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Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

reuters.com

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Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#411

Post by [deleted] »

serial_dev wrote: post #367
gary_0 wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This worldwide push for online ID verification is absolutely not in good faith, and I'm shocked at how few people on "Hacker" News are seeing it for what it is. Imagine going on 1990's or 2000's Usenet and telling those folks they'd have to upload government ID to prove they weren't children and keep using the system. Virtually everyone would have shouted this Big Brother shit down until it was their dying breath.

But think of the children! Or the terrorist! Or communists! Whichever makes you accept the surveillance state.

[deleted]

Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#412

Post by samdoesnothing »

wiredpancake wrote: post #25
OhioMan2943 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can seatbelts be enforced? This is preposterous and imbecilic- if there isn't a policeman inside every car checking every minute how will we make sure that people are wearing them. Clearly there is no point in trying!

There is seatbelt cameras in Australia. They are everywhere, they can also be mobile and placed almost anywhere. These camera are mounted high so they can view down in through the windscreen. They automatically issue a $1,251 for not wearing one to the license holder.

That's about $5 in USD if anyone is wondering

Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#413

Post by [deleted] »

zmmmmm wrote: post #405

A lot of the criticism is based on the concept that it won't be technically watertight. But the key is that it doesn't have to be watertight to work. Social media is all about network effects. Once most kids are on there, everyone has to be on there. If you knock the percentage down far enough, you break the network effect to the point where those who don't want to don't feel pressured to. If that is all it does, it'…

[deleted]

Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#414

Post by gffrd »

baby wrote: post #159
killingtime74 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Socialising != Social media. Teens can still use messenger, WhatsApp, phonecalls, text or even....face to face!

That's true. I'll say this though: my social life skyrocketed thanks to Facebook when I was ~18. Not sure what kind of impact it would have had earlier, I was def. more of a kid and social medias were not a thing anyway. Makes sense to me to have an age limit considering cyber bullying and teen suicides and all.

It’s possible your social life would have exploded without Facebook.

If you found a community on Facebook, you’d likely have found it regardless without it.

Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#415

Post by bamboozled »

papichulo4 wrote: post #288
feb012025 wrote: post #161

I feel like everyone in this thread is assuming this is a good faith move by Australia to help kids in school and with socialization. I think phones and social media are harmful, but I get the sense there's a political motive behind this. We've been hearing politicians complain for years that they're losing the youth when it comes to long-standing foreign policy positions, etc... And suddenly they ban social media. R…

Why does the motivation matter so much? It’s not a global ban, it’s not a permanent ban, nobody is going to jail. It’s like seeing if moving the smoking age to 18 will improve health outcomes. It’s ruining their lives as far as we can tell, and at the end of the day it’s just one country testing it out. It’ll be stastically significant, culturally close enough of a sample set for us to learn from. I’m curious to see…

Don’t you know this is the end of democracy as we know it because kids can’t easily look at toxic content online anymore ?

Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#416

Post by cmxch »

strangattractor wrote: post #237
feb012025 wrote: post #161

I feel like everyone in this thread is assuming this is a good faith move by Australia to help kids in school and with socialization. I think phones and social media are harmful, but I get the sense there's a political motive behind this. We've been hearing politicians complain for years that they're losing the youth when it comes to long-standing foreign policy positions, etc... And suddenly they ban social media. R…

Meta == Phillip Morris - This is a public health issue and will likely need to be treated like tobacco. Kids can't vote so I don't see the political motivation.

Handwaving “public health” doesn’t make it so.

Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#417

Post by spullara »

zmmmmm wrote: post #405

A lot of the criticism is based on the concept that it won't be technically watertight. But the key is that it doesn't have to be watertight to work. Social media is all about network effects. Once most kids are on there, everyone has to be on there. If you knock the percentage down far enough, you break the network effect to the point where those who don't want to don't feel pressured to. If that is all it does, it'…

very few laws and law makers take into consideration secondary (and beyond) effects.

Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#418

Post by Dylan16807 »

lisbbb wrote: post #278
strangattractor wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meta == Phillip Morris - This is a public health issue and will likely need to be treated like tobacco. Kids can't vote so I don't see the political motivation.

I just can't get behind any of it, sorry. The puritanical moralizing feels so good until you cause a revolution or the species goes extinct.

Any of it? You can't get behind cigarette bans for kids?

Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#419

Post by jstummbillig »

feb012025 wrote: post #161

I feel like everyone in this thread is assuming this is a good faith move by Australia to help kids in school and with socialization. I think phones and social media are harmful, but I get the sense there's a political motive behind this. We've been hearing politicians complain for years that they're losing the youth when it comes to long-standing foreign policy positions, etc... And suddenly they ban social media. R…

> I feel like everyone in this thread is assuming this is a good faith move by Australia to help kids in school and with socialization.

Really! My experience is quite the opposite. I see a lot of people explaining why it's a bad idea.

Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#420

Post by palata »

endgame wrote: post #380
feb012025 wrote: post #161

I feel like everyone in this thread is assuming this is a good faith move by Australia to help kids in school and with socialization. I think phones and social media are harmful, but I get the sense there's a political motive behind this. We've been hearing politicians complain for years that they're losing the youth when it comes to long-standing foreign policy positions, etc... And suddenly they ban social media. R…

Of course they aren't. If they were actually helping kids, they would be going after algorithmic feeds in general and the most predatory platforms like Roblox (especially given its recent scandals), doing something about kids being exposed to gambling advertising, etc. The bill was put up for public comment for less than one business day before being rammed through Parliament. Australia is just sending out one of the…

> kids pretending to be adults so they sneak through these filters

The real question is: how hard does it make it for them to pretend to be adults? We just need it to be hard enough that most kids won't do it.

> platforms winding back their (meagre) child safety efforts since "children are banned anyway"

If the law forces the platforms to properly ban children, I don't see how they can do that. If you're thinking that the platforms will just say "it's illegal for children to join, so we don't have to do anything because they shouldn't come in the first place", then I don't think the law is made like this.

> everyone being forced to prove their age via e.g. uploading ID (which will inevitably get leaked)

Some countries have been working on privacy-preserving age verification. I find it's a lot better than uploading an ID.

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