Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Australian Parliament bans social media for under-16s

apnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 345 posts

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

#151

Post by 71bw »

thombles wrote: post #139

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 n…

> If you have an addicted/bullied child would you make them a social pariah and create interminable arguments by taking away their devices?

They'd be addicted/bullied regardless?

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

#152

Post by lmm »

krige wrote: post #138
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.

> I rather doubt under-16s ever watched any news corpos

Well, no, because social media is a better alternative. Hence why they're getting it banned.

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

#153

Post by willyt »

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…

There’s an interview on The Rest is Politics Leading podcast with the politician Peter Malinauskas the premier of New South Wales who started the introduction of this law in his state first. I think it was maybe then taken up by the federal government.

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/leading/id1665265193?i...

It’s very insightful and from listening to this it seems unlikely that murdoch was a huge influence on this.

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

#154

Post by thrixton »

gloosx wrote: post #101
gloosx wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 address…

That's great for those that can implement that, many cant (don't have the time, education, willpower, etc...), maybe the majority.

Given the challenges of rebuilding a proper society, maybe this is a step in the right direction (maybe).

We don't allow kids to have other addictive substances, there's definitely an argument (and the co's agree, with 13 yo minimums?) for restricting an addictive medium.

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

#155

Post by semi-extrinsic »

A solution I would be very OK with is the following:

* Enforce the age limits only on smartphones and tablets. This solves >95% of the problem and still leaves a way for people to be anonymous.

* Smartphone OS vendors come up with a common age verification framework that's based on zero knowledge proofs constructed over the electronic certificate in your passport - there are already working PoCs of this on Github

* Each identity can only be installed on one device at a time. Then parents cannot share identity with kids (unless the parents completely give up on all social media)

* For people who don't have a passport, offer a manual and thorough process for age verification, after which you get issued a small plastic card with identity certificate readable by NFC.

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

#156

Post by [deleted] »

arlattimore wrote: post #10

While I appreciate the sentiment of this legislation, removing social media access for everyone under 16 years to address the concerns of a few is a nanny state act. As a parent, you should be making these decisions for your children - not your government. Additionally, I would suggest it won't address the actual issue. The named/identified social media companies will comply as required, younger internet users will s…

[deleted]

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

#157

Post by switch007 »

michaelhoney wrote: post #36

This is a bad idea, and it’ll be very hard to implement. Better to ban old people from watching Sky News and using Facebook, that’s the real danger to our democracy

I had to correct my auntie that no, Morocco did not manipulate the weather to cause the floods in Spain. She didn't really believe me. The Facebook propaganda is intense

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

#158

Post by jiggawatts »

scripturial wrote: post #92
linuxandrew wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha! We have compulsory voting but unlike many Anglo countries we don't require voter ID, vote registration etc. In fact you do not need to provide any ID to vote, because voting fraud is so statistically low (see https://www.rmit.edu.au/news/factlab-meta/voting-fraud-negli... ). We simply provide a name and address and fill out the ballot. We have so many issues, but compulsory voting is not one of them, in my opinio…

In Australia they ask to see your ID but you can say you don’t have it on you. I think they mostly just ask for ID so it’s easier to look up your name with the correct spelling.

They don't. Source: Australian citizen that has voted many times.

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

#159

Post by jiggawatts »

ern wrote: post #95
Der_Einzige wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forced voting is proof of it. Australia is by far the least free Anglo nation. I will never step foot on that god forsaken island. They have no culture, and that’s the opinion of Australians: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lucky_Country https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Australian_Ugliness

Compulsory voting means that a large part of the electorate that doesn’t pay attention to politics is easily frightened by scare campaigns. An example of this is that Australia is sorely in need of tax reform, but any party that pushes for it at state or federal level is damaged at the polls, often fatally.

Then how did John Howard get the GST passed?

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

#160

Post by kreetx »

willyt wrote: post #153
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…

There’s an interview on The Rest is Politics Leading podcast with the politician Peter Malinauskas the premier of New South Wales who started the introduction of this law in his state first. I think it was maybe then taken up by the federal government. https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/leading/id1665265193?i... It’s very insightful and from listening to this it seems unlikely that murdoch was a huge influence on…

Even if they were, aren't they are unlikely to gain much from this. I.e, when the average teenager can't consume social media platforms anymore, they surely won't go back to a more traditional outlet?
Post reply on HN