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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

#511

Post by lurk2 »

basisword wrote: post #436
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,…

>> Our kids are up against problems we didn't have during the great expansion of social. I'm not sure I agree with this. Our societies globally have become hugely polarised and are manipulated daily because of social media. The damage done by social media is 100x greater than any good that came from it and the lives of adults have been affected by on it a societal level at least as much as the danger to kids. It isn'…

> Our societies globally have become hugely polarised and are manipulated daily because of social media.

Watching 18 year old kids getting drone striked every other day has done more for the anti-war movement than a hundred years of post-WW1 globalist utopianism. The only demographic of war hawks you find online anymore are psychotics and boomers, both being unfit for military service.

This is the fundamental reason why western countries are turning on social. The TikTok ban had less to do with Chinese influence campaigns and more to do with it being a platform where Israeli war crimes were openly discussed without being hindered by shadow algorithms.

You’re seeing Zionists like Larry Ellison make plays in the media space for the same reason; military-aged white men are going off the plantation, and Zionists feel threatened by it. That is literally all these bans are intended to remedy.

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

#512

Post by stOneskull »

barbazoo wrote: post #277
hermannj314 wrote: post #260

Ban kids, implement identity verification checks, remove ban on kids, keep identity verification checks.

> Ban kids yep, done > implement identity verification checks nope, not done so what's your point?

not yet

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

#513

Post by freefaler »

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'…

Social networks aren't that social anymore. Around 65% of the facebook content is not shared/generated by your friends in your social graph. So they're all just a Tik-Tok clones basically. Short dopamine addiction info-snacks with more and more AI generated slop. (and some of the slop is interesting like Cold War military tech stories from books read and visualized by AI).

The network effects doesn't matter that much for the Tiktok's of the world.

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

#514

Post by devmor »

delbronski wrote: post #487
roenxi wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Come on dude, you are on HN. You probably know that social media is no longer about free speech. It’s a targeted advertising machine that is extremely effective on kids and teenagers. It preys on them so, so efficiently. It’s a technical work of art. A young mind is extremely susceptible to the algorithms on those platforms. Much more than adults are, and adults are already really susceptible. This is what this ban i…

Why do we have to ban networked communication for teens instead of regulating it?

Nearly everything about it that’s bad for teens also sucks for the rest of us.

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

#515

Post by nuggets »

pryce wrote: post #499
bigfudge wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is not that simple: Authoritarians that want to "protect" their gender-questioning or orientation-questioning children from having online access to trans and gay spaces online are not only enthusiastically backing Australia's social media ban, they are involved in the very creation of this legislation, and are delighted in its negative affects on LGBTQ teens. There is considerable overlap between those who subscri…

There's not really any plausible explanation as to why referrals to pediatric gender clinics became so skewed towards girls who want to be boys, other than social contagion.

The sticking point is that it's politically controversial to point this out because of progressive beliefs about gender identity as an unquestionable facet of someone's being.

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

#516

Post by chillfox »

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'…

Australia has APIs that can be used to verify ID without uploading them, but American tech companies has always refused to use them.

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

#517

Post by 9dev »

indymike wrote: post #456
phantasmish wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why a person would want to let their kids hang out any place where that stuff you report is common, if it's at all possible to avoid it. I'm gonna continue to run with "no social media", which has worked so far. They can message people they actually know IRL, somewhere without a feed full of crap from people they don't know. That's plenty. Like I can't think of any analogous place in physical space I'd l…

> I'm not sure why a person would want to let their kids hang out any place where that stuff you report is common, A great percentage of serious crimes (from rape to fraud) are committed by family and friends of the victims. Should we not leave our children with our family alone? The best move is to teach your children how to not be victimized. It is part of "being responsible for yourself". My parents taught me how…

That sounds great in principle, but many parents are either not interested or present enough to do so, or themselves lack the skills for it.

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

#518

Post by anon84873628 »

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…

Yes, this is one of those game theory traps like the prisoners dilemma, because it requires coordinated action across a large group of people. Unfortunately the lowest common denominator parenting is not able to handle the problem, because the parents don't understand the situation, are addicted to platforms themselves, and just generally don't have the necessary skills.

Government regulation is a ham fisted approach that risks unintended consequences / secondary effects, but it is generally good at breaking the game theory traps because it changes the playing field for everyone. That is fundamentally why we have government at all - to solve coordination problems.

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

#519

Post by nrhrjrjrjtntbt »

amatecha wrote: post #180

Saw a screenshot last night of someone who can't get into JIRA (or some other Atlassian product) until they either submit two forms of government ID or record a face scan. Seems like a great and effective initiative /s Text of the screen: "Your Atlassian account is not age verified. Laws in your country require us to verify your age before accessing some products, including Jira and Confluence. This process takes 5-1…

You can view your own tickets but the scrum board and comment sections dont work.

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

#520

Post by sardon »

devmor wrote: post #514
delbronski wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on dude, you are on HN. You probably know that social media is no longer about free speech. It’s a targeted advertising machine that is extremely effective on kids and teenagers. It preys on them so, so efficiently. It’s a technical work of art. A young mind is extremely susceptible to the algorithms on those platforms. Much more than adults are, and adults are already really susceptible. This is what this ban i…

Why do we have to ban networked communication for teens instead of regulating it? Nearly everything about it that’s bad for teens also sucks for the rest of us.

hey they can still use networked communication - e.g. whatsapp, signal, etc. This ban is only concerning the following services

Facebook Instagram Threads Kick Reddit Snapchat TikTok Twitch X (formerly Twitter) YouTube

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