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

abc.net.au

431–440 of 498 posts

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

#431
post #99
post #16

My friend is a media lawyer in Australia He can’t even advise if some video game developers he represents’ multiplayer games are exempt from the ban He says the legislation is just an under defined word salad Note this was several days ago and it may have been amended in the mean time

> He says the legislation is just an under defined word salad This might be on purpose. I've heard many say online that this law is sold as "save the children" but is designed to be used to get everyone to provide ID when they go/public/message online. > He can’t even advise if some video game developers he represents’ multiplayer games are exempt from the ban Bad for video game dev's business, and great for lawyers!…

>I've heard many say online that this law is sold as "save the children" but is designed to be used to get everyone to provide ID when they go/public/message online.

Because this was attempted already, for example with the UK "porn ban" law. And Australia is one of the few countries that are even more batshit insane when it comes to policing and controlling its own population, and possibly the only country where such a law could pass now.

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

#432
post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My personal hunch is legacy media is largely driving this The level of conspiracy theory about the “mainstream media” feels out of control at times. Legacy media’s control over the population is already gone (as you stated), with what leverage would they be forcing this? Occam’s Razor: voters are genuinely concerned about the effect social media is having on kids. As a parent I hear about these concerns a lot. That…

One thing I don't understand: if you and other parents are so concerned about this... why let your children use those sites?

Peer pressure will cause many children banned from using social media to work around the ban.

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

#433
post #94
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(i) the sole purpose, or a significant purpose, of the service is to enable online social interaction between 2 or more end-users; (ii) the service allows end-users to link to, or interact with, some or all of the other end-users; (iii) the service allows end-users to post material on the service; Linked to the legislation in another comment.

This is so generic, you might as well ban the internet.

And that is the entire point. You will only use the X state-mandated websites. You will only express positive opinions on there. You will not criticize the government under any circumstances. Glory to Arstozka.

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

#434
post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, what's the implication here, what is the disgrace? Why parental controls are bad? (Or what was implied was a /s tag? :))

Government controlled access to internet is a disgrace in any form. I can control my child without the government.

> I can control my child

Lies every parents tell themselves. Either they will watch porn at age 11 at school or at a friend, or you isolate them from society and they resent you forever.

You can't control every aspect of your child's real life or online activities, that's naive and I don't believe you actually have children, let alone teenagers.

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

#435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd like to see something examining the effects of those behaviors on the population. In the testimony, they explain it: We took a page from Big Tobacco’s playbook, working to make our offering addictive at the outset. Allowing for misinformation, conspiracy theories, and fake news to flourish were like Big Tobacco’s bronchodilators, which allowed the cigarette smoke to cover more surface area of the lungs. https:/…

Still no science though. One exec's views in a large company doesn't equal science. If exec's views are science/truth. Then I bet you would have found execs in tobacco companies who thought they were doing good.

True, it's not science. It is however the intention.

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

#436

Like the spirit, dislike the execution. Passing legislation to “protect the kids” is politically easy. Bans are simple. Much more effective, IMO, would be to legislate the way social networks behave. Stop their most addictive patterns. Adults are just as susceptible as kids in my experience. If there needs to be anything kid specific, perhaps a block on using the service during school hours, or only for X hours a day…

> Stop their most addictive patterns.

Which are? While it's easy to say things like "oh, infinite scroll is addictive" or "autoplaying videos are addictive", those are only the most obvious ones; (social) media addiction comes in many forms. Old Reddit didn't have infinite scroll and you had to click to open items, but would you argue it wasn't addictive anyways? IRC style chat, news groups and forums didn't have any of the obvious dark addictive patterns we associate with harmful social media nowadays, but we still whiled away the hours on them regardless.

I don't think it'd be as straightforward as banning certain practices. Besides, it'd be a game of whack-a-mole since for every legislation they'll find a way around it, or make it so that the users clamor to bring it back - take the EU privacy directive, it told companies they needed user permissions first. But they - the companies, not the EU or the laws - implemented it in the most obnoxious and harmful way possible to spite their own users and hopefully annoy them so much that they would either just hit accept, or vote the lawmakers out in favor of more economically liberal people.

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

#437
post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easiest way it to limit Ads. If you are selling more ads than there are minutes in a day * population some large enough group is getting mind fucked.

In my experience, the ads are the _least_ harmful parts of social media. It's the regular accounts that are causing FOMO and mental health issues by displaying unrealistic lifestyles that the majority of people won't ever achieve.

That's only one fragment of social media though, it's not helpful to focus on this part of social media alone; another big one is the rhetoric hidden in otherwise normal / legitimate content that seems to be a nontrivial factor in a hard shift to the right, politically.

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

#438
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…

Back in the 90's we were somewhat supervised when using the internet on the family PC. We were also somewhat supervised while watching the family TV.

Good point. There was a technology shift in portability and cost which meant each individual got a personal computer. They went from the common areas to personal spaces like bedrooms.

Maybe a lot of issue could be resolved by just having a phone that has to be in a common space, using a technology like LiFi [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li-Fi

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

#439
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.

I'm not entirely sure where you're going with this. I'm expressing my concerns with these restrictions.

My bigger concern than the creation of a free-thinking hacker - is the creation of a free-thinking society.

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

#440
post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t get it so you’re gonna do what to a 15-year-old who is an ‘identity thief’ so that he can go on TikTok? What’s the punishment please?

Put them in chains and onto a stinky sail vessel enroute to Australia... oh wait

The modern equivalent would be to repost all their last year tictocs, again.
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