If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Andy Burnham hasn’t set foot in Downing Street, and his team has already worked out how to protect your children. They’re going to card every adult in the country who wants to get online. The favorite to be the next British Prime Minister will keep the current government’s age-verification scheme running. His spokesperson told The Mirror, “Andy is committed to keeping kids safe online, and has been vocal in his support of age restrictions for kids using social media.” “He knows this ban is a critical first step to keeping kids safe online and preventing further tragedies for families. The task now is to build on the consensus across political parties to make sure it’s enforced in full, and delivered with the urgency this issue demands.” Nobody wants children hurt. The question worth asking is what “age restrictions” has grown into, because this thing was fed after midnight and it is no longer about social media. It began as a rule about Instagram and TikTok. It now reaches into online gaming, artificial intelligence chatbots, and, if the government gets its way, the VPNs that millions of people use to keep their browsing private. Back in June, the government published a progress statement on its under-16 plans. Tucked into the “what happens next” section is a promise to report back by 16 July 2026 on, among other things, the “risks of circumvention through use of virtual private networks.” Read that as a threat to your VPN. The same document raises “whether the age of digital consent should be raised,” which is a roundabout way of saying they might start restricting adults up to 18, or older. Then there is Liz Kendall. In June the Technology Secretary said she would come back in July with more on VPN restrictions, chatbot rules, and, my personal favorite, “overnight curfews or breaks in doomscrolling for 16 and 17 year olds.” A curfew for the internet. Someone in Whitehall seriously believes the cure for teenage anxiety is a nationwide bedtime enforced by software. The gaming rules are already drawn up. Under-16s will lose access to what the statement calls “risky functions on services like gaming services, including communicating with strangers and creating livestreams.” Talking to strangers and going live, the two things that make online games worth playing. Players aged 16 and 17 get them switched off by default. To decide who is allowed what, every player has to prove how old they are, which means every player has to prove who they are. You cannot check a nation’s ages without checking a nation’s identities. Age verification and identity verification are the same machine wearing different hats. To prove you are over 16 to a games company, or over 18 to a chatbot, you hand over a face scan, a credit card, or a government ID. Adults included. The 45-year-old who wants to shout at strangers about football now has to upload a passport for the privilege. The VPN plan is the part that gives the game away. A VPN reroutes your connection so a website can’t see where you really are. People use them to shop safely on public wifi, to dodge tracking, to read news their own government would rather they didn’t. Going after VPNs isn’t child protection. It’s an admission that the whole scheme falls apart the second someone can hide their location, so the location has to be nailed down by force. Kendall’s report is due on July 16. It will arrive wrapped in the language of child safety, because all of this does. Open it up and the request is the same one every time, for your ID, your face, or your real location. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Burnham Backs UK Social Media Ban, Digital ID Age Verification appeared first on Reclaim The Net: Free Speech, Privacy, Digital Rights.