You must log in or register to comment.
The second i have to hand over my id to a tech company is the second i leave and never come back.
Also how they gonna manage the fediverse? Can someone get fined for providing social media to themselves if an under 16 sets up their own federated instance?
Now ban parents posting pictures of their children under 16.
I DGAF about your kids.
Yeah I agree with you on this. It’ll protect them from the being de-clothed using AI as well. I understand wanting to share moments with your family because kids grow up fast but sharing it with these companies as an intermediary is not a good idea. Sadly I don’t have a solution for them aside from setting up a decentralized social network like Pixelfed or Frendica but that requires skill and patience.
The ban and age verification requirements apply to pretty much all services which allow communication of information between people, unless an exemption is granted by the minister.
There is no legislated exemption for instant messaging, SMS, email, email lists, chat rooms, forums, blogs, voice calls, etc.
It’s a wildly broadly applicable piece of legislation that seems ripe to be abused in the future, just like we’ve seen with anti-terror and anti-hate-symbol legislation.
From 63C (1) of the legislation:
For the purposes of this Act, age-restricted social media platform means:
- a) an electronic service that satisfies the following conditions:
- i) the sole purpose, or a significant purpose, of the service is to enable online social interaction between 2 or more end-users;
- ii) the service allows end-users to link to, or interact with, some or all of the other end-users;
- iii) the service allows end-users to post material on the service;
- iv) such other conditions (if any) as are set out in the legislative rules; or
- b) an electronic service specified in the legislative rules; but does not include a service mentioned in subsection (6).
Here’s all the detail of what the bill is and the concerns raised in parliament.
It’s a good thing we wiped out covid and will never need students to use Zoom again!
Oh, wait
- a) an electronic service that satisfies the following conditions:
Obviously there are workarounds, but I suppose it provides a good justification for parents to deny their kids access to social media.
Papers, please!
China Video Game Ban v2.0: Electric Boogaloo
Parents should be parenting, not delegate their responsibilities to a nanny state.
Parents should be Parenting?
If they haven’t been parenting what have they been doing for the last 40 years?
And if thwy have been parenting how’s that workout for us so far?
There’s been no age ban on social media since the internet was founded but there’s record mental health crisis on young people.
Yeah! Parents should totally be allowed to give their car keys to their 14 year old to go out and drive drunk if they feel their kid can handle it.
That would require us paying one parent enough to cover the other parent being a child care expert. But nobody gets to profit off of that so fuck society, everybody works, and nobody gets community goods except the wealthy.
Solution is to fund a social safety net, not ban social media.
if social media is fediverse, you’re right; if social media is agents of surveillance capitalism, fuck social media
what’s “social” about what most people call social media?
Governmemts doesn’t care, any platform that empowers civillians to communicate with each other is “social media”. Governments love to control and restrict communications.
Lemmy would be considered social media. Eventually they would be requiring social media to verify IDs. So Lemmy instances will be required to verify IDs or be banned from certain countries.
A social safety net you say… like a place we could gather all the children to teach them things and let them play under supervision?
So are we gonna put teens in kindergarden?
What? No! They can have their own age appropriate place to learn and play under supervision.
Well I hope Australians are a homogenous society. Like they don’t have racial minorities or LGBT kids that have to keep their identities closeted and have no one to talk to. Every Australian is so open and accepting amirite?
Imagine kids have conservative parents that would kick them out if they came out as LGBT, classmates are just constantly using “yo thats’s gay” as an insult, while teacher and administrators dismiss any reports bullying. Have no adult they trust, and the same conservative parents would not let them see a therapist because that being “weak”. Then when they wanna go online and vent and just have someone to talk to, the government steps in and “help” them by banning online communications.
“We Saved The Kids” Amirite?
But what about those Parental Responsibilities you were talking about earlier? Are you saying we now need extra social safety nets for kids who don’t fit the mold and get bullied? Extra places for them to learn and play under supervision? Because I don’t think that’s going to be economical without boarding them there, away from their parents.
the rules are expected to apply to the likes of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok, per the Prime Minister.
Sites used for education, including YouTube, would be exempt, as are messaging apps like WhatsApp.
The law does not require users to upload government IDs as part of the verification process.
Sounds like a pretty weak law. It will require a birthday when creating an account and accounts under the age of 16 will be restricted/limited. As a result users (people under 16) will lie about their age.
Companies don’t like this because it messes with their data collection. If they collect data that proves an account is under 16 they will be required to make them limited/restricted. However they obviously collect this data already.
I wonder if Facebook and other apps will add/push education elements in order to become exempt.
Any stonger, and they wander into China “Great Firewall” territory.
Lets not make every country into an authoritarian shithole.
Oh I agree. I wouldn’t want a stronger law. I’m just not too concerned with this one. I think if there are concerns with social media we should discuss how to solve them for everyone.
We generally say 16-21 you are an adult so fuck it, whatever happens to you is your fault and ignore the predatory nature of organizations.
We should outline the specific concerns and determine what, if any, steps we can take.
As an example, gambling. I think it’s fair and reasonable to allow gambling. I think ensuring gambling isn’t predatory is a reasonable limitation. I expect for most people it isn’t a problem but I think providing help to gambling addicts is also reasonable. Social media should be viewed through a similar lens.
I wonder if Facebook and other apps will add/push education elements in order to become exempt.
I doubt it, and if they do, they’ll classify a whole bunch of nonsense as educational content in order to do so, e.g. religious content as science.
I mean YouTube has educational content, but that is far from its primary purpose. Assuming YouTube is completely unrestricted it wouldn’t be hard for Facebook to add enough content to be arguably educational.
Hell plenty of people use TikTok for educational reasons. I’m not saying it’s right, but you could argue TikTok is educational in the same way you can argue YouTube is educational.
Now if YouTube is forced to classify it’s educational content the same way they classify children’s content (aka poorly), maybe that’ll work.
I work tech in schools (in Australia) there are definitely tech savvy enough kids that will probably spool up their own fediverse instances
I know right. I used to be a kid who bypassed school firewalls and restrictions all the time. This is going to make no difference.
It will likely make a big difference. Freedoms being taken away day by day and we shrug it off.
“freedom” of kids and teenagers to rot their immature brains on “social media”?
freedom to be manipulated by Zuckerberg and his minions?
freedom to learn what a “real man” is from sexist assholes
freedom to develop bottomless insecurities before constructing a semblance of a “self” to get you through the grit of societies
at least they recognize the problem and … pass hopeless laws 🤷
Freedom to raise your kids, and freedom to live your life as you choose, yes. Laws aren’t needed for this. Content management should come from parents, and if websites are pushing agendas or misinformation you don’t want your child on, you should be dictating what they are viewing.
You don’t (lawfully) ban kids from parts of the library because you are worried they might read about things you don’t like, you monitor which books they are reading and tell them not to read such, or discuss why/why not those resources do not agree with or match the principles you agree with.
This is the equivalent of banning kids talking to each other at school, on the bus or at the mall/park. If a platform is pushing harmful information then block that site, or bring a suit against the site for pushing harmful information.
Edit: If you don’t want your kid on certain apps or sites you can start with things like this: https://families.google/familylink/ Don’t force it on other people with laws, I believe parents should have the choice for themselves. Apps like that allow you to block social media sites, restrict their app usage and reset passwords if needed.
Only for 16 seconds? Why?
One way to implement this: https://chinwag.au/verification/
teen go to website
please enter your birthdate
1/1/2000
welcome!
Lawyer sues tech company
But we asked for the birthday
Lawyer points to law text
Company fined
I don’t see many options between asking for a birthdate and asking for ID for this problem. I don’t see any way that this can be enforced that isn’t problematic.
Facebook/Meta has developed software to estimate the age from a video.
I don’t see any way that this can be enforced that isn’t problematic.
Comes with the territory. The point is to control who has access to what information so that they don’t get wrong ideas.
Problematic for who, the tech companies? They’re practically printing money. Let them spend it on actual solutions to issues that are causing problems for the World.
It forces them to implement solutions that make having anonymous accounts impossible.
Problematic for the children who are having their rights taken away. This change bans children from connecting with their friends in other countries, other states, and even other cities.
Even something as simple as hopping in a voice call with your squad to play Deep Rock Galactic is now illegal for 15 year olds. That’s ridiculous. The fact that they can break the law is great, but they shouldn’t have to break the law in order to do something so harmless.
What about using Zoom to speak to a doctor or therapist? What about contacting queer support resources through social media? What about using a text based suicide hotline? According to the law, that’s social media.
A large part of this will help maintain liability for harm to young people. How ages is verified is irrelevant
Now everyone gets to hand over their ids to the tech companies.
We should make a bet how long it will take before the ID databases get leaked.
Australia requires mobile phone providers to verify IDs before providing cell phone service. As a result, in September 2022, Optus leaked the records of 10 million Australians including passport and drivers license details.
So negative 2 years, 2 months.
But this is just asking for more.
It would take too long.
Making the bet that is, it would be leaked before you are done setting up the betting system.
Identification would need to be handled by a 3rd party to even remotely work. Then they pass on the “yes they’re over 16” tick to the social media platform, with no actual identity details.
Edit: and likewise, Identity company have no details about the social media account name or anything. Just a token transfer of sorts.
I guess Australia.gov can be the site in the middle handing out the tokens
Tech company’s probably already have enough info to know a person age without requiring an id. They could even use ai for something actually useful
Some mastodon instance has it covered already. https://eigenmagic.net/@daedalus/113519360107067092
That is both hilarious and a brilliant solution.
Okay, that is fucking awesome. LOL.
Eh, I don’t think this is the best solution.
The assumption is as soon as you turn 17 you’re smart enough and have the critical thinking skills to navigate social media without it negatively affecting you? Kinda dumb.
There could be an argument that at least try to block it while young peoples brains are still developing, maybe there’s benefit in that.
Older people than 16 are still duped by propaganda, and become addicted to social media, and all the negative consequences.
What we need is regulation imo. Good, smart, progressive, altruistic regulation that is for the benefit of all. Ain’t gonna happen though, because sOcIaLiSm and “mUh FrEeDoMs”.
The older generations always think the younger generations are lazy and lesser. They don’t believe they can parent because they know how shit they were at parenting. So they are voting to take away parental rights and give those rights to the government. And then say they are pro small government.
Yeah, there are adults (in both my generation and the previous one) who have fewer critical thinking skills than today’s teens and young adults. This feels like a band-aid solution to avoid actually fixing the problems of (1) not teaching critical thinking and logic and (2) the toxic content, misinformation and disinformation on these platforms (I recognise the second one is much harder whilst trying to preserve security and privacy as well).
So what? There will be a “Yes I’m over 16” check box which will be as meaningful as the “Yes I’m over 18” one on porn sites?
Any hope of governments or social media sites enforcing this will come with big ethical and technical compromises and I dont think anyone is actually going to really bother.
We already have limits on what children do with other potentially harmful things like fire, sharp objects, heights and roads and they all come from parents. If this law has any real and positive impact it will be the message that it sends to parents.
