The UK is implementing age verification rules to prevent children under 16 from accessing social media — framed as a child safety measure. Musk has characterized it as enabling government tracking, but the stated purpose of the Online Safety Act is to protect users (especially children) and require platforms to tackle illegal and harmful content. There's no described surveillance mechanism in the policy itself. That said, critics raise legitimate concerns about what age verification systems might enable down the line, and there are real questions about how these rules will work in practice. But the law's stated goal isn't mass tracking — it's restricting platform access and content moderation. Whether you think that's the right approach is a separate question from what the policy actually does.