What the government should be doing is mandating that a social media/drugs literacy course is taught in schools. Kids should fundamentally understand that things are not black or white, good or bad; things are grey. They have upsides and downsides; risks and rewards. Kids should be taught that Social media is a great way to connect with your friends, but you are also susceptible to being influenced/manipulated/addicted in X, Y, Z ways.
100% agree. I think it’s a good space for libraries to enter too. Internet literacy, media literacy and critical thinking skills are sorely needed to be taught today.
As if those drug literacy courses helped anyone. We were taught about it aged 12 or something, when nobody really had a clue what drugs are. Around the age where it matters, it was all but forgotten.
i don’t think the always thrown around “more education” is an effective answer to everything
you can educate kids up and down about the harms of smoking- if smoking is advertised as cool in popular media, there are cigarettes with colorful and fruity flavors, and it’s easy for the kids to obtain then they will inevitably smoke cigarettes. everybody has known smoking causes cancer for a half century know.
if you don’t want kids smoking, then you must act with force to restrict something. whether it’s the restriction on subliminal advertising, the ban on colorful cigarettes, or prohibition of selling to underage smokers- you need some sort of ban.
i firmly believe in the near future we will view social media as we know it similar to how we see smoking. addictive little dopamine hits that will over time change the structure of your brain. we look back at the 50s and think it was crazy how they smoked cigarettes on airplanes, drank whiskey at work, and everyone bathed in lead and asbestos. they’re going to look back at our time period and see us similarly
so if I were to say “should kids be using social media?” I wholeheartedly believe they should not be using it until their brains are developed. much like I don’t think kids should be smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, or smoking weed
but the ultimate question is- what are the potential harms of a government ban and are those potential harms worth it?
that’s where I am conflicted. a minor not being able to buy cigarettes is something that I don’t really think hurts society very much.
but a ban on a minor accessing certain online spaces… how do you accomplish that? well, you will need to track people’s identities online somehow. this is the part where I think maybe the harms of kids using social media is not worth giving the government power to monitor and regulate social media websites.
thats a lot of work for the government dude, let them take the easy path
I don’t think there is a technical way to implement this without privacy issues and potential for future misuse and scope creep.
Government doing parenting instead of the parents never works.
I mean, yeah. But also, this isn’t really any different from kids not being allowed to drink alcohol before a specific age, movies and video games having age minima, etc etc.
And I would surmise the same reasoning applies: On average, someone so young has neither the mental development nor the life experience to be able to judge well what they are doing with their own information and how to judge/process the information they get shown.
Of course, this should happen in conjunction with actual education, like I at least had for alcohol and stuff. But it’s an entirely normal thing if it happens as part of a multi-step process (and I am not australian enough to judge how well those things work out in australia in general).
But it IS different. If you compare to alcohol for example, age checks are performed in shops. No record of those is made or available to anyone. There is no centralized infrastructure related to age checks that could be abused in the future to track everyone who buys alhocol.
Yeah but if you think about to, from a law perspective that’s an implementation detail. Sure, from our perspective it’s a really important one, but from the perspective of a lawmaker it’s about whether it should be done, not how it’ll be done in execution (different branches of state, basically).
You are correct that from juridical point of view the difference does not seem great.
Hopefully politicians listen to experts of different fields.
Is anyone talking about the fact that it’s the predatory, short-term-quarterly-gains oriented behavior of the platforms themselves which is in fact rampaging though democracies, massively affecting and survielling Adult’s behaviors on a loop of ragebait-induced dopamine/seratonin manipulation?
Because Kids are going to connect with one another, on whichever the next platform is that’s not banned. What’s more, the institutions they attend will inevitably ask them to do so as…things like Youtube arent exactly 100% avoidable.
Pretty pathetic to clamp down on Youth Liberty in a society that has basically none, when centrally-hosted platforms owned by corporate behemoths are all-but-physically trampling the landscape like some kind of fucked up gentrification-glorifying-voiceline-repeating Megazord
It is easier to enforce access than to enforce ethical algorithm. Sadly, it is not perfect, but it is better than allowing it.
Well we agree but it’s only as much better as it is effective…because when it’s not it’s giving the impression of doing something while in reality it’s legitimizing the stripping of the autonomy.
“best worst case?”
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.
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.
Trusting your face to Facebook is just as terrifying, thanks.
(Plus I have concerns as someone who still looks teenage in her 20s)
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
-
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 otherwise.
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.
it’s not a problem that can be solved by tech.
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.
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.
Now ban parents posting pictures of their children under 16.
I DGAF about your kids.
I DGAF about your kids.
Preach!
One of the craziest wtf moment of my life resulted from an oversharing parent.
At a hot summer day a few years back someone posted a picture of them barbequing in their backyard to our company’s “off topic” teams chat. Nothing unusual. I was over at a friends place so I send back a picture of us sitting in lawnchairs having a beer. In comes the third colleague, first time father with a roughly 1.5 year old at the time. So he posts a picture of his kid running around in his backyard. Completly naked, full frontanl nudity.
It took me a minute to recollect and I messaged him to please take down the picture. I know he didn’t mean any harm and was just sharing his hot-summer-weekend expirence … and he did realise his blunder and took it down. But wtf mate?
After that I immediately googled how to clear my teams’ app image cache …
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.
Frankly, decentralized networks make it even harder to take content down.
Wouldn’t it be easier to take content down if the app was not federated? I don’t know for sure but couldn’t you have a completely private instance only for the people you know?
Sure, if it is already private. But if it is not, then it gets copied to different instances and so if the original post gets removed, it is up to each instance to follow and when.
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
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.
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
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?
In my country they talked about this. And they thought of a different approach.
The government were to emit anonymous digital certificates after validate your identity. And then the websites were only required to validate these anonymous digital certificates.
Or even it was talk that the government could put a certificate validation in front of the affected ip.
So the bussiness won’t have your ip. Only a verification by the government that you are indeed over certain age.
What if I’m also uncomfortable with the tech company knowing what country I’m a citizen of?
They know it already.
IP reveals general location.
Sure, and my IP is something I can control (VPN). I also travel, and I’m certainly not a citizen of each country I visit.
This kind of control tend to be ip based, like cookies in the eu. So if they don’t know they won’t know. And if they know means that they knew. Nothing changes on that regard.
That depends on the law. For example, it’s possible that the US could require Meta to verify ages regardless of nationality, so you the EU (for example) would be subject to it.
I’m not saying that’s how any of these laws work, I’m merely saying that it’s possible. If enough people sidestep the law by using a VPN, I could countries use a heavier hand (e.g. verify everyone or don’t do business here).
I will always oppose these types of laws. I set up my WiFi to connect over a VPN to the next state over because my state has ID laws for porn and social media. It’s annoying and increases latency a bit (only like 10ms), so I’ll oppose them even if I can sidestep them.
ah yea that’ll work
Some mastodon instance has it covered already. https://eigenmagic.net/@daedalus/113519360107067092
Okay, that is fucking awesome. LOL.
That is both hilarious and a brilliant solution.
“being angry about inaction on climate change” hahaha
This is technically feasible, and bussiness don’t need to know your id. If anonymous government certificates are issued.
But I’m morally against it. We need to both educate on the dangers of internet and truly control harmful platforms.
But just locking it is bad for ociety. What happens with kids in shitty families that find in social media (not Facebook, think prime time Tumblr) a way to scape and find that there are people out there not as shitty as their family. Now they are just completely locked to their shitty family until it’s too late.
I’ve said this before, and I’ll keep saying it, we need better terms than “social media.” Tumblr, Reddit, and Lemmy I don’t think should be in the same group as Facebook, Twitter, etc. Social media that uses your real life information should be separate from basically forums that use an online persona.
I don’t know what this legislation says, but I agree with you. It should be limited to restricting the “personal social media,” not glorified internet forums.
I think that the chances of a kid from a broken home finding an exploiter online is much more likely than that kid finding a helpful, supportive community.
Those kids already have exploiters; their parents. The right to communication should be granted to all, and especially the most vulnerable.
They have schools, churches, neighbors, other family, etc etc. There are plenty of organized groups online looking for kids to exploit.
You’re assuming that they’ll find good people online. If they don’t they’ll end up much worse than when they started.
Kids are people and they deserve a chance to try.
I live in New York City. Old timers here remember when 42nd Street was called ‘the Minnesota Strip.’ It got that name because thousands of young people [some as young as 12] would jump on buses and come to New York to live the dream. They’d be met by pimps who routinely patrolled the bus terminal and quickly gathered up as many as they could.
Ok boomer
So, you’re saying my point is relevant, but you’ll ignore it because it involves historical facts?
The fact that people even considered this with a straight face, discussed it and passed it is just indicative how tech illiterate we’ve become.
I don’t know how they are going to do over there.
Here the plan for the same goal is force any social media company to request a digital certificate when entering, or directly overtaking the ip of the social media and force a certificate check to let the user through. This certificates would be expedited by the government to people over certain age.
The haven’t implemented yet, as they were going to start using the system to ban porn for minors and got a lot of backslash.
It’s technologically doable, some kid will always find a way to enter but vast majority will not (next to a bunch of adults that will stop using them because they cannot be bothered with the same system). Moral considerations aside.
It’s technologically doable
I’d disagree here. Sure in theory you could design some system that authenticates every user on every connection but in practice it would be impossible to maintain without complete authoritarian oversight like North Korea. Even closed authoritarian countries fail to achieve this (like Iran or China).
This would cost billions of not trillions in implementation, oversight overhead and economic product loss. That money would be much more effective in carrot approach of supporting mental health institutions and promoting wholesome shared culture, anti bullying campaigns etc.
It’s not a new problem either. We know for a fact that the latter is the better solution and yet here we are…
Come on, this is silly. You can disagree with it politically but technically it would work fine. I already have a digital ID issued by the government for doing online tax returns. Validating a social media account against that ID would be no more difficult than letting people sign in with Google or whatever. There will always technically be a way to get around it but 99% of people won’t bother.
Nah not a good comparison. Once there’s market people will find a way to easily corrupt this. Remember that this is a 3 way interaction: government, private company and private citizen - the opportunities for bypass are basically endless here. You are comparing it with a 2 way market between government and private citizen which has no incentive to break the system.
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.
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.
Huh, I thought all kids immediately say they were born in 1969
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.
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:
What they consider as “social media”? Is it every site where you can communicate with others?
This seems fucked if its so.
While specific platforms haven’t been named in the law, 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.
Youtube: offers Shorts and aggressively markets them at any demo that responds well to Tik Tok, competing for a more toxic comments section with years of experience.
WhatsApp: all the group chats and online bullying that you banned facebook to get away from, 1:1, day of the ban.
Should we identify society root causes and address those? 🤔No. No, it’s the kids who are wrong /s
It’s the parents who are wrong.
Parents shouldn’t allow their kids to use social media until they can handle it. Some kids don’t have issues, whereas others end up experiencing severe depression largely as a result of too much or too little social media exposure. Parents should be the ones responsible here, both for deciding the age and for culpability if they knowingly contribute to problems by either intentionally over or under exposing their children to social media.
But at no point should the government be deciding things like ages, because enforcement would necessitate privacy violations of either the parents (if they need to allow an underage account) of the children. Screw that, let the parents decide and hold them accountable for any abuse.
You are arguing against yourself. In the first paragraph you say that the parents should keep kids from social media.
In the second, you say that it would be a violation of privacy if parents would keep kids from social media.
Kids need policing, it’s going to need to be done by the parents no matter what the laws are. Personally, I don’t think the laws matter much in this regard.
In the first paragraph you say that the parents should keep kids from social media.
Not necessarily. It’s up to the parents to know what their kids can handle.
Keeping kids off social media doesn’t have to be a privacy violation. If you don’t trust your kids to follow the rules, don’t give them access to devices they could use to violate them. If I give my kids access to a device, it’s because I trust them with that device. I don’t put any parental controls on it, either I trust them or they don’t get the device. It’s none of my business what they do with devices I trust them to have.
Kids need discipline and trust, not policing. If they break the rules, discipline them (take devices away and whatnot), but don’t surveil them.
And yeah, the laws don’t matter as written because good parents will help their kids circumvent bad laws. My problem is with the government thinking it has a say in how I raise my children. The government should only step in if there’s abuse, but other than that, they should stick to advising parents by providing high quality research to parents.
I basically agree, with the caveat that Youth Liberation requires buy in from all the adult influences in the Youth’s life and all that follows…yeah otherwise no notes
China Video Game Ban v2.0: Electric Boogaloo
Parents should be parenting, not delegate their responsibilities to a nanny state.
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.
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.
even “crash course” alone is enough of a reason to keep YouTube accessible
but but that requires actually effort and budget that we’d have to take away from Australian oligarchs!
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.
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”
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.
