Heading in the wrong direction

My heart predictably sank at the predictable announcement by Kier Starmer that the UK government will ban social media for under-16s. The ban sounds ineffective, imposes restrictions on everyone (providing ID to use social media), and largely lets the big social media companies off the hook for what happens on their services. I a post by Iain Mansfield that lists objections to the ban and sets out his arguments against them. I wanted to clarify some of my thoughts so I’ve taken his structure and written brief arguments against those arguments. Caveats: I know nothing about Iain Mansfield but this was a useful format. All of this is off the top of my head. There are probably more arguments against the ban than this format allows for. I may change my mind about some things within minutes or weeks. I’m probably wrong about some things. But hopefully more right than wrong. Iain’s example objections to the ban are in bold and a quote from his argument against that are in italics. Read his…