That is one hell of a dystopian cat.

@EUCommission

What about PRIVACY? Child safety is just an excuse for an orwellian dystopian surveillance. No, thank you! No more #ChatControl !!!

#privacy #privacyisaright #StopChatControl

This is like asking kids not to leave the house because the car traffic outside is too dangerous.

The solution is to reduce the traffic, and its speed, not to ban kids from leaving the house.

Also, the traffic is dangerous to everyone, not just the kids, even if they might be particularly at risk.

Don't penalize a vulnerable group; treat the problem instead!

On social media, we don't need age limits; we need better enforcement of content moderation rules!

Sensitive content Reveal/hide

I'm sorry, what you are going to obtain is children using internet illegally, because they will find a way, more uncontrolled than ever, and absolutely no benefit for the rest of users, specially for those in sensitive and dangerous situations. I, as a father, don't wan't this for my kids.

You start deciding what we can see on internet, will end on what we can read, say or think.

Internet is not a playground, we should start educating and teaching, not blocking and forbidding.

I would love to see law and restrictions as long as it does not include:
- Age verification
- Communication monitoring

We should just fine platforms that can not keep up their promises

This is another step in advancing your authoritarian agenda disguises as caring about kids' safety and well-being.

You're no less fascistic and authoritarian than Trump, Musk, Thiel, Putin or Xi: Enemies of democracy and freedom.

as a citizen in the EU I would like to ask, how would the age be handled?

Is it self-defined? Does it need to verify? How will it be verified? Who will handle verifying? What will protect us from those who are supposed to verify, will there be restrictions?

#AgeVerification is not a "solution", but both a convenient cop-out for you, so that you cowards needn't address platform regulation;

and a much welcome vehicle to amass more and more data of every single person, ready to use for you and even more fascist governments to come.

Nobody believes you.

You are not trying to protect children.

You are trying to control the internet, force everyone to provide identification.
Provide certified authenticated users to U.S. bigtech-companies for better targeted ads, crowd out marginalised and vulnerable groups and prime the internet as a mean of control for fascist.

a child's right to privacy is a pre-requisite of child safety.

you cannot protect children when you take away childrens' right to privacy.

your agenda destroys child privacy which means you are unambiguously against child safety.

you are making a wrong decision and you are making it knowingly. the people will never forget your actions or your names.

you'd be well advised to read and heed the replies from concerned citizens, or become irrelevant.

internet is not a "playground" and there's a difference between "safe" and an unfree society, which will be the outcome of this.

go after big tech instead. they're not partners. they're the ones endangering the children.

Please consult with experts who actually work with children and youth online, and ideally with children and youth themselves. As such, we clearly say: You are on the wrong track.

We are here to help if you are looking for expert interventions regarding the topic!

Regulating the business model of big tech social media, particularly targeted advertising and algorithmic manipulation, is much more difficult.

Why not remove the incentives for platforms to maximize engagement through outrage or addictive algorithms?

The answer is that it takes courage.

Age limits require age verification, and age verification means bureaucratically identifying everyone online. Everyone.

That's transparently incompatible with the goal and implementation of the GDPR, and will impose massive regulatory burden and risk on internet services, who'll have to handle PII they might never have otherwise had to handle.

And for what? So we'll all be fake USians when signing up for things, to avoid giving Peter Thiel our passports? Lose the GDPR entirely?

Parent here. I decide appropriate age limits for my kids.

Not you.

The quote of @HennaVirkkunen below the linked article is starting with the right words:
"Children must be able to explore, learn and play online - safely. The Digital Services Act makes platforms responsible for ensuring children are safe online"

The solution for this would be to make the online world safe and to prohibit algorithms in anti-social media.
The solution for this is certainly not to block the children from the online world with age limits.

Unlike you, I've read all the responses here, so I have little to add.

But, making "see" the operative verb in your misleading propaganda, using (lazy) uncaptioned images, is specially galling.

Do YOU see us, hear us, perceive us, acknowledge us?

This account gets more insulting each day.

It's up to the parents.

Any attempt to regulate what children see on the Internet simply removes all privacy for all adults. Exposes them to exploitation by US Corporations and malicious governments. The verification people will sell the info and it will be kept.
It's not like sometimes younger adults having to show ID in a shop. That's not stored or transmitted and it's a minority of adults.

The idea of Child protection on the Internet rather than parental supervision is daft.

The problem is not the children.
The problem is the unregulated, illegal content

Enforce law to protect people against abusive firms, instead of passing laws to survey people.

Hopefully you set up Age related safe spaces instead of banning children from social media. Cutting children off that are under 16, just isolates them from gaming communities and branching out into hobbies their friends may not partake in.

Let them grow, don't prune them. Let them be a part of their sports clubs events and celebratory photos on socials.

Have you considered just banning Facebook/Instagram and Twitter? Would solve like 99% of the problem.

Stop coddling these tech giants. Why do they get special treatment no other EH citizen gets? It's infuriating.

Back up. Before going all "Will somebody think of the children", let's mandate that digital corporations have no more leeway to harming ANYONE, adults included, than is allowed in the non-digital world.

With proper safety & privacy regulations on digital services half the child endangerment - if not more - disappears right away.

Hello @LookWhatTheCatDraggedIn! This panel was commissioned to forge a strong, realistic, European approach to keep our children safe in the digital age. In all of this work we will be guided by the need to empower parents and build a safer Europe for our children.

However, if you have concerns over privacy relating to age verification, you can learn more about the privacy-first age verification solution we are developing here: digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/…