Read the fucking article. The EFF is not talking about tax laws but freedom of association without government identification. I was merely using the UK’s tax law definition of “social media” to demonstrate how easy it is to establish an overly broad definition of something either accidentally or maliciously.

Do you want a free internet where people can associate without the government’s permission? Or are you privileged enough that you’ve never had to worry about your rights and privileges?

EFF has long warned against age-gating the internet. Age verification technology itself is often inaccurate and privacy-invasive, and as more countries considering implementing ID-based checks, the risks move beyond censorship and surveillance toward excluding some people entirely.

From the fucking article, since you won’t read it, you philistine.

This is the EFF. These people know what they’re doing and talking about.

But sure, I’m painting a strawman. Let’s take a look at how the UK defines “social media service” in one of their tax laws!

(3)“Social media service” means an online service that meets the following conditions—

(a)the main purpose, or one of the main purposes, of the service is to promote interaction between users (including interaction between users and user-generated content), and

(b)making content generated by users available to other users is a significant feature of the service.

source

The internet is much larger, until that part gets thrown down the slippery slope too.

It is. You’re using social media right now. So is IRC if you think about it. Anything with a “message component” that “exchanges user submitted information between other users” or whatever can be classified as social media.

Under that definition, it’s very easy to group things such as forums, github/gitlab/whatever. Now you can’t even voice complaints or get and help build source code to resist.

Fuck age verification laws. Anything less than calling it encroachment on liberty and democracy itself is boot licking.

No. Never.

I refuse to let governments gatekeep who gets to have access to social media or the internet in general. Plenty of people have incredibly hard times just getting and keeping an ID card. Imagine how hard it is to get online using some Zk-SNARK-ass ‘proving’ system.

Go read this: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/10/when-no-id-means-no-internet-age-verification-and-right-access-information

If the internet was dependent on government proofs, then I’d contact every nerd I know and set up my own networks. Because I’d rather go back to using IRC than have some entity control “moderation” (read: censorship) from afar.