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Australian Parliament bans social media for under-16s

apnews.com

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

#131

Post by ffsm8 »

renegat0x0 wrote: post #114

Ahhh yes, and thumbs down button in youtube was removed to protect small creators from harm. It is funny to observe how many naive people there are in the world. Australia for years hated the idea that you can anonymously share your opinion. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-07/prime-minister-defend... And no, privacy is not already lost. It is a lie often said. Sure you share a lot of data about you, but you are o…

I'm not Australian and don't know the specifics if this legislation, so I cannot speak with any authority on the matter, but I think you're mistakenly conflating banning Porn is also banned for This doesn't actually remove all kids from the platform, but at least they're no longer being served legally. This will make it less ubiquitous for them.

Relevant part of the article:

Social media companies also won't be able to force users to provide government identification, including the Digital ID, to assess their age.

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

#132

Post by 71bw »

RichEO wrote: post #93
ENGNR wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And now they’ll be able to see the groups you go to within pages, read comments, see what we write, etc etc. It also goes from being a defence capability to used for all sorts of things and eventually leaked. It’s not bad enough to leave, better to engage with the politics and try to get some rights before it spreads further outwards

This is conspiracy theory thinking, why on earth would age verification give them access to all of this additional information?

In what way do you think they'll be able to verify your age reliably without you having to, yourself, "willingly", hand over your PII?

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

#133

Post by GeoAtreides »

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.

just because thing A was (unjustly) demonized doesn't mean demonizing thing B is without merit, even more so when thing A and thing B are completely unrelated.

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

#134

Post by oblio »

gloosx wrote: post #75
oblio wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banning smoking in many places plus banning advertising it plus banning selling it to kids reduced smoking by unfathomable amounts.

Do you have data do back it up? From quickly looking at historical records online, I can't see any unfathomable amounts reduction, It's levelled on 20-30% of smokers among kids, and it remains a core challenge for child and adolescent health to the current day (according to 2020 WHO report[0]), plus they started to smoke vapes. So did the bans you sampled really work, or do they just smoke more discreetly and use tri…

Smoking used to be at much higher levels (50%+) and absolutely everywhere.

Also vaping is probably better than smoking, and don't worry, vaping is next on the ban list. It just takes time to build the case.

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

#135

Post by oblio »

Timwi wrote: post #129
gloosx wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have data do back it up? From quickly looking at historical records online, I can't see any unfathomable amounts reduction, It's levelled on 20-30% of smokers among kids, and it remains a core challenge for child and adolescent health to the current day (according to 2020 WHO report[0]), plus they started to smoke vapes. So did the bans you sampled really work, or do they just smoke more discreetly and use tri…

I might be wrong but I read the OP’s comment as sarcastic.

You are wrong. Banning smoking worked.

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

#136

Post by niek_pas »

chrishare wrote: post #86
SamPatt wrote: post #23

I don't like nanny state policies like this, but hopefully we'll get some data about social media usage from this after a few years. Prediction: the policy was both difficult to implement and difficult to determine if it made any impact, positive or negative.

I've always wondered, when do policies become nanny state policies? If they have data showing that under-age use of social media leads to higher rates of suicide, why would that be a 'nanny state' policy? Does there have to be a gun or drug involved, rather than a phone?

“Nanny state policy” just means “restriction of freedom that I don’t personally like”.

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

#137

Post by krisoft »

lmm wrote: post #15
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…

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.

Does your reasoning also apply for laws which ban underage smoking or underage alcohol consumption? Do you feel the same way about those prohibitions too?

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

#138

Post by krige »

lysp wrote: post #124

The "behind the scenes" of this was a repeated campaign based on News Corp's (ie. Fox News / The Murdoch's) newsrooms (TV, radio + paper). The legislation was primarily based on their campaign - likely as an attack against TikTok and other social media companies, who are taking their viewership and advertising revenue. I believe in the premise of the change (to protect young children), just not the motivation or inte…

I rather doubt under-16s ever watched any news corpos and the new corpos are more than likely aware of this from their own research so I don't think fighting over viewership is a factor in this.

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

#139

Post by thombles »

As an Australian parent this is really pleasing to see. It's clearly inspired heavily by the work of Jon Haidt and Jean Twenge et al. The kids are not okay and the main thing stopping a worried parent from addressing it is that "all the other kids are on it". If you have an addicted/bullied child would you make them a social pariah and create interminable arguments by taking away their devices? Collective action is needed and this is what it looks like.

We don't need watertight compliance, verification or enforcement - just raise the level of difficulty for kids to get on and create a culture among kids, parents and schools that social media is not allowed. This will be enough breathing room for parents to say no and kids not to feel like they're the only ones missing out.

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