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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

#691

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

dizlexic wrote: post #679
rapind wrote: post #651

Earlier 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.

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?…

And we already see what India is trying to do - force phone manufacturers to have an always on GPS feature where the government can track you and disable the phone’s feature where it notifies you if something is using your location.

And they tie your SIM card with your ID.

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

#692

Post by johnnyanmac »

hedayet wrote: post #492
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…

Still, even the most libertarian among us generally won't oppose restricting youth access to tobacco, or restricting recreational access to hard drugs.

That's the thing. We don't really ban "youth smoking". We ban sellers selling to youth. Who's accountable is everything in law.

Targeting platforms is like only banning one brand of cigarette. People will just find another. We should instead attack the "seller" here, being the algorithms optimized for selling and not for the enrichment of society.

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

#693

Post by rtpg »

fn-mote wrote: post #648
rtpg wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure in most places in the world if you are travelling from abroad you are asked to share your passport, and have been for a very very very very long time. The difference between sending it over a chat and handing it over to a clerk (who then photocopies it or types in the data into the computer) feels almost academic. Though at least "Typing it into the computer" doesn't leave them with a picture, just mo…

> The difference between sending it over a chat and handing it over to a clerk (who then photocopies it [...] The difference is that the paper copy is local and only accessible to the hotel (and any government employee that might come knocking). The digital version is accessible to anyone who has access to the system, which as we know well on HN includes bureaucrats (or police) with a vendetta against you and any hac…

Good points.

I do agree that "not without a warrant" is a pretty load-bearing thing and it _should_ be tedious to get information. When a lot of info is just so easy to churn through that can activate new forms of abuse, even if from an information-theoretical point of view the information was always there.

And it's not even just about public officials. All those stories of people at Google reading their exes emails or whatever (maybe it was FB? Still) sticks to me.

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

#694

Post by nonfamous »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #687
delbronski wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Why can we ban those and not this? we didn't ban cigarettes, we disincentivized them. Why can't we do the same here? regulate the algorithms, not the platform (the platform ultimately being "the internet"). This is just a cat and mouse game where every few years the government will ban whatever the kids like. That's not how you create a high trust society.

In the US, all persons under 21 are banned from purchasing cigarettes.

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

#695

Post by stein1946 »

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 lot of the criticism is based on the concept that it won't be technically watertight

Those who do that, are not interested in this ban working, they are the individualists assaulting the community.

> a) normalising people uploading identification documents...

we have technical measures for which there is no need for the end user to upload anything. With oath you can basically have a simple age check; nothing more.

> (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.

You can always minimize the fraction, but you can never make it go away.

> Because it's politically unattractive, I don't think enough attention has been given to the harms that will flow from these laws.

This was a politically bold move and there will be no harms that will come out of it; especially when compared to the status quo.

Those who feign concern about this usually have vested interests into stopping this bill; their "interest" is just another attempt in stopping it albeit with a more "nuanced" approach.

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

#696

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

nostrebored wrote: post #676
johnwheeler wrote: post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You don’t see a downside from having the government tie your ID to your online presence?

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

#697

Post by yunnpp »

jaimex2 wrote: post #666

HackerNews used to be full of moderately smart people. This is basically Reddit level comments. Think for a moment instead of just accepting whatever the media is telling you to think. How many social networks are there? Are some of those decentralised? Will kids move to unmoderated underground ones in response to this? Will the government expand these laws now that it achieved a foothold? Parenting and teaching your…

Obviously you have no kids or live in a remote cabin isolated from society.

Banning social media in principle is like banning the sales of alcohol and other drugs to underage people. Those bans are good for society irrespective of your parenting ability. It helps that those negative things are less accessible to the vulnerable.

Now, how the social media ban is effected in practice is a different point. And people here are rightfully skeptical of ID verification and such things, since that opens the door for way more surveillance outside social media.

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

#698

Post by Nursie »

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'…

> normalising people uploading identification documents

This is dependent on implementation.

From what I have heard (from ConnectID), some sites are using services like ConnectID as a way to have your bank verify you are of age without releasing any ID or specific details.

But I don't think it's all of them, and I agree it's a risk.

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

#699

Post by chillfox »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #684
johnwheeler wrote: post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>Some of us don’t mind government regulation as much as your parents told you not to like it I wasn't told to hate government regulations. 30 years of horrible, ineffective regulation taught me to hate these poorly thought out regulatoins. I grew up under No Child Left Behind. I saw the TSA form before my very eyes. I'm right now seeing ICE roam free, regulations be damned. I don't hate the idea of regulation. I don'…

From the outside it does look like the US is especially bad at it.

Australia has had a pretty good track record with writing/implementing regulations.

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

#700

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #687
delbronski wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Why can we ban those and not this? we didn't ban cigarettes, we disincentivized them. Why can't we do the same here? regulate the algorithms, not the platform (the platform ultimately being "the internet"). This is just a cat and mouse game where every few years the government will ban whatever the kids like. That's not how you create a high trust society.

Yes we disincentivized cigarettes. But now both illegal drug use and legal weed use is up - win?

https://nida.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/2024/08/canna...

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