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Australia proposes ban on social media for those under 16

• AlexeyBrin 2y ago
  I wonder how can you implement such a law without forcing people to identify online ? Will they enforce a digital ID that you need to use to access the web or social media ?
  • davesmylie 2y ago
    A drop down list of birth dates/years "works" for most age restricted sites - I guess the logic is that if a user is lying about their age, it's not the sites problem. Article states that sites must demonstrate they are taking reasonable measures to enforce this though - a lot will come down as to how courts interpret that. If they go to the extremes of the KYC laws in australia I imagine a significant fraction of adults will not want to verify their age.
    • throwaway2037 2y ago
      > extremes of the KYC laws in australia Can you provide more details about this statement? I never heard anything about it on HN discussions.
      • jeeeb 2y ago
        I’m not sure how unusual it is internationally but KYC laws in Australia will generally require 100 points of identification, usually satisfied by showing your passport and drivers license. Other options include recent utility bills, your birth certificate, medicare card etc. The system wasn’t really designed for the internet era and I think a lot of people would not be happy about handing all the personal info over to TikTok or Facebook
    • alkonaut 2y ago
      > I guess the logic is that if a user is lying about their age, it's not the sites problem. If the law is to have any teeth at all, it should be the problem of the service provider. Say for example that a banned feature for minors is having media feeds based on past watching behavior. Lacking a reliable age verification it's simple for social media companies to remove the feature entirely for all users, if it's unreasonable or impossible for them to implement age verification.
    • whstl 2y ago
      As much as I am grateful for most of GDPR, it has shown that leaving the implementation of anything to websites is a recipe for disaster. It's gonna be cookie banners 2.0. I bet a lot will just ask for a credit card number, like in those old scam fake-porn websites from the late 90s/early 2000s.
  • dyauspitr 2y ago
    It’s happening on porn sites in some states in the US right now. When you visit the site, they ask you to validate with your ID.
    • scrps 2y ago
      Hell of a time to run a VPN or a blackmail service... Porn site profiles with activity history + real traceable identities will make the Ashley Madison leak look quaint.
      • morkalork 2y ago
        How long are VPN services for consumers like that going to be viable? All the 5 eyes countries are trending in the same direction and they US isn't shy to press other countries to follow their regulations with the threat of being sanctioned.
      • viraptor 2y ago
        How so? Ashley Madison was a service for cheating. This would be for people watching porn - how is that worse? The history is extremely unlikely to be available to the id validator (beyond the domain at most). VPNs can't see the actual history either.
        • pc86 2y ago
          They're probably referring to the scope. Very few people were directly impacted by Ashley Madison (though there was at least one reported suicide due to the leaks), but lots of people watch porn and most of those people would not be too keen on their browsing history being leaked even if it's relatively tame, and especially if it's not.
          • clown_strike 2y ago
            The funny thing these days is that all porn is tailored to appear as far from "tame" as imaginable. The average PornHub user's history will be full of weird incest shit at the very least, not because of any specific interest in the genre but because so much generic heterosexual porn is labeled as such. Looks really bad for you if it makes the newspaper. So even "tame" leakage is 100x more embarrassing than it ought to be, and thus snooping on bf/husband's devices to humiliate them over their porn usage is normalized on relationship subreddits. Same goes for them plugging your email address into the password reset form to try to verify whether you have an account on any given site.
  • peebee67 2y ago
    You don't! That's exactly what they're aspiring to here, following on from a well-established pedigree of Australian lawmakers and their dysfunctional relationship with the Internet.
    • donohoe 2y ago
      You do! It already happens - just not for everyone. Example: https://m.facebook.com/help/582999911881572 https://m.facebook.com/help/582999911881572
  • sturadnidge 2y ago
    The government is being deliberately non-prescriptive about that, as they are about what qualifies as 'social media' (statement of fact - no comment on the approach itself). Ideally the legislation is accompanied by a government digital service that allows 3rd parties to verify age _without_ divulging full identity, but I don't see that side of things being discussed anywhere down here :(
    • threeseed 2y ago
      They seem pretty clear [1] about what social media is: Social networks, public media sharing networks, discussion forums, consumer review networks. [1] https://www.esafety.gov.au/sites/default/files/2023-12/Phase-1-Industry-Codes-%28Class-1A-and-Class-1B-Material%29-Regulatory-Guidance.pdf?v=1730953002185 https://www.esafety.gov.au/sites/default/files/2023-12/Phase...
    • bigfatkitten 2y ago
      They haven't got the competence to implement it even if they wanted to.
  • addy34 2y ago
    The government currently tendering for providers of different systems. See here [1] and here [2]: Tender documents released on Monday show the technical trial is slated to begin “on or around 28 October”, with the provider also expected to assess the “effectiveness, maturity, and readiness” of technologies in Australia. Biometric age estimation, email verification processes, account confirmation processes, device or operating-level interventions are among the technologies that will be assessed for social media (13-16 years age band). In the context of age-restricted online content (18 years or over), the Communication department has asked that double-blind tokenised attribution exchange models, as per the age verification roadmap, and hard identifiers such as credit cards be considered. [1] https://www.innovationaus.com/govt-readies-age-verification-tech-trial-for-social-media-ban/ https://www.innovationaus.com/govt-readies-age-verification-... [2] https://www.biometricupdate.com/202409/australia-launches-tender-to-trial-biometric-age-estimation-and-alternatives https://www.biometricupdate.com/202409/australia-launches-te...
    • nick3443 2y ago
      Sales of stick on mustaches will skyrocket
    • strangecasts 2y ago
      The source for "double-blind tokenised attribution exchange models" is this report from July 2024, from the Australian eSafety Commissioner: https://www.esafety.gov.au/sites/default/files/2024-07/Age-Assurance-Issues-Paper-July2024_0.pdf https://www.esafety.gov.au/sites/default/files/2024-07/Age-A... They note that existing age verification setups largely either rely on providing ID, or on a combination of manual and automated behavior profiling (face recognition, text classification, reports from other users), both of which have obvious privacy and/or accuracy issues. The "double-blind tokens" point to a summary by LINC explaining how they _could_ be implemented with zero-knowledge proofs, but I could not find an article or a practical implementation (could just be a mistake on my part, admittedly) At _best_ you end up with a solution in the vein of Privacy Pass - https://petsymposium.org/popets/2018/popets-2018-0026.pdf https://petsymposium.org/popets/2018/popets-2018-0026.pdf - but that requires a browser extension, a functioning digital ID solution you can build on top of, and buy-in from the websites. Personally, I also suspect the strongest sign a company is going to screw up the cryptographic side of it is if they agree to implement it...
  • prawn 2y ago
    No comment on the implementation, but I wonder if there's some value in just allowing parents to be able to point to this and say "No, little Fred, you're not allowed to have an Instagram account until you're 16. It's the actual rule."
    • alfiedotwtf 2y ago
      I’m guessing you don’t have kids
      • prawn 2y ago
        I have three kids. They have access to devices they use primarily for reading and language/music lessons. They don't use social media and would likely pay a decent level of attention if (in addition to us having explained concerns about social media for children) we indicated that there was government advice/ruling around this.
        • sekai 2y ago
          > we indicated that there was government advice/ruling around this. Why would any pre-teen / teen care about what government thinks? They care what their friends think about that TikTok they saw during recess, though.
    • technion 2y ago
      I'm listening to Australian radio right now and a group of mothers just made this exact point.
      • deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
    • dools 2y ago
      Yep, the "everyone else has BLAH" argument is a strong one. If we collectively take action through government to set a standard it is MUCH easier to shut down those self-fulfilling claims.
  • _AzMoo 2y ago
    You don't necessarily need to actually attempt to globally enforce it. It's like speeding, right? Everybody knows the law, and a lot of people choose to break it. We can't check everybody's speed all the time, so instead we selectively enforce. The real change though comes from parent's perceptions. Right now there's age limits of 14-years-old on most social media platforms, however most parents just see this as a ToS thing, and nobody cares about actually violating it. Once it becomes law, the parents are suddenly responsible (and liable) for ensuring their children are not breaking the law by accessing social media. It's not going to stop everybody, but it'll certainly move the needle on a lot of people who are currently apathetic to the ToS of social media platforms.
    • Affric 2y ago
      Not true. Only the social media companies will be liable. It’s an important part of the legislation.
      • _AzMoo 2y ago
        Yeah, you're right about the liability part. But regardless, as a parent of teenagers, being able to justify an unpopular decision with "it's the law" instead of "research shows it's potentially bad for you in the medium to long term" is extremely valuable.
  • jojobas 2y ago
    Same as alcohol. If you supply your kids with alcohol, or even have it at home and they get drunk without your knowledge, you'll be in trouble.
    • pests 2y ago
      Not sure that is the best example as many states have exceptions to allow parents to legally give their children alcohol so that scenario you devised could be completely legal.
  • sureIy 2y ago
    Making it illegal could make it taboo, kids are less likely to talk about it in fear of "getting caught" and less talking means less usage. This is not like porn which is a solitary activity: on social media you have to be social and let everyone know… at least for traditional actually-social media, not content-consuming apps like TikTok. It's similar to alcohol usage: you can't stop it completely, but also you don't have 50% of kids bringing it to school.
    • sekai 2y ago
      > Making it illegal could make it taboo, kids are less likely to talk about it in fear of "getting caught" and less talking means less usage So like piracy? > This is not like porn which is a solitary activity: on social media you have to be social and let everyone know… at least for traditional actually-social media, not content-consuming apps like TikTok You don't? You can stay perfectly anonymous.
  • asdefghyk 2y ago
    RE ".....how can you implement such a law..." Request the social media platform to implement the restriction. The large social media platform have billions $ cash , so if that "really want to implement it" it should not be a problem. However, I expect social media companies to "drag out every reason , why they can ot implement it..." - since it does not benefit the social media company. ... and would reduce its user base ...
    • michaelt 2y ago
      > Request the social media platform to implement the restriction. The large social media platform have billions $ cash , so if that "really want to implement it" it should not be a problem. I'm sure that Facebook, Google and TikTok will be delighted to make it mandatory that Australians send in photos of their face, passport and driving license. But is it good for Australia to have their citizens hand such mountains of PII to unaccountable foreign megacorporations?
      • asdefghyk 2y ago
        RE "...is it good for Australia to have their citizens hand such mountains of PII to unaccountable foreign megacorporations...." NOT NEEDED , Mega Corp needs to have office in Australia where such documents are checked. Document never leaves Australia.
  • askvictor 2y ago
    Well, funny you should mention that - the AU government ID system (used to access govt services like medicare and tax), has very recently been rebranded from MyGovID to MyID. Most states have already got digital drivers' licences.
  • alkonaut 2y ago
    I don't think lawmakers should describe HOW things are done necessarily. Here it's enough to say that "unless you can be 100% sure your user is above age X, then you can't provide them service Y or feature Z". It might not even be the desired outcome to have identification, the better outcome could be to have feature Z stripped for all users (for example video feeds based on past watching behavior).
  • dredmorbius 2y ago
    Law should not be excessively prescriptive, especially in the case of rapidly-evolving technologies (and business sectors) for all the obvious reasons. What's far more useful is to propose effective incentives and disincentives, and let the participants work this out for themselves. There are some useful principles and examples which come to mind: - Business is profit-oriented. Attack the basis of profits, in a readily-identifiable and enforceable way, and activity which pursues those markets will tend to dry up. - Business is profoundly risk-averse. Raise the risks of an activity, or remove protections or limitations on threads (e.g., Section 230 of the CDA in the US), and incentives to participate in that activity will be greatly reduced. Penetrating corporate and third-party veils would be particularly useful, in this case, of service providers (aiding and abetting in a proscripted commerce) and advertisers (profiting by same). Lifting any limitations on harms which might occur (bullying, induced suicides, addiction, or others) would similarly be crippling. As to how age might be ascertained: - Self-reporting. Not terribly reliable, but a decent first cut. - Profiling. There are exceedingly strong indicia of age which can be made, including based on a particular account's social graph, interests, online activity, location data (is the profile spending ~6h daily at an elementary school, and not lunching in the teacher's lounge?), etc. One strong distinction is between legislation and regulation, where the latter is imposed (usually with rulemaking process) through the executive branch (SCOTUS's Loper v. Raimondo being a phenomenally stupid rejection of that principle). Such regulation could then on a more flexible basis identify specific technical means to be imposed, reviewed, and updated on a regular schedule. - Access providers. Most people now access the Internet through either fixed-location (home, work, institutional) providers, or their own mobile access provider. Such accounts could well carry age (and other attestation) flags which online service providers could be obliged to respect as regards regulation. Jumping in before a few obvious objections: no, these mechanisms are not perfect but I'll assert they can be practically effective; and yes, there are risks for authoritarian regimes to abuse such measures, but then, those are already abusing present mechanisms. I'd include extensive AdTech-based surveillance in that, which is itself ripe for abuse and has demonstrated much of this already. (That said, I'd welcome rational "what could possibly go wrong" discussion.)
  • Hilift 2y ago
    Remember the Silicon Valley episode where they would have been fined $21 billion for not verifying the age of PiperChat users? Same way. All companies are one slippery slope away from being fined by Missouri for not protecting children enough. Or Australia.
  • brtkdotse 2y ago
    There’s a near-zero chance of getting caught driving without a license. Despite not having a drivers license checking mechanism, people generally don’t drive without a license because of the mere fact that it’s illegal. Societal signaling is pretty powerful.
• Nathanba 2y ago
  What even counts as social media? Is Hackernews social media? Is my future platform where people can talk to each other social media? It's all pure desperation, they could instead force social media companies to only promote useful educational, pro-science, pro-fitness, documentaries, family style content and then social media would be helpful. Forming communities around learning, robotics, science? What could possibly be better for children who look for purpose in life? It would be fantastic. But of course half the grifters on social media are also already hiding in those tags and serving the most shallow, useless, fake content about e.g ancient pyramid aliens or discussions about how veganism will help your body. As you can tell by my last little insertion here, half the problem is that even all the adults can't come to a shared understanding of what is "good" or true.
  • galuggus 2y ago
    Yes. Does Roblox count? What about Minecraft?
  • dyauspitr 2y ago
    Start with the big 4 or 5 and add more in there as and when they become problematic. Who decides which one? Some agency. I think the real solution is banning under 18s from having smart phones period.
  • akira2501 2y ago
    > What could possibly be better for children who look for purpose in life? They sort of naturally do that if you have the appropriate challenges and opportunities around them. > ancient pyramid aliens or discussions about how veganism will help your body. There used to be a tabloid called "News of the Weird." This stuff just exists. You'll find it anywhere people gather. We're story tellers. When we don't have a compelling story we just make stuff up. It's identical to the point above. > even all the adults can't come to a shared understanding of what is "good" or true. It's not possible. If the children are intended to inherit the future then this is a flawed and reductive strategy. You will not achieve what you seek through parochial means. Really.. I think your biggest problem should be advertising. It should be nowhere near children. Ban _that_ but keep the social media.
  • 2y ago
• joshka 2y ago
  How about over 60? That's more likely to have a positive effect on society
  • qup 2y ago
    How's that?
    • immibis 2y ago
      [flagged]
      • Juden1488 2y ago
        [dead]
      • NotLongNow 2y ago
        [flagged]
      • pc86 2y ago
        Here's a crazy thought maybe it's not actually fascism.
        • lern_too_spel 2y ago
          Then why do the people he hand-picked say it is? Should I ignore the words coming out of their mouths and pens? Should I ignore the words coming out of Trump's own mouth? Then what should I use to determine whether it's fascism or not?
          • roenxi 2y ago
            That is actually a pretty interesting question, fascism doesn't seem to have any actual meaning. It is very hard to outline what a "fascist" is unless they self-identify. I thought briefly in writing this comment and I can't actually rule out Trump being a fascist, based on the fact that any policy that isn't explicitly in the liberal or communist traditions may technically be fascist. Anyway; it has reached the point where I no longer believe people who claim Trump said something negative. Back in the 2010s I spent enough time reading up primary sources to reveal it was a misquote. Possibly a malicious misinterpretation, possibly the man just makes people so emotional that they can't listen to him for a full minute and try to interpret with a neutral lens. He appears to be close to a saint given how much time his opponents have to spend making up stuff about him to dislike. Realistically there are a lot of real problems that people should focus on; like bad policies.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• golemiprague 2y ago
  [dead]
• teyc 2y ago
  Why about Sky News?
• donohoe 2y ago
  Start with 16. Increment it every year.
  • HKH2 2y ago
    And make the home page an ugly green with disgusting pictures of health problems?
  • tmshapland 2y ago
    Love this!
  • omeid2 2y ago
    Tasmania tried doing that with smoking and it kind of didn't go through due to technicalities. https://www.smokefreetasmania.com/new-law/ https://www.smokefreetasmania.com/new-law/
    • slyall 2y ago
      New Zealand also tried it. But then we elected a government full of [ex] tobacco lobbyists
  • dredmorbius 2y ago
    I'd suggest 61 as well, and closing the gap ;-)
• bigfatkitten 2y ago
  All of these <16s will be voting in a few years, and Australia has compulsory voting. I hope they remember this on their first visit to the ballot box.
  • BLKNSLVR 2y ago
    This will be wholly supported by both parties of our primarily two-party system. There's no alternative but a protest vote to one of those fringe parties that will never get any real power anyway.
    • viraptor 2y ago
      A protest vote is still free in Australia due to a reasonable voting system. And quite a few independents still get in. Is not terrible and actually can make a difference.
  • viraptor 2y ago
    Kids in schools which forbid phone use for everyone are often happy with the result. Banning social networks for everyone may be popular with them by the time they vote.
    • bigfatkitten 2y ago
      What about the 14-15 year olds who happily use who happily use various apps to keep in touch with their family and friends (outside school hours), who will now be prohibited from doing so?
      • Mashimo 2y ago
        I'm not Australian, how are they now being prohibited?
        • bigfatkitten 2y ago
          They don't really have a plan yet. Thinking things through isn't a quality that Australian governments have ever been blessed with, particularly when it comes to tech policy.
• throwawaythekey 2y ago
  Also note that the government is attacking social media on a second front. Last night they took advantage of the population being distracted by the US election by having an extended parliamentary session to push forward with a second reading of the controversial misinformation bill. The government and state media apparatus are of course both immune from any penalty under the bill. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-11/acma-crackdown-social-media-disinformation-bill/104339144 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-11/acma-crackdown-social...
  • BLKNSLVR 2y ago
    Part of the concerted effort against social media is the (sudden?) loss of ability to control the narrative by the established power base. Politics and Print / Television Media used to have the last word on "facts", but now every man and his dog can create their own narrative. Methinks they're, again, using "think of the children" as a bulwark against the inevitability of their own waning power. The more things change... Can we also prevent under 16s from being exposed to religious teachings?
  • the5avage 2y ago
    I really hope you sort this out. When I have my masters degree finished I would like to live in your beautiful country where a lot of wonderful people live.
• OfficeChad 2y ago
  [dead]
• yowayb 2y ago
  Completely unenforceable
• andrewstuart 2y ago
  They’re protecting the children.
  • jaimex2 2y ago
    They're taking steps to control freedom of speech. Little steps, get them young. You should see the misinformation bill they are trying to pass.
• consumerx 2y ago
  lol, probably because they have a propaganda leak.
• linuxandrew 2y ago
  I put in a submission to the committee for this issue[1]. The big issues from my point of view are widespread ID validation and the security and privacy consequences of that, definition of social media, lack of controls provided by social media websites, and further risks to centralisation (like ID providers requiring an app that can only run on an iOS or Google Play device). Many of the ID verification services that have spun up over recent years like AU10TIX are private companies that don't have their users' interests at heart. It wouldn't surprise me if they become more involved with the so-called data economy (data broker ecosystem)—if they aren't already. Meta itself causes harm to users of all ages with their algorithms (like suggested content on the feed) which can't really be turned off, and fueled the misinformation crisis which really took off a few years ago. The social media companies have done a good job of convincing the Australian government to overlook these harms. 1: https://roffey.au/static/submission-social-media-2024.pdf https://roffey.au/static/submission-social-media-2024.pdf
  • r4indeer 2y ago
    FYI, assuming that is your web server, your TLS certificate expired end of last month.
    • linuxandrew 2y ago
      Ty, I'll fix it very soon :) Something's up with Certbot and it's probably a trivial fix.
• VagabundoP 2y ago
  Yeah I’m not against it. Please EU follow suit. What really needs to happen is tough regulators digging through the algorithms. Why are boys on YouTube getting served so much manosphere crap? Etc. We have enough studies about what these algorithms are trying to do to people to keep them engaged. It’s not healthy for society.
  • johnny22 2y ago
    Honestly that does not seem enough. Honestly I'm worried about the entire age range of human beings in this regard, not just children.
  • akomtu 2y ago
    The algorithm is pretty simple: show random videos, select categories that invoke the most reaction, show more random videos from those categories and so on. That's why the algorithm often converges to a local maximum and keeps showing disturbing shit on one topic.
• logicchains 2y ago
  The main reason for this ban, like the attempted TikTok ban in the US, is the overwhelmingly anti-zionist views of the younger generation due to repeated social media exposure to the genocide in Gaza. Fundamentally social media facilitates the faster and broader spread of information than ever before in human history, which is a threat to the gatekeepers who for decades have tightly controlled what information the people of Australia have access to.
• nutanc 2y ago
  This is awesome. I have been telling that social media is like smoking. When cigarettes came, even doctors were advertising the benefits of cigarettes. Now we know the harmful effects. Same is the case with social media. We just dont know they harmful effects completely yet. Ban this. I am addicted and can't stop. Or put a warning on social media apps like they do on cigarette packets. Using this app maybe harmful for your mental health.
  • r3d 2y ago
    [flagged]
  • jaimex2 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • pixxel 2y ago
      Weak minds love government intervention over parental responsibility. It’s awesome! Get your IDs out, everyone, think of the children. JFC.
      • Johanx64 2y ago
        Here's the reality: some significant % of parents will have zero parental responsibility and are ill suited to be parents. This is just a fact. How to solve this? 1. Only allow suitable responsible people to be parents. Would you like this? This would be highly unpopular and wouldn't happen. 2. Or alternatively you enforce uniform rules across all population of minors, thus children without functional parents have limitations and protections in place as if they had parents with resposibility. The second option is simply more palatable and feasible to be implemented.
        • johnny22 2y ago
          the problem isn't what it means to the kids, but what it means to us! It'd mean we'd need to be ID'd. We don't want that.
• rationalfaith 2y ago
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• tnuc 2y ago
  While I dislike social media, this ban is as stupid as Australia's laws enforcing bicycle helmets. Will this mean I will have to register as my real name on Hacker News? Not a chance
  • LeafItAlone 2y ago
    Don’t many US states have laws requiring bicycle helmets for minors? https://www.iihs.org/topics/pedestrians-and-bicyclists/bicycle-helmet-use-laws-table https://www.iihs.org/topics/pedestrians-and-bicyclists/bicyc...
    • jamil7 2y ago
      In Australia this is not just for minors, you can be fined as an adult for cycling without a helmet which is even more absurd when you look at the lack of cycling infrastructure in Australian cities and the general cultural distain towards cyclists.
      • the5avage 2y ago
        You dont even have sidewalks to go by foot. You are in general cultural distain towards anything that is not a big 4WD car.
      • threeseed 2y ago
        If you are seriously injured and/or disabled then your fellow taxpayers will be paying for your health care either through Medicare or the NDIS. In a society it's not fair for your selfish actions to have a negative effect on everyone else.
        • jamil7 2y ago
          An active society reduces the burden on public health care, take a look at the obesity rates in Australia, especially childhood obesity, shouldn't we also regulate lifestyle choices that contribute to this? How about the explosion of massive 4WDs in Australia? Are you not also subsidising the health care burden those? If you want to keep cyclists safe then build more bike lanes.
• jaimex2 2y ago
  And this is why we try our best to have minority governments. The bills being put forward lately are really concerning and I have no idea how to get a party in that would kill the eSafety Commissioner and put in strong freedom of speech laws. I'm pretty content seeing the web destroy their website blocking measures. Thank you DoH and ECH!
• gloosx 2y ago
  Such a shame of a news, sad to see the level of Australian govt when they are trying to ban for "safety" in the year 2024. Good thing one smart Digital Industry Group representative already told them they are not thinking straight. Of course giving young people something better and more exciting thing to do is not in their plans. In their dreams is to BAN, take ID VERIFICATIONS and FINE private companies for the rest of their days, any Australian should be ashamed of such dull and unsophisticated policies, and BRAVO to Sunita Bose.
• jaimex2 2y ago
  It's so sad seeing how many people think its on the government to raise kids.
• r3d 2y ago
  It's crazy that human beings with the new fandangled ability to communicate in ever easier ways have created this problem. This is your enemy. Social media, government rules are not the enemy. Nor the saviour you think it might be.
• BiteCode_dev 2y ago
  As usual, the problem with this is that it assumes a way to perfectly identify somebody on the internet, which in turns mean a way to perfectly identify, in real time, somebody carrying permanently a tracking device with GPS, microphone and camera. It's crazy that all the things we considered the worst of dystopia in the 80's, thinking nobody would be stupid enough to do, and that those societies in SF books were only distant fictions, are things we are actively seeking now. Things like "Find my" and "air tags" are already beloved my millions, people use it to track loved ones and they swear by it. Even very intelligent, educated people. There is such a cognitive dissonance between people swearing the last election meant a likely dictatorship and the same people setting up a tech rope around their necks in case a dictatorship does happen. My now-dead Jewish grandfather met my grandmother during the French occupation because she was making fake papers. He would be horrified if he knew what we are doing right now with our data. My German ex was born in East Germany, 11 years before the fall of the Berlin Wall. She thinks people are mad to believe that tracking is not going to be abused. What the hell is going on?
  • scotty79 2y ago
    A knife can be stuff of nightmares or a very useful tool (even with constant threat of abuse and accidental harm). Location tracking is just another knife.
    • anilakar 2y ago
      Exactly. You don't allow people to carry knives in public because it does more harm than good.
      • scotty79 2y ago
        Some places don't. Some do. In Poland news about ban on knife carrying was April fool's joke. In UK it's a serious law with serious punishments. In UK people who'd carry a knife with malicious intent just moved to carrying caustic chemicals. It's often not specific tech that's a problem, but the culture and incentives for its misuse. Although reasonable restrictions on all technologies aren't inherently bad. Restrictions imposed pre-emptively just because nightmare scenarios are easy to imagine and captivating are not great.
• lrvick 2y ago
  I would remind everyone that the ban of porn below 18 is not enforced, but it is enough to ensure it is not consumed openly or at school. That is how this will play out too.
  • Tronno 2y ago
    Not sure what kind of maniac would "consume" porn openly at school. In contrast, I doubt most kids will have any such misgivings about social media, especially if not enforced.
    • deergomoo 2y ago
      Teenagers can be weird and dumb and like to show off. A kid in my class used to pull porn up on the computer connected to the projector if the teacher left the room, just because they thought it was funny.
      • BeFlatXIII 2y ago
        Back in my HS years, we had a sped student who loved having a wank in the library.
  • cnity 2y ago
    Porn isn't consumed openly or at school because of social effects (read: it is embarrassing), not because of laws. If schoolchildren are the pliable rule-followers you imply, why do they all vape?
  • shirro 2y ago
    If a kid wants to find porn then so be it. If an adult Australian citizen or media company wants to show them porn then that is probably a criminal offense. Kids also find alcohol. Can't supply as an adult or company. The problem for the social media companies is that their recommendation algorithms and content make it very clear they know exactly what ages are watching and what they are showing them. They are multi-billion dollar multi-national operations and not some kid running an iffy image board. I usually hate the Australian government's dumb takes on anything tech or Internet (cryptography, internet filters) but in this case I think pushing regulatory compliance on large companies is what makes this doable.
• squarefoot 2y ago
  Good, but not enough if you ask me. Mainstream social media make money out of angering people and the addiction it creates, and it affects everyone, not just kids: had a few grown ups among friends and other people, even over 60 and older, completely ruined by that crap. I don't see any reason why corporations that don't obey any moral obligation should be motivated to change their business model anytime soon, unless forced from above.
  • squigz 2y ago
    What about non-mainstream social media? What about news services? What do you think would happen if we banned both, those people that get angry and addicted will just be happy and healthy? Or do you think corporations will find another avenue to try and manipulate people, which those people will happily flock to?
    • squarefoot 2y ago
      Non mainstream media by its definition probably doesn't attract much people and damages would be restricted; I think the most damage happens in crowded echo chambers where a critical mass, assuming there is one, would be easily reached. Yes, very likely corporations would find other ways to exploit people addiction, and educating kids before it's too late is a good move, however I don't expect much cooperation by parents.
      • squigz 2y ago
        > however I don't expect much cooperation by parents. Why not? Most parents don't tend to hand their children drugs.
        • squarefoot 2y ago
          I meant parents who are among the grown ups I was referring to in my original post. Kids become addict to social media also because of their absence as parents, and giving bad example.
• tessierashpool9 2y ago
  prohibition never worked and won't ever - the only way to make it work is by implementing a total surveillance state with draconian punishment for noncompliant citizens. but given that i'm more or less the only one realizing that i just make peace with what is coming.
  • pie_flavor 2y ago
    'Prohibition didn't work' is an almost meaningless statement. It's always some variation on 'yeah, drastically fewer people drank, but it didn't eradicate it entirely and cost a nonzero amount to maintain'. Same as banning anything ever, like murder, or unregistered securities.
    • tessierashpool9 2y ago
      prohibition of alcohol didn't just cause less people to drink ... it provided the breeding ground for organized crime, caused people to go blind from drinking self-made liquor and started the war on drugs which eventually led to the fentanyl crisis. my body, my choice.
      • Sabinus 2y ago
        But we already prohibit children from drinking alcohol. How is social media any different?
      • aniviacat 2y ago
        And that's where the analogy falls short. You think teens are going to start using darknet social media?
  • lupusreal 2y ago
    That assumes "make it work" means making it work 100% with no gaps or misses. If it only works 90% of the time then it's still working quite well and you get most of the benefit from it without needing "a total surveillance state with draconian punishment for noncompliant citizens" For instance, it has always been possible for sufficiently motivated kids to acquire hard liquor. If nothing else they can steal it from their parents. To stop this you would need surveillance inside every home and extremely harsh punishments. But we don't actually need that, because an imperfect prohibition works reasonably well. The whole premise that if a law isn't perfectly enforceable then it's a bad law is a weird thing that techies on the libertarian/autism spectrum come up with a lot, but it's not the way the world actually works.
• aussieguy1234 2y ago
  I support the ban. In terms of enforcement, social media platforms already use algorithms and gather huge amounts of data on their users, enough to make a good estimate of age even if a user has signed up with a fake age. So, when the algorithm detects that a user is likely to be underage, that's when they'd be required to show ID.
• turing_complete 2y ago
  I wouldn't have said this a few years ago, but I think this is a good idea.
• metalman 2y ago
  this is fake legislative action, there is no way to legaly enforce this, short of a complete and total policing of the internet and peoples phones,and the quiet part is that by seperating the "law" into all of its beurocratic bits,such as needing to "ratify" it later....., and then actualy create and fund some sort of enforcement body at some further and impossible to predict time which all then points to a desperate and floundering government, resorting to the lamest kinds of tacticts to buy a bit more time at the trough oink oink
• gU9x3u8XmQNG 2y ago
  Given the lack of interest in the industry “self” regulating, and/or taking responsibility of, the content; what other option is there. It seems there’s little interest globally. With my direct and indirect experiences of social media; I strongly support this. That said; how does a young individual get updates to public transport outages that are only available via twitter/x, or read the menu of the local cafe that is only posted on Facebook? I do worry about the implementation, especially if government owned. The government has, in the past, said one thing and executed another. (DNS metadata collection for ISP’s, for example) Whilst I have nothing to hide, and am happy to be entirely transparent with them; I can appreciate, respect, and understand the hesitation. And, if government owned; how long until it’s “privatised”. Will be interesting to see how this plays out.
  • immibis 2y ago
    "The spying industry isn't spying on people enough, so the government has no choice but to force them to spy harder"
  • quitit 2y ago
    There is zero willingness by Meta and others to even follow through on their own guidelines or government requirements. I think it's time a hard decision was made about the harms spread by these networks. I am definitely not alone in submitting a report about a fake profile only for the system to nearly automatically deny it. Even when the real person being impersonated is literally sitting next to me asking me to help them submit the report. Even illegal drug dealers operate in the open on Meta properties with no recourse whatsoever. The process of eliminating a huge swath of fake and harmful content could be implemented trivially, we have so many ways of muting or limiting the spread of information which is unvetted, dubious origin, has outlier qualities and so on - yet nothing of the type is engaged by these networks to obvious harmful consequences.
    • gU9x3u8XmQNG 2y ago
      Thanks for your reply. On a similar note; a family member was being exposed to intense and violent content over Facebook. There was no block, ignore, or report feature on the content exposed. The only option we could find, after researching it; was a “show less of this content” setting buried deep in the Facebook web app (not even available on the standalone app). Honestly; if the account owner has little option to manage the content they are exposed to.. ugh!
• elric 2y ago
  Can't we just ban exploitative & manipulative social media instead? This is another case of the baby and the bathwater.
• Giorgi 2y ago
  Ahh yes, government knows what is best for you.
• DeathArrow 2y ago
  Ok, they will join places like 4chan instead.
• pfdietz 2y ago
  Another development that makes me happy for the US 1st Amendment.
• ghssds 2y ago
  In the '90s, a lot of dial-up BBS were owned by <16yo teens. Later the same happened with internet forum. Today, you'd think 16yo is old enough to have your own social media. Maybe a Mastodon or Lemmy instance, or something unfederated like an old phpBB forum or something. Yet the australian gov think these same people aren't old enough to access a social media! They should incite their teens to have one in their bedroom, fcs.
  • Benjamin_Dobell 2y ago
    I'm not sure precisely how this legislation is to be phrased, however I assume all the use cases you presented from the 90s are still permitted. Social media is a very different beast than closed communities / interest groups.
    • im3w1l 2y ago
      I don't think it's nearly that clearcut. Just to take an example, these days a lot of communities / interest groups are organized as Facebook Groups. Or subreddits. Is reddit social media? It has an algorithmic feed mainpage, it has profiles and likes and dms. You can make self-posts that are not posted to any subreddit just to your own profile. So if you think about it, it's actually very similar to facebook from a feature standpoint. But the culture is different. What about discord? I think it was originally meant for voice chat, but it also hosts communities / interest groups and quite a lot of other social network features. It does however not have a feed of posts, and you can't post things to your own profile. But you can set a status, which often is the precursor to a feed.
    • bigfatkitten 2y ago
      > Social media is a very different beast than closed communities / interest groups. Those are explicitly within scope for this plan also.
• jappgar 2y ago
  Funny how so many middle-aged tech workers, who were almost certainly using some primitive social media themselves as teenagers, are now in support of a full ban. I don't like the outcomes we see with modern social media, but this feels like we're punishing the victim instead of the perpetrator.
  • jpalawaga 2y ago
    social media for us was chronological timelines of content our friends produced. Not... waves hands whatever the f*%k this is.
    • mrweasel 2y ago
      Profit, it's profit, almost free, self-perpetuation, self-promoting profit, build on addictions and exploitation of users.
    • stonethrowaway 2y ago
      Upvoted for mental imagery.
    • fsflover 2y ago
      So Mastodon should be fine for the kids to use?
  • maxehmookau 2y ago
    Social media that tech workers in the 30s and 40s were exposed to was never any more intense than a bulletin board or a chat room. Social media now is a very different beast. It's designed to be addictive, and it generates engagement through polarization. Is banning social media for children a punishment for the child? Some parents would argue the opposite, that it's a good thing that the child isn't developed enough to realise yet.
    • ev7 2y ago
      Banning social media for a single child creates social death; banning it for all promotes social life.
• nottorp 2y ago
  Doesn't everyone lie about their age anyway, to get around the stupid restrictions?
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• whiplash451 2y ago
  I'm not sure to see the value of going all the way to 16. 14yo would be a massive win already. The cost/benefit of social media between 14 and 16 is much more favorable to social media than <14.
  • Perenti 2y ago
    13-15 is when the brain is driven mostly by hormones, not thought. It's worst at 14. 14 is NOT the age to let teens off their leash.
    • whiplash451 2y ago
      I'll take your word for it since I don't have kids in that age range, but I'd tend to think that hormones are in the driver seat all the way up to the 20s.
• ossobuco 2y ago
  So when China regulates the internet, it's a dictatorship; when a western-affiliated democracy does it, it's... good?
  • rty32 2y ago
    I can't answer "whether censorship good or bad", but one thing I think is true and needs to be clarified is that there is a democratic process for such legislation -- representatives debate the topic and vote on them, and if they do become law, they may be challenged in the court. They don't just happen. By comparison, censorship in China is mandated by a number of different laws and "rules" with extremely broad and vague words, some of which date back decades, with the explicit intention to be able to arbitrarily enforce the laws based on whoever is in power to interpret them, and... good luck challenging them in courts. Of course there are lots of caveats here -- e.g. in the US model, what if the executive branch, legislation and the court are controlled by one person (which we'll see very soon), and in the other hand, in China there is actually a parliament and a formal process for many of the legislations (even though that doesn't mean much). Still, at a very high level, there is a distinction.
  • sigmar 2y ago
    uh yeah, dictatorships are bad. Society determining their government and enacting laws through consensus is good. Is that controversial now?
    • self_awareness 2y ago
      It's only democracy if it's the government on which we have voted for, otherwise it's a disgrace and a Russian manipulation.
  • stonethrowaway 2y ago
    [flagged]
• Perenti 2y ago
  The way to give this teeth is for any proposed law to charge the parent or guardian of social networking children, as well as the social networking site. Once it hits the parents' pockets they'll start to get involved in their kids lives and see what they're looking at on the web.
  • PittleyDunkin 2y ago
    That, or they'll just give their own kid access to their social media accounts.
• looopTools 2y ago
  I agree with others whom see the identification problem. But I also think that it is a right step on the way to help improve the current situation
• protocolture 2y ago
  "Australia Proposes Ban" is way too common a headline.
• nashashmi 2y ago
  This might force children to be social in the real world. And disabled children will remain unsocial.
• dominojab 2y ago
  [dead]
• benabbott 2y ago
  I fully support this. In fact, make it 18. I see it like a new type of drug. Future generations will be horrified that we permitted children to connect their brains to attention-optimization algorithms running on supercomputers. Children can not consent. They can't sign contracts. They don't understand the ramifications of what algorithmically delivered content does to you.
  • cathalc 2y ago
    On that point, I don't think most adults understand the ramifications either!
  • dataflow 2y ago
    18 seems terrible. You're making a fraction of the kids miss out on their friends' lives just before they're about to go their separate ways and potentially never see each other again. At least give them a bit of time to naturally settle into the new social environment before they permanently part ways?
    • OptionOfT 2y ago
      I disagree. If the relationship is valuable to you, it requires maintaining. Following each other on social media isn't the same. Not to mention social media is filled with someone's best moments which give you a bad view on how you're doing against your peers. Not to that half of the posts on social media are ads, which aren't good for you at any age.
      • dataflow 2y ago
        > If the relationship is valuable to you, it requires maintaining. Following each other on social media isn't the same. Maybe not to you, but to some people it is incredibly valuable for maintaining relationships. And these are kids about to part with most of their friends for the first time, you can't rely on them having learned your insightful life lessons by this point. I'm guessing you've never been felt the negative effects being left out of a social circle can have? Relationships aren't binary, not everyone is best friends or strangers. Lots of room in between for people to bond or be left out.
• uhtred 2y ago
  I fully support this. Fuck google, meta, tiktok, all of them, they are ruining the world. And fuck amazon too.
• deleted 2y ago
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• scudsworth 2y ago
  australia proposes big button that says "are you really old enough to read posts? please do not lie"
• ElCapitanMarkla 2y ago
  This is the wrong approach, to achieve the desired effect they should make social media compulsory for anyone over ~40.
• asdefghyk 2y ago
  Social media companies would have a strong motivation to ensure the plan fails. They would want it to fail to stop spreading to other countries. They could help it fail by several methods, in my opinion. Social media companies would have NO motivation to ensure its success. Maybe there needs to be a significant penalty to social media companies if the proposal fails?
  • asdefghyk 2y ago
    The penalty for potential failure needs to be very high - such as banning a app from a country. It could be done. ( Something that would give social media companies significant motivation. ) Social media implication efforts should be examined and audited for software experts and other experts - even down to viewing every part of their software system. Actually tested by outside experts. I used to work for large gambling organisation and the companies systems where audited such by experts - they could reques tto see ANYTHING . Included their own test scenarios . included auditing of our test results. Depending on change , audit could take days . Penalty for hiding anything was so high , it was not done. Same type of system needs to apply to social media companies. I would predict they will claim it can not be done
• bgdkbtv 2y ago
  A lot of you who are supporting this are unaware that to enforce this, EVERYONE will have to have an online government ID and the government will be tracking EVERYONE's internet activity.
• benkaiser 2y ago
  It sounds righteous for sure, but the implementation sounds terrible. Let's suppose kids do get forced off the mainstream social networks with Australia legal entities (Meta, Goog, Bytedance, X?). What stops them from joining fringe social networks operated outside of Australia with even less oversight? Surely nothing bad could happen between kids on those networks. Yes, the Australian government could DNS block them like they do torrent sites. But it really wouldn't be beyond teenagers to inform their friends about how to change DNS servers...
  • jumpei163 2y ago
    That's what I thought. How do you verify the age? Verifying ID? That seems like another route that could go wrong. Just having a checkbox to confirm the age? Do a poll on this website to see how many people have visited an adult website when they were not... As long as you have internet access, there will be a way. I don't have a good proposal, but I feel this is more like a cultural issue than something we can simply fix by implementing law.
    • squigz 2y ago
      > I don't have a good proposal, but I feel this is more like a cultural issue than something we can simply fix by implementing law. ...Why not make the aspects of these sites that are so harmful illegal in general?
• autumnstwilight 2y ago
  Apart from the logistical issues with tracking and verifying everyone's identity, I think cutting teenagers off from an (admittedly very manipulated and dysfunctional) source of community is not a straightforwardly good idea. To give some examples, isolated LGBT teenagers probably benefit from being able to find and talk to people like them, and people into all kinds of niche hobbies and interests can be inspired to learn and create by other people into the same thing (cosplayers, digital artists, electronic musicians, etc). Also social media is used for organizing a ton of IRL events as well. (It would be nice if online community was not all centered on Facebook/Twitter/etc, but unfortunately that's the current situation.)
  • account42 2y ago
    Another view might be that kids are better left off exploring their identity without agenda-driven strangers influencing them over the internet.
    • squigz 2y ago
      It's a lot easier to explore one's identity when you're talking to people who have similar parts of their identity. I'm curious how one would do that, on any medium, without being exposed to 'agenda-driven strangers'?
    • Spivak 2y ago
      What are you talking about? Finding your people is one of the main benefits of the internet for minorities or folks with niche interests. We're literally on an interest based community right now. There's this weird belief in certain circles that being gay is contagious and if we could only keep our kids away from seeing them they'll turn out "normal" and its bollocks. They'll just be unhappy and ashamed of themselves, think they're broken and not know why.
    • Nasrudith 2y ago
      Ah yes, when you are a minority living your life is just 'an agenda'. It is so much better that kids feel alone and isolated than knowing facts that there are other people like them. Fuck that and fuck you.
• martin82 2y ago
  Time for some "right wing extremists" to win a landslide victory and send that administration packing. Hopefully, this is an issue that will make Australians finally wake up fron their hypnosis...
• vv_ 2y ago
  There are parental controls on most phones. Educating parents on how to use them is a better option than a blanket ban that'll either: a) not work or b) require you to use some digital / national ID to register.
• Moldoteck 2y ago
  Imo would be nicer if algorithmic feed & targeted ads would be banned for them. So basically a social network with chronological feed and no targeted ads should be ok-ish. This would allow them to use the tech without the addiction mechanisms and influencing
• NoZZz 2y ago
  An insane idea, encroaching on the liberty we enjoy on the web. These types of decisions should be up to parents, and, will eventually play out as they seem fit.
• styczen 2y ago
  I proposed ban on all social media politicians and government officials.
• zoezoezoezoe 2y ago
  Regulating this is always going to be impossible, and when it’s not, you’re in a surveillance state and you have bigger problems than the age you’re allowed to be on social media
• k310 2y ago
  I'm late to this thread, but I propose that for greater social good, people OVER 16 should be banned.
• nomdep 2y ago
  I would raise the limit to 20 at least
  • ost-ing 2y ago
    I would argue when the prefrontal lobe has matured, which is about 25 for males. These platforms are highly manipulative and causing immeasurable damage to our social fabric. A dopamine slot machine in your pocket powered by AI, ready to grab your attention anyway it can, by outraging, triggering or seducing you. I personally would ascribe these platforms as evil.
• brokenmachine 2y ago
  I, for one, am all in favour of our new "summary execution of children if they access social media" law. Bring on the brown shirts! We must protect family values at all cost!
• brokenmachine 2y ago
  I wish they would make some effort to restrict what inputs the social media algorithms can use to target people, instead of this ham-fisted idiocy.