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September 15, 2026

Games Without Frontiers: The EU KIDS Act Bans Loot Box Mechanics Everywhere Except Games

The leaked KIDS Act Regulation goes far beyond the leaked Communication that announced it. Its most consequential move sits beneath the proposed social media age limit: services would apply child-safety settings until they establish that a user is an adult through age assurance. That choice turns age into part of the infrastructure of online participation. The Regulation combines it with guardian-controlled accounts for 13- to 15-year-olds, an attempted prohibition on screenshots of minors’ material, direct...

Blog Post, digital rights, internet policy, technology
September 10, 2026

Don’t You (Forget About Me): Three Features That Owe a Child an Answer

For some background music when reading this post, we encourage you to (re)discover Simple Minds performing “Don’t You (Forget About Me)”. Where the earlier posts in our series “So, what is a plan” told a platform what to switch off, what to forbid, and what to start the child behind, this set tells a platform what it has to build and deliver, a duty to serve rather than a boundary to respect. It leads on...

Blog Post, digital rights, internet policy, technology
September 8, 2026

Every Breath You Take: Three Features That Decide Who Can Reach a Child

For some background music when reading this post, we encourage you to (re)discover The Police performing "Every Breath You Take". The previous post in this series, Sweet Dreams Are Made of This, took the three features that turn a child's attention into money: the streak and the reward loop, the profile built to sell, and the box you pay to open. The fix there was a line the feature may not cross, since none of...

Blog Post, digital rights, internet policy, technology
September 3, 2026

Sweet Dreams Are Made of This: Three Features That Put a Child on the Bottom Line

For some background music when reading this post, we encourage you to (re)discover the Eurythmics performing “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)”. The previous post in this series, You Spin Me Round, took the three features built to keep a child scrolling: the feed that never ends, the video that plays itself, and the notification built for return. The proposed fix was to switch off the harmful pattern by default, with the possibility to switch...

Blog Post, digital rights, internet policy, technology
September 1, 2026

You Spin Me Round: Three Features Built to Keep a Child in the Loop

For some background music when reading this post, we encourage you to (re)discover Dead or Alive performing "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)". The opening post in this series, Non, a Ban Is Not a Plan, described how the French Conseil constitutionnel struck down the under-15 ban because the legislator had set out to address the risks posed by certain features of social media services and then wrote a rule about the user’s age...

Blog Post, digital rights, internet policy, technology
August 27, 2026

Non, a Ban Is Not a Plan: France Struck Down the Ban, Meta Settled on Features

For some background music when reading this post, we encourage you to (re)discover Michel Polnareff’s “La poupée qui fait non”. France adopted its under-15 social media ban on 21 July 2026 but hit a major roadblock a few weeks before its prohibition was due to take effect. The Conseil constitutionnel censured the central provision of the ban on 14 August, and the reasoning for its “Non” travels far beyond France. While the court did accept...

Blog Post, digital rights, European policy, internet policy, technology
July 8, 2026

Zero Knowledge, Full Record: Age Verification And The Infrastructure The Privacy Label Ignores

The “privacy-preserving age verification” label should be understood at two separate levels: on the one hand, it accurately describes a mechanism, yet on the other, it misleadingly describes a system. The protection it refers to covers a single exchange between a user and a website; the infrastructure that makes that exchange work requires knowing who the user is. The former may be preserving privacy, but the latter certainly doesn’t. That distinction has consequences. The label...

Blog Post, digital rights, technology
July 1, 2026

Two Megaphones and an Empty Room: The Need to Write the Copyright Reform for the Empty Seats

The EU copyright review is being argued by two blocs of private interests. The party that will live with the result, the public, was never really in the room. That was a choice by those who drafted the consultation. That is not a good thing. Two private interests are shouting at each other across the European Commission's copyright review, and the room they are shouting in is empty. On one side stand rightholders. On the...

artificial intelligence, Blog Post, copyright
June 24, 2026

Ownership 2.0: A Gamer, a Librarian, and a Random Mum Walk Into a Bar…

A video gamer, a librarian, and a random mum walk into a bar. That could be the start of a great joke. Sadly, it is not. It reflects a convergence of interests that most EU policymakers have not yet noticed: three communities, fighting separately, over the same broken promise. The European Parliament’s IMCO Committee meets today, 24 June 2026, to examine digital ownership under the heading “Ownership 2.0.” What that entails, whether the Members...

Blog Post, copyright
June 22, 2026

Brussels Revisits Copyright – Part 3: Why an Optional Research Exception Is No Exception at All

This is the third and final installment in a series analysing the European Commission's current call for evidence on EU copyright rules. Part 1 examined live content piracy and the fundamental rights implications of enforcement without safeguards. Part 2 examined the push for mandatory AI training licences and why the mechanism would harm the creators it claims to protect. This post focuses on the research exception: a provision that has been optional for twenty-five...

artificial intelligence, Blog Post, copyright