You must log in or # to comment.
performative nonsense which does nothing for kids or their mental health and harms queer kids who lose one of the first places they can find community.
Then it seems there is something other to fix in society than making sure facebook knows anything about that kid.
The Zuckerbergers of the world aren’t the ones to trust with that.
Not a bad idea all things considered
I support this move. Some here are delusionally arguing that this impacts privacy - the sort of data social media firms collect on teenagers is egregiously extensive regardless. This is good support for their mental health and development.
Strange that the adults don’t want those benefits for themselves also.
I’d support banning it for everyone as well.
This is good support for their mental health and development.
This is good pseudo-science.
How can you look at the state of things pretty much everywhere since social media has become so ubiquitous and think that it has no effect on people, young people especially? It’s full of hate, envy, propaganda, and brainwashing
There is no published science definitively proving that it is harmful or helpful. The effects of this particular legislation, if it is impactful at all, remains to be seen. I’m just offering my opinion based on my personal experiences. I expect it to have some success in reducing acute adolescent mental health issues. If the matter is ever settled through consensus, I’ll defer to that.
This ban does nothing.
Anything that does not force ID verification is useless.
Anything that does verify ID would mean that adults also have to upload their IDs to the website.
What will happen is either this becomes another toothless joke. Or the government say “okay this isn’t working, lets implement ID checks”, and when that law passes Lemmy Instance Admins would be required to verify ID of any user from an Australia IP.
Y’all want that to happen?
So what hapoens if other countries start catching on and also pass such law?
Eventually the all internet accounts would be tied to IDs. Anonymity is dead.
Government provided open id service which guarantees age. Website gets trusted authority signed token witch contains just the age. We can do this safely. We have the technology. They could even do it only once on registration.
Digital id’s exist already in the EU, and many countries run a sign on service already. We aren’t far from this.
No. I don’t want governments to know what social media I use, nor do I want social media to know what country I’m a citizen of. I don’t want any connection between the two.
I’m pretty sure they all know this already.
Sure, but I don’t want to hand it over on a silver platter, especially for my kids.
Depending on what the token contains.
There are two implementations I could think of:
“This user has been verified to be at least [Age]. Sincerely, [Government Authority]” Assuming this is an identical token thats the same for everyone? Sure. I’m not opposed to this.
“This user has been verified to be at least [Age]. Unique Token ID: 23456” Hell No. When the government eventually wants to deanonymize someone, they could ask the website: “What was the token ID that was used to verify the user?” then if the website provides it, now the government can just check the database to see who the token belongs to. And this could also lead to the government mandating the unique token id to be stored.
Why not just look up how it actually works in the real world instead of hypotheticals
This ban is a wake up call to Tech Industry to implement and enforce rules against hate speech, grooming, fake news, etc. They surely cannot verify the age of a human without any official ID made in the real world. This leads to other problems but that’s not the concern of the government! Social Media wants it’s users, not the government.
This ban is a wake up call to Tech Industry
what? Why would tech industry care? If anything it’ll have the reverse effect and dimiss tech role in brain rott because “see, kids are not on it! It’s all good here”
If i recall correctally, Australia tried to fine adults if they didnt have thier phone with them. Ive heard a relaible youtuber say it, but i couldnt find a news article to confirm it.
Went to look for the article. Found something even worse https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-01-24/can-border-force-search-your-phone-when-you-travel-to-australia/100774644
Not a bad choice.
Probably going to get downvoted for this, but this just makes kids look for VPN’s and other ways to skirt this restriction. It may make VPN’s less useful for the rest of us as a result when certain services are forced to comply with the law, breaking those services for those of us using VPN’s. It sounds like a great idea but I don’t know that the implementation will make a noticeable or effective difference.
Most kids are not going to pay a subscription for a VPN, I don’t think that would be as big of an issue as you think.
No, they’re gonna download “free vpns” and get infected with malware and turn their device into part of a bot net.
Or use Tor and end up finding things worse than just “social media”.
Are the government gonna ban those too?
Congrats, you now live in China where the all benevolent government have 24/7 surveillance to keep you safe.
There are free VPNs that are subsidized by payers and are legit (though most are not). Calyx and Proton to name two.
Also Tor is free, and the most popular site on the darknet is Facebook, so I dont think you’re informed about the nature of Tor traffic.
Also here, where a VPN or proxy is a “must” for using the internet normally, there are also some ran by charities. But yeah, the omnipresence of shady free VPNs is very concerning.
Well unless they go for free vpns and get data mined to the moon and back… Which is a far worse outcome imo.
There are free vpn services? How do they data mine you?
Well they have to host the servers and pay for them somehow… So they take all of your traffic going through their servers and sell it. They know when you go to any website, at what time, and how long you were there… That’s why anyone recommending a VPN strongly recommends vpns that do not keep logs of what their clients do when connected to their servers. Even some paid vpns double dip and keep logs and sell them as well as charging for access.
To be fair, I wouldn’t really count on a VPN not collecting logs - if I can’t check it, better assume they’re collected. This may not matter as much, but I still wouldn’t rely on this for anything sensitive.
Also, the free VPNs can harm you in more ways than just selling your traffic logs, such as making you a part of a proxy botnet.
Just because it isn’t perfect it doesn’t mean it’s useless.
Just because there is no way to stop 100% of all crime it doesn’t mean taking measures to reduce crime is futile.
There is a lot more to this than just blocking the site. It will also change social norms. Right now, if a 14 year old as social media, nobody bats an eye; but with the 16 year requirement, through all the sudden, parents aren’t too comfortable with letting their 14 year old have social media. So not only will they need to find some free VPN totally not spyware to use (and even know that that exists and how to use), they will also have to hide it from their parents, as it is no longer socially acceptable for 14 year olds to have social media.
And before you say “Kids can easily get a free VPN and hide it.” Never underestimate tech illiteracy.
Kids accessing social media shouldn’t be treated as a crime.
The future of such restriction is:
Exhibit A: People’s Republic of China and the “Great Firewall”
Nope, lets not go there.
???
How is restricting access behind an age requirement the same as the “Great Firewall”. Right now, as we speak, you cannot use social media until you are 13. They are just increasing that requirement to 16.
There are many many many other things that are already lock behind an age restriction and I don’t see you freaking out. Here are a few examples of things locked behind an age restriction:
-
alcohol
-
gambling
-
cigarettes
-
pornography
Media has age restrictions. Books have age restrictions, movies have age restrictions, games have age restrictions. Media has had age restrictions for a very long time and it’s high time the same standards are applied to social media.
Whats gonna happens when politicians realize kids are just gonna click “I’m at least [Age]”?
They’ll implement ID verification.
Then kids will use VPN to bypass it.
So VPNs get banned
Either you have a toothless law, or you live in a country with Great Firewall of China.
Yup… right what I suspected! The Slippery Slope Fallacy!
Whats gonna happens when politicians realize kids are just gonna click “I’m at least [Age]”?
Many pornography work like that and can, as such, be easily bypassed. But does that mean we should drop the age restriction for access to pornography? Of course not!
Here is another example:
Murder. Murder shouldn’t be legal and it is not. However, despite this restriction, some find ways to get away with murder. Does that mean that laws against murder are useless since we cannot stop murder 100% of the time? I highly doubt it.
It is impossible for any law enforcement to prevent 100% of all crimes, but that is not justification for those law to not exist.
Either you have a toothless law, or you live in a country with Great Firewall of China.
False dilemma fallacy.
Again, I’ll refer to pornography. Many pornography work on the trust system. By your logic, that means we should drop all laws restricting access to it. However, that is absurd.
The point isn’t to stop 100% of all usage. It is simply there to reduce the usage. You are forgetting that we are talking about human beings. Beings which have a natural tendency to conform to social norms as to not be cast out of their tribe (since humans cannot survive in the wild without each other, such would be a death sentence).
This law would set the societal precedent that people need to be of a certain age to access these social media apps (as shown by scientific data, which revealed that social media usage can have many negative effects on a developing mind). This societal precedent will, hopefully, make it taboo for people bellow 16 to access social media, which will, in turn, reduce, but not outright 100% stop, underage social media usage.
The point is to prevent the detrimental effects to the mental health of teens and preteens. That doesn’t work unless you plug the holes. That’s the problem. Fallacy in argument or no fallacy.
The point we’re trying to make isn’t that we don’t want the restriction. We just understand that it’s not going to work specifically because it requires the same thing the under 13 privacy laws already include. Companies to comply (which they will, probably with detriments to legal users), and that parents be involved in what their children are doing online and restrict that accordingly to comply with the law (which we already know they aren’t).
I as a full grown adult am not willing to provide my details (picture of a government issued ID or similar) to most online entities. I certainly won’t ever be giving it to social media or a porn site of any kind. But that’s what’s going to end up being required to enact this law and make it enforceable. Is the law going to fine parents whose children aren’t in compliance? Is it going to fine businesses for not enacting enough restrictions? Is it going to outlaw VPN’s for use on social media?
Where is the burden of proof and who’s privacy gets invaded in order to enforce the law?
I was not (in my original comment or any subsequent ones in the thread) intending people to take this as “we shouldn’t do this because XYZ”. And I am aware that you weren’t responding to me. I was saying that it’s going to be problematic to enforce and isn’t likely to have the results intended.
It’s not about the handful of people per hundred who commit a murder. It’s about how 75-85% of teens will find a way to circumvent the law because they don’t understand the dangers and parents aren’t doing their part. So the rest of us will have to jump through hoops to use any social media.
If 75% or more of people the law effects aren’t following the law, the law doesn’t do what is intended and is going to have to be reworked.
-
The thing about kids getting a VPN, free or paid is that it will spread like wild fire. It only takes one kid who knows how to do something. They tried this at my highschool, blocking websites and such. That was more than 20 years ago and we knew how to use VPN’s or similar then and once we figured it out it was an open secret.
I’m not saying the law shouldn’t exist or that we should do nothing. I’m saying that this isn’t going to be effective as it is and could end up leading to worse things.
Us right now are on a service that’s totally going to follow this law. /s
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.
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
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.
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.
The legislatiion specifically allows SM sites to handle ID.
I guess Australia.gov can be the site in the middle handing out the tokens
Now ban everyone else (except Lemmy of course).
teen go to website
please enter your birthdate
1/1/2000
welcome!
I’m well old enough to satisfy these checks and I also do this. If I’m feeling productive, I’ll pick a random date.
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.
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.
it’s not a problem that can be solved by tech.
A large part of this will help maintain liability for harm to young people. How ages is verified is irrelevant
How ages are verified are irrelevant? Until a whole collection of faces or government IDs inevitably leaks!
Are you over 16: Yes/No.
That wasnt difficult.
If this would indeed be the case, I would be really happy.
They have no specified otherwise so its a case of why would they waste money doing itherwise
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.
Trusting your face to Facebook is just as terrifying, thanks.
(Plus I have concerns as someone who still looks teenage in her 20s)
if you think AI software will be able to differentiate between a 15 year old and 16 year old then I have this cool bridge in Brooklyn that you might be interested in.
This is delusional to the point where it feels like we’re literally devolving.
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.
The senate inquiry outlined the two likely solutions :
-
Uploading ID to the website.
-
3D face scanning. This will include continual monitoring so if another person comes into view they will have to face scan in. Remember, its prohibited for chidren to even watch prohibited content with their parents.
Lol those options harm children
How can it possibly be legal to 3D face scan a child, especially if it needs to be authenticated by a remote server somewhere.
I can only ever see option 1 working
-
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”.
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).
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.
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.
Then I read that chat apps and YouTube would not be banned, and scoffed
Literally chat apps are social media. You can post stories and pump memes and news. You can even have bots that scrape and post content. YouTube is just a matter of checking a box whether it’s “for kids” and they already do that. Basically the whole thing is stupid
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.
The law does not require users to upload government IDs as part of the verification process.
No, it merely requires the sites to provide an alternative, such as face scanning using a mobile phone unlock. Using a computer ? Then you’ll have hand over your ID.
The law also explicitly gives sites the right to onsell private information if its outlined in the terms of agrrement.
Re verification per AP,
The amendments passed on Friday bolster privacy protections. Platforms would not be allowed to compel users to provide government-issued identity documents including passports or driver’s licenses, nor could they demand digital identification through a government system.
So it sounds like an ID will not be a requirement.
I suppose a face scan is possible, but I find it unlikely. Obviously if it heads in that direction then the law should be amended to clarify that is also not acceptable.
In terms of selling information I assume that just clarifies the status quo and isn’t new. Not that that makes it acceptable, it just means that’s something to tackle.
So it sounds like an ID will not be a requirement.
Sure, but gov ID is permitted as an option if another non-ID option is also available.
Simply choose between submitting your government ID or, say, switch on your front facing camera so we can perform some digital phrenology to determine your eligibility.
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.
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.
Huh, I thought all kids immediately say they were born in 1969
People should lie about as much as possible to most companies they interact with online anyway (obviously don’t lie to your bank, or doctor, or whatever). Do always, without fail, lie randomly about your age, gender, address (if it’s not relevant) or anything else that’s not actually needed to provide the service.
One way to implement this: https://chinwag.au/verification/
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.
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.
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.
but but that requires actually effort and budget that we’d have to take away from Australian oligarchs!
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.
even YouTube got in an exception list. So it’s not an “all or nothing” approach, it seems.
- Lemmy is too small for governments to care
Youtube got an exeption because Alphabet Inc. lobbied them to do so to get kids used to Youtube. Lemmy does not have the lobbying power like a mega corporation, plus, its a good excuse to get rid of a left-leaning platform, since governments tend to be against the left.
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.
This isn’t even delegating. It’s more of an equivalent of stuffing your fingers into your ear holes and going “nanananan CAN’T HEAR YOU”
Ah fuck. Canada is likely to copycat this, we love copying Australia’s homework. NDP and Cons BOTH already favor this idea except it’s also all 18+ websites. Gov ID to wack off. Puritans are on every wing and I wish we could shake them off.
Wait what? The NDP supports this?!??
Unfortunately. NDP have lost the plot in multiple ways under Singh.
