On: France's top court blocks social media ban for under-15s

The judges did what judges are supposed to do: they struck down a clumsy attempt to turn every child’s phone into a revenue stream for the tech giants. The Council said, in plain words, that banning children under fifteen from social media violates freedom of expression - because the law did not merely restrict the platforms, it forbade the children themselves to speak or be spoken to. That is a blunt instrument, and blunt instruments are what tyrants reach for first.

Macron now promises a “new draft.” I have seen that trick before: the first law is too crude to survive the courts, so the second law is wrapped in softer language while carrying the same purpose. They will call it “age verification,” or “parental consent,” or “digital sovereignty,” but the effect will be the same - another wall between the young and the rest of the world.

The real question is not whether children may use social media, but who benefits when they cannot. The platforms profit from endless engagement; the state profits from endless surveillance; the parents are left with the bill. The judges have at least reminded us that freedom is not a privilege to be rationed by age or by algorithm. If Macron wishes to protect children, let him do it with playgrounds that do not charge rent, with libraries that do not harvest data, with schools that do not outsource discipline to Silicon Valley. Anything else is just another enclosure of the commons.