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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

#501

Post by pryce »

msuniverse2026 wrote: post #403
pryce wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ingredients for this legislation trace back to an organisation called "Collective Shout"[1], by Melinda Tankard Reist, who readers may be aware of from their previous efforts to pressure Steam to restrict games with adult content I happen to think there are plenty of valid points regarding harmful content on steam and valid arguments about the harms of social media, but I do not believe Collective Shout is a bene…

That is just a thought-stopping reference. Why does this literal nobody who nobody has to listen to have the total backing of both major political parties? That is the real question and it obviously goes back to narrative control and the move from democracy to an authoritarian managerial state.

moral panics are useful for creating authoritarian states. If a moral panic is not presently available, in 2025 it may be easier it's ever been before to cultivate one.

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

#502

Post by 9dev »

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.

But then again, should the EU follow up with a similar policy, it could mandate the use of these checks and prevent/penalize ID photos. I’m very optimistic here.

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

#503

Post by Bratmon »

samdoesnothing wrote: post #394
Bratmon wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're 180° backwards on that. How many alternative platforms are there really going to be that can afford to develope and operate the legally-mandated age-detection ML-models? Especially after the bureaucrats see that the law isn't working and start looking for scapegoats without massive lawyer teams to make an example of

Why would they do that? There are plenty of platforms that simply won't care, and there's stuff like Mastodon et al.

The law tends to be pretty good at caring about you when you don't care about it.

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

#504

Post by optionalsquid »

fnikacevic wrote: post #475
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.

So are we banning all advertising to children? Or only banning them from communicating and posting with each other? If it's about monetizing child attention not about speech control why isn't every single toy ad, food ad, movie ad, also banned?

> So are we banning all advertising to children? Or only banning them from communicating and posting with each other?

Kids are not banned from communicating and posting with each other; the ban exempts a number of direct messing apps, as well as community apps like Discord:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/dec/10/social-media-b...

If I had to over-simplify it, then the ban appears to mostly target doom-scrolling apps. I say mostly, since I'm not sure why Twitch and Kick are included

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

#505

Post by anon84873628 »

wrxd wrote: post #431
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'…

a) is solvable by a system that instead of collecting IDs reveals only the single bit of information required b) parents still need to do their job Arguably parental control should have been enough to avoid all of this but the regulation still helps parents. It’s way more difficult to ask kids not to have social media when all of their friends have it. I would have preferred stricter social media platform regulation…

In other words it solved the multi-agent coordination problem amongst parents, which otherwise would require the majority of them to be rational and good (a tall order).

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

#506

Post by owisd »

armenarmen wrote: post #497
hedayet wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It’s already a solved problem- load a digital ID into a wallet app, the operating system can then perform a zero knowledge proof for each website that the user is over 16. The government issuing the ID doesn’t know which websites it’s being used for and the website only gets a binary yes/no for the age and no other personal info:

https://blog.google/products/google-pay/google-wallet-age-id...

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

#507

Post by FpUser »

delbronski wrote: post #487
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…

Come on dude, you are on HN. You probably know that social media is no longer about free speech. It’s a targeted advertising machine that is extremely effective on kids and teenagers. It preys on them so, so efficiently. It’s a technical work of art. A young mind is extremely susceptible to the algorithms on those platforms. Much more than adults are, and adults are already really susceptible. This is what this ban i…

>"You probably know that social media is no longer about free speech, It’s a targeted advertising machine"

Youtube for one is an advertising machine. On the other hand it is one of the few places where one can find some amazing educational and entertainment content. Prohibiting it I think is a crime.

Besides, lately Politicians stick their noses everywhere. It is just way too much.

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

#508

Post by deadbabe »

crowbahr wrote: post #478
skwee357 wrote: post #408

The next step is to outlaw social media in general, and maybe the world will become a bit better. Edit: in case someone decides to disagree with me, here is a non-exhaustive list of issues that social media has created: isolation from the real world, unrealistic expectations in terms of looks/status/success, dehumanization by turning people into likes-dislikes, dehumanizations by creating influencers whose sole purpo…

You do know that HN in in the category of social media right?

HN is an anti-social media. It is not inclusive. If you are not a tech geek or cannot articulate well you are not welcome here, and will be ignored.

You cannot follow or be followed. There is no attention drawn to your username or profile. Everything about HN is designed for you to just read a comment and move on, not caring much about the human behind it.

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

#509

Post by jmward01 »

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'…

These are exactly my thoughts as well, both the positives (it doesn't need to be air-tight) and the negatives (providing documentation). I don't know that there is a great system here. The best I can think of is having independent third parties that people can register with and that can provide a 'proof of eligibility' token tied to an e-mail address or something similar with the explicit, backed by law, understanding that sharing more than that proof of eligibility with a third party is a criminal offense. The money side of things would be that FB and the like would pay the proof company a service fee so they make money and FB gets the proof without getting access to your documents. Just a thought.

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

#510

Post by skwee357 »

crowbahr wrote: post #478
skwee357 wrote: post #408

The next step is to outlaw social media in general, and maybe the world will become a bit better. Edit: in case someone decides to disagree with me, here is a non-exhaustive list of issues that social media has created: isolation from the real world, unrealistic expectations in terms of looks/status/success, dehumanization by turning people into likes-dislikes, dehumanizations by creating influencers whose sole purpo…

You do know that HN in in the category of social media right?

No, it’s not. It’s a link aggregator and a discussion platform, it is not centered around social aspects like user profiles and followers.
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