Talking points on EU Kids Act / Age Verification / Social Media Legislation

General
1

Tomorrow afternoon, I’ll appear on BLCKBX Today (an alternative media news/actualities show) to discuss the new social media legislation and age limits.

Any input and/or relevant information (for example, from the EU Kids Act) would be welcome :slight_smile:

And of course, I’ll mention the ECI and if I get the chance the Think Twice conference

2

Dear @PrestelPirate @Kalpana and @boiert, would you have any input on this?

My advice would be to reuse the Chat Control talking points, but tweak them a bit.

The bad:

  • Veryfing everyone’s IDs and privacy concerns
  • The freedom restriction this implies (comparing it to the end of free movement on the Internet?) as the digital
  • It misses the point that algorithms and digital design is nefarious for everyone, not only children → digital designs should be improved at large for everyone
  • If you want a safe internet, you need better and systematic enforcement, which is old boring expensive law enforcement cyber-brigades (and giving them psychological support). And parents who are really present to accompany their children on the internet.

All of this can echo the “Stop Killing the Internet” initiative, as you mention.

The good:

  • Underlining parents’ responsibility in all this
  • Introducing the concept of “safe design” although incomplete

Apologies on not picking up on this sooner, I hope it will help!

3

Sorry all, I’ve been buried in work the last couple of days and totally missed this. I’ve put together the following thoughts - this is my initial view from having a read through of what’s been published so far.

Executive summary

The EU KIDS Act, adopted 17 September 2026, bans social media accounts for under-13s, restricts 13–14-year-olds to parent-supervised accounts, and mandates certified age verification and “safety by design” rules across social media, video platforms, games, app stores and AI chatbots. Measured against the European Pirate Party’s Manifesto, the Act is in conflict with manifesto commitments: unqualified privacy from state and commercial actors, self-determination, free association, user control of one’s own tools, and bottom-up rather than top-down governance. Its mandatory verification infrastructure, contact restrictions, and state-specified feed design are the kind of measures Pirates have opposed by name in other fights (age/ID verification mandates, “chat control”-style infrastructure, expansion of the Digital Identity Wallet’s remit). A smaller set of provisions (the reversed burden of proof, bans on dark-pattern exploitation, and mandatory transparency audits) do align with some Manifesto areas.

Main proposals of the KIDS Act

  • Age staircase: no social media account under 13; parent-supervised account with a 1-hour daily limit and parental contact-approval at 13–14; independent account from 15
  • Mandatory age verification: self-declared age no longer accepted; verification via a certified EU app and, later, the EU Digital Identity Wallet, marketed as “zero-knowledge proof” (yes/no signal only, no ID check)
  • Existing accounts: platforms must re-check all account holders within 6 months and disable accounts of under-15s or unverifiable users
  • Safety by design: bans addictive mechanics for minors (infinite scroll, pull-back notifications, streak mechanics, mass-audience posting rewards); mandates usage breaks and time limits
  • Recommender system rules: for minors, feeds must be optimised for safety over engagement; personalisation off by default; no external tracking data; mandatory feed reset option
  • Stranger-contact restrictions: no unsolicited messaging of minors, no minors in contact suggestions or group invites without approval, anonymous blocking, no screenshotting/downloading of a minor’s content, no default livestreaming
  • AI chatbots/companions: may not simulate emotional dependency, may not carry memory across sessions by default, must be risk-tested pre-launch, under-13s access only via parental controls
  • Games and app stores: mandatory age-rating with published methodology; must carry the EU verification app
  • Reversed burden of proof: platforms with 45M+ EU users must submit an independently audited compliance plan before reaching children, at their own expense
  • Enforcement: built on DSA/AI Act structures; Commission-level supervision for the largest platforms with expedited timelines (30-day preliminary findings, 90-day final decision); fines up to 6% of global annual turnover

Where the Act conflicts with the Manifesto

The European Pirate Party’s Manifesto put anonymity, opposition to mandatory verification/ID schemes, and user control of technology at the centre of our platform. Rather than a generic children’s-rights framing, as pushed by the Commission, evaluating the KIDS Act against our Manifesto show many of its central mechanisms are exactly what we organise against.
Manifesto plank KIDS Act provision Why Pirates would call this a direct conflict
Privacy “protected… at all times” from public and economic actors; the movement’s consistent opposition to mandatory age/ID verification and “chat control”-style infrastructure Certified age verification required across nearly every social, video, game and chatbot service, escalating to the EU Digital Identity Wallet This is the exact category of scheme Pirates campaign against elsewhere: a government-specified verification layer touching every user of a service, regardless of the “zero-knowledge” framing: infrastructure, once built for one purpose, is available for scope creep to others
“Self-determination,” “freedom of thought,” “free access to information” - stated as general rights, not age-limited Account ban under 13; mandatory parental control of contacts, settings and screen time at 13–14; personalisation off by default Pirates ground autonomy in the individual, not the family or the state; a law that hands control of a minor’s account to a parent or defaults it away entirely is a transfer of self-determination away from the person it names as rights-holder
“Free association” and “free assembly in public” Minors excluded from contact suggestions; barred from groups without prior agreement; cannot be messaged without pre-approval A binding legal wall around who a minor may associate with: exactly the kind of restriction the manifesto’s civil-rights section exists to rule out
Free software: technology should be “used, analysed, disseminated and changed by everyone,” underpinning “users’ control of their own technical systems” Legally mandated recommender-system behaviour and banned design patterns, specified in EU law rather than left to user configuration or open alternatives The Pirates’ answer to manipulative platforms is normally open tooling and user agency, not a state-authored technical specification substituted for it. This provision takes the decision out of users’ (and open-source developers’) hands entirely
Citizen participation: “public authorities should… allow citizens to actively propose policies and make decisions” rather than rule top-down A single uniform EU regulation (ages, time limits, feed design) imposed identically across 27 states with no participatory mechanism in the instrument Runs directly against the manifesto’s preferred mode of policymaking, which is participatory and bottom-up, not centrally drafted and imposed
Net Neutrality: “unencumbered access to the internet… for everybody” Whole age classes (under-13, unverified under-15) legally denied access to entire categories of service Different mechanism (age-gating vs. carrier-level discrimination) but the same default the manifesto asserts (universal access) is the one being overridden

Where the Act aligns with our Manifesto

A sub-set of proposed provisions aligns with some Pirate views:

  • Reversed burden of proof on the largest platforms matches the Manifesto’s aim to put obligations on powerful institutions rather than individuals or authorities
  • Bans on dark-pattern exploitation of minors (addictive design, engagement-driven feeds) target the same corporate behaviour the privacy plank names: exploitation “by… economic actors”
  • Independent audits and transparency duties for large platforms echo the Manifesto’s transparency-and-accountability language, even though that language was written for public institutions, not private firms

The Commission’s counter-case

Defenders of the Act would respond that verification is designed to yield only a yes/no age signal, not an identity, so it isn’t the surveillance infrastructure Pirates typically fight; that most adults face no new check at all; and that minors’ autonomy has always been treated differently from adults’ under EU and international law.

Sources

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Especially this one sounds dangerous to me, getting a ‘makeshift measure’ applied to the wrong type of institution (the one that can argue ‘Trade secret’ to the public).

5

For that last part, one would need to choose an entirely different kind of social medium where none of the comfortable lies of ‘We will keep your children safe’ echo true. But it is akin to keeping your kids out of school.

The network effect of the current social media is just enormous. It is the reason the platforms, when designated as such, are regulated. However, it creates this perverse incentive to háve platforms to regulate.

Where is the space for a competitor that breaks the mold completely to arrive on the scene?

I fear this Act will stifle or scare off new (and independent) developments.

6

My immediate concern with this is that it is pushing Chat Control in through the back door. Mandatory age verification for children means mandatory age verification for everyone, by default.

Which will require some on-device solution. Which will have to check that all apps comply with this. Which means local device scanning. Which Apple and Google conveniently already have waiting in the wings. Which has the technology controls they had built for Chat Control.

So we get mandatory age verification, mandatory digital ID, complete surveillance of all devices (mobile, tablets, PCs and laptops) and this then paves the way for a full Chat Control implementation because “the technology is already in place”.

“Protect the children” is the rallying cry of charlatans.

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