France's Conseil constitutionnel censured Article 1 of the under-15 social media ban on August 14, 2026, weeks before it was due to take effect. The reasoning matters far beyond France: a rule aimed only at children forces every adult to prove their age too, and Parliament never wrote down how that proof would work.
Read the full story: France's top court kills the under-15 social media ban →
Transcript
France banned social media for anyone under fifteen. Today, France's own constitutional court killed it. And the reason should worry every country writing the same law. The judges said you cannot ban children from a service unless that service can tell who the children are. Which means everyone gets asked. A thirty four year old who was never covered by the ban still has to prove their age to read a feed. And parliament never said how. No method, no limits, nothing about what gets collected or kept. So the court struck the whole article. This thing passed the Senate two hundred and forty three to two. It passed the Assembly two seventy nine to eighty one. It died anyway, seventeen days before it was supposed to start.