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They also recently tried to pass a "Misinformation" bill which would have given them the power to decree what we can and can't say on social media, and they'll try to sneak that back in, too.
This country is a nanny state and it's getting scary.
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.
We do have recourse. What you'll see is more independent candidates get voted in to overturn the law. Once the government of the day starts badly implementing it the conservatives who voted with the center left party will split off and start attacking for it's repeal. It's a nothing burger law designed to look tough and do nothing.
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.
Prediction: the policy was both difficult to implement and difficult to determine if it made any impact, positive or negative.
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…
For children, it is very important for them to build their social skills based on interactions with other kids and adults, rather than from social media. They must learn about the world from the world, rather than through a commercial filtered lens of a big tech company, that is focussed on clicks, views and profits.
True, its a nanny state move. But, in my view, it is absolutely essential, as big tech seldom seems to worry about their products and their effects on children.
Sometimes, when the problem is big, the action must also be big.
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.
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…
> national IDs to be able to provide cryptographically secure proofs of age Nah, this is an antipattern we've seen before. A veritable Pandora's Box whispering to be opened. There is a much simpler and safer solution: 1. A disclosure law, which requires sites to somehow (e.g. HTTP headers) show their nature as a social media site, porn site, etc. 2. Parents can choose to purchase devices/software for their children w…
This is a worse problem than allowing it for all.
Its another vector of temptation, distraction, in-equality, etc.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We do have recourse. What you'll see is more independent candidates get voted in to overturn the law. Once the government of the day starts badly implementing it the conservatives who voted with the center left party will split off and start attacking for it's repeal. It's a nothing burger law designed to look tough and do nothing.
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.
Acting like we should be seriously treating children and teens as an equal political group is a joke
The point of this isn't to keep kids off social media. It's an excuse to require ID for adults so they can arrest us for criticizing them. They also recently tried to pass a "Misinformation" bill which would have given them the power to decree what we can and can't say on social media, and they'll try to sneak that back in, too. This country is a nanny state and it's getting scary.
Also, it must be the state of affairs that an Adult can have an ID on SM and criticize the govt. and the laws and courts should protect that individuals right to criticize.
Avoiding IDs on the internet, just so that the govt can't catch hold of the critic is a lot of step backwards.
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.
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…
People are far more worried about the government knowing that you're using a social media site, than they are about the social media site knowing who you are. I don't see a way this could be implemented where the govt doesn't know what site is requesting the verification. I'm assuming it'll be an openid type flow where the social media sites will have to register client IDs with the govt myID, in which case the govt…
Blind signatures. Briefly, a blind signature is a way for a party to sign a document without seeing the contents of the document. The cryptographic forms of this, at a high level, work like this:
1. You do a keyed reversible transformation on document D that produces a transformed document D'. This is called "blinding" the document.
2. They sign D' with signature S'.
3. You apply the reverse transformation to S', which gives you a signature S from them for D. This is "unblinding".
Use a random key each time you need to get something blind signed and throw away the key afterwards.
Even if they later see D and S they can't match them up with any D' and S' because they don't know the key.
For age verification D would be some kind of token you obtain from the social media company during age verification. You'd then have the government blind sign that with a signature that is only used when the government has verified you are at least 16. You'd unblind the signature and give that back to the social media company.
There are also protocols to do this using zero knowledge proofs.