In the UK, Apple faced legal action earlier this year after refusing to build a secret government backdoor into its devices, while the secure chat app Signal has indicated it would rather exit from the UK than comply with the government’s demand to weaken encryption. Globally, laws like the UK’s Online Safety Act, Australia’s under-16 social media ban, and an increasing number of US state laws are mandating age verification not just for porn sites, but also for platforms like Reddit and Discord. The result is the over-censorship of legal content as “harmful to minors”, or platforms like Bluesky shutting off service altogether in certain states.