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Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws

abc.net.au

291–300 of 498 posts

Re: Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws

#291
post #104

If 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…

> is a surmountable problem given all the cryptographic technologies at our disposal

I'm genuinely curious, is it? I don't know enough to be sure one way or the other, how you'd do it with some kind of private/public key thing or whatever. Can anyone here provide a quick example?

And I'm assuming it would involve some kind of code generated on the spot just for you, so somebody couldn't just post a code on the internet for all teens to use.

Re: Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws

#292
post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally lived in a very backwater state, surrounded by racist conservatives, and was raised hardcore Catholic by extremely abusive guardians. I owe every single ounce of my rationality to the web and the ideas and people I encountered there. Facebook, etc are definitely terrible for kids. But the wording of these laws is intentionally vague, in order for these kinds of laws to be used according to the whim of th…

Well that goes a long way to explaining your quite extreme views.

You're flirting with an identity fallacy here, but please, explain which part of my views are extreme.

Re: Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws

#293
post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why gambling but not Facebook?

Among other things, there is solid evidence that the move toward gambling in the US has been a disaster. This is a topic that's fairly easy to study in objective terms. The evidence for social media harming people is highly disputed and, I would say, largely unconvincing. For one thing, it relies on self-reported subjective well-being.

Sports gambling is nothing compared to Dave and busters or Chuck E. Cheese’s tickets. We hook our kids of disgusting gambling behavior (legally?). No one cares about this and wants to go after sports betters instead.

God damn boot lickers all over this thread. I’m so glad to not live anywhere near that godforsaken island.

Re: Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws

#294
post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's pretty obvious, no? The entire point is that I got to grow up with a wide variety of opinions and ideas from people across the world. I have good friends all over the world today thanks to the web. We have influenced and helped each other over the years. We depend on each other. That's not a corner case.

> I got to grow up with a wide variety of opinions and ideas from people across the world. You got to grow up with the vocal minority on the internet, in otherwords the 4% of the worlds population which is most extreme in their views and most arrogant in how they express them.

That is entirely an assumption on your part, one which reveals your inherent biases. My experience was not at all as you describe.

You have no idea how I spent my time on the web overall just because I gave you a glimpse into a single aspect of my intersectional experience on the web.

Re: Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws

#295
post #175

Every 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 'chil…

Why would you have to jump to the conclusion that identity verification is required to implement this law? The simple existence of this law:

- Requires social media companies to implement rules to prevent - Enables parents to tell their - Will likely drive a number of BigTech has been slapped in the face enough in EU to take this kind of law seriously.

It baffles me that they've gained so much power in the collective consciousness that any law that restricts their usage would have to be implemented by someone else.

Re: Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws

#296
post #175

Every 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 'chil…

How many under 16s read newspapers or watch news anyway? All you need to do is look up the mental health stats since the iPhone release to see why parents are massively concerned. There has never been a time when an alert parent didn’t have a fair idea of what info a kid was exposed to. This is why going to university is such an awakening. Now the parents basically need a background in infosec to stop their kids acce…

How many under 16s read newspapers or watch news anyway?

That's exactly why there's a suggestion legacy media are driving this.

Re: Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws

#297
post #222

I generally think that children's access to the internet needs to be more closely monitored. You wouldn't allow your child to walk up to random strangers in the street without you there, why do we allow it online? I have on a few occasions had to protect a child from an adult in an online group. What concerns me here is how this will be enforced. The only way to implement this is with IDs to check birth dates, and so…

The benefit of allowing one nerdy kid unrestricted access to the internet is often larger than literally hundreds of people “harmed” by that very same access.

Trying to kill the pipeline for creating the “hacker” mentality that folks here are supposed to have is supreme level bootlicking. I hope you eventually find it disgusting.

Re: Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws

#298
post #3

What they're really saying is that all websites will add a 'are you really over 16' checkbox?

Apparently the gov has been setting up their own system for that: https://www.esafety.gov.au/newsroom/media-releases/statement...

Which will probably work as well as most apps implemented by the Australian Govt; myNDIS, myGov, myMedicare etc etc etc. They are all trash. We do not have a good track record in this area.

Re: Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws

#300
post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> stop their kids accessing hardcore porn, violence and other mind bending content. Such sites are not among the social media sites required to verify Australian's ID/ages, which hints that protecting kids is merely a pretence.

[flagged]

> Are you suggesting porn, violence, and other mind bending content is not present on social media?

If protecting kids from porn is the objective, the most obvious thing to do would be to require age verification for porn sites, not some other random websites that happen to have occasional porn.

Ironically, kids will now have to visit much more hardcore sites (4chan etc - ones without age verification) if they want to socialise online. The effects will be similar to banning alcohol, it doesn't decrease demand, just pushes it elsewhere creating worse problems along the way.

See: perverse incentives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive#Examples_of...

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