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

abc.net.au

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

#321

Post by djtango »

nomilk wrote: post #300
beardedwizard wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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…

Why is it 4chan and not WhatsApp groups?

The internet was wild before social media but somehow the weird stuff remained fringe before recommendation algorithms and the perverse incentives that emerged from recommendation algorithms and content creation meant that feeds became an on ramp to all kinds of nasty things

I'm not exactly a greybeard but I remember when happy slapping was a viral phenomenon but that seems pretty tame by comparison these days

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

#323

Post by hn_acker »

BSDobelix wrote: post #226
slibhb wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you really not see a difference between _lung cancer_ and "my teenager is moody"? The evidence that Facebook harms people is extremely iffy.

>The evidence that Facebook harms people is extremely iffy. Funny because internal documents at Facebook said exactly that about teenagers: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/09/16/faceboo... https://fairplayforkids.org/facebook-research-children/ https://theconversation.com/states-sue-meta-for-knowingly-hu...

Facebook's internal documents showed that on 11 of 12 body image issues, Facebook was helpful to more teens than it was harmful to [1]:

> For example, lots of people rely on the reporting around the Frances Haugen leaks from inside Facebook to argue that “Facebook knew” that Instagram causes “body image issues” for children (and then most people leapt to the belief that the company then ignored and downplayed that finding). But, as we noted, the actual study told a very, very different story. As we pointed out at the time, the study was an attempt to do the right thing and understand if social media like Facebook was actually causing negative self-images among teenagers, and the study found that for the most part, the answer was absolutely not.

> It looked at 12 different potential issues, and surveyed teenaged boys and girls, and found that in 23 out of 24 categories, social media had little to no negative impact, and quite frequently a mostly positive impact. The only issue where the “negative impact” outweighed the “positive impact” was on “body image issues” for teenaged girls, and even then it was less than one-third of the teen girls who said that it made it worse for them. And the whole point of the study was to find out what areas were problematic, and which areas could be improved upon. But, again, in every other area, “made it better” far outranked “made it worse.”

[1] https://www.techdirt.com/2022/11/28/contrary-to-popular-opin...

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

#324

Post by interactivecode »

idunnoman1222 wrote: post #319
sprice wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the Aus Govt will be able to access citizen social media data with relative ease. So no more pseudo anonymous accounts This isn't necessarily true. It came as a surprise to me, but many "Government Digital ID" systems use Verifiable Credentials[1][2] and Decentralized Identifiers[3]. I live in BC, Canada. I have installed the BC Wallet app[4] which is open source code[5]. With the BC Wallet app, I can create an acc…

Proving identity is a hard problem. What’s to stop a kid from grabbing his father’s drivers license and setting up this wallet because eg his father is never going to do it Secondarily what’s to stop an 18-year-old having hundreds of tiktok accounts and selling them for a dollar to whatever kid wants at is high school every social media site is going to have to implement Australia’s 2fa system?

aside from limitations like, you can only setup 1 app, or things like 2f authentication. Usually things like this are stopped by laws and enforcement causing consequences. I'm pretty sure that sort of thing would be considered identity theft. same thing as stealing their father's drivers license and opening bank accounts in their name.

There are physical barriers and there are barriers that are enforced manually. Same with speeding. you are not allowed to drive faster than 60. even though your car can drive faster, laws in combination with police, traffic cams and speed traps will make sure it's enforced.

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

#325

Post by fsflover »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #280
fsflover wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Facebook knows Instagram is toxic for teen girls, company documents show (wsj.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28523688 Facebook proven to negatively impact mental health (tau.ac.il) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32938622 Testimony to House committee by fo…

See this is just thing the commenter you are replying to is saying. Just read the comments in your second link tearing apart the study. Given the replication crisis in psychology, the authors make bad choices in the experiment design that are not justifiable in 2022.

How about my third link?

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

#326

Post by sprice »

idunnoman1222 wrote: post #319
sprice wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the Aus Govt will be able to access citizen social media data with relative ease. So no more pseudo anonymous accounts This isn't necessarily true. It came as a surprise to me, but many "Government Digital ID" systems use Verifiable Credentials[1][2] and Decentralized Identifiers[3]. I live in BC, Canada. I have installed the BC Wallet app[4] which is open source code[5]. With the BC Wallet app, I can create an acc…

Proving identity is a hard problem. What’s to stop a kid from grabbing his father’s drivers license and setting up this wallet because eg his father is never going to do it Secondarily what’s to stop an 18-year-old having hundreds of tiktok accounts and selling them for a dollar to whatever kid wants at is high school every social media site is going to have to implement Australia’s 2fa system?

This seems like a different and fraudulent category of problem.

The point is that it's possible to create third-party authentication systems that require proving your age and the only extra thing the third-party learns is a verifiable age and the government does not get any information at all.

All this being said, I took a look at the article in question and saw this:

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

So what could have been achieved with no invasion or privacy now seems like it must be achieved with an invasion of privacy.

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

#327

Post by CatWChainsaw »

nomilk wrote: 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…

So you think that legacy media is behind this because if they could just get that pesky social media banned, those kids would shell out their allowance money to The Economist or The Washington Post? Do you know what Overwatch is? Minecraft? League of Legends?

Or maybe, just maybe, social media sites will be all too happy to gobble up the sweet sweet DATA available from an ID requirement. In the US, this would give social media access to your full name, DOB, address, height/weight/any medical restrictions, and organ donor status, which social media giants will package with all the other stuff they know about you and sell insights to any advertiser or government that flashes cash.

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

#328

Post by nomilk »

djtango wrote: post #321
nomilk wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Why is it 4chan and not WhatsApp groups? The internet was wild before social media but somehow the weird stuff remained fringe before recommendation algorithms and the perverse incentives that emerged from recommendation algorithms and content creation meant that feeds became an on ramp to all kinds of nasty things I'm not exactly a greybeard but I remember when happy slapping was a viral phenomenon but that seems pr…

4chan is a synecdoche representing all those fringe ~'social media' substitute sites; they'll soon be common knowledge in Aus, at least among the U16s..

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

#329

Post by BadHumans »

owisd wrote: post #160
BadHumans wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Surely the problem of verifying a property of someone (the Boolean of “is over X age”) without sharing further details, is a surmountable problem given all the cryptographic technologies at our disposal. Only if preserving privacy is the goal and I'm sure we both know it isn't.

I guess it will become self-fulfilling if everyone denies that there are privacy friendly options. Legislatures globally are starting to take this seriously so chances are it's happening one way or another.

"Everyone" isn't denying there are privacy friendly options. The government does not want to implement privacy friendly options.

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

#330

Post by prng2021 »

This sounds so useless that it could be an Onion article. What am I missing?

“There are no penalties for young people or parents who flout the rules.

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

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