These aren’t social media companies. But communication platforms jus as sms or phone calls.The UK government have given social media companies enough warnings over the past 5 years telling them to improve child protections on their media platforms or the government will do it for them and each year the social media companies have shown contempt to the UK government by not improving child protection to a level that satisfies the government. This is not something that has hit the social media companies out of the blue, this is something that has been going on for years and something the social media companies have know about for years but have been very complacent in their duties on child protection. The social media companies were given enough rope to hang themselves and they have done just that. Now the government have stepped in and started to act which is what they warned the social media companies they would do if they did not get their act together.
Therefore stop blaming the government for doing what they are doing. The fault likes directly at the doors of the social media companies who were given EVERY opportunity over the years to come up with very credible solutions to the problem of how to protect children on their messaging platforms.
Child protection charities saw there was a problem. They spoke to the social media companies to come up with solutions and they were dismissive of the charities concerns because they blustered with the usual PR 'yes, we listened and will we make changes' but these changes dragged on and on and on so the child protection charities went to the UK government asking for their help because they were not getting it from the social media companies. The UK government gave them warnings to change and if they didn't the government would step in. A number of years later and here we are, the government having to step in and oh look, the social media companies are not happy that their business model is going to be affected due to something they refused to do when politely asked.
The government is quite literally asking for the impossible. You can’t have privacy and security at the same time. Ether your communication is private or it’s not.
The UK government is just a bunch of authoritarian *******s who can’t differentiate their business from privacy while complaining. It’s the parents job to take care of their kids phones and not install anything. Not the government or companies who aren’t even advertising to them.