Social media

The Heritage Foundation’s tech policy team has endorsed European-style age verification laws for social media, likening them to alcohol and tobacco age restrictions. This is a comparison worth taking seriously – just not in the way Heritage intends. Walk into a bar, and a bouncer checks your ID. In about 15 seconds, you’re inside. That’s it. Online age verification would be a very different experience, requiring the collection, storage and verification of sensitive personal documents at scale. This is a breach of privacy and free expression for adults. It also puts minors – a population 35 to 51 times more likely than adults to fall victim to identity theft –

The White House X account has won notoriety as a coven of young memesters scandalizing the nation. There have been meme images of leading Democrats decked out in sombreros, and clips featuring footage of Iranian military hardware being blown up interspersed with WiiSports.  Now the antics have been taken a step further. There is currently widespread talk of the United States “unleashing hell” on Iran once markets close this weekend, after its initial 15-point peace offer was rejected. There is even some frenzied speculation that things might go nuclear.  Not the best time then, to release a set of cryptic videos that seem to hint at some approaching cataclysm. One, at four

Spain’s Socialist prime minister Pedro Sánchez is proposing a ban on under-16s using social media, following the example set by Australia last year. Speaking at the World Government Summit in Dubai earlier this week, Sánchez said: “Today our children are exposed to a space they were never meant to navigate alone… We will protect [them] from the digital Wild West.” The Spanish premier’s announcement comes at a time when several other European nations are also attempting to combat the harmful effects of social media on children. France’s ban on under-15s using social media is expected to become law later this year, while Greece, Portugal and Denmark have signaled their intention

The internet suddenly went down in Iran last night, as courageous Iranians continued to rise up against the Ayatollah. The UK government was apparently inspired. Not by the rebels, whose plight the Prime Minister has remained remarkably quiet about – but by the mullahs’ digital crackdown. Call me a conspiracy loon, but I dare say Labour’s ire for X isn’t simply about the site’s supposedly insufficient safeguarding policies Britain’s Labour party has issued its most serious threat yet to social-media giant X – whose owner, Elon Musk, has become this rudderless government’s go-to bogeyman. The platform could be banned in Britain, Downing Street sources let it be known, if it

The celebrity death rumor is a common phenomenon

For Trump, DoGE was never about government efficiency. It was about owning the libs

A panel discussed child exploitation stats and laid out proposed solutions for parents

Insider threats are slipping past inadequate screenings into sensitive US institutions

It does not help that everything is political nowadays. Everything