frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

France blocks social media ban because it would require adults to prove age

https://www.reuters.com/world/frances-top-court-rules-social-media-ban-curtails-freedom-expression-2026-08-14/
66•BlueBerry2001•1h ago

Comments

zug_zug•50m ago
Seems like there are many ways to get toward the best of both worlds -- don't allow people to upload pictures of kids who are clearly under 15 to social media would get us a lot of the way there.

Also all of these companies know from advertising data, and location data, that you are at school, who you are, etc. They would also know that all of your friends are also teenagers.

If the law is serious there are many many ways to enforce this without violating privacy.

wizzwizz4•46m ago
Without further violating privacy. I would say that the data these companies are already collecting on people (including children, who many believe should be afforded extra protections from such companies) is a major, systematic privacy violation.
philipwhiuk•17m ago
> Seems like there are many ways to get toward the best of both worlds -- don't allow people to upload pictures of kids who are clearly under 15 to social media would get us a lot of the way there.

How do you prevent kids uploading photos of themselves?

Cider9986•11m ago
YouTube kids is able to do it. They detect kids in regular YouTube and whether they are the account owner and move them to YouTube kids.
skybrian•43m ago
This could have been an http header. It's hard to identify people, but blocking child-locked devices should be easy, since the devices can be built to cooperate.

Then it's up to parents to give their kids child-locked devices and for stores to not sell unlocked devices to kids.

throwaway27448•4m ago
Child-locked devices can already whitelist/blacklist sites and apps. The issue is not capability.

And before anyone blames the parents, parents will always be shitty. They are an impediment to children's health society must work around.

I wish we would just pull the plug on ad-based social media altogether. The incentives add up to destroying society.

clickety_clack•2m ago
People keep saying it’s the parents responsibility to keep their kids safe, and don’t give them the tools! This is such an obvious one. I should be able to lock down a laptop for a child, and then have the browser limit websites to those that are actually child safe. I don’t care if a government agency is the one issuing “child safety certs”. This gets around the whole “identify everyone no matter what” thing, and it means that parents don’t have to run an entire IT department level of security infrastructure to keep their kids safe online.
graemep•40m ago
The title is unfortunately edited. The courts have blocked it. The government wants it.
awithrow•5m ago
The courts are part of the government no?
dgellow•39m ago
Oh that’s interesting. Could that potentially be used as a blocker for Chat Control 2.0 at the European level?
hk1337•33m ago
What I find interesting is that Texas did it with just pornography sites, everyone complains. Then California, which included those that complained by Texas' law, says they're going to do it at the OS level, some people were okay with it but some still opposed it and possibly some others opposed it. Yet, they're still pushing forward with both?
rabfu•23m ago
Frankly, the proper solution is to ban social media regardless of age. We are already doing it with heroin and other similar substances and clearly social media are pretty bad for everyone and anyone.
sajithdilshan•13m ago
Funny that you’re saying that in a social media
betaby•9m ago
Tobacco and alcohol are scientifically proven carcinogens, yet they are sold ubiquitously in the [western] world. I would argue they are more dangerous than social medias. Yet we don't see any push in banning tobacco and alcohol for 'everyone'.
josefritzishere•16m ago
This is the correct response. Privacy is a human right.
azhdanova•11m ago
The court reasoned sensibly: it's wrong to violate the rights of all citizens just to weed out a small group of violators. This is contrary to data protection regulations. The controversial Chat Control law follows the same logic: to find criminals, they propose monitoring everyone.

The problem is that any age verification system effectively becomes an identity verification system. And such tools rarely remain "just for kids"—they quickly become used for other purposes. The only secure way is to verify not the person's identity, but the device's status (for example, that it's a children's device). This is called age assurance: we confirm age without knowing who exactly is in front of us.

Qwen 3.8 27B

https://huggingface.co/Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B-FP8
178•erdaltoprak•2h ago•158 comments

Seven books I keep close because I love them

https://blog.plover.com/2026/08/02/
106•surprisetalk•2h ago•38 comments

Introducing Toast 1

https://www.mixedbread.com/blog/toast-1
75•mplappert•2h ago•22 comments

RustDesk now supports true unattended remote access on Wayland

https://rustdesk.com/blog/unattended-remote-access-wayland/
34•rustdesk•55m ago•3 comments

GLM-5.3: Frontier coding with emergent cyber capabilities

https://z.ai/blog/glm-5.3
902•pella•11h ago•460 comments

Why does Opus 5 feel worse to work with?

https://mun-logadan.github.io/why-does-opus-5-feel-worse/
391•numeri•6h ago•388 comments

Google is making private AI practical with homomorphic encryption

https://blog.google/security/how-google-is-making-private-ai-practical-with-homomorphic-encryption/
38•u1hcw9nx•1h ago•23 comments

Every Fucking Website (2020)

https://lxe.github.io/everywebsite/
511•doubletwoyou•2h ago•308 comments

RayforceDB – a pure C analytics database with a Lisp-like syntax

https://rayforcedb.com/
15•sourdecor•1h ago•5 comments

In Australia, a home battery boom has helped cut wholesale power prices

https://e360.yale.edu/digest/australia-home-batteries
198•speckx•3h ago•157 comments

I turned my RSS feeds into an e-ink newspaper to stop reading on my phone

https://heyjonny.dev/posts/rss-to-eink-newspaper/
51•speckx•2h ago•20 comments

France blocks social media ban because it would require adults to prove age

https://www.reuters.com/world/frances-top-court-rules-social-media-ban-curtails-freedom-expressio...
66•BlueBerry2001•1h ago•16 comments

Don't classify, hallucinate!

https://softwaredoug.com/blog/2026/08/10/hypothetical-classifications
161•softwaredoug•3d ago•70 comments

Ultraviolet Bird Photography

https://uvbirds.com/
15•EndXA•1w ago•0 comments

"Solving a largely imaginary user goal"

https://unsung.aresluna.org/solving-a-largely-imaginary-user-goal/
27•euthymiclabs•1h ago•29 comments

DeepSeek peak/off-peak pricing update

https://api-docs.deepseek.com/news/news260813/
193•fagnerbrack•7h ago•107 comments

The TEMU-Fication of Software, Digital Goods and Services

https://xn--gckvb8fzb.com/the-temu-fication-of-software-digital-goods-services/
73•surprisetalk•5h ago•45 comments

Self-hosted web push Cloudflare Worker, works on iOS

https://kukuroo.cc/
28•saiday•2h ago•9 comments

Cursor is now a part of SpaceX

https://cursor.com/blog/joining-spacex
37•billy_jones_75•3h ago•19 comments

Show HN: Graft – Claude Code hooks that cut grep tokens by 42%

https://github.com/NanoNets/Graft
22•shrishdwi•1h ago•21 comments

HashAgent – Share an AI agent as a URL, runs locally via WebGPU

https://hashagent.pages.dev/
29•masonhsu•4h ago•3 comments

Maximizing the value of your Claude Code sessions

https://claude.com/blog/maximizing-the-value-of-your-claude-code-sessions
6•twapi•53m ago•0 comments

AI Model Atlas – visualizing populations of ML models as interconnected 3D graph

https://run.cosmograph.app/public/ca9fd1ad-fe83-4238-8b69-b707c633aef0
20•bj-rn•2h ago•4 comments

Gödel, Escher, Elisp: The Beauty of Macros

https://www.chiply.dev/post-elisp-macros-are-beautiful
29•JNRowe•1w ago•9 comments

AI by Hand

https://www.byhand.ai/
5•sans_souse•1h ago•0 comments

Earth.nullschool.net

https://earth.nullschool.net/
20•TremendousJudge•2h ago•9 comments

Show HN: We Implemented the IPv8 Internet-Draft in Linux, Libc, and BGP

https://goonhost.rocks/blog/implementing-ipv8-internet-draft
50•turborigby•4h ago•28 comments

Unsloth Qwen3.8-27B GGUF files

https://huggingface.co/unsloth/Qwen3.8-27B-GGUF
45•apitman•2h ago•1 comments

Differential Heuristics

https://www.redblobgames.com/blog/2026-08-08-differential-heuristics/
97•ibobev•5d ago•7 comments

We're not done with point clouds

https://claytonwramsey.com/blog/mvt/
59•claytonwramsey•3d ago•7 comments