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Australian Parliament bans social media for under-16s

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Re: Australian Parliament bans social media for under-16s

#101

Post by gloosx »

gloosx wrote: post #45
obblekk wrote: post #2

The votes are strong majorities of both houses - great to see a functional democratic government act on such an important issue. They specifically don’t prescribe any particular age verification methods. This would be a great time to follow up with legislation that updates their national IDs to be able to provide cryptographically secure proofs of age without leaking identity. Absent that, I’m sure many of the commen…

>the government act with expertise to solve the problem Do you have an idea which problem did they solve? Did banning certain psychoactive drugs solved the problem of drug abuse? Maybe banning alcohol removed it from the streets during great depression? Banning gambling? Kids will find a way to get into their social media accounts anyway, and then these democrats will tell you they need to ban every VPN service and s…

For all the proponents of the ban here – I will just tell you what works – for your education. It is endorsing and subsidising healthy and active lifestyle, supporting and promoting strong family wellbeing as well as upholding public psychological and physiological health. Only doing these instead of issuing bans would really contribute to kids choosing virtues of real life over screen time, but unfortunately addressing root causes takes more effort and time than issuing a ban.

Re: Australian Parliament bans social media for under-16s

#102

Post by pizza »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #27
larrysalibra wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

under 16 year olds cannot vote, are not represented and have no recourse. when one group votes to make rules for another group that cannot vote, it can be called many things, but "democracy" is not one of them.

When adults make decisions for children it's called "parenting" Acting like we should be seriously treating children and teens as an equal political group is a joke

I'm not sure what's worse: giving parental responsibility to politicians or equating craven paternalism to benevolent parenting.

Re: Australian Parliament bans social media for under-16s

#103

Post by poilcn »

voidfunc wrote: post #80
kumarvvr wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you protect children from the absolute devastating effects of social media on children, by banning it for adults?

Demonizing social media is this generations version of demonizing rock and roll. It's so tiring.

Is it? You can see the actual harm caused by web sites.

Doomscrolling in all age groups. Going to bed very late at night.

Girls having body dysmorphia cause of instagram.

Young men having porn addition and having no ambition to interact with real women

Re: Australian Parliament bans social media for under-16s

#104

Post by usr1106 »

profsummergig wrote: post #89

I'm thinking about how in France kids are allowed to have wine, and they have fewer alcohol problems when they grow up.

They are not allowed to buy wine themselves. Most parents wouldn't allow them to drink when alone. Drinking small amounts of wine at the family dinner table makes the educational difference. Social media is consumed without any family interaction and can consume all free-time and more.

Re: Australian Parliament bans social media for under-16s

#105

Post by DavidPiper »

hcfman wrote: post #60
oblio wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curing addictions is very hard and some addictions are very strong. Some addictions are also guarded by business interests leveraging close to a trillion dollars to increase this addiction. We didn't reduce smoking through personal responsibility, stop using "nanny state" tropes. In democracies the government is an imperfect representation of the will of the people and sometimes it decides individuals can't fight som…

Good point bringing up smoking. Why don’t they just make smoking illegal in every country ? Because it’s impractical. Same as this law.

And yet the things they have done have gone a long way to reducing the real harms caused by smoking.

A 5% spread of harm in a population is better than spread across 80% or 90%, etc. Taking action to reduce the surface area of harm, even if 0% is impractical, is beneficial to a functioning society.

Re: Australian Parliament bans social media for under-16s

#106

Post by globalnode »

vermilingua wrote: post #97
globalnode wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was back in 2017 when the govts were all up in arms over encryption. Apparently they don't mind it too much now, which means it all must be back door'able for them.

Has been backdoor(ed|able) for FVEY (via Australia) since 2018. https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about-us/our-portfolios/natio...

5y in jail if you refuse to give a password and power to covertly access devices and conceal that fact if they desire. Yikes, they don't mess around.

Re: Australian Parliament bans social media for under-16s

#107

Post by Timwi »

kumarvvr wrote: post #25
lmm wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the opposite of democracy - a group imposing rules "for their own good" on people it doesn't represent who have no recourse. If they had any integrity they'd be banning it for adults not children.

How can you protect children from the absolute devastating effects of social media on children, by banning it for adults?

I agree with the OP that the ban is woefully undemocratic, and that banning it for children only is a grave misstep.

I think what they should ban instead is recommendation algorithms. If I subscribe to a source, and explicitly unsubscribe from another, it should be illegal to withhold some of the first’s postings and shove the second’s in my face. This should be a no-brainer and has nothing to do with the age of the user; but it's easier to just ban the people who, as OP correctly noted, have no representation and no recourse.

Re: Australian Parliament bans social media for under-16s

#108

Post by wqaatwt »

liammclennan wrote: post #85
linuxandrew wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They specifically don’t prescribe any particular age verification methods. This would be a great time to follow up with legislation that updates their national IDs to be able to provide cryptographically secure proofs of age without leaking identity. Hard disagree. We do not need an internet driver's license. Australians are supposed to have a right to interact with organisations with privacy protections under the…

Did you see the "without leaking identity" part? Your comment seems to ignore that.

Only for now. After requiring an ID to sign up is normalized governments will inevitably try to eliminate any anonymity to “protect children”/catch criminals/censorship/etc.

Re: Australian Parliament bans social media for under-16s

#110

Post by rebuilder »

ehnto wrote: post #100
linuxandrew wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They specifically don’t prescribe any particular age verification methods. This would be a great time to follow up with legislation that updates their national IDs to be able to provide cryptographically secure proofs of age without leaking identity. Hard disagree. We do not need an internet driver's license. Australians are supposed to have a right to interact with organisations with privacy protections under the…

They can opt out, by not participating with the site. No one is mandated to use social media. But I would also want to see things go the other direction anyway, default to non-algorithmic feeds. Those with the awareness to opt-out are not the people at highest risk. I agree with basically everything else you said, and I think social media is generally a blight on society. But we can opt-out already, if you are on soc…

Isn’t this kind of like saying the solution to robocalls is not having a phone?
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