Summary
Australia has passed a groundbreaking ban on social media use for children under 16, the strictest of its kind globally.
Platforms like X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, and Reddit have one year to implement the age limit, with fines up to AU$50M for non-compliance.
Supporters cite mental health concerns, while critics argue the ban risks isolation for marginalized youth, lacks proper research, and excludes harmful platforms like 4chan.
Privacy concerns surround proposed age-verification methods. Opponents, including parents, scholars, and tech companies, argue the legislation is rushed and poorly designed, potentially exacerbating existing issues.
An Australian Senate committee signed off on the legislation late Tuesday but said social media platforms should find “alternative methods for assuring age” rather than forcing users to submit personal information such as their passports or other digital identification.
Like? You think letting these same companies you see as a threat to kids to come up with their own verification method is a good plan? LOL
Edit - lost words somehow
Are you over 16? Click yes
How do you assure age without personal identification? It’s funny that they signed on the bill but only know how they don’t want to force it, without any ideas or alternatives. I got no love for Meta but I’m really wondering what can you possibly implement?
Oh and also, VPN. GG.
Read it again.
What it actually says is that SM sites can collect personal ID, but must provide an alternative.
At least you have words available to lose. I lost all my words already.
and excludes harmful platforms like 4chan.
Jesus Christ.
No block in Roblox either.
All my friends kids are playing Roblox and i’m trying to get everyone updated about Roblox.
The only concern they had until now, was the kids spending money for cosmetics.
4chan is not excluded.
The Communication minister can extend the requirement to any internet site at any time without parliamentary approval.
So your complaint is the bill doesn’t go far enough? It should ban more things?
I’m, generally, skeptical of the efficacy of any such ban. But if a ban is going to be in place, 4chan et co seem like they should be pretty high fucking priorities to close off to kids. It’s like declaring a ban on beer for health reasons, but clarifying that unregulated backwoods moonshine a step away from wood alcohol is still 100% kosher.
So you admit this is a good start? 4chan isn’t particularly popular anymore, btw. I’m guessing that’s why it flew under the radar.
But that’s exactly the problem, right?
Social media platforms, forums and other online social spaces wax and wane on popularity. New ones are turning up all the time. This won’t prevent kids from socializing online, it’ll just force them to do it in the least safe places. Even if you try to regulate every online social space, it’ll just turn into a game of whack a mole.
So we should legalize stabbings because otherwise people will turn to “even worse” forms of violence? Surely there must be a simpler and less moronic approach to legislation.
Should we legalize or decriminalize most drugs, create safe injection sites, and treat addiction as a medical rather than a criminal issue?
Yes. That’s exactly what the experts recommend.
And that is no more an argument for my point than your comparison is an argument against it.
Analogies are not load bearing. They illustrate an argument, they don’t make it.
You haven’t provided an argument. Only an analogy, which on its own is worthless.
And, for the record, when you do figure out what your argument is, you’ll have to share it with someone else, because if you’re firing right off with “moronic” then there’s clearly nothing fruitful to be gained from me actually discussing this with you in good faith.
This was a Rupert Murdoch campaign against Social Media called “let them be kids”.
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Not only do I have concerns about privacy concerns of age-verification, I think the “ban until 16, then unrestricted” is a very bad policy. Yes, social media is harmful to kids, but frankly, it’s harmful to everyone. If kids have no exposure to social media and no education on how to use it appropriately, it’s just going to concentrate the issues to teens/young adults.
So… it’s harmful to everyone, especially kids, which is why we shouldn’t ban its use by kids?
And how exactly are they going to enforce this? Kids always find a way around … always.
Exactly this. When I was in school, we had these things called firewalls. And as a kid, I knew exactly how to get around said firewalls and access whatever online content I wanted. So what’s going to stop the same thing from occurring on a national scale here? And with platforms like Fediverse and nostr, shit like this is completely unenforceable.
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Uploading ID to site.
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face scanning and continual monitoring, so if a person comes into view they must face scan. Under the law, its prohibited for children to watch prohibited sites even with their parents.
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Honestly, who gives a shit. Literally no one should be using these brain-rotting democracy destroying websites anyway. If you want your privacy get a life.
One way to implement this: https://chinwag.au/verification/
I work with young men on a daily basis and all I can say is: holy shit finally. You guys don’t understand what it’s like out there. 16 year olds are dumb as shit by default, so imagine what happens when you add Joe Rogan and Andrew Tate. Please. Imagine what it’s like to explain for the hundredth time why human trafficking is actually bad, and feminism isn’t evil, and so on. I just can’t imagine ANY FUCKING REASON that a child needs to be on a social media website of any kind, from twitch to twitter.
All of their content is public though, you don’t need to verify your age to watch a Joe Rogan podcast.
They get pushed way harder than they should on nearly every platform
So now instead of getting their news from Facebook, they’re getting it from Truth Social? Or some new fly by night social media platform even less reputable?
Surely that’s a lot worse?
First of all, fifteen year olds don’t give a shit about political “news.” Secondly, is your argument that Facebook shouldn’t be banned because something else just as bad as Facebook exists (which could also be banned)?
My point is this; unless you’re proposing simply banning teenagers from the Internet entirely (we’ll get to the problems with that in a moment), you now have the task ahead of you of a) deciding which websites are age restricted and b) enforcing that age restriction.
So, you will have to constantly identify new “social media” sites, including any mastodon instance, lemmy instance, or just plain old school BBS that someone decides to spin up. Then you will have to force them to comply, which isn’t easy. By the time you do, a new site will have popped up, and users will have migrated there. Deciding what is or isn’t a “social media” site will also be a fun little legal challenge.
The big sites, the ones with some degree of moderation, the ones that at least make basic efforts to remove predators and the like when they’re reported, they’ll all comply. But the sites with the least moderation, the least protections for users, those are the ones you’ll have to drag kicking and screaming.
So what you’ve done now is made the web actively more dangerous for teens by forcing them out of the well policed areas and into the parts you least want them to be in.
As mentioned previously, you could contemplate blocking the entire web for teens. But putting aside how much schools have come to rely on it, and how essential it is for many aspects of normal daily life, you also have to consider the direct harm to at risk teens. Many at-risk teenagers rely on the internet for information that can save their life. Information about abuse, rape, pregnancy, drugs, suicide prevention. Queer teens often rely on the internet to safely explore their identity. Teens in many families rely on the internet for access to sex education that their parents refuse to provide (and that’s not even getting into the fact that many access that kind of information through social media).
So how does this work? How do you pull this off in a way that doesn’t cause more harm than good?
Governments is burning money on these bans. Parent should be able to make these choices for their families. Maybe if workers could count on public education and have enough money and time off they would be able to.
Nonsense. This law will generate revenue as we fine the ever-living-shit out of social media websites until they can figure out how to get kids off their toxic platforms.
The article says that the Australian government is leaving it to the social media platforms to implement the age verification process themselves and that they can face fines if they don’t. Assuming that a company has no physical servers running in Australia, is there any reason they need to pay any attention to this? Aside from their platform bring outright banned I suppose. I’ve had debates on lemmy about whether a website operates in other countries just because it is accessible or not. If a lemmy instance based outside of Australia fails to implement age verification, should they be worried about being fined? Will the majority of the fediverse(assuming the majority don’t implement this) be banned in Australia?
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