UK weighs adding Vinted and eBay to under-16 social media ban
What's the deal? The UK government is "looking seriously" at adding resale sites Vinted and eBay to its planned ban on social media for under-16s, culture secretary Lisa Nandy said on Sunday. The ban is set to take effect in March.
Why now? Nandy's comments, made on the BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg , followed a Sunday Times report that the ban would widen to cover the two marketplaces. The concern is that messaging tools let strangers groom children; the paper said Depop and Facebook Marketplace could also be added.
The move would go further than the original plan. When the government announced the ban in June, it did not intend to include e-commerce platforms.
What changes in practice? The ban will cover 10 of the biggest platforms "whose purpose is to enable social interaction and which allow users to post material," including Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube. A full list has not been published. YouTube Kids is excluded, and gaming site Roblox would not be banned outright, though features such as its chat function would be restricted.
Both eBay and Vinted already require users to be at least 18. Vinted, which has grown to 17 million UK users, allows parents to create supervised accounts for children. A spokesperson said direct messaging is "part of how the platform works," but that it has "zero tolerance for harmful or explicit content" and removes rule-breaking activity.
eBay said it was "focused on providing a trusted and safe marketplace experience" and looked forward to "understanding more and continuing to work constructively with the government."
What could go wrong? Matthew Sinclair, a senior director at the Computer and Communications Industry Association, which represents tech firms, warned against "scope creep." A messaging restriction for under-16s "would not stop at social media and would reach into the services families depend on to stay in touch," he said.
What happens next? Ofcom last month set out four ways to verify ages, including photo ID and facial age estimation. The government plans to finalise regulations, while the scope of covered platforms remains unsettled.
The signal: Including marketplaces would test how broadly "social media" is defined, since Vinted and eBay are retail sites rather than conventional networks. Australia's under-16 ban took effect last year and is now facing a High Court challenge over privacy and scope — a sign of the questions the UK has yet to resolve.
Read more: thenextweb.com, BBC
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