instead of Orwellian age-appropriate protections, if you want to protect children you could start by banning and sanctioning games that push minors into gambling and child labour such as the well known Roblox: youtube.com/watch?v=_gXlauRB1E…

Or by realising that big techs put children into their ecosystem starting by the very schools, making it way harder for children to leave such ecosystems as they grow up

Investigation: How Roblox Is Exploiting Young Game Developers

With Roblox Corporation now being valued at more than $45 billion, we ask whether the kids making the vast majority of its content are being taken advantage ...

^YouTube

"The DSA requires platforms accessible to minors to maintain a high level of privacy, safety and security."

I have a better idea. What if you require privacy, safety and security for *all* platforms? That way you also don't have to breach it yourself with age verification.

#NoAgeVerificationRequired #EULaw #MyProtectedCharacteristics

#LookITUp

🧙⚕️🤖🤖⚕️🧙 | " title=""/>​🦹​🦄​​🦹" title=""/>

#DigitalServicesAct #BeingRight #SuperAwesome

>Age-appropriate protections

This sounds way too much like "we know tobacco products are designed to be more addictive than necessary, so we're banning their sale from under 18 year olds".

Please consider that everyone wants a safe environment, and you can't just let social media companies act predatory because all the victims are of voting age.

the linked article states:
”While young people are digital natives, their impulse control and understanding of threats is sometimes lacking.“

Lacking impulse control and understanding of threats is not a trait specific to young people. Else there won't be hate speech, manipulation through rage bait, fear bait, etc. won't work and people wouldn't react on any scam/malicious e-mail (or could be manipulated to vote for Brexit).

”Some platforms exploit this with features specifically designed to keep users hooked for hours and algorithms may also push harmful content directly into a child’s feed, while collecting their personal data for long-term profiling and targeted advertising.“

You know the core issue but you're not addressing it.
You want to take care of minors because they're not able to see and handle these threats but adults are supposed to now (and properly react on) the very same threats.

”Actions to protect young people online are favoured by the majority of Europeans, with over 9 in 10 supporting mechanisms to restrict children’s ability to access age-inappropriate content.“

Well, hiding behind ”the majority“ is a comfortable position.
… and it allows you to avoid addressing who is actually in charge to give minors access to these platforms - their parents or legal guardians.

Last but not least, this initiative is imbued with the same spirit Mrs. von der Leyen showed about 20 years ago when she was in charge of introducing measures against (online) child abuse.

Her only proposed solution was implementing virtual stop signs to block sites showing criminal contents.

No measures were proposed to prevent actually occurring acts of violence against children.

Today you are about to repeat this farce on European scale.

Don't do that!

Seriously?

Your website commission.europa.eu is an Amazon CloudFront distribution. The TLS certificate is issued by Amazon.

Every visitor clicking the URL in this post (including the young Europeans you claim to protect!) delivers personal data to a US server, under US law.

You cannot legislate what you cannot practice.

Enough with empty rhetoric. It is time for a "#RegimeChange" at the #EuropeanCommission.

This is happening offline as well.

Shall everyone verify with their ID that they can go outside?

Education and social-site algorithm regulation.

Bullying is bullying, regardless of where it happens. Same with sexual abuse. Educate kids. Teach them so they can grow up to be resilient adults. Instead of turning the entire EU into a bizarre Orwellian dystopia supposedly tO pRoTeCt tHe cHilDreN.

Take the money you're spending on this bullshit and start spending it on mental healthcare.

y'all are swinging and missing with this one. There are so many questions about this protection I have that anyone who has been a teen with internet could come up with (or, really, anyone who knows what teens get up to) that y'all have not even addressed.

It honestly reads like an attempt to introduce means of control and not a real attempt at providing safety.

sorry.
This is just ridiculous solutionism.
Say that you doing things to try to keep them safe... We may agree and applaud.

But only say that you are keeping them safe if you have an independent study that proves it.

E.g. the recent age-limits potential progress will let irresponsible parents worry even less of the usage... And thus make it even more possible to let users become dependent.

as @luca points out (mastodon.luca-alloatti.eu/@luc…), most people - adults included - don't understand the depths of the invasive tracking that goes on behind the screen. Breaking privacy of individuals further simply doesn't feel like the right solution, more education does. Understanding that the entirety of the internet rests on 3 massive American companies: Amazon, Microsoft, and Google (parameter.io/amazon-aws-crash-…) would be a good start. Teaching parents about OS parental controls too.

Luca Alloatti

2026-04-19 10:10:12

Seriously?

Your website commission.europa.eu is an Amazon CloudFront distribution. The TLS certificate is issued by Amazon.

Every visitor clicking the URL in this post (including the young Europeans you claim to protect!) delivers personal data to a US server, under US law.

You cannot legislate what you cannot practice.

Enough with empty rhetoric. It is time for a "#RegimeChange" at the #EuropeanCommission.

If any of these lovely proposals include collecting more identifiable information (name, age, address, passport / ID, behavioral patterns, ...) you can shove them right in the bin.
If anything, they should do the opposite.

When there's no real name attached to a data cache it becomes less valuable for bad actors and the problem solves itself.

DAS ABENDLAND!

UNGLAUBLICHES GLÜCK!

ERFAHREN habe ich den Gipfel der menschlichen Zivilisation!

DIE HÖCHSTLEISTUNG von THE WHITE MAN bei der wir gemeinsam die absolut höchste Intelligenzstufe der Menschheit erreichten!

IN NUR DREIHUNDERT JAHREN entwickelte der weiße Mann eine einzigartige Zivilisation, die zu meinem Lebzeit und genau dort, wo ich lebe, ihren Höhepunkt erreichte!

EUROPA – DER WESTEN – DAS ABENDLAND!

ICH FÜHLE UNGLAUBLICHES GLÜCK!

youtu.be/zmpJEfD7Vbg