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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

#441

Post by jen729w »

zmmmmm wrote: post #405

A lot of the criticism is based on the concept that it won't be technically watertight. But the key is that it doesn't have to be watertight to work. Social media is all about network effects. Once most kids are on there, everyone has to be on there. If you knock the percentage down far enough, you break the network effect to the point where those who don't want to don't feel pressured to. If that is all it does, it'…

> normalising people uploading identification documents and hence lead to people becoming victims of scams

We've long lost this war.

I'm in Italy, staying at my 3rd Airbnb. I was surprised when the first asked me, casually, to drop a photograph of my passport in the chat. I checked with Claude: yep, that's the law.

(I'll remind you that Italy is in the EU.)

On checking into this place last week, the guy just took a photo of our passports on his phone. At this point I'm too weak to argue. And what's the point? That is no longer private data and if I pretend that it is, I'm the fool.

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

#442

Post by KaiserPro »

pizza wrote: post #341
Sevrene wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think we should normalise children on platforms where the content contains political agitation, sexual and violent content, crypto and fintech scams, etc. Especially when this content is packaged up to them and commodified. These platforms make more money than the ATO (Australian Tax Office) brings in a year. I think they have the moral obligation and means to create safer spaces- either inside or seperate fr…

The platform operators have a responsibility to remove garbage from their site. I don’t see how it’s better if adults are the recipients of these alleged harms. And I definitely don’t see how the platform operators are going to clean up their act if — rather than being penalized — they can pretend that the problem has vanished into thin air because a specific category of vulnerable users is now de jure disappeared.

> rather than being penalized

The problem is, currently doing any kind of content filtering, as in making illegal stuff hard to find, and having a moderated semi walled garden, plays right into the noisy fuckers brigade.

If I were to design a TV programme which is aimed at 11-16 year olds, where I just play soft porn every 15 seconds, offer guides on how to do financial scams, and encourage the children to hide away from their parents as they watch. it would be banned instantly, regardless of how much "good" content I put in there.

People would say it's irresponsible to expose kids of that age to such things.

Yet, here we have social media doing just the same.

The reason why we make it illegal to beat kids, sell them smokes, drugs, booze and generally treat them like shit, is because we want well rounded functioning kids who are able to live a long an illustrious life as part of society.

Giving them a device that feeds them war, porn, rage bait, and huge lies, all for the profit of a few hundred people in america seems somewhat misguided.

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

#443

Post by multiplegeorges »

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…

> they're losing the youth when it comes to long-standing foreign policy positions

It's well known that foreign actors are all over social and that the west's foreign policy is (rightly so!) hostile to them.

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

#444

Post by aus_throwaway »

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…

The Australian government didn’t do this because of any concern about children; it’s to punish (mainly) Meta for backing out of the Australian Social Media Bargaining Agreement [1]. Other social media companies are collateral damage.

News Corp wanted Meta et al to pay for the privilege of sharing links to News Corp articles (imo, ridiculous). Meta played along for a short period, but has now refused to engage, which has clearly upset News Corp (and their shrinking top line). It’s slowly changing, but it’s an unfortunate truth that News Corp still has incredible influence over Australian politicians, hence this had bipartisan support.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/nov/12/meta-coul...

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

#446

Post by aussieguy1234 »

A bunch of people in local LGBT community Discord servers that marked themselves as NSFW have been locked out of those servers and now need to prove their age to get back in.

These communities already had active mods that would remove anyone underage that they found, so it doesn't really make sense in this case that Discord is now requiring them to prove their ages.

Meanwhile kids are finding ways around the ban. Kids are asking their older looking friends to pass facial scans for them.

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

#447

Post by multiplegeorges »

skwee357 wrote: post #408

The next step is to outlaw social media in general, and maybe the world will become a bit better. Edit: in case someone decides to disagree with me, here is a non-exhaustive list of issues that social media has created: isolation from the real world, unrealistic expectations in terms of looks/status/success, dehumanization by turning people into likes-dislikes, dehumanizations by creating influencers whose sole purpo…

There is nothing that social media provides that a private group chat with your closest people doesn't fulfill.

It could be banned with nothing of value lost.

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

#448

Post by xethos »

Sevrene wrote: post #215
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 don't think we should normalise children on platforms where the content contains political agitation, sexual and violent content, crypto and fintech scams, etc. Especially when this content is packaged up to them and commodified. These platforms make more money than the ATO (Australian Tax Office) brings in a year. I think they have the moral obligation and means to create safer spaces- either inside or seperate fr…

> I don't think we should normalise children on platforms where the content contains political agitation, sexual and violent content, crypto and fintech scams, etc. Especially when this content is packaged up to them and commodified.

I hope we can agree that allowing every social media site to devolve into the above is the bigger problem. There can be some places that are adults-only; just like reality though, the world is better when open-by-default, with some places gated to adults-only.

Shifting focus to "Why are we letting some of the most profitable companies the world has ever seen get away with being a cesspit?" lets us keep kids safe by default, doesn't attack E2EE, and doesn't default to the internet becoming a surveillance state.

If we start by getting Facebook and Twitter (et al.) to clean up their acts, we can all work, yell, and vote together, instead of some yelling about their kids being shown unexpected pornography, and others yelling about the internet becoming a surveillance state.

Because both can be real concerns - but a starter solution can get the vast majority of voters on-board, and garner real progress, instead of giving Facebook more data and control, or governments a turn-key dictatorship.

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

#449

Post by Animats »

palata wrote: post #420
endgame wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course they aren't. If they were actually helping kids, they would be going after algorithmic feeds in general and the most predatory platforms like Roblox (especially given its recent scandals), doing something about kids being exposed to gambling advertising, etc. The bill was put up for public comment for less than one business day before being rammed through Parliament. Australia is just sending out one of the…

> kids pretending to be adults so they sneak through these filters The real question is: how hard does it make it for them to pretend to be adults? We just need it to be hard enough that most kids won't do it. > platforms winding back their (meagre) child safety efforts since "children are banned anyway" If the law forces the platforms to properly ban children, I don't see how they can do that. If you're thinking tha…

> We just need it to be hard enough that most kids won't do it.

Silly though that sounds, it might work. Because it's social pressure from other kids to be online that drives many kids into being constantly on Instagram and Snapchat. If you're not online, you don't know what's going on. The big social networks monetize FOMO.

If a sizable fraction of kids aren't on social media, that's not where it's happening any more. The pressure goes away. Or goes elsewhere.

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

#450

Post by indymike »

gertlex wrote: post #433
indymike wrote: post #406

Father of five here, and founder of a social media marketing company (exited). Our kids are up against problems we didn't have during the great expansion of social. The three big things: 1. State level actors and well funded not for profits are fighting an information war to influence our kids. And they are very good at it. Down to having troll farms to talk one on one. Every time something new happens in the world,…

Am I wrong in feeling like the solution you outline is only applicable to an individual's kids? But at the societal level, it clearly seems we can't depend on enough parents to do what you talk about. Something else is needed. I don't have answers to give. Certainly not a fan of the government approach of "everyone must prove their age online now", which I believe is how the AU law is done. (casual listening to Secur…

"Everyone must prove their age online now" creates a trail of identity that kills anonymous speech dead. Anonymous speech is very important to maintaining freedoms... such as freedom of speech and freedom of association.
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