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Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

reuters.com

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Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#181

Post by eddythompson80 »

betteryet wrote: post #165
mullingitover wrote: post #71

Florida passed a similar law, and a bunch of other states are attempting to but are blocked by federal courts. Will be interesting to see if the tech industry allows it, or decides to break up the federal government before it becomes too powerful.

How about we break up the tech industry instead? This muskian "I am above laws so I'll break up the USA/EU" is asinine and societies should come down on it like a ton of bricks.

Is the assumption that non "tech industry" communities (e.g: voat, parler, ovaries, gab, truth, lemmy, mastodon, 4chan, 8chan, etc) are less likely to be a problem or to negatively impact teens than the mainstream "big tech" ones (e.g: facebook, twitter, youtube, tiktok, reddit, etc)?

Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#182

Post by 1121redblackgo »

feb012025 wrote: post #161

I feel like everyone in this thread is assuming this is a good faith move by Australia to help kids in school and with socialization. I think phones and social media are harmful, but I get the sense there's a political motive behind this. We've been hearing politicians complain for years that they're losing the youth when it comes to long-standing foreign policy positions, etc... And suddenly they ban social media. R…

I actually do think people directly see the negative public health impact, its so visceral in so many parents lives, and that that is the driving force behind all of this.

I love being cynical, but I actually do buy these efforts as being purely "for the kids", kind of thing. Sure, there are knock-on effects, but I do buy the good faith-ness of phone bans in school and of these social media bans for kids.

Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#185

Post by dmix »

anticrymactic wrote: post #94
csense wrote: post #73

RIP freedom of speech, freedom of association and freedom of the press.

How so? Since when is slop-producing ad-machine social media the only access to speech, press and association?

The only way to enforce it is basically a very dangerous game and will normalize gov control of the internet down to the individual level.

Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#186

Post by wahnfrieden »

lm28469 wrote: post #143
protocolture wrote: post #31

Its crazy how the AusGov has just tried to turn this into some kind of nationalistic celebration. Passing laws isolating children isnt to be celebrated by lighting up national monuments.

Do you have kids ? Do you see kids in your day to day life ? I do, every day, and even <10 years old already have permanent neck damage from scrolling as soon as they haves 5 seconds of free time. I see groups of friends walking back from schools, they're side by side, scrolling on their phone, not talking, not even looking in front of them. I walk by 3 schools multiple times every single day and that's all I see as…

They already excluded many popular and addictive services that are used for grooming

This will enhance surveillance and state control of content, but not address the problems you’ve mentioned

Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#187

Post by amatecha »

paxys wrote: post #110

Putting "teens" in the title is misleading. The ban is for ages 15 and below.

The ban is also for anyone who refuses to submit their private data (face scan or government ID) to an unrelated 3rd party company which will invariably store that data with insufficient security.

Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#188

Post by ethin »

falaki wrote: post #151
AngryData wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it a little early to declare success? I think the bigger worry with the US though is not whether it is technically possible, but whether anyone in power cares to actually help kids versus using this it as an excuse to implement Orwellian surveillance upon citizens.

Alcohol, tobacco and many other products have age restrictions, so do cars and many other products of the modern society. Social media can and should have age restrictions.

This is a nonsense take that gets perpetuated over and over. For some reason.

Purchasing alcohol or buying a car is not the same as verifying your age on an internet property. They aren't even comparable. This is just as dumb as saying "well you have to verify your age to go into a bar". Sure, but does the bartender or salesman who sells you the alcohol completely remember every pixel of your photo or video selfy, permanently? Or do they just remember your face more generally?

The problem with these age verification laws is that they harm everybody, adults and kids. They don't do anything to protect kids and their sole purpose is a way for governments to suppress things they don't like. Any age verification technology (be it age estimation or similar) has a permanent record of the photo ID or video selfies (or whatever you use to prove your age) that you give it. Forever. If these systems didn't have those records, the result would be you having to verify your age every time you visit the website. There is a massive, massive difference between getting alcohol at a bar, or going to a strip club or similar, and providing your photo ID to a bouncer or bartender, who probably won't remember your ID after 5 minutes, versus a computer which permanently remembers it. That is the differentiator.

Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#190

Post by kahmeal »

baby wrote: post #159
killingtime74 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Socialising != Social media. Teens can still use messenger, WhatsApp, phonecalls, text or even....face to face!

That's true. I'll say this though: my social life skyrocketed thanks to Facebook when I was ~18. Not sure what kind of impact it would have had earlier, I was def. more of a kid and social medias were not a thing anyway. Makes sense to me to have an age limit considering cyber bullying and teen suicides and all.

Facebook then wasn't what facebook is today. The social media of the early internet was largely a digital expansion of otherwise healthy social norms. Then the internet blew up. Now it's more akin to the drug dealers DARE warned us about. Still waiting on _those_ free drugs, tbh.
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