Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban • Hacker News Board

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

#461

Post by matsemann » Wed, Dec 10, 2025, 9:41 PM UTC

criddell wrote: post #388

matsemann wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had the same thought. Growing up in a small town (couple of hundred inhabitants), internet access early 2000's was a gift for teenage me. I joined web forums and discovered new interests (=web development which lead to my career), chatted with friends on msn, later played runescape and wow and met friends I later traveled countries to meet. Of course, these things were different than the beasts today. Everything was…

Are you describing the difference between a social network and social media?

I don't know, what would be what?

Hn and reddit are kinda the same concept, it's just the scale of them making it different, or?

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

#462

Post by roguecoder » Wed, Dec 10, 2025, 9:43 PM UTC

I feel like just making kids lie about our age was pretty effective back in the day. Those of us who lied knew we were going into adult spaces, hid our irl identities, and learned how to behave.

Then Facebook convinced people social media was supposed to be about your "real" identity, which made us sitting ducks for scammers and propaganda. Now we have governments demanding we provide our identity papers before we are allowed to participate.

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

#463

Post by lovich » Wed, Dec 10, 2025, 9:44 PM UTC

indymike wrote: post #450

gertlex wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hard disagree on anonymous speech. Individual humans should have free speech but that is divorced from anonymous speech.

With anonymous speech you don’t even know if you’re talking to a person or a program.

If you want to say something, then say it with your identity. You don’t get to be anonymous when saying something to my face so why should it be allowed across a screen?

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

#464

Post by roguecoder » Wed, Dec 10, 2025, 9:44 PM UTC

KaiserPro wrote: post #442

pizza wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In America, we haven't made it illegal to assault children. We should, but we haven't.

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

#465

Post by pajamasam » Wed, Dec 10, 2025, 9:45 PM UTC

ivan_gammel wrote: post #428

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'…

> a) normalising people uploading identification documents and hence lead to people becoming victims of scams The reasonable approach to solve this problem is verification protocol that mandates integration with the apps chosen by users. You have your wallet with digital ID and you use only it on any website, sharing the bare minimum of details. No uploads of anything anywhere. Independent wallet providers ensure pri…

> sharing the bare minimum of details The reasonable approach, yes, but the approach most in the interest of the governments and corporate players driving these laws...?

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

#466

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Dec 10, 2025, 9:46 PM UTC

Tadpole9181 wrote: post #460

petcat wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is opaque to the service The "service" is irrelevant. I think most people would trust Porno Hub to be discreet about their visits. That's in their business interest. But now they have to tell your government about all the times you're visiting Porno Hub. And nobody should trust their government. Also, keep in mind that western governments share with each other. There will come a time when Australians will try…

To be entirely fair, a government that would abuse your vague "am I allowed to access porn" history seems well into the territory of a government that would just make it up. A nefarious, powerful entity has no real requirement to be honest in their maliciousness. They also have more direct means of accessing more specific data via ISPs, audits, banks, etc.

[deleted]

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

#467

Post by morgengold » Wed, Dec 10, 2025, 9:48 PM UTC

I am so glad a country finally took action. Can't wait to see data on its effects. At this point in time I lost interest in nuanced discussions about the details here. We are in one big experiment and it might end in catastrophy. We need counter experiments and hard data fast.

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

#468

Post by bigfudge » Wed, Dec 10, 2025, 9:48 PM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #459

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'…

Well, yes but the other problem is this is putting authoritarians in charge of more stuff. I had a comment comparing this to allowing people to eat too much food and that is literally where the logical outcome of this sort of thinking goes - it happens in practice, that isn't some sort of theoretical risk. The more the government decides what people can and can't want to do the worse the potential gets when they make…

The attempt is to remove the market do exploiting the attention of children for profit. This doesn’t have to be perfect to be worth it.

What’s more, the idea that this puts children at the mercy of authoritarians is laughable. The US tech industry has shown us beyond doubt that they are perfectly ok with genuine authoritarians in charge, provided the dollars keep rolling. Fuck them, and good on ya Australia.

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

#469

Post by nrhrjrjrjtntbt » Wed, Dec 10, 2025, 9:50 PM UTC

Tadpole9181 wrote: post #460

petcat wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is opaque to the service The "service" is irrelevant. I think most people would trust Porno Hub to be discreet about their visits. That's in their business interest. But now they have to tell your government about all the times you're visiting Porno Hub. And nobody should trust their government. Also, keep in mind that western governments share with each other. There will come a time when Australians will try…

To be entirely fair, a government that would abuse your vague "am I allowed to access porn" history seems well into the territory of a government that would just make it up. A nefarious, powerful entity has no real requirement to be honest in their maliciousness. They also have more direct means of accessing more specific data via ISPs, audits, banks, etc.

That is an assumption. The games the powerful play leverage truth and provable things. I think there is a lot of need for privacy and abuse of dragnet information before you get to the government framing people.

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

#470

Post by roguecoder » Wed, Dec 10, 2025, 9:50 PM UTC

xethos wrote: post #448

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…

> 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 wo…

I don't think we've shown that that cleanup is possible.

Whenever platforms have taken even the smallest steps in that direction, the right-wing authoritarian political parties freak out and blackmail them into stopping, or in the case of Musk simply buy them out outright.