France's top court blocks social media ban for under-15s, citing freedom of expression
France blocks social media ban because it would require adults to prove age
France's Constitutional Council struck down a bill that would have barred under-15s from social media, ruling that the age verification requirement disproportionately infringed on freedom of expression and privacy. President Macron has asked the government to rework the legislation, aiming for enactment before the 2027 presidential election.
The Council holds that the contested provisions, on the one hand, disproportionately infringe upon the freedom of expression and communication and, on the other, fail to provide the legal safeguards necessary to ensure the right to respect for private life.
- azhdanova
The court reasoned sensibly: it's wrong to violate the rights of all citizens just to weed out a small group of violators. This is contrary to data protection regulations. The controversial Chat Control law follows the same logic: to find criminals, they propose monitoring everyone.
The problem is that any age verification system effectively becomes an identity verification system. And such tools rarely remain "just for kids"—they quickly become used for other purposes. The only secure way is to verify not the person's identity, but the device's status (for example, that it's a children's device). This is called age assurance: we confirm age without knowing who exactly is in front of us.
- skybrian
This could have been an http header. It's hard to identify people, but blocking child-locked devices should be easy, since the devices can be built to cooperate.
Then it's up to parents to give their kids child-locked devices and for stores to not sell unlocked devices to kids.
- graemep
The title is unfortunately edited. The courts have blocked it. The government wants it.
- zug_zug
Seems like there are many ways to get toward the best of both worlds -- don't allow people to upload pictures of kids who are clearly under 15 to social media would get us a lot of the way there.
Also all of these companies know from advertising data, and location data, that you are at school, who you are, etc. They would also know that all of your friends are also teenagers.
If the law is serious there are many many ways to enforce this without violating privacy.
- sixthDot
As french citizen what I can say is: Parliamentary time wasted. During the initial work the deputees that have initiated the project could have figured out that the constitutional court would, in fine, block the text.
- seethishat
The Internet was built for adults. Then, we gave kids tablets and phones. Now, decades later, we have a problem. Kids see things meant for adults.
Maybe we need an adult only portion of the Internet and verify identity only on that (like bars do to keep out kids).
New TLD maybe? .adult
- hk1337
What I find interesting is that Texas did it with just pornography sites, everyone complains. Then California, which included those that complained by Texas' law, says they're going to do it at the OS level, some people were okay with it but some still opposed it and possibly some others opposed it. Yet, they're still pushing forward with both?
- josefritzishere
This is the correct response. Privacy is a human right.