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UK’s Very Bad No Good Internet Law

About a year ago, I interviewed Shoshana Weissmann of the R Street Institute about proposals to ban children from social media. Shoshana is fairly libertarian and argued that state intervention was unnecessary - and that on top of that, implementing age verification systems would be a disaster. Since she was leaning so strongly in that direction, I played devil’s advocate for the idea of taking proactive action to age verify kids. I had also just finished reading Jonathan Haidt’s excellent book The Anxious Generation and was feeling naturally sympathetic to the idea that the internet is really, really bad for kids.

I still think that the internet melts a lot of children’s brains, but I’ve got to admit that Shoshana was more right than I was. The UK has rolled out age verification as part of their dystopian Online Safety Act and it’s been an utter disaster.