This Week in Tech (Audio)

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TWiT 1089: Robot Butt Crack - Anthropic Banned, But Winning

Explore episode Jun 22, 2026
Society & Culture
The UK's Under-16 Social Media Ban: Unenforceable Legislation

TWiT 1089: Robot Butt Crack - Anthropic Banned, But Winning · Jun 22, 2026 Society & Culture

The UK government is banning children under 16 from YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, and Facebook by year's end. The only real enforcement mechanism would be mandatory government ID for all social media — a privacy nightmare. Iain Thomson, who has friends in Australia, says the equivalent Australian ban simply hasn't worked.

Where this was said

Bob Dylan, Phone Bans at Concerts & Social Media Addiction

At 1:27:35 · chapter starts 1:07:30

Leo went to see Bob Dylan — his first time in 50 years — at the Greek Theatre, where signs warned that phone use meant ejection. Despite this, audience members were sneaking their phones constantly, proving how addictive the devices have become. Iain Thomson was publicly shamed by Stephen Merritt of the Magnetic Fields for tweeting during a concert. The panel debates screen addiction, its particular harm to teenagers, and whether banning phones at concerts is reasonable. The conversation shifts into online privacy: Leo discovers that even his privacy-focused Zen Browser has a unique fingerprint, Doc Rock details how many trackers appear on a simple news article, and Leo reveals that TWiT was hit by a sophisticated man-in-the-middle phishing attack — including stolen two-factor authentication credentials — that went undetected for 121 days.

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