[dupe] Discussion:
Australian Parliament bans social media for under-16s
61–70 of 345 posts
Re: Australian Parliament bans social media for under-16s
#62The votes are strong majorities of both houses - great to see a functional democratic government act on such an important issue. They specifically don’t prescribe any particular age verification methods. This would be a great time to follow up with legislation that updates their national IDs to be able to provide cryptographically secure proofs of age without leaking identity. Absent that, I’m sure many of the commen…
> They specifically don’t prescribe any particular age verification methods. This would be a great time to follow up with legislation that updates their national IDs to be able to provide cryptographically secure proofs of age without leaking identity.
Hard disagree. We do not need an internet driver's license. Australians are supposed to have a right to interact with organisations with privacy protections under the Privacy Act 1988, like APP2 which allows individuals to deal with organisations anonymously or pseudonymously.
Social media companies are doing a great deal of harm to society, but banning under-16s is tackling the symptom, not the problem. All people should have more rights and protections, like opting out (or better, opting in) to infinite scroll and algorithmic content suggestions as opposed to subscribed content. Algorithmic content today is akin to spam in the early 2000s which governments regulated and has had some impact on bad behaviour by local companies (of course I am not under any pretense that spam will ever really be solved). Social media users should be able to opt in or out of content categories which AI could potentially help with that categorisation, ideally in an uber-transparent way.
I'm young enough that "modern" social media was just starting up when I was a teenager. It's not clear that banning under 16s from modern digital communication would provide any benefits (which, by the way, social media is very loosely defined under the amendment).
> Absent that, I’m sure many of the comments to come will worry about the privacy implications.
The big issue is that we are importing the UK model which will see identity outsourcing to companies like Yoti and AU10TIX, the latter which was hacked in 2021 and led to some pretty serious implications for affected users.
Of course the reality is that Meta is already doing age and identity verification on users who use privacy-protecting technologies like Firefox Container Tabs, at least in Australia, and has been for a number of years. This usually leads to an account being blocked until the user provides their ID via a photo. This will become formalised so that accounts that are detected as possibly being U16 (via various techniques like profiling and data matching against external sources) will be requested ID, and Yoti will likely be used to actually perform that verification.
Another big concern will be that this is forced onto smaller operators like Australian Mastodon sites, internet forums, mailing lists and others.
Re: Australian Parliament bans social media for under-16s
#63Tell me why
They didn't just ban pedophiles off the apps
Re: Australian Parliament bans social media for under-16s
#64The point of this isn't to keep kids off social media. It's an excuse to require ID for adults so they can arrest us for criticizing them. They also recently tried to pass a "Misinformation" bill which would have given them the power to decree what we can and can't say on social media, and they'll try to sneak that back in, too. This country is a nanny state and it's getting scary.
You're literally spreading misinformation in your comment. a) The government was trying to outlaw deepfakes and fake accounts. But also require more transparency for users to contest moderation decisions. It did not try to limit what you can say. b) There is no law that makes it illegal to criticise the government.
There are many places in the world where there is no law for "contempt of cop" but police find a way to extra-judicially punish anyway. The lack of a law allowing something doesn't stop abuse of power! And Australia is notorious for its raids of journalist's homes and has a court system very disinclined to punish the police for illegal activity.
Re: Australian Parliament bans social media for under-16s
#65This is a bad idea, and it’ll be very hard to implement. Better to ban old people from watching Sky News and using Facebook, that’s the real danger to our democracy
They’re not mutually exclusive, and this isn’t about democracy. We know that developing brains have been deeply impacted by the easy dopamine engineered hits Meta and Bytedance deliver. To me this feels like a contemporary version of the opium wars, but instead of nation states at war, it’s companies vs people.
Perhaps we should also make it illegal to report on the war in the Middle East in case young people find it traumatising to see that that the western democracies are supporting dropping 2000 pound bombs on children in other countries. Can you image the damage being caused to young minds seeing that death and destruction visually through their own eyes ?
Re: Australian Parliament bans social media for under-16s
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
We’re a nanny state, the government is just going to use it to track us
Forced voting is proof of it. Australia is by far the least free Anglo nation. I will never step foot on that god forsaken island. They have no culture, and that’s the opinion of Australians: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lucky_Country https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Australian_Ugliness
You have to remember, Australia as a nation is young, and has an interesting history - forced migration of convicts, high levels of immigration (IIRC 25% of the population are 1st or 2nd generation immigrants), and of course the difficulty of dealing with colonial treatment of the Aboriginal population. "No culture" is patently absurd; everywhere with people has a culture.
And on mandatory voting: yes, in one way, that's a curtailment of freedom, but in another way, it's enshrining freedom.
Re: Australian Parliament bans social media for under-16s
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Correct. Children deserve rights, representation, and bodily autonomy. Today they have none of this
We need to turn down the volume here. Not being exposed to social networks for a few years is no way comparable to depriving them of bodily autonomy.
They are already mostly segmented off from their friends after school hours. They have killed off one of the final mediums for interaction and are preventing interaction with the rest of their generation's culture. They're also narrowing their world view to be more controlled by the state.
Re: Australian Parliament bans social media for under-16s
#68The votes are strong majorities of both houses - great to see a functional democratic government act on such an important issue. They specifically don’t prescribe any particular age verification methods. This would be a great time to follow up with legislation that updates their national IDs to be able to provide cryptographically secure proofs of age without leaking identity. Absent that, I’m sure many of the commen…
>the government act with expertise to solve the problem Do you have an idea which problem did they solve? Did banning certain psychoactive drugs solved the problem of drug abuse? Maybe banning alcohol removed it from the streets during great depression? Banning gambling? Kids will find a way to get into their social media accounts anyway, and then these democrats will tell you they need to ban every VPN service and s…
Just because the War on Drugs failed does not mean the argument extend on to every other fields.
Re: Australian Parliament bans social media for under-16s
#69This is a bad idea. We should be forcing demonetization of the platforms content creators instead of hamstringing children. No I'm not joking. Content creators making money should be outside where I post about my cat. I'm fucking sick of engagement bait.
The money driven content creators are going to thrive on platforms that support them. If you don't want to have their content on the same feed as your cat pics, you're going to have to find some alt networks
Re: Australian Parliament bans social media for under-16s
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
We’re a nanny state, the government is just going to use it to track us
ASIO has been able to track you for decades since they have real-time metadata feeds from Telstra, Optus, NBN etc. They have access to your location estimate, URLs of sites you've visited, people you talk via email/phone etc. And we know that this dataset is shared to the Five Eyes. So if you are concerned about being tracked I would strongly recommend leaving Australia.
And now they’ll be able to see the groups you go to within pages, read comments, see what we write, etc etc. It also goes from being a defence capability to used for all sorts of things and eventually leaked.
It’s not bad enough to leave, better to engage with the politics and try to get some rights before it spreads further outwards