Original article ISPreview UK:
The Stop Killing Games group, which is a consumer campaign that seeks to preserve video games after they are taken offline, has joined with a number of global rights respecting organisations to create a sister campaign called Stop Killing the Internet. The aim is to defend the open internet against policies and practices that “impose surveillance, exclusion and excessive centralised control” in the name of online safety.
The international campaign follows shortly after the UK government confirmed its intention to introduce an online Social Media ban for children under the age of 16 against ten popular platforms, as well as various other measures (summary). But the launch of the new movement also comes just as a petition not to ban social media on the UK Government website broke through the 100,000 signatures required to trigger a debate in parliament (it’s currently on c.192,000).
NOTE: The new campaign group is backed by the
Open Rights Group, Index on Censorship, NO2ID, Big Brother Water, Defend Digital Me, Progressive Voice, RWS and Stop Killing Games, among others.
The new international Stop Killing the Internet campaign aims to support alternative “rights-respecting approaches to child protection, privacy, democratic accountability and platform responsibility“, while pushing back against stricter forms of censorship and solutions (e.g. social media bans, scanning of devices and additional surveillance).
“There was widespread feeling that a global threat required a global response, and that the UK’s announcement of prohibition and device scanning required an immediate response,” said the announcement, while highlighting how it would make it harder for young people to access educational videos online, or connect with friends, and socialise while playing games.
Moritz Katzner, Director of Stop Killing Games, said:
“The internet is a place of education, games, friendship, culture, work and public debate. Like any town hall, it can become ugly. But we would never respond by shutting down the town hall. We would never demand identity papers at the door.
We are building a global movement, if you believe in building a better internet and fighting for a global connected internet then join us.”
The full public launch is due to take place on 27th June 2026, although people can sign-up to join the campaign today. But thus far politicians in the UK and other countries, where similar measures are being taken, have shown little interest in addressing the more negative aspects of the restrictions they’re trying to impose.
Most people can easily understand the principles of what governments are seeking to do, but often it falls down on implementation and risks significant unintended consequences in the process. Speaking of which, Ofcom’s letter to the government on the recently proposed ban (here) highlighted how much work there is still to do on the issues and some of the challenges involved.
For example, Ofcom warned that while “age assurance at 16 should be technically feasible“, it is not an easy thing to get right and there are also “privacy considerations“.
Extract from the Regulator’s Letter to Government
A clear lesson from the first year of implementing the Online Safety Act has been that clarity in the law facilitates successful compliance and enforcement. We would encourage the Government’s regulations to be as clear and specific as possible, including about the services these restrictions will and will not apply to. This would allow Ofcom to move rapidly to detailed implementation and then driving real improvements for children online as soon as possible.
We have already kicked off work to support Parliament’s consideration of the regulations that government will be laying later this year, and I can confirm that we will deliver by the end of October a technical assessment of Highly Effective Age Assurance at 16. Our initial observations are:
• That age assurance at 16 should be technically feasible but there are currently fewer available methods than at 18. For example, email-based age estimation or credit cards checks are not applicable or not available at 16. We have more work to do to understand the effectiveness and accessibility of different methods, the availability of identity and age attributes at 16, and the privacy considerations of different existing and emerging methods. We will work closely with the ICO as we develop the assessment.
• There will be a range of practical implementation challenges, including accuracy at boundary ages and how to approach the “ageing” of child accounts. Some services will need clarity on how to ensure their age assurance process is highly effective at correctly determining both users who are 18+ and 16+, in order to fulfil concurrent regulatory obligations.
• We are already learning about effective design, implementation and enforcement from the new Australian regime. For example, some services likely to be captured by the ban have relied on age inference models (where user activity is analysed to estimate age) to meet their obligations in Australia. The evidence does not yet show that these models can deliver an effective, privacy-preserving solution for an under 16 ban.
• Age checks are most effective when they are built into multiple stages of the user journey. Our age assurance report in July will assess the use, effectiveness and challenges of the current service-level statutory approach to age assurance. In the longer term, a layered or whole-of-system approach may be most effective, reducing circumvention and increasing public trust. We will issue a follow-up report in the first year of the social media ban coming into force to specifically consider the issue of displacement.
Ofcom’s letter also highlights the “particular stress that the Secretary of State has placed on enforcement“, with the regulator seeking a deeper understanding of how the Government expects them to drive compliance with the regime, while “noting the constraints placed on us by the legal processes on individual cases and the importance of retaining flexibility to respond to developing situations“.
The reality is that there isn’t a perfectly workable solution to everything the Government are seeks to do, which seems likely to result in a solution that does just as much to irritate adult users as it does the under 16s. But as Ofcom says, the government first needs to be much clearer about precisely which services these restrictions will and will not apply to.
