If Kevin Bacon has taught us anything beyond basic graph theory, it is that teenagers will circumvent oppressive control and that they will unstoppably band together to do so. Australia has decided to ban u16 kids from social media, and I’m confident that the result will be an omnishambles of hysterical demands to flog tech companies for the insuperable problem that data is delivered to IP addresses rather than Government Citizen ID-numbers of some form.

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Stepping back, though, and you can see all the other countries’ child safety advocates condemning this move, and I believe not for the reasons stated. Ostensibly they are pushing the inevitable line that “children will suffer and this punishment (that the government is meting out upon the children) is a failure of the tech companies to deliver.”

“Look what you made me do…”

It is no such thing. The challenge is impossible without eradication of anonymity from the internet and/or imposition of controls over free-speech-as-code, and nobody wants to admit that, so they can see a disaster upon the horizon: this will fail, and be walked back, and the child safety community as a whole will be seen to have taken their shot and failed.

They know this. They are trying to set the stage for this eventuality, because otherwise the resulting damage to the momentum of their narrative may take years to remedy.