Age verification, digital IDs and no more anonimity... coming soon to your country too!
Fake Ids and undergrounds sites coming right after.
Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban
671–680 of 1001 posts
Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban
#672To all the parents defending this: you are responsible for your children and what they do. Passing laws that affect all of us because you are too lazy and ineffectual to raise your children properly is unacceptable.
I disagree. It’s easy to say this from your armchair, but when your kid is the one kid not on social media because you’re such an righteous parent, and that kid is getting bullied by all the other kids for not knowing what’s going on in TikTok or Insta, you start seeing this as a problem that requires the coordination of large numbers of people who you may or may not know, many of whom are kids who lack executive fun…
Maybe you should move to a community that shares your values rather than getting the state to impose those values on everyone.
Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban
#673Father 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,…
I really really hate the term "troll farm" it completely minimizes nation state level propaganda machines down to something that sounds like its just one big internet joke for gags. The cutesy 'fun' language of 'troll farm' itself deflects accountability from what are coordinated psychological operations. It makes it sound like some rambunctious kids in basements having a little weekend fun.
It was very illuminating though obvious when recently Twitter started showing account country of origin and all of the MAGA political accounts pretending to be American get revealed as run out of Nigeria and Russia.
The scale of the operations is immense now.
Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban
#674Earlier quoted context omitted.
These are government regulations regarding kids. Nothing new here, we’ve been regulating what you can market to kids for decades. I’m not buying a slippery slope argument. As a parent myself, it definitely helps when you can collectively avoid having your kids on these platforms. I can’t express how much easier it is to restrict it and not seem like a kook when authorities are also on board.
The government isn't helping you, they just pushed every child in Australia to un-moderated and decentralised social networks. Complete free for alls. 4chan, Mastedon, BlueSky, PeerTube, Pixelfed They have millions of users. They're about to get more. No, you can't block these. No, you can't order these to do anything.
This idea that regulation fails to destroy industries is farcical. Most examples of “failed regulation” like American prohibition were runaway successes as public policy. Whether it is good or desirable is a different question.
The idea that someone is going to make an engaging experience on a “decentralized” network is honestly a bit silly to me. The market potential of this business is low. Decentralized networks with much larger incentives have failed to capture critical mass.
There will be side effects, but social media has been so ridiculously corrosive to the welfare of teenagers that I can’t imagine a ban would be worse.
Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban
#675Earlier 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…
> simple tweets against the government
Which tweets do you have in mind? Because it not does not describe any of the high-profile tweet-related arrests I have heard of.
Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban
#676Earlier 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…
Some of us don’t mind government regulation as much as your parents told you not to like it. I just say this because it’s usually those types of parents that instill this kind of stuff and their children not to trust the government but some of us actually do. We are pretty happy with the way things are. It’s not naïve either. It’s seriously a problem when people talk like the government is meant to be not trusted.
I typically think regulation is ineffective and poorly structured. Banning social media for teenagers is such an obvious social good that I can’t see a downside. The kids are not alright.
Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban
#677Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure why a person would want to let their kids hang out any place where that stuff you report is common, if it's at all possible to avoid it. I'm gonna continue to run with "no social media", which has worked so far. They can message people they actually know IRL, somewhere without a feed full of crap from people they don't know. That's plenty. Like I can't think of any analogous place in physical space I'd l…
> They can message people they actually know IRL, somewhere without a feed full of crap from people they don't know. Just how do you think they get introduced to TikTok? What do you think gets posted in the school class WhatsApp group chat? My kids' WhatsApp group chats are mostly a torrent of sharing idiotic TikToks, YouTube Shorts, and celebrity Instagrams. Which my kids can't watch… until they're savvy enough to b…
Ah, the inevitable "meh, give up, it's hopeless" post, to go along with the "why don't parents do their fucking job and leave us alone?" posts. No thread on HN related to parenting and technology is complete without a healthy dose of both sorts of post.
Sorry, I'm trying to do my fucking job, as others demand.
Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban
#678Earlier quoted context omitted.
These are government regulations regarding kids. Nothing new here, we’ve been regulating what you can market to kids for decades. I’m not buying a slippery slope argument. As a parent myself, it definitely helps when you can collectively avoid having your kids on these platforms. I can’t express how much easier it is to restrict it and not seem like a kook when authorities are also on board.
The government isn't helping you, they just pushed every child in Australia to un-moderated and decentralised social networks. Complete free for alls. 4chan, Mastedon, BlueSky, PeerTube, Pixelfed They have millions of users. They're about to get more. No, you can't block these. No, you can't order these to do anything.
What social networks are these? If they aren't complying with the law, they can (and should be) blocked.
You're also missing what folks keep saying: the network effect isn't there. It needs to be popular enough that there's social pressure to be there. If it's that large, it's going to be large enough to be on the radar and then be under enforcement.
Slippery-slope arguments, for the most part, exist to fear monger folks away from change, even when the argument itself is non-sensical.
Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban
#679Earlier 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…
These are government regulations regarding kids. Nothing new here, we’ve been regulating what you can market to kids for decades. I’m not buying a slippery slope argument. As a parent myself, it definitely helps when you can collectively avoid having your kids on these platforms. I can’t express how much easier it is to restrict it and not seem like a kook when authorities are also on board.
And if the government regulates your children join an after school program where they learn outdoor survival skills, exercise, and learn the popular political parties glee club.
There would be nothing new here?
The argument is that kids being online isn’t the governments business one way or the other.
The slippery slope argument is always secondary, but how often has government regulation not grown in size and scope? Combine that with how norms shift and the type of large scale identity infrastructure put in place to support this, can you honestly say this isn’t going to grow?
All of that also ignores the possibility (read inevitability) that a bad actor/authoritarian would exploit this access further without popular support.
Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban
#680A 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…
The government has laws saying people under 16 can't drive cars, do you think that's part of the slippery slope that has led to all of those happening-in-practice bad things?