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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

#491

Post by rstuart4133 »

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.

Most Australian schools banned phones a while ago. Attempts were made to measure the outcome. For example, South Australia saw a 72% drop in phone-related issues and 80.5% fall in social media problems in early 2025 compared to 2023 [0]. Other states reported similar results. These early figures are a little rubbery, but overall look very good. The social media ban is in part a response to that success.

The only major concern I have is de-anonymization of the web. It's worse than just de-anonymization. They've opened the gate for organisations like Facebook to demand government ID, like say a photo of a drivers licence. It contains a whole pile of info these data vultures would like to get their hands on, like your actual date of birth and residential address.

The sad bit is I doubt de-anonymization was goal, in fact I doubt they put much thought into that aspect of all. If it was the goal there far more effective ways of going about given the corporations permission to "collect whatever data you need to make it work". They could have implemented a zero knowledge proof of age service. But given the track record of their other computer projects, a realistic assessment is it had near zero chance of being implemented at all, let alone on time and on budget.

But if they had of insisted the providers implemented some sort of ZKP themselves, I would have found it hard to argue against given the past experience in schools.

[0] https://ministers.education.gov.au/clare/school-behaviour-im...

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

#492

Post by hedayet »

roenxi wrote: post #459
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'…

Well, yes but the other problem is this is putting authoritarians in charge of more stuff. I had a comment comparing this to allowing people to eat too much food and that is literally where the logical outcome of this sort of thinking goes - it happens in practice, that isn't some sort of theoretical risk. The more the government decides what people can and can't want to do the worse the potential gets when they make…

Still, even the most libertarian among us generally won't oppose restricting youth access to tobacco, or restricting recreational access to hard drugs.

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

#493

Post by zmmmmm »

jen729w wrote: post #441
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'…

> normalising people uploading identification documents and hence lead to people becoming victims of scams We've long lost this war. I'm in Italy, staying at my 3rd Airbnb. I was surprised when the first asked me, casually, to drop a photograph of my passport in the chat. I checked with Claude: yep, that's the law. (I'll remind you that Italy is in the EU.) On checking into this place last week, the guy just took a p…

Well, even there, you're doing a transaction worth hundreds to thousands of dollars probably.

This pretty much lowers the bar to any random website on the internet can ask for ID to do something as trivial as look at a photo.

In a world where social engineering is the last unsolvable security vector, this is significant even if it is just a matter of degree.

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

#494

Post by 9dev »

samename wrote: post #483
bigfudge wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The attempt is to remove the market do exploiting the attention of children for profit. This doesn’t have to be perfect to be worth it. What’s more, the idea that this puts children at the mercy of authoritarians is laughable. The US tech industry has shown us beyond doubt that they are perfectly ok with genuine authoritarians in charge, provided the dollars keep rolling. Fuck them, and good on ya Australia.

What about future governments in Australia? This is ripe for abuse and scope creep. It also ties a uniform ID to an account, simplifying tracking and surveillance by corporations and governments. Plus, this is asking everyone in the country to give up their biometrics (face scanning is one implementation) or link your government issued ID to your social media account (look at the UK to see how this turned out - peopl…

> It also ties a uniform ID to an account, simplifying tracking and surveillance by corporations and governments.

That is by no means the only solution. A lot of work is happening in the area of cryptographically verified assertions; for example, a government API could provide the simple assertion "at least 16 years of age" without the social media platform ever seeing your ID, and the government never able to tie you to the service requiring the assertion.

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

#495

Post by roguecoder »

cmxch wrote: post #416
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.

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

Suppressing the evidence of it doesn't make it not so: https://www.firstpost.com/explainers/meta-project-mercury-sh...

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

#497

Post by armenarmen »

hedayet wrote: post #492
roenxi wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, yes but the other problem is this is putting authoritarians in charge of more stuff. I had a comment comparing this to allowing people to eat too much food and that is literally where the logical outcome of this sort of thinking goes - it happens in practice, that isn't some sort of theoretical risk. The more the government decides what people can and can't want to do the worse the potential gets when they make…

Still, even the most libertarian among us generally won't oppose restricting youth access to tobacco, or restricting recreational access to hard drugs.

As one of the libertarian people here, my concern is that this “what about the children” will force IDs to post. Because how else could it be done?

That said smoking and Instagram are probably best avoided by kids

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

#498

Post by zmmmmm »

BoppreH wrote: post #481
yladiz wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the EU you don’t need to upload your ID anywhere, the service can use the government’s portal for ID verification. In the case of age verification they can get a yes/no response if the age is above some threshold. This is opaque to the service so they wouldn’t get any additional ID details.

That's a very good technical solution, but socially it can be foiled by an official-looking alert saying "failed to scan card, please do X instead". And that's assuming the technical solution is deployed everywhere. I'm in the EU with one of those IDs, and I still had to upload photos of my passport and scan my face to open a bank account. The identification process even had its own app that I had to install.

Exactly. I'd concede this point if I'd seen a giant public awareness campaign informing people which official sites to use and general safety awareness about it. I can tell you, literally nothing like that has happened. Not an insufficient effort at it - no effort, nothing. It's clear the people in charge are just head in the sand about this aspect of it.

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

#499

Post by pryce »

bigfudge wrote: post #468
roenxi wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, yes but the other problem is this is putting authoritarians in charge of more stuff. I had a comment comparing this to allowing people to eat too much food and that is literally where the logical outcome of this sort of thinking goes - it happens in practice, that isn't some sort of theoretical risk. The more the government decides what people can and can't want to do the worse the potential gets when they make…

The attempt is to remove the market do exploiting the attention of children for profit. This doesn’t have to be perfect to be worth it. What’s more, the idea that this puts children at the mercy of authoritarians is laughable. The US tech industry has shown us beyond doubt that they are perfectly ok with genuine authoritarians in charge, provided the dollars keep rolling. Fuck them, and good on ya Australia.

It is not that simple: Authoritarians that want to "protect" their gender-questioning or orientation-questioning children from having online access to trans and gay spaces online are not only enthusiastically backing Australia's social media ban, they are involved in the very creation of this legislation, and are delighted in its negative affects on LGBTQ teens.

There is considerable overlap between those who subscribe to the "trans people are a contagion" moral panic of writer Abigail Schrier, and the "ban social media" advocates in AU who were instrumental in creating this legislation.

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

#500

Post by roguecoder »

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.

Social media has caused at least two genocides so far, and their data centers and AI slop are helping drive us towards an earth incapable of supporting human life.

So what you are describing is just the base case.

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