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Week 38: The week when the EU Commission presented the Kids Act
Deutsch (original) · Auto-translated to English
The 38th calendar week is coming to an end. We have published 16 new texts with a total of 154,720 characters. Welcome to the weekly review of network politics.
Dear readers,
This week on Thursday, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen (CDU) presented her proposal for the Kids Act, a law for comprehensive age controls in the name of child and youth protection. We have one day beforehttps://netzpolitik.org/2026/eu-kids-act-eu-kommission-will-netz-mit-alt...Draft published and analyzed.
Many news media have reported that the EU is planning a social media ban up to age 13. That's not wrong. But it's also not the point. The EU Commission is planning much more. If in doubt, everyone online should be considered a minor - until they prove otherwise.
The Australian model, which served as a model for the EU, requires age limits “only” forAccountson major platforms like TikTok or Instagram. The European model, on the other hand, already requires age restrictionsAccessto all kinds of places on the internet, as long as they are not designed to be child-friendly. So it's also about the smallest social networks, video platforms and chatbots, apps and games with age ratings.
Of course, it depends on the exact design. At the end of the day, for which offers is the regulation really applicable and enforceable; How strict are the age controls? On the way from paper to practice, such projects can sometimes come to nothing. But for now we must take seriously what the draft requires. And in the draft, the thresholds for age controls are very low. There should expressly be no exceptions for small and micro companies.
The image of the Internet that emerges from the Kids Act is not the Internet we know today. It's more like Teletubby land. Only proof of age becomes a ticket to the digital world, which is still largely openly accessible today.
According to the draft, everyone should participate in the implementation. Everyone online should submit to age controls, for example with a version of the age control app presented by the EU. This app is intended to scan your own ID. However, the app should then only pass on an age signal, for example: “over 18”.
The dream of every authoritarian government
At the beginning, the privacy promises are high. Everything should be as anonymous as possible. But these promises crumbled from the start. The prototype of the age control app presented was initially not anonymous, as promised, but pseudonymous. Thehttps://netzpolitik.org/2026/facesscan-und-handy-zwang-von-der-leyen-...App “finished” since Aprilis still not finished. I can't download it and try it out. The draft law does mention “zero knowledge proof,” which is valuable for data protection, but in a grammatically meaningless statement. Such mistakes undermine trust.
What I find most dangerous is what this type of age verification infrastructure can become once it's in place. When millions of people in the EU prove their age as a matter of course before they watch a cinema trailer on YouTube or download a mobile game from 12 onwards. Even a small app update and a tightening of the legal situation could be enough to ensure that age control apps no longer just pass on anonymous age signals, but real names.
What the EU Commission wants to build here is an infrastructure for compulsory ID and real names on the internet - even if it is not initially clear. I find that disturbing. Such a control apparatus would be the dream of every authoritarian government.
Parents should prove custody of their children
As if that weren't enough, a second control device is to be created in the slipstream of age verification. If parents want to set up a supervised social media account for their 13-year-old child, for example on Instagram or TikTok, they should not only provide proof of age for themselves and their child. Thirdly, they should also prove that they have custody of their own child. The EU member states should create a path for appropriate digital evidence.
The planned regulations for proof of custody speak of the iron voice of a government that does not seem to trust its citizens even an inch. Let's imagine that a father simply wants to set up a parentally monitored Instagram account for his 14-year-old daughter. And then comes this voice that says: “First prove to me thatyouyou're really grown up. First prove to me that your child is really at least 13 years old. First prove to me that this childreallyis your own. Nothing else is going on here!” – Dear EU Commission, how do you imagine this?
It occasionally happens that the initial surcharge for regulation is completely excessive for strategic reasons. This creates bargaining chips for Parliament and the Council of Ministers, and from the perspective of fundamental rights it already seems like a success if at least a somewhat tolerable regulation remains at the end. But I don't think that should be a benchmark.
This makes it all the more important to state the plans in their full drastic form. No, this is not just about a social media ban for under-13s - even this projecthttps://netzpolitik.org/2026/absicherungn-statt-aussperr-deutscher-ethikr...German Ethics Council failedis. It's about a dangerous control system for large parts of the Internet. At stake are fundamental rights such as participation, freedom of expression and freedom of information for younger and older people alike. We won't let up.
Have a nice weekend
Sebastian
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