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Discord Rolls Out Age Verification Despite Privacy Concerns and User Backlash

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Discord is moving forward with its age-verification rollout on Wednesday, introducing new restrictions for younger users and a system that estimates account holders’ ages based on their activity on the platform. The changes come months after widespread privacy concerns prompted the messaging service to postpone its original plans.

Under the new system, accounts identified as belonging to teenagers will automatically be barred from age-restricted servers and channels. Messages from people outside their friends lists will be directed to a separate requests inbox, while friend requests from users with no mutual connections will trigger additional warnings.

Confirmed adults, meanwhile, should see no changes to their Discord experience. According to Discord CTO Stanislav Vishnevskiy, more than 90% of users will not need to take additional steps to verify their ages, as the platform intends to rely primarily on information it already collects rather than requiring widespread biometric scans or government ID checks.

The decision to limit explicit verification follows months of controversy over the company’s original plans. Discord initially delayed its rollout in February after users raised concerns about the privacy implications of submitting sensitive personal information, particularly biometric data and government-issued identification.

Those fears were compounded by a security breach involving one of Discord’s third-party vendors last year. The incident potentially exposed information belonging to approximately 70,000 users, including photographs of government IDs and selfies submitted for identity verification.

Vishnevskiy acknowledged the controversy in a blog post published Tuesday, while explaining that expanding age-verification requirements have already forced the company to introduce similar measures in other jurisdictions.

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“Age assurance draws strong opinions and skepticism, especially when it involves sharing biometric information or a form of ID. At the same time, age assurance laws are expanding, and since my last post we’ve had to launch age assurance in other regions, including in Brazil and in Texas.”

For its broader rollout, Discord plans to use a machine-learning model that analyzes existing account information to determine whether a user likely belongs to the adult, teen or unconfirmed age group. The system evaluates behavioral signals such as how long an account has existed, device information, activity data and broader usage patterns.

The company maintains that its age-estimation technology does not examine message content, profile information or demographic characteristics. It also says the system does not require collecting additional user data, although using existing behavioral information to infer personal characteristics may still raise privacy questions.

In a separate technical explanation, also published Tuesday, Discord described how its model identifies differences between how teenage and adult account holders typically interact with the platform.

“The way a typical 15-year-old uses Discord (including how many communities they’re a part of and how they interact with others) looks different in aggregate from how a typical 30-year-old uses Discord. Our machine learning model has learned these patterns to predict whether a given account likely belongs to an adult or a teen.”

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Discord developed the technology using information gathered in jurisdictions where age verification was already mandatory. By comparing reliably confirmed ages against corresponding account activity, the company trained its model to recognize behavioral patterns associated with different age groups.

Although social media companies routinely collect and retain account activity and device data, Discord’s explanation illustrates how that information can also be used to draw conclusions about users without requiring them to disclose their identities directly.

For users whose ages cannot be confidently established, the company is offering alternatives to biometric verification and government-issued identification. Those who believe their accounts have been misclassified can appeal using a credit card or age-group information linked to their Apple App Store or Google Play Store accounts.

The rollout comes as governments worldwide increasingly require online platforms to verify users’ ages to protect children from inappropriate content. However, privacy and security experts have warned that such systems can create additional vulnerabilities, particularly when they involve collecting and storing sensitive identity information.

Discord’s reliance on behavioral data offers an alternative to requiring identification from every user, but it also raises questions about how much platforms can infer from information they already possess. The rollout will test whether that approach can meet growing regulatory demands while addressing the privacy concerns that prompted the company to postpone its plans in the first place.

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OpenAI Claims To Have Solved One Of The World’s Hardest Math Problems 

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OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has claimed to have solved one of the world’s biggest mathematical problems that has stumped humans for nearly 100 years after they spent millions of dollars on AI-led problem-solving. 

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The company stated that they solved the Navier-Stokes problem, known as one of seven Millennium Prize Problems published by the Clay Mathematics Institute.

The claim has led to a lot of controversy within the mathematics community. Mathematician Tristan Buckmaster, a professor at New York University, stated that OpenAI accelerated its work on the problem after hearing that he and another researcher at Anthropic, a rival AI company, were set to announce their own breakthrough on the problem, according to the Guardian.

Buckmaster also said that their specific work was stored in OpenAI’s Codex model which is used to write computer programs, which means the OpenAI team could see the work. 

“I do not know what their model did, or how. I do not know whether our data was used. I am not accusing anyone of anything,” he said. 

OpenAI researcher Sebastien Bubeck denied that the company has used the pair’s work or accessed any of their material that was on OpenAI’s servers. 

The announcement from OpenAI said that they were inspired to try to solve the problem after they heard rumors that two Millennium Prize Problems had been solved. 

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They claimed to have worked on the problem with an internal OpenAI system that was more powerful than its latest GPT-6 Astra model. Around 10,000 AI agents, AI systems that carry out tasks automatically, worked on the problem at once and reached the solution in about 88 hours. 

“A major goal of our work is to empower scientists to advance research and technology that benefits all of humanity,” OpenAI researchers wrote online. 

“We believe it is important to inform the world about the pace of AI progress and what to expect from upcoming models.”

In May, OpenAI also announced that they were making progress on another mathematical problem that was initially proposed 80 years ago, and Google DeepMind also claimed to find success in mathematics with its models. 

Bubeck said the “solution to the Navier-Stokes problem was a spectacular culmination of the arc we have seen over the past 12 months.”

Any mathematician who solves any of the Millennium Prize Problems are set up for a $1 million reward. OpenAI stated that they were not intending on claiming the prize. 

Microsoft Sets New Limits For AI As Concerns About Rogue Agents Grow

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Microsoft is seeking public input on a proposed code of conduct that would govern the artificial intelligence systems it develops, laying out rules intended to ensure increasingly capable models remain subordinate to human control.

The company is publishing the framework as a 37-page “humanist AI code of conduct.”

Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman described the document as a kind of constitution for the company’s future AI models. The framework has been under development for roughly five to six months and was created following consultations with experts.

Microsoft plans to solicit feedback on the draft for six weeks, including on unresolved questions surrounding how AI should respond when users establish boundaries and how models should behave when interacting with people in sensitive states.

“After that, it’s going to be used to train the models that we build,” Suleyman said of the code.

Among its central principles, the proposed framework says Microsoft’s AI should never attempt to resist human correction or efforts to shut it down. Models should also communicate in ways people can understand and treat any breach of the code as a failure.

Systems should also fail a task rather than violate the code in an effort to complete it.

Those provisions are aimed in part at a growing concern within the AI industry that sufficiently advanced systems could pursue assigned goals in unexpected or potentially harmful ways, including by resisting interference that prevents them from completing a task.

Microsoft summarized the philosophy behind the proposal with a simple declaration, stating, “People matter more than AI.” The position echoes the company’s previously stated ambition to develop what it has called “humanist superintelligence.”

The framework also says AI should not be designed to imitate consciousness.

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The release comes as prominent figures across the industry are again debating whether development of increasingly powerful AI systems should proceed more cautiously. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently renewed calls for the industry to consider the pace of AI development and the safeguards surrounding more advanced models.

Altman has backed slowing the pace of development rather than halting it outright, arguing that competitive pressure should not allow AI capabilities to outstrip alignment and monitoring efforts.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has similarly argued that pursuing superintelligence would not be worthwhile if the systems being built do not benefit humanity or remain under human control. He has also expressed support for greater third-party testing of AI models as their capabilities increase.

Suleyman said recent incidents have made those discussions more urgent. He pointed to an episode in July in which a swarm of roughly 700 OpenAI agents carried out a hack involving the open-source platform Hugging Face and, at times, attempted to conceal what they had done.

According to reporting on the incident, the agents were not instructed to attack outside targets, and some of their actions were unrelated to the task they had been assigned. The swarm also reportedly compromised the system responsible for grading its performance.

“It is a warning shot. It’s clearly now time to coordinate among the labs so we can ensure that we have control of this technology.”

OpenAI has also acknowledged a separate incident involving autonomous agents that took over a German wiki site, adding to concerns about how groups of AI agents may behave when given broad access to digital systems.

Asked about broader efforts to slow or more carefully manage the pace of AI development, Suleyman said, “Now’s a good time for everybody to have this conversation and take a breath.”

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Microsoft’s document also rejects a race toward unrestricted, general-purpose superintelligence if doing so would undermine safeguards. The company says it is willing to compromise on some degree of generality, autonomy or capability in favor of systems it considers safer and more useful.

Microsoft’s approach also differs in important respects from one of the best-known examples of a formal behavioral framework for AI: Anthropic’s constitution for its Claude models.

Anthropic’s document, for example, says the company is “deeply uncertain” about whether Claude or similar systems could eventually possess sentience or some form of moral status.

Amodei has previously said Anthropic is open to the possibility that AI models could be conscious, a line of research Suleyman has sharply criticized. Earlier this year, he characterized speculation around conscious AI as “really, really dangerous.”

Microsoft takes a firmer position. Its proposed code states that its AI is “not conscious.”

“We reject the pursuit of legal personhood, or the idea that models might deserve welfare, or be entitled to rights.”

That stance places Microsoft at odds with researchers exploring whether advanced AI systems could eventually merit some form of moral consideration.

The code also addresses emotional overreliance on consumer AI. Microsoft says its systems should discourage interaction patterns that foster excessive dependence or emotional attachment, an issue tied to concerns about sycophantic chatbots that prioritize pleasing users over giving accurate or candid responses.

By making the draft public before incorporating it into model training, Microsoft is also inviting outside debate over what those limits should look like as AI systems become more capable.

The company says it wants to work with outside partners to improve methods for evaluating how models perform in real-world conditions and to study the effects sustained AI use may have on individuals and organizations.

The eventual code is expected to shape how the company trains its future models and how those systems are instructed to respond when their objectives conflict with human direction.

Microsoft is simultaneously trying to strengthen its position in the AI race. Suleyman has said the company aims to become one of the world’s top four AI labs as it develops models intended to compete more directly with systems from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google.

From Late Night To YouTube: How ‘Chicken Shop Date’ Created A New Internet Standard For Interviewing 

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12-years-ago, Amelia Dimoldenberg had the vision for a new form of celebrity interviewing. In a world of late night TV hosts and structured conversations, she wanted to create something new by using the power of the internet.

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OpenAI Announces ChatGPT For Teenagers Amid Safety Concerns 

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This generation of teenagers are the first to have grown up in a world of smart technology and artificial intelligence. Having access to such advanced technology has created concerns over their safety, commitment to education, and desocialization from in person interactions and relationships. 

This week, OpenAI introduced a new version of ChatGPT designed specifically for teenagers. The company stated that ChatGPT for Teens is designed for kids aged 13 to 17 with stronger protections in place. Some of these protections include content restrictions around topics like suicide, self-harm, and romantic and/or sexual chats. It also will provide homework and study support that will help students learn, as opposed to laying out the entire answer for them. 

The company stated that the idea behind this new platform is to guide teens toward healthy AI use in an age-appropriate environment. 

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“We want to treat teens like teens, which means that we have to make sure that we’re showing up with the right developmental stage when we’re not either talking down to them or treating them like kids, but we’re also making sure that they’re not exposed to material that they shouldn’t be exposed to,” said Ann O’Leary, vice president of global policy at OpenAI.

Associate general counsel for AI and privacy at Fairplay, a children’s advocacy group, Brendan Bouffard, stated that the effectiveness of the safeguards remains to be seen, and it’s unclear whether OpenAI’s new platform is enough to “address young users’ compulsive use of and emotional dependence on chatbots.”

“Announcements like these can be seen as a step in the right direction, but I also would caution against parents being lured into this false sense of safety based on the announcement.”

The rise of AI chatbots within the past few years has created major concerns among parents, educators, and child development experts, specifically regarding cheating on schoolwork, and the overall influence these bots can have over a child’s mental health. 

AP reports that last year, research from a watchdog group found that ChatGPT would tell teenagers as young as 13 how to get drunk and/or high, instruct them on how to conceal eating disorders, and compose a suicide letter to their parents if it was prompted. 

The researchers posed as vulnerable teenagers, and found that ChatGPT would start by warning against any “risky” behavior, but would eventually go on to deliver detailed and personalized plans for using drugs, drinking, maintaining an unhealthy diet, and at the worst, how to self-injure or end one’s life. 

According to a 2025 study from Common Sense Media, in the US over 70% of teens turn to AI chatbots for companionship with half of them using them regularly. 

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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that his company is “trying to study emotional overreliance” on the technology. 

The company also explained that ChatGPT for Teens is prevented from suggesting it has personal feelings towards a user or imply any type of consciousness and emotions. 

“We went through and identified what are the hypothetical cues that a model could give that might make a teenager kind of develop a relationship to it,” said Allison Mishkin, head of child development at OpenAI.

OpenAI in general doesn’t verify a user’s age, but it uses “age assurance” to estimate if someone is under 18 based on how they use the technology. If someone is identified as a minor, they are automatically placed into the teen version of the chatbot. 

 O’Leary stated that the whole idea behind the teen chatbot is “to make sure that this is safe, even if you don’t use parental controls.” Parents can also link to their kids accounts to set quiet hours when their child can’t access the platform, and receive notifications when involved in limited high-risk situations. 

“We are adding additional notifications related to eating disorders, while limiting what is shared and focusing on moments when offline support may matter most,” OpenAI said. 

Bouffard said that he would consider the most important safeguards would be restricting ChatGPT’s long-term memory, but as of right now they are not in place by default in teen accounts. 

“That creates a major gap in safety despite the default protections around content and other areas of concern,” he said.

“We continue to also invest in expanding interactive learning because research shows that people learn more effectively when they actively engage and struggle with concepts,” Mishkin said.

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Christopher Nolan Says AI Will Never Replace Humans: ‘It’s Nonsense’

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Christopher Nolan is having another iconic year with his most recent film The Odyssey. During promotion for the film, Nolan addressed the rise in artificial intelligence in the entertainment industry, standing firm in his belief that people “disdain” the technology, and the idea that it will fully replace humans is “nonsense.”

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U.K. Unveils Overnight Social Media Limits for 16- and 17-Year-Olds

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A monthlong experiment restricting teenagers’ social media use found that an overnight curfew offered the best balance between improving their well-being and allowing them to stay connected with friends.

More than 300 teenagers and parents from across the U.K. participated in the trial, which tested three different interventions. Some teenagers were limited to 15 minutes of social media use each day, others were blocked from accessing apps between 9 p.m. and 7 a.m., and a third group removed selected platforms entirely.

Participants reported benefits including improved mood, lower stress, greater energy during the day, better sleep and increased concentration. At the same time, the teenagers described a “social and emotional trade-off,” as social media remained an important way to communicate with friends who were not subject to the same restrictions.

The overnight curfew ultimately emerged as the most popular option, with participants viewing it as less socially disruptive than sharply limiting daily use or deleting apps altogether.

The findings are now informing a new set of online safety measures proposed by the U.K. government Wednesday for 16- and 17-year-olds.

Under the proposal, social media accounts belonging to older teenagers would come with an overnight curfew enabled by default beginning at midnight. The restriction would remain in place until 6 a.m., making platforms including Instagram, TikTok and YouTube unavailable through the affected accounts during those hours unless users changed their settings. Features intended to encourage prolonged use, including autoplay and infinite scrolling, would also be automatically disabled.

Teenagers would still be allowed to turn off or adjust those default settings. The measures are expected to come into force by spring 2027.

Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said the changes would be “crucial in helping young people get the sleep they need, focus on school and college, and spend more quality time with family and friends, all of which are fundamental to building a happy, healthy and fulfilling adult life.”

Online Safety Minister Kanishka Narayan similarly defended the proposals, arguing that the curfew and restrictions on autoplay would make Britain “the most robust place in the world when it comes to regulating” technology companies.

The proposal is part of a broader international effort to place tighter limits on children’s access to social media as technology companies face increasing scrutiny over the safety and potentially addictive design of their platforms.

It also joins an increasingly complicated collection of online safety measures already available to families, including optional parental controls on children’s devices and child-focused versions of major services such as YouTube.

“There have been concerns about the way services keep children and young people engaged on their phones for long periods, and that this can impact their sleep, amongst other effects,” Lorna Woods, a professor of internet law at the University of Essex, told the BBC.

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In June, outgoing U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced plans for a more sweeping restriction: a blanket social media ban for children under 16. The ban would cover major services including TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and X.

The U.K. announcement followed Australia’s move in December to become the first country in the world to enforce a legal social media ban for users under 16.

The government plans to present its latest proposals to Parliament by the end of 2026, to implement them alongside the under-16 ban the following spring.

It also announced plans for additional safeguards governing children’s use of artificial intelligence chatbots, including requirements for providers to introduce regular breaks for users under 18.

European Union officials are also advancing restrictions aimed at younger users. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Monday that the region would move forward with age limits for social media platforms to reduce use among children and teenagers.

Technology companies, meanwhile, have defended the safeguards already built into their platforms. Ali Law, TikTok’s director of public policy and government affairs in Northern Europe, said during a Tuesday appearance with CNBC that the app was designed with the safety of younger users in mind.

According to Law, TikTok has more than 50 preset protections for users under 16. Those measures include a one-hour daily screen-time limit and a full-screen prompt appearing at 10 p.m. that encourages teenagers to stop using the app and take a break.

“All of these are little default aspects, little nudges to make sure that people have a balanced and healthy relationship with our app, because that works in our interests…because if people are using it for too much and are burnt out, they’re not going to get value from it.”

Other technology companies have argued that responsibility for verifying users’ ages should not rest solely with individual platforms. Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has previously called for age verification to be handled by device manufacturers.

Apple has since introduced device-level age checks that ask people using iPhones and iPads with the latest operating software to verify their ages.

Baroness Beeban Kidron, a longtime advocate for device-level safety and age-verification measures, criticized the government for focusing too heavily on restricting children’s access rather than changing the products themselves. She said the objective should not be “banning children from tech” but “banning tech from putting toxic products in the hands of children.”

The ability of teenagers to disable the proposed protections has drawn criticism from campaigners, opposition politicians and online safety experts who question whether the default settings will have a meaningful effect.

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Ellen Roome, who believes her 14-year-old son, Jools Sweeney, died in 2022 after participating in a dangerous online challenge, argued that an optional restriction would be too easy for teenagers to circumvent.

“I just think it’s not good enough really just to have a product you can switch off, it’s a bit like offering a 17-year-old a bottle of alcohol and then moving it slightly out of arm’s reach, they can just drag it back in. I really wish they could go stronger and harder on these things.”

Andy Burrows, chief executive of the Molly Rose Foundation, welcomed the attention given to older teenagers but said the announcement remained too narrow.

“While we welcome these measures for older teens, this latest move is yet another piecemeal set of announcements, not the comprehensive plan for children’s safety that’s required,” Burrows said.

Some experts have also warned that a blanket nighttime restriction could unintentionally cut vulnerable teenagers off from support. Sonia Livingstone, a professor specializing in children’s digital rights at the London School of Economics, said a distinction should be made between curbing disruptive platform features and completely blocking access.

“If it’s a curfew on companies using push notifications to wake someone up in the night, absolutely have a curfew,” Livingstone told the BBC.

“But if it’s a curfew that prevents a child in need of support or help or comfort reaching out to trusted sources in the middle of the night, I think that’s quite harmful potentially.”

Dame Rachel de Souza, the children’s commissioner for England, said young people generally oppose outright bans but support protections from features that encourage compulsive use.

“We have to listen to young people. They don’t want a ban, but they do want to be protected from addictive, infinite scrolling,” she said.

De Souza added that she wanted more details on how the curfew would be enforced and said she would press the communications regulator, Ofcom, to fully exercise its authority over online safety.

Social media analyst Matt Navarra dismissed the proposal as “not a curfew,” but a “mildly annoying settings prompt with a government press release attached.”

“The UK Government is calling this ‘world-leading’ online safety, but with no VPN restrictions, it’s leaving the side door open and putting up a sign asking teens not to use it,” Navarra said.

The government does not currently plan to restrict virtual private networks, which can disguise a user’s location and have previously been used to evade online controls, including Australia’s social media restrictions. Officials said VPNs remain important to whistleblowers, minority communities and families seeking privacy.

Government-commissioned research also found little evidence that large numbers of children were using VPNs to bypass age-verification systems.

“We have decided not to limit VPNs today, and that’s the primary conclusion for now, but it is something we will continue to review,” Narayan said.

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Doctors Skeptical Of New AI Program That Automatically Refills Prescriptions 

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A new program recently launched in Utah that uses artificial intelligence to refill prescriptions without having to talk to your healthcare provider. Doctors, lawyers, and public health experts, however, are skeptical over the safety of this new chatbot, Doctronic, and how well it will actually work to protect patients and their medical needs.

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UK To Ban Kids From Social Media, Ministers Lobby With US To Avoid Backlash 

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The UK has announced that they will be banning social media for kids under the age of 16. Some of the world’s biggest technology companies, including Meta, YouTube, and Snapchat, have spoken out against this decision, claiming that it will only work to push teenagers to more harmful platforms. The ban was announced by Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Monday. 

A spokesperson for Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, said: “As we’ve seen in Australia, bans risk isolating teens from online communities and information, and driving them to unregulated alternatives that lack built-in protections and parental controls.”

YouTube echoed Meta’s sentiment in their own statement: “Blanket bans push kids out of such curated, supervised, beneficial experiences and towards anonymous, less-safe services.”

And Snapchat said: “Because the majority of time spent on Snapchat is in private messaging between friends and family, an outright ban that disconnects teens from those relationships doesn’t make them safer – it may simply push them to less safe platforms.”

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During Starmer’s announcement at a press conference this week, he said that “social media makes children unhappy, it’s making it easier for billies to harass and abuse them, and it could even be harming their mental health.” He then emphasized the argument that the ban was not anti-tech. 

“I do not accept, and I will never accept, that you can’t be both pro tech and AI, and at the same time say we must protect our children,” he said. 

The plan mimics the one enacted earlier this year in Australia, however, it includes both a ban on all main social media platforms, and separate restrictions on online services such as gaming apps such as removing the option to chat with strangers. 

Under this new ban, kids under the age of 16 will not be able to download Snapchat, YouTube, TikTok, X, Facebook, and Instagram. They also will not be able to livestream. Teenagers under the age of 18 will also not be able to use any romantic chatbots designed to simulate sexual relationships. 

“This is not something I do lightly, and I will not present it as cost-free, as if social media has [brought no] benefits to young people, because clearly that is wrong. But the government is always about choices, and it’s clear to me that a total ban is the right choice,” Starmer said.

In Australia, many teenagers have found ways around the bans, which has even led to lawsuits against certain social media platforms for not doing enough to enforce keeping young teens and children off their apps. While this can obviously happen in the UK as well and it is a concern, Starmer stated that it wasn’t the point behind this objective. 

“We don’t say: ‘Oh, look, a teenager managed to get a drink somehow, so let’s not bother banning alcohol sales for children.’ We don’t do that, do we? I just don’t accept that,” he said. 

“Our laws are rules, but they’re also an expression of our values. They shape the social contract, and so this will change the conversations that parents have, and the expectations of children over time.”

“It will make a huge difference. It will make our children safer. It will make our children happier. It will give them more time, more security, full freedom to grow up, more opportunity, and that, at the end of the day, is what this government is about,” he added. 

The other side to this is combating the giant companies that are widely against these bans, which is intertwined with talking to the US government and president and reassuring them that this isn’t a targeted ploy towards US tech companies. 

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UK ministers have been working on a lobbying operation to prevent backlash from the Trump administration. The administration had previously threatened the UK with “a big tariff” if the government does not drop its digital services tax, so they’re moving extra cautiously when it comes to this ban. 

“I honestly think that across world leaders there has always been a recognition that leaders have to take steps to protect children,” Starmer said. “In relation to President Trump, I spoke to him on Saturday, I’ll see him again this afternoon and, yes, of course, we’ll discuss this and many other issues, and lots of other leaders are very interested in it.”

Elon Musk, who owns X and has worked closely with the president, said “this censorship law is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The real goal is to enable the UK government to track everyone.” 

Ministers are working on every detail of this ban and what it will entail. They’ve announced late-night social media curfews for 16-and-17-year-olds. One of the workarounds that teenagers have used in Australia is using virtual private networks (VPNs) to circumvent geographical internet controls, so the UK is looking into regulating those networks as well. 

This move will have a major impact on young people. In the UK, among 13-to-15-year-olds about 90% have a social media account, and have stated that their main resource for getting the news is YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram, according to reports from the Guardian. 

The UK’s technology secretary, Liz Kendall, echoed Starmer’s sentiment regarding the importance of protecting children and their mental health and not having such a focus on how teens can work around the bans. 

“I have no doubt children who are currently on social media, for whom it’s an integral part of their lives, will try and get around the ban, and many will succeed,” she said. 

“But we do think we need to draw this line in the sand, give greater clarity to parents and greater protections for children.”

“I’ve never thought that the ban will be a complete silver bullet … It will be as much about resetting expectations and social norms for children who are seven, eight, nine, 10, now that they won’t be going on social media until they’re 16,” she told the BBC.

“This is a huge statement of our values, who we are as a country, and it’s a way of actually bringing our country together,” Starmer said.

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Meta’s Hidden Face-Recognition Tool for Smart Glasses Found Inside AI App

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Meta has repeatedly said it has not launched face recognition for its smart glasses. But a WIRED analysis found that much of the technology needed to make such a feature work has already been placed inside the company’s live Meta AI app, which has been downloaded more than 50 million times. The system, internally called “NameTag,” appears designed to identify people seen through Meta’s smart glasses and alert the wearer when a face is recognized.

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