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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

#591

Post by [deleted] »

stephen_g wrote: post #574
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'…

> 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. I've seen this argument a lot, and I don't think it really matches reality - I very much expect that the problem users of social media who are teens will tend to be the ones that will want to get around the ban (and will easily be able to). Kids who just have an account becau…

[deleted]

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

#592

Post by heavyset_go »

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'…

> (b) a small fraction of kids branching off into fringe networks that are off the radar and will take them to very dark places very quickly.

Congratulations, Australia, you just drove a ton of kids into the arms of psychopaths like 764.

If you think Instagram and even 4chan are bad, that's nothing compared to the groups that sadly, are usually kids that were groomed themselves, who goad other kids into self-harm, violence and suicide through extortion, love bombing and literal cult shit.

Instagram might make you feel sad, but it doesn't threaten to kill your family if you don't strangle your pet cat and carve CVLT into your chest for a bunch of organized pedophiles online.

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

#593

Post by osculum »

steve_taylor wrote: post #586

The real news is that age verification will be required to use a search engine from the 27th. This has flown completely under the radar because of the social media ban. Initially, it will only be required if you're logged in. Obviously that won't be effective, so the next logical step would be to require that everyone logs in to use a search engine. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-11/age-verification-sear...

That's your reading of the situation, and far from logical to everyone else.

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

#594

Post by ropable »

I fully support this legislation, and government regulation around this topic. Given the current (2025) state of the social media landscape, I believe that the positives of restricting access to them for teenagers well outweighs any potential harms.

As the parent of a teenager affected by this ban (plus one who has aged past it): I wish that it had been in place 8-10 years ago, before either of my kids got smartphones. We tried to be reasonably conservative in their introduction to devices and social media, on the rationale that it would do them no harm to delay using those for a couple of years through their early brain development. The real difficulty turned out to be the network effect of their peers having access to social media, which increased the social pressure (and corresponding social exclusion) to be online. Not having access to Snapchat/Discord/etc. at that point meant that they were effectively out-group, which is a Big Deal for a teenager.

We ended up allowing them onto social media platforms earlier than we'd have liked but imposed other controls (time and space restrictions, an expectation of parental audits, etc.) These controls were imperfect, and the usual issues occurred. My assessment is that it was a net negative for the mental health of one child and neutral for the other.

I realise that HN is primarily a US forum and skews small-government and free-speech-absolutist. I'm not interested in getting in a debate with anyone about this - my view is that most social media is a net negative with a disproportionate harm to the mental health of non-fully-developed teenage brains. This represents a powerful collective-action failure that is unrealistic to expect individuals to manage, so it's up to government to step in. All boundaries are arbitrary, so the age of 16 (plus this set of apps) seems like a reasonable set of restrictions to me. I am unmoved by the various "slippery slope" arguments I've read here: all rules are mutable, and if we see a problem/overreach later - we'll deal with it in the same way, by consensus and change.

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

#595

Post by jancsika »

indymike wrote: post #406

Father of five here, and founder of a social media marketing company (exited). Our kids are up against problems we didn't have during the great expansion of social. The three big things: 1. State level actors and well funded not for profits are fighting an information war to influence our kids. And they are very good at it. Down to having troll farms to talk one on one. Every time something new happens in the world,…

> Every time something new happens in the world, my younger kids ask me about what they saw on Tik-Tok and their initial understanding is shaped by a well funded actor, and is often completely a false narrative.

As someone who remembers the near lack of anti-war voices on network/cable news in the lead-up to the Iraq War (Donahue on MSNBC being the lone example), I'd like to get more details on your strongest example here.

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

#596

Post by phatfish »

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…

Sorry, you are crazy if you trust American tech companies (that you have zero control over) rather than your own government which in theory you have a lot of control over, but it does depend on your flavour of democracy.

Until these controls on American tech companies Trump (via all the tech CEOs fawning over him) had more control over Australian society than your own government.

The rest of the world needs similar restrictions on American tech and social media unless we all want to have American bonkers (and increasingly authoritarian) politics fully exported to us.

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

#597

Post by amatecha »

plantain wrote: post #374
amatecha wrote: post #180

Saw a screenshot last night of someone who can't get into JIRA (or some other Atlassian product) until they either submit two forms of government ID or record a face scan. Seems like a great and effective initiative /s Text of the screen: "Your Atlassian account is not age verified. Laws in your country require us to verify your age before accessing some products, including Jira and Confluence. This process takes 5-1…

No Atlassian products are included in the ban. I think you have seen a joke.

Yeah turns out that is the case, it was a joke image but the person didn't say it was a joke and posted it as if it was real :\

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

#598

Post by pennomi »

simgt wrote: post #528
petcat wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is opaque to the service The "service" is irrelevant. I think most people would trust Porno Hub to be discreet about their visits. That's in their business interest. But now they have to tell your government about all the times you're visiting Porno Hub. And nobody should trust their government. Also, keep in mind that western governments share with each other. There will come a time when Australians will try…

> And nobody should trust their government. Nobody should trust a billion dollar corporation, that's why we have democratically elected governments. All these power hungry fucks counter balance each-other, to some extend at least.

Hot take, nobody should trust anybody. Trustless systems could certainly exist for this, if the government took the time to care.

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

#599

Post by stickfigure »

skwee357 wrote: post #510
crowbahr wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Your profile here is https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=skwee357 and your Social Credit Score, as of this posting, is 927.

HN is social media.

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

#600

Post by le-mark »

jancsika wrote: post #595
indymike wrote: post #406

Father of five here, and founder of a social media marketing company (exited). Our kids are up against problems we didn't have during the great expansion of social. The three big things: 1. State level actors and well funded not for profits are fighting an information war to influence our kids. And they are very good at it. Down to having troll farms to talk one on one. Every time something new happens in the world,…

> Every time something new happens in the world, my younger kids ask me about what they saw on Tik-Tok and their initial understanding is shaped by a well funded actor, and is often completely a false narrative. As someone who remembers the near lack of anti-war voices on network/cable news in the lead-up to the Iraq War (Donahue on MSNBC being the lone example), I'd like to get more details on your strongest example…

There wasn’t much but the mostly fabricated WMD narrative was questioned a lot. Now the current administration makes an endless stream of fantasies and lies which go almost entirely unchallenged.
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