Greece is banning anyone under 15 years of age from using social media – a law that has a history of total failure.
Age verification laws are a failure and have been for quite some time now. It was promised that the technology was completely safe and “highly effective”. Reality has shown that it is neither. The technology has been circumvented with sharpies, pictures of golden retrievers, or beaten by VPN technology, defeating the technology has long been trivial. Further, big promises of the technology being secure has been blown to smithereens thanks to stories like the Discord data breach, the AgeGO scandal, and other data leaks and breaches.
This has put supporters in a bind. They want to see this technology widely adopted, but the technology has been little more than a complete and total failure. Yes you could write a law that says that the technology must be effective, but just because you write a law that says it should be effective doesn’t necessarily make it so. So, what is left for supporters? Lying their collective asses off about it of course! Media outlets began re-writing history, breathlessly claiming that the technology has been an overwhelming success and going off with “barely a hitch”. This while others are just resorting to total denial altogether. When denial and lies are the only thing selling such laws, that isn’t good, but hey, what else can they do at this stage?
Ultimately, the only thing that such laws have solved is train a future generation on how to defeat government censorship. As the Australian experience has shown, a vast majority of those impacted by the “ban” have largely shrugged it off and continue to use social media as if nothing happened. This while endangering people who chose the more honest rout and just submitting their personal information to a database seemingly destined to fall into the wrong hands.
Despite all of that, reports I’m seeing today suggest that Greece has become the latest country in the process of implementing their own failed age verification law. From Yahoo! News:
Greece will ban under-15s from social media from next year.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis confirmed the ban on Wednesday morning, announcing it would begin on 1 January 2027.
He said rising anxiety, sleep problems and addictive platforms were to blame for the ban.
In a video message to Greek children, the PM said spending long hours in front of screens does not allow their minds to rest, and they faced growing pressure from constant comparison on social media and online comments.
“Greece will be among the first countries to take such an initiative,” Mr Mitsotakis said.
“I am certain, however, that it will not be the last. Our goal is to push the European Union in this direction as well.”
The comments are quite clear that the country is being pushed through pure moral panic. The science has been quite clear for some time that social media is not inherently harmful. We’ve seen study after study after study after study after study after study say as much, so the claims about social media resulting in anxiety and widespread addiction have long been baseless.
Really, the claims about social media causing harm have largely been the result of a cult-like mentality where you just have to believe in the claims hard enough. Anyone who points out that none of this is true is treated to die hard supporters screaming “heathen!” at them. At the end of the day, we’re talking about an internet censorship cult.
Much like the other countries that have decided to take the approach of “damn the consequences” and implemented these laws, Greece is going to eventually enter a “finding out” phase when these laws invariably fail like in every other country these laws have been implemented in. It’ll ultimately be another case of history repeating itself. At most, we’ll see another cycle of widespread denial when this iteration ultimately fails and we’ll go back to talking about how this law has failed in yet another country as the censorship cult tries to get other countries to implement these failed laws.
Drew Wilson on Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook.
Discover more from Freezenet.ca
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
