Australia’s Communications Minister Anika Wells is lobbying governments around the world to adopt her Digital Duty of Care bill as a model.
It isn’t law yet, and it may not survive the Senate. The 90-page text never mentions free speech once, lets regulators run fake “sock puppet” accounts, and tells platforms the cost of compliance must not be taken into account.
Fines reach A$109.2 million. To keep under-16s away from feeds and likes, every user will have to prove their age first.
Meanwhile, her existing under-16 ban is so widely ignored that she is preparing to sue five platforms over it. Exporting a disgraced law that doesn’t even work at home is a bold sales strategy.
reclaimthenet.org/australia-…
11
82
197
3,792
France had riots, so a minister summoned TikTok, Meta, YouTube, X, Snapchat and Discord to an emergency meeting.
They left promising to remove more content, act faster on livestreams and hand user data to police.
Gabriel Attal wants the power to block platforms during unrest, despite France’s top court ruling his TikTok ban in New Caledonia illegal.
There are no new laws or court orders. The government just needed a crisis to implement its agenda.
reclaimthenet.org/france-pre…
15
113
306
6,971
The UK speech regulator's chief executive, Dame Melanie Dawes, told MPs this week that the regulator won’t be able to recover every Online Safety Act fine. Nine of the eleven fines it has issued remain unpaid.
4chan was fined ÂŁ520,000 plus ÂŁ800 a day, and its lawyer replied with a picture of an AI-generated hamster. When Ofcom wrote again, he sent another hamster.
In July, Ofcom closed a case against an American forum it had fined ÂŁ950,000 because it had run out of legal routes. Then it asked the government for more powers.
In the same hearing, Dawes said the UK’s under-16 social media ban will be “much more draconian” for Meta than its US settlement. Those were her words.
The only way to keep under-16s off a platform is to check the age of every adult on it.
reclaimthenet.org/ofcom-stru…
15
70
257
9,062
Georgia can now make every social media user in the state verify their age before they post a single word. Parents of anyone under 16 may have to hand over their government ID or a payment card number to approve the account.
The Eleventh Circuit never ruled that the law is constitutional. It ruled that NetChoice brought the wrong kind of challenge and didn’t list enough of its own members.
That procedural slip is now enough to put an ID check in front of millions of adults. The law was sold as protecting kids, but in practice it ends anonymous accounts for everyone in Georgia.
28
177
406
8,750
Gabriel Attal, France’s former Prime Minister and Macron’s Renaissance party candidate for the 2027 presidency, blocked TikTok across New Caledonia in 2024.
France’s highest administrative court later ruled the block illegal because it was total and open-ended.
Now he wants the power back, this time described as “temporary” and “targeted,” aimed at whatever territory the riots happen to be in.
He also wants facial recognition and AI run on surveillance footage and on videos people post online, so that within 48 hours of unrest starting, suspects are being found at their homes.
He says the goal is to “set an example.”
6
46
144
3,025
Australia banned under-16s from social media last December. A University of Chicago study found about 73% of the 14 and 15 year olds it covers are still on the banned apps. The platforms have already closed more than 5 million accounts and set AI loose on people’s posts looking for mentions of birthdays and school grades. It didn’t work.
So the government doubled the maximum fine to A$109.2 million. That didn’t work either.
Now it’s preparing to sue Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube. The eSafety Commissioner has new powers to summon current and former employees and question them under oath. Anyone who refuses to answer faces 12 months in prison.
Nobody in charge has stopped to ask whether the law is the problem. Kids keep getting around it, and the only way to close the gaps is to check the age of every Australian, adults included. That was always where this was heading.
79
355
1,205
44,075