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This is going to harm kids.
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).
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.
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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.
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Why not just look up how it actually works in the real world instead of hypotheticals
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.
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
Strange that the adults don’t want those benefits for themselves also.
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
Now ban it for over 16s
People should be allowed to do as they please. I think, however, people should be presented with all the potential risks in very clear language if they’re going to, in the same way a pack of cigarettes has a warning, access to social media should present similar disclaimers.
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The difference being you can’t stop a federated protocol. I was being cheeky, but banning or at least regulating algorithm-based social media would do nothing but good for society. User engagement and user safety are directly at odds in a for-profit model.
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.
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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.
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.
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Us right now are on a service that’s totally going to follow this law. /s
Obviously there are workarounds, but I suppose it provides a good justification for parents to deny their kids access to social media.
why would parents need a justification to parent?
Peer pressure is real. Kids get social media accounts way too early because it’s difficult to justify holding off when all of their classmates have them. It causes actual social issues for kids when they are the only one without something. They get bullied etc, so parents are effectively forced to accede. Making it illegal gives parents a reason to say no, which might slow down the uptake.
I’d really like to see a teenager who’d say “yes parent, I’ll not use Instagram because you told me not to”. People who pushed this law are so senile they frankly forgot what teenagers even are.
What? You think every single teenager university disobeys their parents? I know for a fact this isn’t true. There exist responsible teenagers. Even if a teenager is disobedient, the placement of boundaries changes their behaviour.
For something so menial like social media? That’s equivalent of tying your shoelaces in their eyes. I’m willing to bet you real money that this would be <1% of teenagers. If anything, I wouldn’t be surprised if this would have the opposite effect.
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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.
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”
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.
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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?
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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
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even “crash course” alone is enough of a reason to keep YouTube accessible
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?
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What? No! They can have their own age appropriate place to learn and play under supervision.
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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 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:
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.
By virtue of you actually knowing what a firewall is, and participating in the conversation, on this platform, you are ahead of 99 out of 100 people.
True, but I was that one kid who showed all of my friends how to use a VPN to bypass all the restrictions as well, and then they taught their friends.
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.
You don’t (lawfully) ban kids from parts of the library because you are worried they might read about things you don’t like, y…
libraries are carefully curated. Popular “social media” of today is a shit show.
This is the equivalent of banning kids talking to each other at school, on the bus or at the mall/park.
no, it’s not “equivalent” to that at all. Are they banning messengers?
Kids in schools talk through game chat anyways. Are they banning games in Australia?
☞ “Exemptions will apply for health and education services including YouTube, Messenger Kids, WhatsApp, Kids Helpline and Google Classroom.”
this ban is not directed at kids, it’s targeting “big tech”.
So instead of demanding big tech companies monitor their broadcasts, they are banning kids from accessing them, how is that not directed at kids? It is explicitly directed at kids.
it’s illegal to sell alcohol to kids, right? Would you consider that too as “banning kids from accessing them”?
I work with tech security and once a corporate blog post I wrote got from 1,000 monthly views to 100k because kids were looking up proxy tool guides and it was for Roblox lmao
This law is incredibly illiterate
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
So even in perfect scenario where this ban “works” it would still have zero intended effect as teens can consume all of that rubbish but not talk back and can jolly continue any harm on “allowed apps” like wtf is even this supposed to do lmao
ah yea that’ll work
Imagine if this was done around the world. And then imagine how empty the Internet would be.
You don’t need to ban kids from the Internet. You need to ban pedophiles from it.
I strongly disagree.
Social media is terrible for mental health especially for the youth. Phones and tablets help in some areas like motor control development but also hurt other places like attention deficiencies and critical thinking, and very rarely does it lead to a kid learning how technology works (that’s usually from the computer nerds, aka kids who want a computer, doesn’t happen even close to the same rate as smart phones.
Smart phones make people dumb. That’s my opinion. But the above are scientifically backed.
Then parents need to stop using such things as babysitters.
And parents also need to get up in arms about lazy “educators” using tech to make their job easier (instead of making learning more effective, which is the bullshit argument that’s always used).
Parenting is harder than ever, so I don’t blame parents.
Back in the day you would have the mother home all the time, even more recently there was still a strong community in most places and big families meant lots of babysitters.
Nowadays it’s fend for yourself for everybody almost everywhere, so raising a kid properly is almost impossible unless you are rich or have a lot of free time.
While I can see your point I would like to point out that that might excuse problems parents have raising their children but not parents making that everyone else’s problem by insisting the rest of the world is made child-safe somehow.
Most of the technical problems with learning/teaching are actually caused by sticking to outdated 19th century concepts in schools such as having the (by definition average) local teacher explain things instead of someone who actually knows how to explain the subject matter well and pretending that kids need to memorize everything in a modern world instead of incorporating the ability to look up things into the learning process.
Most of the actual major problems with education are caused by funding structures and deliberate sabotage by parts of society who benefit from an uneducated population without critical thinking and research skills.
100% agree. These things get talked up as benefits when they are mostly treated as revenue streams by the seller and distractions by the buyer. Kids and adults. We all need to be way more critical of the tech we use.
The damage to children’s lives done by social media is catastrophic.
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People used to say the same thing about video games. And movies. And even books.
And “banning children”, wait, I mean forcing every adult to verify who they say they are online accomplishes what?
Oh, that’s right, a massive tracking database for any bad actor to use.
If your children get into shit, it’s your fault for not raising them right. I got into some shit as a kid, and had friends that got into more/less shit.
I watched those fuckups raise their kids, and they learned from their own childhood experience and chose to guide their children how to use the internet properly. To understand how it works, the risks, etc.
You can’t bubble wrap the world. The idiots (myself included) will always find a way around such safetyism, and in the process you’ll be harming everyone else.
Are we not already subject to massive tracking databases anyway?
So then it is okay to add another? ;-)
You need to raise kids better instead of delegating that job to the internet.
We can’t rely on the assholes running these site to ban pedophiles. They’d endorse a pedophile president if they thought it would give them less taxes/regulations.
This is a prudent move, we’ve only seen the very beginnings if the sorts of indoctrination and manipulation our kids might be subjected to.
Never thought I’d sound this way, but i can no longer ignore reality.
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.
Huh, I thought all kids immediately say they were born in 1969
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.
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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.
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.
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.
Not a bad idea all things considered
Edit: Save for the “Showing your ID” part, anonymity is healthy for the net and far too rare these days
Some mastodon instance has it covered already. https://eigenmagic.net/@daedalus/113519360107067092
“being angry about inaction on climate change” hahaha
That is both hilarious and a brilliant solution.
Okay, that is fucking awesome. LOL.
