Nandy warns tech firms that Britain's under-16 social media ban is only a staging post

The board-deck version of the UK file is a compliance project that closes in March. By then the ban on under-16s using "high-risk" apps ^[2], the tighter age checks and the feed limits for 16- and 17-year-olds all go live ^[3]. Nandy, speaking ahead of her Labour party conference speech, described that package as an interim step. "We shouldn't accept that this is the end," she said ^[4]. "This is a staging post to what must be a very active interventionist state, policing and regulating the online space so that people are safe." ^[5]

For a product team, the more useful signal is her case against the ban's own method. "How have we got to a point where we're saying these social media sites are so harmful and dangerous that we cannot conceive of any way of protecting our children except to remove them altogether? This ends now," she said ^[7]. She also said the internet was the only new technology to have been "entirely outsourced to the private sector" ^[14]. A minister who counts keeping children out as a last resort is likely to turn next to how the platforms work. In my view, the March limits on infinite scrolling and algorithmic content ^[3] are a better guide to that next stage than the under-16 ban itself.

A skeptic would say a conference speech is not a bill, and Nandy supplied part of that case herself. "Laws are only as good as the ability to enforce them," she said, in remarks about Ofcom and the Online Safety Act ^[15]. The reported remarks did not include new measures or a timetable. The record so far points the other way. Keir Starmer and Liz Kendall announced the ban in June ^[6], and it takes effect in March ^[3], about nine months later ^[1]. It survived a change of prime minister in between ^[6].

The government's wider tech ambitions give it a reason to keep adding rules. Nandy welcomed a suggestion from Matt Brittin, the BBC director general, that a "public service algorithm" could compete with big tech ^[12]. She linked that ambition to visible action on safety. "But I think to win the permission of the public to do that, they've got to hear from us loud and clear that we will take action to protect people, particularly children, right now," she said ^[13]. The same government plans to give established broadcasters greater prominence on YouTube and TikTok, and it accepts the dispute with Washington that comes with it. "That is a difference of opinion with the US administration, but we do reserve the right to take a different approach," she said ^[9].

For platforms, this quarter's trade-off is in how the March controls get built. Age checks and feed limits sized to the announced age bands are the cheaper way to hit the deadline. Controls that can be extended to other ages or other features cost more now and less if the rules widen later. The cheaper build only makes sense if the regime stops in March. Nandy has told the industry it does not stop there ^[1], and the Ofcom enforcement problem she acknowledged ^[11] will set how fast the next tranche can be enforced.