I wonder whether Britain’s new role in the world is to show others what not to do.

Their government sets policies that are about as sensible as jumping from high cliffs with neither parachute nor bungee cord. We can all watch and learn.

Earlier this year, a proposed Member’s Bill entered the New Zealand Parliament’s biscuit tin. That bill would require social media companies to block those under the age of 16 or face penalties.

The Bill mirrored Australia’s similar legislation, which only takes effect in December.

A sensible approach would have been to wait and see how things pan out in Australia, because there are obvious problems in trying to set online age limits. Santa Clara University’s Eric Goldman explained the pitfalls earlier this year in the Stanford Technology Law Review.

A rule saying that youths are not allowed to see something is one thing in the real world. At a movie theatre, the clerk can quickly tell that a middle-aged patron can be waved into an age-restricted film. Those near the age limit can be asked to show an ID, the clerk can glance at it, and everyone can get on with their day.

None of that applies online. Penalising internet companies if youths access something forbidden is the same thing as demanding that every adult prove that they are, indeed, an adult. And instead of showing your ID to an indifferent clerk, you are supplying personal details to a website that could store it for other purposes.

Professor Goldman warns that age verification exposes both minors and adults to significant privacy and security risks and “dramatically reshapes the Internet’s functioning to the detriment of almost everyone.” Ways of checking online user’s ages range from “dangerous in one way” to “dangerous in a different way.”

The proposed Bill is now in the tin and Parliament is holding a broader Select Committee inquiry.

Fortunately, the British have stepped in to show us the consequences.

The UK’s Online Safety Act also imposes age restrictions on the internet. Their Parliament defined a broad range of online content as being ‘sensitive’ and set penalties for internet companies if anyone under 18 accessed sensitive content on their sites.

The legislation started coming into effect on 25 July. It is not going well at all.

Sensitive content is defined broadly. A speech in Parliament about unpleasant topics could be considered sensitive.

So when an MP tweeted one of her speeches in Parliament, Twitter put a sensitive content warning on it. Any UK-based user wanting to see the video of the speech would need to prove to Twitter that they were not under the age of 18. Content about Gaza is also being censored. Twitter otherwise would risk hefty penalties.

Tech companies can also guess at your age by using a selfie. But people close to an age limit would be stuck using a real ID – or using one of the obvious ways of faking a selfie.

Virtual Private Networks that help you pretend to be based in a country without age limits have proved another popular workaround. In a few days after Britian’s new legislation took effect, half of the top ten free apps in Apple’s UK download charts were VPNs. UK Science Secretary Peter Kyle says the government will be looking “very closely” at VPNs but denies having plans to ban them. So far.

Even adults may prefer VPNs to handing identification documents over to a host of different websites. A stored identification document can be subpoenaed or hacked. It means the end of online privacy.

Pornography is considered sensitive content. It will be exciting to learn which British Members of Parliament enjoy what sorts of content when their details wind up being extracted from dodgy porn sites and handed over to the Daily Mail.

I have more sympathy for Brits with families in places like China, who may now worry about posting on social media even under a pseudonym.

Over half a million Brits have now signed a petition asking that the law be repealed.

There may be no way of reliably keeping youths off internet sites without either imposing substantial encumbrances on every adult wanting to visit the site or creating privacy nightmares.

That problem applies just as strongly to proposed New Zealand age limits for social media. Every adult will need to prove that they are an adult, and privacy disappears.

Britain, right now, is showing us the myriad ways that online age restrictions wind up failing while also breaking the internet. I hope that Parliament is paying attention as it considers age-limits here. 

Jumping off of cliffs is bad enough. Doing so after someone else has just demonstrated the perils would be exceptionally foolish.

New Zealand has enough problems without Parliament creating a new one. 

To read the article on The Post website, click here.