Cope creep, scope creep, and illusions of online control

As age-restricted platform access is increasingly legislated for across the world, will it make any difference or is it a moral panic?

by Rob Corbidge

Published: 14:39, 12 November 2026

During the 1980s, the UK experienced a brief spasm of moral outrage over what were then described as "video nasties". These were films made freely available to watch at home by the advent of the VCR, movies that the virtuous of the day deemed as being unacceptable in content, with such delicate titles as The Driller Killer being in their censorious reticule.

Crucially, these "video nasties" were titles that had escaped the long-established certification process for films intended for release into the UK's public sphere, into cinemas, in other words. This happened because the VCR was a new technology, and it was possible to use a loophole in the law to avoid the certification process for movies released on to video.

The twists in the tale that eventually led to the Video Recordings Act 1984 being passed in order to bring this outrage under control are many, and include the main engine of the moral outrage, one Mary Whitehouse, being spurred into action still further by the distributors of the Italian movie Cannibal Holocaust writing to her anonymously to complain about their own film, in order to generate publicity. Also featured in the moral fervour were police officers in the town of Slough, who seized copies of the Dolly Parton movie The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas, believing it to be obscene.

I was a participant in this awfulness. In my first year of senior school, the year after the 1984 law was passed, a classmate revealed he had access to a stash of such uncertified videos, obtained by an older brother. Blessedly, this classmate also lived near the school. And so it was, for a number of lunchtimes, a bunch of us would decamp to his house and watch illegal gory movies with the curtains drawn. None of them have stuck with me, so clearly they weren't my cup of blood, and maybe, and not surprisingly, I'm more affected by some of the real world nasties I have seen in a life well-lived than by some low-budget horror that I watched as a lad. Yet, it's worth remembering, that outrage was real at the time.

The delightful coda to this story is that many years later, I noticed this classmate's social media profile on Facebook and there he was, leather jacket, black polo neck and sunglasses, being feted at an Italian film festival as a director of genre movies that seem to feature a great deal of creative theatrical violence. Clearly, he has an audience and clearly, he hasn't harmed anyone.

The reason for this story of a bygone VCR age is that we are currently seeing a wave of governments moving forward on social media bans for the under-16s. Here, in the UK, we are following the Australian model with regulation scheduled to come into force in March of next year. Which exact platforms are to be included in the ban has not yet been announced, but Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, X, Reddit, Threads, Snapchat and YouTube are all but certain to be in there. Once again, it's a somewhat belated regulatory response to a technological development that has been with us for some time, so is it better late than never?

The intention is, according to the government to "capture user-to-user platforms whose purpose is to enable online interaction and which allow users to post material, alongside having an algorithm." Yet, already, a minister has said they are also considering including platforms such as Vinted, Depop, eBay and Facebook Marketplace in the ban, as they allow one-to-one communication. The mission is already creeping.

Obviously, the other side of this is that adults will have to prove they are over 16 in order to use such platforms. Official suggestions on how best to achieve that are entirely predictable, as age verification is still age verification, and quite how compliant or not the adult British population are feeling currently will certainly be tested.

This is not entirely a problem limited to big platforms of course. Massive numbers of sites of all kinds use Google or Facebook to manage login processes, and most media and publishers are not currently age-checking their users. Will the scope creep consume them too? Critics also point out that the biggest winners in all this will be Meta and Google, with the up-and-coming Palantirs of the online world close behind. Not feelgood scenarios, these days.

Whether I agree with attempts at restriction seems secondary to whether or not I think it will work, and the evidence suggests not. If a speed limit is unenforceable, it is irrelevant what it is set at.

Certainly, the jury remains out in Australia on whether the ban has had any tangible effect and not a single platform has yet fallen foul of it, even if some major enforcement action is thought to be in the pipeline, with Reddit most recently picking up the legal cudgels against the legislation by arguing that "the law breached the freedom of political expression implied in Australia's constitution by restricting children from the most important means of communication in the modern world".

Seems to me that the same kids who got hold of illicit stuff back in my day will find a way to get to hold of illicit stuff now and that the parental relationship remains the single most important element in governing what kids actually do.

Personally, I was recently asked by the 16-year-old if she can have an X account. She's an intellectually engaged young woman who does well at school, and I trust her, so the answer was yes. My main reasoning to her was that "you're a smart girl, you can afford to have some of your brains trickle out of your ears by reading X". She is internet native, in a way I am not.

With that in mind, it's quite possible that a social media ban for those aged 40 to 60 might be more efficacious in improving the quality of public discourse.