Ministers weigh adding Vinted and eBay to under-16 platform ban
The culture secretary says the government is "looking seriously" at putting second-hand marketplaces inside a ban that starts in March. Any marketplace with a message box is now in scope.
Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, said the government was considering adding Vinted and eBay to the list of platforms barred to under-16s from March.
Asked on the BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme whether ministers wanted to ban under-16s from the two marketplaces, she said: "We are looking seriously at doing so in order to keep children safe."
The under-16 ban was announced in June and is due to come into force in March. It was framed around social platforms: Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat among the ten biggest services, plus YouTube. YouTube Kids is excluded.
The full list of affected platforms has not been published. The government has said the rules will cover services "whose purpose is to enable social interaction and which allow users to post material".
That test already stretches beyond social feeds. Platforms with livestreaming, or features that let strangers contact children, are covered, which pulls in gaming sites.
Roblox, the biggest gaming site in the UK among eight to 12-year-olds, will not be banned outright. Its chat function will be restricted instead.
The Sunday Times reported that the ban was being widened to take in the second-hand marketplaces, citing concerns that messaging functions let strangers groom children. It said Depop and Facebook Marketplace would also be on the list.
Both named marketplaces already claim to be adult services. eBay states on its website that members must be over 18, because listings involve entering into a contract. Vinted is aimed at over-18s but its terms allow parents or guardians to open supervised accounts for children.
Vinted has grown to 17 million UK users, according to the BBC's reporting. A Vinted spokesperson said direct messaging was "part of how the platform works", that the company had "zero tolerance for harmful or explicit content", and that it used moderation teams and tools, with action up to a permanent ban or a report to the authorities.
An eBay spokesperson said the company was "focused on providing a trusted and safe marketplace experience for our millions of customers" and that, with the details of the proposed legislation not yet clear, it looked forward to "understanding more and continuing to work constructively with the government".
Matthew Sinclair, a senior director at the Computer and Communications Industry Association, which represents tech companies, warned against "scope creep". He said restricting messaging for under-16s "would not stop at social media and would reach into the services families depend on to stay in touch".
Enforcement is the unresolved part. Ofcom set out recommendations last month on how to work out which UK users are over 16. Rani Govender of the NSPCC said the real question was how the government made age checks effective, and that tech companies should also be required to build child safety into every platform, device and AI tool.
Australia introduced a comparable ban last year. Many children there have found ways around it; the UK says it intends to take a tougher approach.
For anyone building a consumer marketplace, community app or game in the UK, the dividing line is no longer whether you call yourself social. It is whether strangers can message each other on your product. If they can, assume age assurance is a March cost line, and assume the list of covered platforms can grow after you have shipped.