Here in Austria in fourth grade kids take a little test for their bicycling skill. Not that it matters much in a car-centric country, but people forget that cycling, even in company with a parent, give kids the chance to learn the necessary traffic rules. Why not have something similar for social media or as the problem seems to be general conduct in social media, educate the kids and give them better ways to raise the alarm when things to bad. Just banning kids won't help them much.
Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws
51–60 of 498 posts
Re: Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws
#52Is the actual discussed measure available somewhere ? Looking around none of the articles discussing this had references to official documents. Judging from the info in the article: - kids will have one year to see which platforms are not categorized as SNS, yet can be used as such. - kids stuck with brainwashing parents, especially in remote rural areas, will have it a bit more tougher I guess.
This was rushed through with a public comment period of 24 hours.
It's going to be a mess, while the spirit is well intentioned it has edge cases up the wazoo, foot guns galore, and stinks of back door government ID for adults.
Pretty much the only media outlet in Australia that stood up with questions and non fawning commentary was Crikey:
eg: https://www.crikey.com.au/2024/11/26/teen-social-media-ban-s...
and: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Acrikey.com.au+social+...
This was deeply rooted in traditional media ( Murdoch News et al ) in AU putting pressure on the Government in AU to take action against Facebook & Co. after the ceasation of payments for linking to news media.
Re: Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
The main point here is probably to force ID control and have a constant flux of fully identified users on the networks ? The gov gets at least full legal check of any SNS account.
From the article: > Social media companies also won't be able to force users to provide government identification, including the Digital ID, to assess their age.
The actual law doesn't fully rule it out (there was an amendment to kind-of add that but it's fuzzy so ID could still be part of it).
But it's basically unenforcable without doing ID, it's going to fall in a heap eventually. The Australian Governement talks big game in tech regulation but almost every single thing they do (like the 'eSafety Comissioner' with their truly extradorinary powers) fails because they are very, very incompetent when it comes to technology.
I think former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull accidentally summed it up (talking about encryption) when he literally claimed that "The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia".
Re: Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws
#54Make absolutely no mistake. The real reason why politicians push through these anti-social media laws is to prevent children from networking and discussing and sharing revolutionary ideas. These laws are designed to prevent generations from establishing a baseline sociopolitical coherency and unity. I was subject to a home firewall and computer use surveillance as a child for the exact same reason, because my cult gu…
I think it's safe to say that, in under-16s, cyberbullying and susceptibility to intentionally addictive social media algorithms are a bit more of a common problem than revolutionary activities. Any would-be Che Guevaras can put in the time arousing the working class in person until such time as they can grow facial hair.
Re: Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws
#55Make absolutely no mistake. The real reason why politicians push through these anti-social media laws is to prevent children from networking and discussing and sharing revolutionary ideas. These laws are designed to prevent generations from establishing a baseline sociopolitical coherency and unity. I was subject to a home firewall and computer use surveillance as a child for the exact same reason, because my cult gu…
Sorry, but it’s rubbish. Are you saying that all the people who were 16 and grew up without social media had no social connections? Didn’t form strong bonds with their peers? Social media is absolutely terrible for kids. Social media absolutely destroyed social skills in teens.
I personally lived in a very backwater state, surrounded by racist conservatives, and was raised hardcore Catholic by extremely abusive guardians. I owe every single ounce of my rationality to the web and the ideas and people I encountered there.
Facebook, etc are definitely terrible for kids. But the wording of these laws is intentionally vague, in order for these kinds of laws to be used according to the whim of the incumbent, as a tool of oppression.
Re: Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws
#56Guess Australia will get a lot of kids well-versed in VPN use.
I've recently been teaching kids to code (in Aus) - 7 year olds already know about VPNs, and use them to circumvent various roadblocks to playing roblox!
Re: Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws
#57Make absolutely no mistake. The real reason why politicians push through these anti-social media laws is to prevent children from networking and discussing and sharing revolutionary ideas. These laws are designed to prevent generations from establishing a baseline sociopolitical coherency and unity. I was subject to a home firewall and computer use surveillance as a child for the exact same reason, because my cult gu…
I think it's safe to say that, in under-16s, cyberbullying and susceptibility to intentionally addictive social media algorithms are a bit more of a common problem than revolutionary activities. Any would-be Che Guevaras can put in the time arousing the working class in person until such time as they can grow facial hair.
Then we attack the systemic issues, instead of pushing through intentionally vague legislation. Some of the similar legislation being explored by multiple US states is frightening.
Re: Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Leisure Suit Larry was ahead of its time with its age verification system.
For those of us who weren’t around at the time, could you d on what made it good? Thanks!
what made it good?
Less good, more fun. To 'prove' that you were over 18 you had answer a series of multiple choice questions [1] about pop culture that most kids almost certainly wouldn't know. Pre internet, finding the answer was surprisingly hard without asking an adult. The main result was that 10 year old me knew a surprisingly large number of obscure facts of about US culture, like who Spiro Agnew was and that Ronald Reagan once starred in a movie with a monkey.
Eventually we found out that you could press some magic key combination to skip the question all together.
[1] https://allowe.com/games/larry/tips-manuals/lsl1-age-quiz.ht...
Re: Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws
#59Make absolutely no mistake. The real reason why politicians push through these anti-social media laws is to prevent children from networking and discussing and sharing revolutionary ideas. These laws are designed to prevent generations from establishing a baseline sociopolitical coherency and unity. I was subject to a home firewall and computer use surveillance as a child for the exact same reason, because my cult gu…
You may also be just the right age to have had access to an internet less dominated by doomscrolling and bullying.
I think there was a ton of bullying depending on what part of the internet you spent your time in, but importantly it was very easy to find inclusive, safe spaces.
Today, it is not as easy. This is probably part of why so many have moved to group chats and direct messages for online interaction in recent years.
Re: Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws
#60Some notes: * It is illegal for a platform to provide children with a social media account, not for the child to create an account. Circumvention of this by the child is not illegal. * No grandfathering - all accounts under 16 once this takes effect (which won't be until this time next year at earliest) must be deactivated. * Maximum fine (per instance?) is 50 million AUD (about 32 million USD) * The legislation is v…
> The legislation is vague on the technical details, although it does specifically mandate that platforms cannot use government-issued ID of any kind (including digital ID). That's unexpectedly sane from a law like this. Hopefully they can figure out some zero-knowledge proof of age. (But then there's nothing stopping adults from creating and selling proof values to kids.)
That wasn't in the original bill and it was only amended to add that yesterday, because it wouldn't get past the Conservative (Liberal/National Party) whose votes they needed to ram it through Parliament with almost no scrutiny otherwise (the hastily drafted bill only having been introduced the Friday before the final sitting week of the year).