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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

#881

Post by zelphirkalt »

lovich wrote: post #463
indymike wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Everyone must prove their age online now" creates a trail of identity that kills anonymous speech dead. Anonymous speech is very important to maintaining freedoms... such as freedom of speech and freedom of association.

Hard disagree on anonymous speech. Individual humans should have free speech but that is divorced from anonymous speech. With anonymous speech you don’t even know if you’re talking to a person or a program. If you want to say something, then say it with your identity. You don’t get to be anonymous when saying something to my face so why should it be allowed across a screen?

Probably only works for as long as you are not living in a dictatorship, authoritarian state, utterly corrupt country, or similar. Then suddenly we would want our anonymity back.

While anonymity comes with its own issues for society, I am not convinced it would be worth it getting rid of it.

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

#882

Post by rawbot »

heavyset_go wrote: post #716
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.

We're literally at the point where we have KYC laws just to post on the internet. The slippery slope is long behind us, we're already at the bottom.

Once you hit rock-bottom, it's time to bring out the jackhammer.

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

#883

Post by jjcob »

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'…

> fringe networks that are off the radar and will take them to very dark places very quickly

Soo... we already have a problem with some youths running into extremist content on Facebook, TikTok, Telegram ... no "fringe" network needed.

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

#884

Post by arrrg »

lII1lIlI11ll wrote: post #851
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.

> 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. This pattern of thought is exactly the issue. Stop offloading parenting of your children to government! That won't end well for neither children nor adults.

It takes a village to raise a kid.

You cannot parent in isolation and outside of society. How society is structured has an huge impact on parenting. It is delusional to think of parenting as some kind of thing that exists in isolation separate from and not influenced by the rest of society. Parents often can only have little influence themselves.

This is a value neutral description. Though I do think total parental autonomy in parenting is not a worthwhile goal and also not at all realistic. As parents you have to deal with society.

What does that mean for social media bans? To me mostly: network effects are wicked strong and fighting against them as an individual parent is basically impossible. This can lead to parents only having bad choices available to them (ban social media use and exclude them from their friends, allow social media use and fry their brains). Are bans that right solution? Don’t know. I’m really not sure. But I do know that it‘s not as simple as „parent better“.

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

#885

Post by immibis »

protocolture wrote: post #28
hallole wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hugely decisive! Feels more like a policy for idyllic hypotheticals. "Suppose we could ban social media..." well, hey, they actually did it. I'm very interested to see how their socializing evolves in response to such a shock. Do the social behaviors of pre-internet times re-emerge? "Third spaces" reappear overnight? We shall see!

>well, hey, they actually did it. They passed legislation, its not clear at all that they succeeded.

They actually did the experiment. While we're over here thinking social media is probably bad for kids and wondering what would happen if they weren't allowed to use it., Australia actually did that. Soon we'll actually know what happens when kids aren't allowed to use social media.

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

#886

Post by immibis »

bigB wrote: post #862
manindahat wrote: post #712

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is an argument and worth monitoring, but IMO it's not a strong enough argument to stop this. This sort of ban is the same as existing laws banning the sale and consumption of alcohol or driving until kids are of age they will (on average) have sufficient maturity to handle the responsibility. Something we accept. Kids are not banned from digital communication. My daughter can still send text messages and make ph…

How long will it take them to ban communications ? A big reason they are pushing this is Cyberbullying....yet a recent death in the news this week, the kid was literally bullied/sextorted via SMS....not social media. Without banning SMS and possibly calls as well, it debunks this argument

This appears to be a slippery slope argument: if they ban specific algorithmic social media platforms that have a verified extremely negative effect on children, soon they'll ban all communications.

It could happen that they ban all communications, but if you think so, it needs its own argument; it can't hang off the social media ban. Otherwise it is like saying that if they ban children from drinking beer, soon they'll ban them from drinking liquids.

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

#887

Post by philipwhiuk »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #455

Alternative to archive.md, archive.ph Text-only: https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1S3fVC... https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1S2nVb... echo url=https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/world/asia/australia-social-media-ban-under-16.html \ |curl -K/dev/stdin -Agooglebot > 1.htm firefox ./1.htm links -dump 1.htm|sed -n '/Effect/,/region./p' More https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2…

Your script broke.

   echo url=https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/world/asia/australia-social-media-ban-under-16.html \
    |curl -K/dev/stdin -Agooglebot > 1.htm
    firefox ./1.htm
    links -dump 1.htm|sed -n '/Effect/,/region./p'

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

#888

Post by philipwhiuk »

didibus wrote: post #134

To be honest, I wouldn't mind they'd ban it for adults too, would help me from wasting time on them. In all seriousness though, I'm curious what counts as social media, can they not play MMORPGs anymore for example? Are niche forums included ? What about chat apps like Whatsapp? Phone texting? Email? I'm also curious if say TikTok and YouTubed simply deactivated their social features? No comments, DMs, and so on for…

Fortnite?

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

#889

Post by immibis »

dragonwriter wrote: post #710
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.

> These are government regulations regarding kids. No, they aren't just that, because they are government regulations requiring everyone wanting access to something that cannot be marketed to children under the rules to prove that they are not a child, which is not inherently essential to a regulation of what can be marketed to children. There is a difference between regulating what can be marketed to children and ma…

It actually doesn't say they must verify ID. It says "reasonable steps". Actually, it says they must NOT verify ID unless they also have a way to do it without verifying ID. The fine for requiring an ID upload is the same as the fine for letting minors on the platform (30k penalty units, whatever that means).

Of course, nobody is sure what "reasonable steps" actually means, other than a selfie or ID upload.

Here is the text of the bill: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display....

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

#890

Post by immibis »

lII1lIlI11ll wrote: post #851
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.

> 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. This pattern of thought is exactly the issue. Stop offloading parenting of your children to government! That won't end well for neither children nor adults.

This pattern of thought is exactly the issue. Stop offloading the responsibility for creating a reasonable environment! That won't end well for neither children nor adults.

It's an extremely American religious belief that everything is an individual problem. Luckily, almost no other country has this religion.

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