Guess Australia will get a lot of kids well-versed in VPN use.
What we'll learn first is how schools use the new law as a tool for limiting device access in general and kids spend 8 hours a day reliving Gen-X.
Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws
171–180 of 498 posts
Re: Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws
#172Like the spirit, dislike the execution. Passing legislation to “protect the kids” is politically easy. Bans are simple. Much more effective, IMO, would be to legislate the way social networks behave. Stop their most addictive patterns. Adults are just as susceptible as kids in my experience. If there needs to be anything kid specific, perhaps a block on using the service during school hours, or only for X hours a day…
Governments should not be in the business of telling tech companies how to design software. Honest observers will look back on the anti-social-media movement as a moral panic. It isn't so much that social media is good, it's that the proper attitude toward new, scary things is to integrate them into your life in a healthy way rather than banning them. And if we should ban anything it's drugs and gambling, not tiktok
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Re: Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws
#173Like the spirit, dislike the execution. Passing legislation to “protect the kids” is politically easy. Bans are simple. Much more effective, IMO, would be to legislate the way social networks behave. Stop their most addictive patterns. Adults are just as susceptible as kids in my experience. If there needs to be anything kid specific, perhaps a block on using the service during school hours, or only for X hours a day…
Governments should not be in the business of telling tech companies how to design software. Honest observers will look back on the anti-social-media movement as a moral panic. It isn't so much that social media is good, it's that the proper attitude toward new, scary things is to integrate them into your life in a healthy way rather than banning them. And if we should ban anything it's drugs and gambling, not tiktok
> And if we should ban anything it's drugs and gambling, not tiktok
You realise children can legally do neither, right?
Government should be in the business of improving citizens lives. As another commenter said, left to their own devices companies would still be using leaded paint everywhere if it was 1c cheaper per gallon. I’ve grown very tired of this “any regulation is bad regulation” viewpoint, it doesn’t hold up to the slightest bit of scrutiny.
Re: Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I started losing faith in democracy since Brexit. It is still better than other forms of governance, that seems like a low bar. 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…
> dumb/racist/misogynist voters…
> Democracy only works if voters take it seriously
Do you mean democracy only works when all people vote for options that you think are sensible?
Im afraid you seem to have the wrong end of the stick when it comes to democracy. The whole point of it is that everyone, including people you disagree with, get to have a say. Calling people names like dumb and racist is just a crass result of disagreeing with somebody, and then extrapolating their entire personality based on an opinion.
Democracy works when everyone has the choice to vote, and excercises that choice. If 70% of the population suddenly voted to extradite all people with dark skin to Africa, under the rules of democracy you would need to accept that choice as correct and support it. If you decided to say the result was racist and that it shouldnt be carried out, then you are diagreeing with democracy full stop. In that situation you may as well just have a dictatorship, as what it boils down to is one person thinks everyone else should do what that person thinks is right.
If you feel that people should support and agree with what you think is right you need to do the same to everyone else in the world, including people whose opinion is drastically different from your own. Even if you feel it is wrong.
Calling people names and belittling their peronal opinions and judgements is only further sowing seeds of division and hate.
Re: Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws
#175Every single Australian's ID will have to be verified (in order to confirm their age).
Depending on the degree of cooperation (/coercion) the Australian government has with social media companies, the Aus Govt will be able to access citizen social media data with relative ease. So no more pseudo anonymous accounts (or, at least, they'll be made more difficult, especially for non-technical folk).
Reminds of the 'chilling effect' of measures of bygone decades.
My personal hunch is legacy media is largely driving this, due to them seeing the writing on the wall and knowing 'social media' is their biggest threat. If young people get their information from sites like bluesky, twitter, podcasts and reddit, they may never watch a mainstream news program or read an online newspaper. Bad for business. This measure is a great way of eradicating some competition.
Re: Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws
#176My 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.
> The Internet - WebChatBroadcasting, ICQ, IRC, etc - was like a gift from the gods in the early 1990s.
I grew up in a wealthy very tech-savvy area, and most kids except the really geeky like me didn't get internet until the mid or late 1990s, so you weren't as "backwards" as you think. You would have still been on the bleeding edge to have internet in the early 1990s.
Re: Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws
#177Like the spirit, dislike the execution. Passing legislation to “protect the kids” is politically easy. Bans are simple. Much more effective, IMO, would be to legislate the way social networks behave. Stop their most addictive patterns. Adults are just as susceptible as kids in my experience. If there needs to be anything kid specific, perhaps a block on using the service during school hours, or only for X hours a day…
Governments should not be in the business of telling tech companies how to design software. Honest observers will look back on the anti-social-media movement as a moral panic. It isn't so much that social media is good, it's that the proper attitude toward new, scary things is to integrate them into your life in a healthy way rather than banning them. And if we should ban anything it's drugs and gambling, not tiktok
> Governments should not be in the business of telling tech companies how to design software.
This sounds a lot like "Governments should not be in the business of telling tobacco companies how to design cigarettes." Social media use is a problem for developing brains. I'm not saying I like Australia's plan, but, like the person you're replying to, I like the spirit of it.
Re: Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
Governments should not be in the business of telling tech companies how to design software. Honest observers will look back on the anti-social-media movement as a moral panic. It isn't so much that social media is good, it's that the proper attitude toward new, scary things is to integrate them into your life in a healthy way rather than banning them. And if we should ban anything it's drugs and gambling, not tiktok
> And if we should ban anything it's drugs and gambling, not tiktok You realise children can legally do neither, right? Government should be in the business of improving citizens lives. As another commenter said, left to their own devices companies would still be using leaded paint everywhere if it was 1c cheaper per gallon. I’ve grown very tired of this “any regulation is bad regulation” viewpoint, it doesn’t hold u…
Some regulations are good. Like the ones regulating drugs and gambling (that have been largely dismantled).
But we don't need the government to protect people from Facebook!
Re: Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
(i) the sole purpose, or a significant purpose, of the service is to enable online social interaction between 2 or more end-users; (ii) the service allows end-users to link to, or interact with, some or all of the other end-users; (iii) the service allows end-users to post material on the service; Linked to the legislation in another comment.
This is so generic, you might as well ban the internet.
This is hilarious. Want to use google maps? Sorry, ID please! Users can post comments and reviews all over the world and see ones from everyone else.
Re: Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws
#180If you’re tempted to think “this isn’t worth it, too hard to enforce without affecting something else”… read “The Anxious Generation” by Jonathan Haidt. There is very real, irreparable harm being done to young people, and it merits trying to make it right, not just surrendering to it. Surely the problem of verifying a property of someone (the Boolean of “is over X age”) without sharing further details, is a surmounta…
I have tried to find good scientific evidence that shows that social media is a net negative for kids and or adults. I have been unable to do so. Reports that I read on conventional media sites often summarize government reports, but they do so incorrectly. And when I go and read the government reports, they present a much more balanced picture than the summaries would suggest. In particular, for marginalized teens,…
> I have tried to find good scientific evidence that shows that social media is a net negative for kids and or adults. I have been unable to do so.
> For example, Hacker News is the only social media that I use
Try spending an hour a day on tiktok (average tiktok user screen time) and 30 min a day on instagram (average ig user screen time) for a year and report back. This shit is crack cocaine for kids