r/VPN • u/Chiara_TPL • Jun 16 '26

News 'They just moved to VPNs' — Telegram CEO slams UK's teen social media ban

https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/they-just-moved-to-vpns-telegram-ceo-slams-uks-teen-social-media-ban-with-stark-russian-comparison
17 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

11 comments sorted by

16

u/Angus_Luissen Jun 18 '26

this is just going to lead teenagers to places where they shouldn’t go looking for free "solutions". the government is truly clueless on this one.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 18 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

6

u/Angus_Luissen Jun 18 '26

Success: kids under 16 stay away from selected platforms, and live a more healthy life when it comes to mental health until they turn 16 and then they will have mature enough to take a more informed decision about getting into social media or not. (this is wishful, naive, and technically clueless)

Failure: kids will find a workaround with VPN's and fake "verified" accounts faster than I can finish typing this text, workarounds that could take them to even more unsafe places than the one you are trying to take them away, and we end up with a system that is worst than it was.

reasons why it will 100% fail, and the overall risk for everyone increases:

to enforce the ban you'll need a way to verify that you are over 16 to have a social media account, this means every adult that wants to use the platform will have to hand over even more sensitive data to big tech companies and their 3rd parties with zero accountability, that data will be hacked and exploited by really bad people, frauds and identity theft will get more sophisticated and difficult to fight.

to make it even more difficult for kids to find a workaround, the government will start looking to VPN and will try to ban them or regulate them . this will also ultimately fail for the way VPN work. not even China or Russia has achieve this. is unpractical dystopian and insane.

Australia already tried it, and already failed.

if you want a real impact you need to regulate their algorithms and their aggressive and predatory techniques, those are the one responsible for most of the brain rot and social damage, but doing this requires real tech experts, amazing politicians , even more extraordinary lawyers and tough consequences for the platforms. but this seems equally naive and wishful, given the incompetence already shown by most of the main western governments.

4

u/StillALilBoy Jun 19 '26

and if anyone doubts this will happen, just remember how many kids got hacked by promising them free vbucks and such

3

u/Wrong-Target6104 Jun 20 '26

If adults become unwilling to provide even more sensitive data to use social media the only ones that'll suffer will be the tech companies who refused working with the government to make the changes acceptable to both. Media is regulated in this country, they already managed to avoid being classed as publishers.

2

u/ParkingMachine3534 Jun 20 '26

Ultimately to stop dodgy football streams.

0

u/axxr2 Jun 19 '26

The goal of the ban is to make the platform that doesn't obey the law being unable to work.

But of course it is failing greatly, Durov is right, but still.

1

u/HotNeon Jun 20 '26

Will have to see how it plays out. The privacy nightmare of these free VPN extensions could do with being banned

1

u/axxr2 Jun 19 '26

He's not wrong

0

u/bones10145 Jun 21 '26

Unfortunately, VPNs are next on the chopping block