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Australian Parliament bans social media for under-16s

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

#41

Post by oblio »

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…

Curing addictions is very hard and some addictions are very strong. Some addictions are also guarded by business interests leveraging close to a trillion dollars to increase this addiction.

We didn't reduce smoking through personal responsibility, stop using "nanny state" tropes.

In democracies the government is an imperfect representation of the will of the people and sometimes it decides individuals can't fight some things.

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

#42

Post by walrus01 »

nixpulvis wrote: post #40
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

Facebook already does this with users under 13. Read here about how they do it: https://about.fb.com/news/2021/07/age-verification/ But I agree it's a bad idea. See my comment above or below.

The idea that your operating system might share with meta your personal data like your age is pretty messed up.

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

#43

Post by doctorpangloss »

lmm wrote: post #15
obblekk wrote: post #2

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.

Yes, but then how could they find audience for political ads, if not in social media?

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

#45

Post by gloosx »

obblekk wrote: post #2

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…

>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 set-up Deep Packet Inspection devices for every ISP, make their own govt CA, and trust me all of it will be done in the name of people and child safety.

Sad to see a dysfunctional govt. which bans and calls it a solution to the problem. When I will be in the office I would ban the whole concept of banning itself once and forever, and any politician who proposed a single ban in his life would be banned from service. I will of course step out for proposing this ban immediately.

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

#46

Post by threeseed »

ClassyJacket wrote: post #21

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.

You're literally spreading misinformation in your comment.

a) The government was trying to outlaw deepfakes and fake accounts. But also require more transparency for users to contest moderation decisions. It did not try to limit what you can say.

b) There is no law that makes it illegal to criticise the government.

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

#47

Post by discordance »

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

They’re not mutually exclusive, and this isn’t about democracy.

We know that developing brains have been deeply impacted by the easy dopamine engineered hits Meta and Bytedance deliver.

To me this feels like a contemporary version of the opium wars, but instead of nation states at war, it’s companies vs people.

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

#48

Post by hcfman »

kumarvvr wrote: post #26
Terr_ wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The problem with this approach is that you will have two groups of children, the ones who have access and the ones who don't have access. This is a worse problem than allowing it for all. Its another vector of temptation, distraction, in-equality, etc.

But not a worse problem than blocking it for everyone

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

#49

Post by nomilk »

When the laws come in, many Australians will get VPNs rather than provide ID to random websites.

If social media sites are compelled block VPNs, is that technically achievable/viable? Cloud providers and VPN services have predictable IP ranges, so are easily blocked (/majorly inconvenienced) by sites motivated to do so. But social media companies might not want to block VPNs since a lot of legitimate traffic comes through them (e.g. people anywhere in the world who simply wish to have that extra layer of privacy from their ISP and wifi owner).

Are there VPN strategies that will allow an Australian to reliably access social media as though their traffic is coming from another country?

I also guess Australians who try this might have to access social media sites via a browser on their phone (as opposed to native app).

Asking for a friend, of course.

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

#50

Post by oblio »

kumarvvr wrote: post #26
Terr_ wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The problem with this approach is that you will have two groups of children, the ones who have access and the ones who don't have access. This is a worse problem than allowing it for all. Its another vector of temptation, distraction, in-equality, etc.

I'd say the next steps is that you also force institutions for kids to ban it, regardless of parent choice.

Parents must present proof of disabling said websites for their children. Or their kids can just not have those devices with them.

Do this for schools, activity clubs, restaurants, fast for food places, etc, and you've basically hit 80% of places where kids are all the time.

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