101–110 of 498 posts
My thoughts immediately go to all the queer kids in rural areas who stand to be cut off from the only support networks they have.
Experience deprivation is a very real thing. I grew up in a desolate rural area, circa the 1980s and 1990s. The Internet - WebChatBroadcasting, ICQ, IRC, etc - was like a gift from the gods in the early 1990s.
Cutting off young teens from access to the world via 'social media,' is a human rights violation.
Here in Austria in fourth grade kids take a little test for their bicycling skill. Not that it matters much in a car-centric country, but people forget that cycling, even in company with a parent, give kids the chance to learn the necessary traffic rules. Why not have something similar for social media or as the problem seems to be general conduct in social media, educate the kids and give them better ways to raise t…
Right. Let's do the same for drugs. Irony aside, these platforms are addictive and polarizing by design. I doubt a little test will change anything.
Surely the problem of verifying a property of someone (the Boolean of “is over X age”) without sharing further details, is a surmountable problem given all the cryptographic technologies at our disposal. If a government wants to make this possible, given they know everyone’s birthdate, they could.
Yes, this is flawed legislation, and yes kids will find ways to bypass these protections. But I think this is a step in the right direction. There is clear evidence of the harms caused by social media, especially for adolescents. We have to start trying things - albeit imperfectly - to get to a better place. We can learn a lot from the outcomes of this experiment.
Nice of you to volunteer others as experimental subjects.
My thoughts immediately go to all the queer kids in rural areas who stand to be cut off from the only support networks they have.
Is the actual discussed measure available somewhere ? Looking around none of the articles discussing this had references to official documents. Judging from the info in the article: - kids will have one year to see which platforms are not categorized as SNS, yet can be used as such. - kids stuck with brainwashing parents, especially in remote rural areas, will have it a bit more tougher I guess.
This was rushed through with a public comment period of 24 hours. It's going to be a mess, while the spirit is well intentioned it has edge cases up the wazoo, foot guns galore, and stinks of back door government ID for adults. Pretty much the only media outlet in Australia that stood up with questions and non fawning commentary was Crikey : eg: https://www.crikey.com.au/2024/11/26/teen-social-media-ban-s... and: htt…
God wills it, ten years from now they will all be out of job. The publications will still be there, of course, but the shilling will be delegated to LLMs prompted by Bangladeshi youths for $5 a day, with a few meatsack editors to set the tone.
My thoughts immediately go to all the queer kids in rural areas who stand to be cut off from the only support networks they have.
Any and all kids in rural areas. Experience deprivation is a very real thing. I grew up in a desolate rural area, circa the 1980s and 1990s. The Internet - WebChatBroadcasting, ICQ, IRC, etc - was like a gift from the gods in the early 1990s. Cutting off young teens from access to the world via 'social media,' is a human rights violation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a trend in lawmaking in Australia, and it's seriously damaging. It's basically written so the Government's Minister of Communications gets to decide who to directly target (or not target) with the law. Basically allows them to arbitarily apply the law to some parties and not others, with no right of appeal. That does lead to potential constitutionality concerns, but it would take years for it to be struck dow…
Isn’t that what the electorate desires? By electing personable but mediocore, sometimes even incompetent, MPs over the intelligent but aloof candidates. Someone or some committee, somewhere, still has to actually work out all the details, and if it’s not done in Parliament, because the average MP literally can’t grasp even half the agenda items, it has to be done elsewhere. Edit: And even that is probably being too o…
People making “protest” votes without bothering to understand the consequences, single issue voters, young people who don’t even bother to vote, dumb/racist/misogynist voters…
Democracy only works if voters take it seriously, only if media is at least reasonably honest/competent etc. Across the world, this is not the case today. Britain, U.S, India, Australia …
https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/news-events/no-evidence-screen-time...