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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

#551

Post by AuthAuth »

endgame wrote: post #380
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…

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…

>going after algorithmic feeds

This is such an older person take. Users really like Algorithmic feeds and see the removal of such a feature to be platform destroying. Cronological feeds are still easy to game and abuse.

>predatory platforms like Roblox

What makes roblox a predatory platform and what would you change to make it not a predatory platform? To me Roblox is a predatory platform because of the age group of people not because of the platform design.

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

#552

Post by wiredpancake »

andrewinardeer wrote: post #175
rcMgD2BwE72F wrote: post #72

Why ban social media when ad-supported media is the culprit? Remove the incentive (to get users to doom scroll, to polarize, to impulse buy…) and you change the behavior. I remember when social media was sane 15+ years ago. The problem is the business model, not socializing. It's crazy to ban it when being a teen is the beginning of socializing!

It's crazy that social media is banned but kids are still subject to gambling ads prior to or after watching the footy on free to air TV.

[dead]

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

#553

Post by cjpartridge »

Absolute joke, most Australian parents will just ID for the kids, if the kids don't figure out how to get around it themselves, especially the typical ipad-kids and their parents.

The average Australian punter is getting absolutely screwed by our current government and all involved parties.

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

#554

Post by makeitdouble »

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…

If you think we can't depend on parents for the kids education, school should handle it.

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

#555

Post by wiredpancake »

denkmoon wrote: post #532
jgilias wrote: post #385

Kids being banned from social media is just one side of the coin. _Everyone_ else being forced to KYC with random websites is the other. I can’t help but wonder, which of the two outcomes is the actual goal here.

Nobody is forcing you to use facebook

You're right, but Social Media was one of the last places one could be critical of the Government whilst also being anonymous or pesudo-anonymous.

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

#556

Post by drnick1 »

yladiz wrote: post #434
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'…

In the EU you don’t need to upload your ID anywhere, the service can use the government’s portal for ID verification. In the case of age verification they can get a yes/no response if the age is above some threshold. This is opaque to the service so they wouldn’t get any additional ID details.

> In the EU you don’t need to upload your ID anywhere, the service can use the government’s portal for ID verification. In the case of age verification they can get a yes/no response

The issue is that now the government knows what you are doing online, and that should never be allowed to happen.

I grew up when the Internet was truly free, before Facebook even existed. People shared source code, videos, MP3s, games, regardless of "copyright" or "intellectual property." To some extent, it is still possible to do all of this, but these freedoms are being eroded every day by making the Internet less anonymous. The endgame is obviously to force people to pay for things whose "marginal cost" is zero in the language of economists. "Protecting the children" is just a convenient excuse.

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

#557

Post by NoPicklez »

hintymad wrote: post #438
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'…

I'd even go one step further: it does not have to be enforceable at all. This has to do with teen's psychology. For whatever reason, kids just fight their parents but listen to their schools and government a lot more. Of course, there are exceptions, but I'm talking about trend. The kids in my school district were generally angry towards their parents when they couldn't get a smartphone when their peers did. However,…

That's exactly what its part of it.

So many people are looking at this from a technical stand point and how water tight or perfect its going to be.

But there is a large psychological part of this that helps parents and I know that part of it is what a number of parents I've spoken to like about it.

Its not just about the current generation, but the next wave of kids who have grown up under these laws, the psychology of it will have changed.

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

#558

Post by phs318u »

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 "stuff" is already in the hands of authoritarians. When huge swathes of the world's "social estate" lies in the hands of a very small number of individuals with overwhelming incentives to tweak the "stuff" for their own benefit (exerting their authority over the estate if you will), then you're already in that territory. At least with elected authoritarians you have some theoretical influence. Good luck getting a Facebook/X policy changed.

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

#559

Post by makeitdouble »

roguecoder wrote: post #470
xethos wrote: post #448

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. 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.

If cleaning it isn't possible, getting kids to know it and navigate the filth is required. Same way we teach kids how to interact with people on the street and get a sense of who to trust when they're in trouble and how to avoid trouble in the first place.

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

#560

Post by bluerooibos »

jonwinstanley wrote: post #452
multiplegeorges wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The whole world seems to be hooked on TikTok, reels and shorts for entertainment. Reversing that would take some doing.

It's quite dystopian. Seeing people in your family, and friends, just mindlessly consume that shit, for hours upon hours - and many of them are completely oblivious to the fact that these reels and shorts are engineered to keep them engaged.

Using ML/Data to keep people hooked on content - I'd be embarrassed to be an engineer at any of these companies actively destroying our society.

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