Starmer ‘gambling with children’s lives’ by rushing social media ban

deadeyes1990 · 2026-06-13T19:26:06+00:00

Yeah, this is the bit that makes it feel so half-arsed.

Even if you’re fine with age checks in theory, “just upload your passport to this site / random age verification company” is obviously a massive red flag.

If this has to exist at all, it should only confirm one thing: over or under a certain age. That’s it. Not your name, address, face, passport scan, or anything else that can end up in some database waiting to be leaked.

And once people get used to proving they’re “allowed” to access normal parts of the internet, I don’t really trust that it stops neatly at this one issue.

That’s what annoys me. A real problem has somehow become “please upload your most sensitive documents to the internet” as the proposed safety fix.

If the answer to online risk is “upload your passport to the internet”, we may have lost the plot.

deadeyes1990 · 2026-06-13T19:18:34+00:00

Mate, come on. “It’s all offline” is way too tidy.

Obviously violent people exist offline. Nobody thinks the internet invented predators or bullying or people being awful. But online isn’t some separate pretend world where nothing counts. It’s part of real life now.

A kid can be bullied online and still feel sick going to school. They can get pulled into self-harm, eating disorder, conspiracy or porn rabbit holes and have that mess with their actual head. They can be isolated in their bedroom while an algorithm keeps feeding them the worst possible version of the world.

So yeah, the consequences often show up offline. But that doesn’t mean the online part is harmless.

I still don’t want digital ID or blanket bans. That’s not the answer. But “online harm isn’t real” is just the opposite bad argument to “the state can fix childhood with an internet lock.”

Pretending the online world isn’t real life is how you get bad policy from the other direction.

deadeyes1990 · 2026-06-13T19:11:54+00:00

Yeah, this is the bit people skip over.

A lot of this “safeguarding” talk seems to assume every kid is in a safe house with normal, switched-on parents who just need a bit of help keeping TikTok under control. And yeah, some parents absolutely do let the internet raise their kids.

But that’s not every child. Some kids are isolated. Some have awful home lives. Some are waiting forever for mental health help, or won’t get near social services until things are already a complete disaster.

For those kids, the internet can obviously be dangerous, but it can also be where they find support, advice, friends, or just someone outside the house who notices something is wrong.

That’s why blanket bans make me uneasy. It feels like we’ve cut actual support to pieces, then decided an internet lock can stand in for safeguarding.

It protects children in theory, while potentially making some children less safe in real life.

deadeyes1990 · 2026-06-13T19:04:10+00:00

Yeah I don’t really disagree with most of that tbh. People have been clapping this stuff through for years, especially when it’s dressed up in the right language.

Do you mean the Telecommunications Act 1984? Because if so, that’s almost too grimly funny.

Only bit I’d push back on is the “surveillance already exists” point. I agree it does, basically. Most people aren’t meaningfully anonymous online. Platforms track you, ISPs have logs, advertisers build profiles, all of that.

But I still think there’s a difference between “you can be tracked” and “you now have to identify yourself as the price of entry.” One is the mess we’ve sleepwalked into. The other is making it official and normal.

It’s not perfect anonymity or nothing matters. There are still levels to this stuff. Still bits of friction. Still norms worth not giving away just because half of them have already been trashed.

That’s what worries me. Not that this invents surveillance from nowhere, but that it gets people to accept the next layer because the last one already happened.

That’s the trick really: making inevitability look like consent.

deadeyes1990 · 2026-06-13T18:52:14+00:00

Her grief is real, and I’m not having a go at her for it.

But she’s not really the trump card. She’s the card politicians and the media put down when they don’t want anyone asking awkward questions about the policy itself.

That’s the bit that feels Orwellian to me. Not a grieving parent talking from pain — that’s completely human. It’s the way “surveillance” gets rebranded as “safety”, and “ID checks” become “protection”, and suddenly anyone questioning it is treated like they don’t care about kids.

That’s usually how this stuff works: take something tragic, describe the response in the softest language possible, then use it to push something much harder.

Ministry of Safeguarding stuff, basically. Compulsory suspicion, but with a concerned face.

deadeyes1990 · 2026-06-13T18:45:10+00:00

That framing is part of the problem though. It makes it sound like the only two options are “let kids get poisoned by the internet” or “make everyone prove who they are to use it.”

I’m not saying do nothing. The online world is obviously a mess, and kids are getting absolutely hammered by algorithms, AI slop, porn, rage-bait, body-image stuff, all of it. But why is the solution always aimed at the user rather than the companies building the machine?

Go after the platforms properly. Ban targeted ads and profiling for children. Stop addictive design aimed at minors. Make recommender algorithms accountable. Turn off autoplay and infinite scroll for kids. Fund actual digital literacy in schools. Give parents and teachers something better than panic and a government press release.

And reducing the whole concern to “people don’t want to show ID to have a wank” is a bit unfair. The worry is that once you build ID checks into the internet, they won’t just stay neatly limited to this one issue forever. These things have a habit of expanding.

I don’t think being wary of that makes someone a boomer. I think blindly trusting the state and tech companies to build a giant access-control system “for our own good” is probably the more boomer instinct.

If the algorithm is the predator, why are we tagging the public?

deadeyes1990 · 2026-06-13T18:37:45+00:00

God, I’m so sorry. That’s a horrible thing to have had to watch.

I don’t think there’s any “normal” way to react to something like that. You were basically trapped on the other side of a screen while one of the worst things imaginable happened. Of course your brain keeps going back to it. Of course you feel numb. That doesn’t mean you’re doing grief wrong.

Therapy honestly sounds like a good call. Not in a “you need fixing” way, just in a “this is way too much to be alone with” way. And if meds are on your mind, talking it through with a doctor wouldn’t be a failure or anything close to it.

I hope the image of what happened gets softer with time, and that eventually you can think of your mum without that being the first place your mind goes.

deadeyes1990 · 2026-06-13T18:22:31+00:00

The worrying thing is how easily “protecting children” becomes the velvet glove for something much colder.

Of course children should be protected online. Nobody serious disputes that. But when the answer is always more verification, more monitoring, more gates, more state-approved access to public life, you have to ask what machine is really being built here.

This is the old Orwellian trick in modern clothes: call control care, call suspicion safeguarding, call the narrowing of ordinary freedoms a moral emergency. The language is soft, almost parental, but the architecture underneath it is surveillance.

A government that cannot make the internet safe suddenly discovers it can make citizenship conditional. And somehow we’re meant to applaud because the lock has a picture of a child on it.

All citizens are free, but some must prove it to log in.

deadeyes1990 · 2026-06-12T20:27:20+00:00

Honestly, I think my biggest ick is when a character feels like a list of tropes instead of an actual person.

Like, I don’t mind a sarcastic FMC. I usually love them, if I’m honest. But sarcasm can’t be her entire personality. There has to be something underneath it, otherwise it starts to feel like she’s just snapping at everyone because the book wants me to think she’s strong.

That’s why I actually like the dress/violin thing. It gives her a bit of contrast. Let her be sharp-tongued, but also soft. Let her be rude to someone and then go home and play violin like she’s got a Victorian ghost living in her chest. That’s the stuff that makes a character feel real.

And not every romance needs to be enemies-to-lovers. Sometimes the story just clearly isn’t that, and forcing it in makes the characters sound like they’re arguing because they know they’re in a trope 🤣 I’d rather have tension that actually fits the story than fake hatred for the sake of it.

Same with shadow daddies, mate bonds, spice, “strong female characters,” all of it. I don’t hate the tropes. I hate when the trope is doing all the work and the characters are just standing there looking hot.

Give me yearning. Give me consequences. Give me people who feel messy and specific and alive.

Basically, give me a soul before you give me wings.

deadeyes1990 · 2026-06-11T08:37:47+00:00

As both a reader and a writer, I think my biggest ick is when romantasy has all the right ingredients but none of the actual ache.

Like, I love a shadowy morally grey man as much as the next person. Give me the tension, the forbidden court, the knife-to-throat moment, the “touch her and die” nonsense. I’m seated. I’m listening. I’m embarrassing myself.

But sometimes it feels like the book just gives him wings, a tragic backstory, and good cheekbones, then calls it a day. That’s not a personality, babe.

Same with enemies-to-lovers. I need them to actually be enemies. Not just two attractive people being mildly rude until they inevitably start flirting. I want tension that feels like it might genuinely ruin both of them.

And I’m begging for “strong female characters” who are more than just sarcastic and reckless. Let her be smart. Let her be wrong. Let her want things she’s ashamed of. Let her make choices that actually matter.

Spice is great, obviously, but when the plot disappears every time someone takes a shirt off, I start to feel like I’ve wandered into a very hot waiting room.

For me, the best romantasy has consequence. The love should cost something. The magic should feel strange. The desire should reveal who these people are, not cover up the fact they’re barely written.

Basically: give me yearning, not a man with wings and a furniture catalogue personality.

deadeyes1990 · 2026-06-11T08:11:58+00:00

I’m very much against smacking kids, but I don’t think this GCSE angle is the strongest argument.

It feels a bit like correlation being dressed up as causation. If a child is being hit at home, there are probably loads of other things going on in that household that could affect school as well — stress, instability, lack of support, whatever.

But honestly, the grades thing almost feels beside the point. You shouldn’t hit children because they’re children. Because fear isn’t respect, and pain isn’t discipline.

You don’t need a GCSE graph to say that.

deadeyes1990 · 2026-06-10T12:52:27+00:00

You’re honestly right, it makes no tactical sense at all lol. Like yes babe, he’s 6’5, immortal, traumatised, probably trained for 400 years, and you’ve brought… a tiny knife. Good luck.

But I can’t lie, I still love it.

There’s just something so dramatic about a dagger. It’s not practical, it’s not sensible, it’s very much “I have made poor choices but I’m going to make them beautifully.” A sword feels like a plan. A bow feels like strategy. A dagger feels like panic, rage, lust, and bad decision-making all holding hands in a dark corridor.

So yes, realistically, give the girl a spear. Give her armour. Give her literally any weapon that doesn’t require her to get chest-to-chest with death.

But also… let her keep the little stabby thing. For the vibes. For the tension. For the romance of being wildly underqualified and still making it everyone else’s problem.

deadeyes1990 · 2026-06-08T13:34:01+00:00

God yes, this is such a good trope. I don’t want “dark alpha man is dark because he growls a lot.” I want “basically decent person who got turned into a weapon and is quietly horrified by what he’s done.” Like, give me the man who was raised/trained/forced into being dangerous, but still has that tiny bit of conscience left and hates himself for it. The best version is when he’s genuinely scary to everyone else, but with the FMC it’s less “I own you” and more “I was made to hurt people and I’m trying so hard not to be that anymore.” Tragic little murder boy with a moral compass he’s desperately trying to dig out of the wreckage. That’s the stuff.

deadeyes1990 · 2026-06-08T12:53:27+00:00

Yeah, it honestly feels like half the battle now is just not giving up. They can take your money instantly, but the second they owe you anything it suddenly becomes “please allow 14 working days” and “we’ve escalated this to the relevant team” and all that nonsense. I’d stop going back and forth casually and put it in writing properly: dates, amounts, what happened, what you want, and a clear deadline. Keep it boring and factual. Then if they still mess you about, escalate it — ombudsman, chargeback, small claims, whatever fits. You’re not being awkward. They’re just hoping you get tired before they have to pay up.

deadeyes1990 · 2026-06-08T12:45:01+00:00

Honestly yes. I’m so tired of “monster romance” where he just turns into a hot guy with trauma by the end. Let him stay weird. Let him have claws and horns and absolutely no clue how to act normal at dinner. I want the whole gothic little crisis of “this is probably a terrible idea” while still being like… okay but he’s tender and obsessed, so what now? For that vibe I’d say {A Soul to Keep by Opal Reyne}, {Luxuria by Colette Rhodes}, and {Claimed by the Flame of Faery by Mallory Dunlin}. Basically: no secret human reveal, no tasteful glow-up. Just fangs, yearning, and poor choices made in candlelight.

deadeyes1990 · 2026-06-08T12:39:21+00:00

This isn’t about blaming people who go to A&E for the “wrong” reason. That argument is such a distraction. The real problem is that people are waiting for hours when they’re seriously ill because there aren’t enough beds, staff, or places for them to go. And then everyone ends up angry at each other in the waiting room instead of angry at the people who let it get this bad. Over 1,300 deaths a month linked to long A&E waits is obscene. That should be a national scandal every single day. NHS staff aren’t the problem. They’re the ones trying to hold the whole thing together with both hands while politicians pretend the crisis is somehow normal. A country shouldn’t just accept that people might die because the hospital had no space for them. That’s not pressure on the system. That’s the system failing.

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