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on Gopher (inofficial)
(HTM) Visit Hacker News on the Web
COMMENT PAGE FOR:
(HTM) Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban
casey2 wrote 24 min ago:
I could have sworn china did something like this a decade ago, but sure
World first LOL
Havoc wrote 2 hours 52 min ago:
And the UK is pushing for age checks on VPNs [1] >regulations which
prohibit the provision to UK children of a Relevant VPN Service
(the âchild VPN prohibitionâ).
(HTM) [1]: https://bills.parliament.uk/publications/63901/documents/7465
MagicMoonlight wrote 2 hours 23 min ago:
Thatâs a list of random possible amendments which havenât been
agreed.
pookha wrote 3 hours 25 min ago:
This has nothing to do with protecting kids...This is the classic "OH
WONT SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!" meme that governments fall
back on to terrorize and coerce the herd. There's an obvious push by
neo-liberals to implement a digital application (ID) that they can use
to "authorize". What the UK and Australia and the US homeland security
really want is the ability to see a troublemaker and to toggle a switch
on their digital certificate\token to dissociate them from the
internet. No doubt they've got legions of Keycloak systems stood up and
ready.
ProllyInfamous wrote 6 hours 56 min ago:
I was in college when this really cool idea came out: a social network
database which only college students could join, regulating access to
students@*.edu emails, only [obviously: TheFaceBook]. When distant
relatives began sending `friend request`s, just a few years later, I
left that platform forever.
Seems like local school districts could reintroduce such a platform
(perhaps one already exists) for class discussions to continue outside
of the classroom... but without the temptations of the outside world
[which these u16 bans rightfully seek to limit]. Hyper-walled gardens,
actual community-based social spaces, sans predation.
As always, I imagine with the unlimited timelessness of childhood
multiple clever work-arounds will persist, regardless of any law. May
the cat-and-mouse be merry.
superxpro12 wrote 6 hours 22 min ago:
It's interesting that, in almost every proposed solution, there is a
degree of moderation involved. There simply is no way around it.
ProllyInfamous wrote 1 hour 58 min ago:
>there is a degree of moderation involved
Life in moderation, even with tech.
I've used an outbound-only landline, for going on two years; the
previous two decades I always carried a work cell phone. It's
incredible that even years later, if I happen to hear my former
ringtone (used by other people), or hear that familiar `buzzing`
sound: I still get anxious feeling like I must respond to these
ficticious nobodies...
The portability of the cell phone is IMHO what made it so addictive
/ disruptive. Back when most computers didn't fit into our pockets
society had clearly delineated spaces between online/offline â
now everything is connect so nothing is...
oddrationale wrote 7 hours 6 min ago:
A lot of debate here is debating a social media ban. But what actually
being banned is accounts, not access.
Australian teens can still scroll TikTok, Instagram, and watch Twitch
streams from logged out accounts. They just can't comment, like, or
upload their own content.
One might argue that this removes the algorithmic feeds. But I would
wager that social media companies will just use browser fingerprinting
to continue to serve algorithmic content to logged out users, if they
aren't doing this already.
My take. This ruling seems to impact the content creators (from
Australia specifically) more than the content viewers. Which I'm not
sure is the intent of the legislation.
SoftTalker wrote 6 hours 19 min ago:
I don't use social media but from occasionally trying to look at a
link someone has sent me, the experience of viewing these sites
without being logged in is very limited. If you can see anything,
it's maybe one post and then you get a popup demanding that you log
in to see more or view the whole thread.
twiclo wrote 4 hours 17 min ago:
I think they'll loosen that for Australia after this.
pfdietz wrote 7 hours 42 min ago:
This would be a nonstarter in the US. SCOTUS has ruled "minors are
entitled to a significant measure of First Amendment protection."
(Erznoznik v. City of Jacksonville, 422 U.S. 205 (1975)) This sort of
blanket ban would collide with that.
ulrashida wrote 7 hours 33 min ago:
I'm not sure if you've been following, but the current SCOTUS hasn't
seemed to as concerned about upholding precedents as previous courts
have.
random9749832 wrote 8 hours 10 min ago:
It feels like there is more bot activity then ever before. Reddit is
now filled with fresh accounts, suspended accounts and bunch of content
that suddenly gets deleted. It doesn't even feel like you are
interacting with people anymore.
The "social" part is severely decaying.
quitit wrote 8 hours 14 min ago:
I have seen a swift uptick in "Australians" negatively posting on
social media networks about the new restriction.
Notably the central theme presented by these same "Australians" was
that there should be no changes, limits or restrictions to the types of
information collected by social media companies, or how they handle
such personal information, rather that everything should be exactly as
it was... how very convenient.
Some were even so incensed about their personal privacy that they wrote
how much they disagree with having to share their SSN with online
platforms.
As many of you would already know, mentioning a "SSN" is a give away
that the "Australians" are not genuine people. These accounts are
perpetuating the lie that Australians must provide a government
identity to access these services. While an ID can be used, it's not
mandatory and is actually one of the less convenient options, in
comparison to 3rd party verification or a face photo.
Seems a bit of a disingenuous argument to complain about taking a photo
of one's face for verification, but having no qualms about using the
social media network to post photos of oneself for public viewing.
maqnius wrote 9 hours 25 min ago:
Regulating dark patterns and recommendation algorithms would benefit
everyone. Banning social media until age 16 and then suddenly allowing
teenagers into the toxic social media world feels half-baked and
somewhat misses the point to me.
techterrier wrote 9 hours 29 min ago:
HN: social media is as bad as smoking
AUS: we agree, and like smoking, won't be letting our kids do it
NH: but freeze peach!
zulban wrote 7 hours 48 min ago:
HN is not one person.
roschdal wrote 9 hours 40 min ago:
This is a brilliant idea!
alexnewman wrote 10 hours 34 min ago:
My wife did a lot of conversations with kids in Australia. They all
said they hate social media and regularly get harassed by Asian
criminal gangs trying to blackmail them. They support the law cause
they were only there cause they felt they had to be. We freed these
children . The Australian internet is far more dangerous than the USA
exasperaited wrote 10 hours 50 min ago:
Tech people imagining their own preferential boogeyman harms that might
flow from any action intended to reduce the harms of their products.
Again.
fpauser wrote 11 hours 1 min ago:
This is a good thing!
pharrington wrote 11 hours 16 min ago:
Modern social media is worse for our mental health than cigarettes are
for our physical health. This should be a no-brainer.
_pdp_ wrote 11 hours 43 min ago:
Many of us grew up without social media and turned out to be fine!
Anyone arguing against this ban is delusional what social media does to
undeveloped brains. There are plenty of studies to support this as
well.
Social media is harmful to children. We are talking about 10 yo having
access to non-stop stream of inappropriate content for their age. You
can blame the parents but social media is now fact of life that cannot
be so easily escaped.
Like buying alcohol, gambling, driving, voting and other similar things
which are restricted under particular age, the discussion should be
about at what age is safe for children to participate in the public
discourse.
I really hope similar controls are implemented across EU.
ljlolel wrote 12 hours 11 min ago:
It's funny because Facebook and these social networks are always
testing in Australia and New Zealand because it's a whole
English-speaking society but it's a bit isolated and far away.
fithisux wrote 12 hours 21 min ago:
It is exactly like smoking. They use age verification, instead of
banning it.
Because they are deeply involved.
It is not about protecting. It never was.
DeathArrow wrote 12 hours 33 min ago:
If they scare teens of Instagram the danger is some of them will go to
places like 4Chan.
fxwin wrote 11 hours 18 min ago:
i assume 4chan would fall in the age restricted social media category
egorfine wrote 12 hours 51 min ago:
Father of four here.
I will do everything in my power to keep my kids' connected to their
social networks. I have a strongly opposing view: social media is one
of the best inventions and there is no way or need to protect people
from participating.
With all the negative effects they bring the society has to learn how
to live with it instead of pretend fighting.
gverrilla wrote 11 hours 55 min ago:
Send your children to Gaza.
egorfine wrote 11 hours 50 min ago:
Why?
niemandhier wrote 13 hours 50 min ago:
To ostracise means literally to be outed from society.
Most people I know want to keep their kids off social media, but do not
want them to be ostracised.
Given that law, it might now be possible to keep your kids off the
networks.
In my experience, at least for younger teens, itâs a small subset of
kids enabled by their parents that push everybody else into the mouth
of the kraken.
Example from my life:
Kid A has an Instagram account curated by her mum, who is more than
happy to set up all kinds of communities, etc., for the kids in the
class to cite: âfinally be able to better communicate and stay in
touchâ.
Sure, you can keep your kid out, but social isolation is not easy for
teens. Given that law, you could get Insta-mom banned.
wartywhoa23 wrote 13 hours 52 min ago:
The infovacuuming phase of social networks is complete. Training
datasets grabbed, social graphs built, biometry compiled.
Now it's very logical to spin that expensive infrastructure down,
removing free communication channels which can dangerously synchronize
people against the state, and leaving only channels of control: digital
ID, CDBC and a white list of governmental "services", all else
outlawed.
People of 2010s uploaded their personal data into the cloud because
they thought that was cool, people of 2030s will do because their
telescreens demand them so.
Everyone who thinks this will stop at "think about the children" is
beyond all repair.
_petronius wrote 13 hours 39 min ago:
Your sci-fi distopia flash fiction is compelling, but not actually on
topic in this discussion.
"Think of the children" is weaponized for censorious purposes, but
also the harms of social media are well documented (unlike many of
the other moral panics fuelled by this phrase). Communication
channels are becoming managed spaces, but by private companies not
accountable to the electorate, not by the state.
I'm not sure a blanket under-16s ban on all social media is the right
answer, but there are really good reasons why people support this
that you need to engage with to have a useful discussion here.
wartywhoa23 wrote 8 hours 36 min ago:
> Your sci-fi distopia
> to have a useful discussion here
Typical dismissive tactics of a devil's advocate;
> by private companies not accountable to the electorate, not by
the state
This tale about corporations being separate entities from the state
doesn't entertain anymore.
mentalgear wrote 14 hours 6 min ago:
Should have been done 20 years ago, all the millions of miseries that
could have been prevented, if politicians hadn't fallen for the
Zuckerberg/Sandberg narrative.
metacortexx wrote 14 hours 13 min ago:
This is a good start to protect kids! Let's hope it helps families and
makes the internet a better place for everyone.
256_ wrote 14 hours 22 min ago:
A lot of the arguments I see in this thread are about whether modern
mainstream social media are bad for young people. When the debate
becomes about that, it's very easy to defend these types of Orwellian
laws. It becomes "This is a problem, therefore the solution is good",
without questioning the solution itself. I think this type of thinking
is demonstrated, or perhaps exploited, very well by this article (I'm
not implying the WEF is secretly behind everything, I'm just using this
as an example): [1] The first part of that article is an absolutely
scathing, on-point criticism of mainstream social media. I find myself
agreeing with everything said, and then, suddenly, seemingly out of
nowhere, the article pivots to "therefore we need completely 24/7 mass
surveillance of everyone at all times and we need to eradicate freedom
of speech". That article is like a perfect microcosm of this entire
international shift in internet privacy.
People and their governments seem to agree that modern social media is
a problem. The difference is why. The people think it's a problem
because it harms people; governments think it's a problem because they
don't control it.
I think that the root cause of this shift to mass surveillance is that
people in democratic countries still have a 20th-century concept of
what authoritarianism looks like. Mass surveillance is like a novel
disease that democracies don't yet have any immunity to; that's why you
see all these "it's just like buying alcohol" style false equivalences,
because an alarming number of people genuinely don't understand the
difference between normal surveillance and mass surveillance.
(HTM) [1]: https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/01/davos-2025-special-add...
PurpleRamen wrote 10 hours 32 min ago:
> It becomes "This is a problem, therefore the solution is good",
without questioning the solution itself.
This is a very simplified view. The topic has been disputed for
years, and societies has tried to find alternative solutions. But
turns out, there is no other well enough working solution at the
moment, hence the nuclear option. And sometimes that is the only
working option anyway.
Should be noted, this is not a first. Social Media has already been
restricted to various degree for kids of certain ages in several
countries. Australia is just raising the age from the usual 12, 13 up
to 16.
> I find myself agreeing with everything said, and then, suddenly,
seemingly out of nowhere, the article pivots to "therefore we need
completely 24/7 mass surveillance of everyone at all times and we
need to eradicate freedom of speech".
So it's a poor article, so what? These attempts are not new. There
are regularly political attempts pushing towards stricter regulations
and more surveillance. Some work, some not.
> That article is like a perfect microcosm of this entire
international shift in internet privacy.
There is no shift. Those views have always been there, even before
the internet. This is a normal part of societies, including
democratic. There is a constant power-struggle between control and
liberty in any society, and the balance is always shifting depending
on how good or bad certain problems are at that moment.
But a certain thing which is missing here BTW is a complete ban of
all open media, for everyone in all ages and groups. For Government,
kids on social media are not a big problem, that will only bite them
in the decades to come. But people now, today, who are getting
radicalized against the standing order, those are a problem. And
nobody demanding for a ban is good sign for a healthy enough
democracy. Because think about in which countries this is not the
case..
qwery wrote 9 hours 29 min ago:
> So it's a poor article, so what?
I believe their point was to illustrate the disconnect between the
problem and the solution.
They agree with the problem, and experienced "whiplash" when the
solution was described.
> For Government, kids on social media are not a big problem, that
will only bite them in the decades to come.
In Australia the kids on social media are a problem for the
government, today.
A 16 year old is less than two years away from voting.
Successive governments have laughed at the idea of lowering the
voting age to 16 or 17.
The government has very little influence on social media -- this is
different to older forms of media / communication.
denismi wrote 11 hours 40 min ago:
Australia is a Five Eyes country, with carte blanche access to data
that the incumbent social media companies freely share with all the
acronym deep-state authorities.
Could you elaborate further on how preventing a sizeable proportion
of its citizens from communicating through these established
spy-nets, causing them to disperse out to unpredictable alternatives
they might not be able to control, increases mass surveillance?
256_ wrote 11 hours 3 min ago:
That's definitely an interesting argument I haven't seen before.
I suppose it depends on how effective these types of measures
actually are, and also on how many adults refuse to identify
themselves. I would assume governments are more interested in
spying on adults than under-16s, so the adults are probably more
relevant here.
I hope you're right, though. Maybe there'll be a renaissance of
smaller platforms. Probably not, but I can hope.
denismi wrote 8 hours 12 min ago:
This legislation left it entirely up to the service providers to
determine implementation, and so far they don't seem particularly
motivated to disrupt my usage by asking me to prove my age.
My suspicion is that fairly simple heuristics of age estimation,
combined with social graph inspection, are probably enough to
completely disrupt the network effects of "social media" for
kids, and achieve the stated objectives well enough that I never
have to.
Maybe it turns out that I'm wrong, but why even risk it? If the
true policy goal is extending mass-surveillance, why waste so
much political capital on such a round-about approach which might
yield nothing, or even set back your existing capabilities.
MyID (myid.gov.au) already exists, and could easily have been
mandated, or "recommended", or even offered as a means of age
verification now. But it wasn't.
rhubarbtree wrote 14 hours 1 min ago:
Well, no one is suggesting 24/7 surveillance, weâre suggesting
banning children from using social media, as it has demonstrably very
harmful effects on their education and wellbeing.
Itâs not Orwellian. If it were, then not allowing kids to vote or
drink before they become adults would be Orwellian.
We are simply banning kids from a harmful activity until they are old
enough to decide for themselves. The ban has to be at a social level
decided by the democratic process, because thereâs a coordination
problem here: itâs not a harm that can be remedied at the level of
the individual.
The real villains here are the social media companies that have
profited from the misery and manipulation of children, to their
ultimate harm.
I find it hard to believe anyone would argue in good faith against
this ban. In tech circles there are a lot of vested interests that
donât want other governments to protect the children in their
countries from harmful products. Shame on them.
qwery wrote 9 hours 39 min ago:
> I find it hard to believe anyone would argue in good faith
against this ban.
This is a problem. You will not accept an argument against the ban.
Instead you paint anyone presenting any opposition to any part of
it as a stooge of predatory businesses.
> We are simply [...]
It's a simple idea, but the implementation is anything but.
> The real villains here are the social media companies [...]
They're getting out of this easy. You're giving them a free pass.
Tax them. Sue them.
Hold them liable for the content they show users.
Ban social media for children without empowering the social media
companies or the government.
256_ wrote 13 hours 42 min ago:
You've basically just confirmed what I said at the end, that
democracies have no immunity to mass surveillance. 24/7
surveillance may have been an exaggeration but not by much, really.
Age verification, as it exists now, inevitably means mass
surveillance, in particular tying real life identities to political
beliefs and porn preferences on a mass, computerised scale. If
you're too young to remember the Snowden leaks I can maybe
understand why you'd think mass surveillance is not an inevitable
consequence of age verification, but I'm old enough to remember
them, so I think it is. The existence and impact of mass
surveillance seem to be invisible to you.
> Itâs not Orwellian. If it were, then not allowing kids to vote
or drink before they become adults would be Orwellian.
To be clear: What do you think you're refuting? I don't think
children should be on modern social media. I don't think anyone
should be, but especially not children. There are plenty of ways of
going about this. This is why I said:
> A lot of the arguments I see in this thread are about whether
modern mainstream social media are bad for young people. When the
debate becomes about that, it's very easy to defend these types of
Orwellian laws. It becomes "This is a problem, therefore the
solution is good", without questioning the solution itself.
You then claim that the tech industry, and by extension "tech
circles", don't like this because it means they make less money.
I'm not sure how forcing companies whose business model is based on
surveillance capitalism to do even more surveillance would hurt
them, but if it does, it's still not my concern anyway. And
conflating random hackers like me with "big tech" seems to have
become increasingly common recently.
rswail wrote 14 hours 27 min ago:
I'm Australian and just had to age verify on X/Twitter. They used some
app called "selfie" and took a pic and said I was verified. That was
it.
This social media ban is not so much about banning kids from social
media.
It's more about banning social media apps/companies from accessing
kids.
The SM apps are entirely about exploitation of their audiences via
algorithms to push advertising and political positions. That needs to
be stopped.
This is a start.
It's a bit like the bans on under 18 (Australia) drinking without
supervision. We know that the bans aren't "perfect", but they work for
the majority of the time for the majority of the kids.
mk89 wrote 14 hours 29 min ago:
I like this article more: [1] It goes through numbers, potential ways
it's gonna be implemented, and also which other platforms are affected.
For example:
> Dating websites are excluded along with gaming platforms, as are AI
chatbots, which have recently made headlines for allegedly encouraging
children to kill themselves and for having "sensual" conversations with
minors.
It wasn't enough the online pedo or weirdos trying to get your kids
through chats or games.
It wasn't enough the instagram meat grinder that leads to depression,
social anxiety, etc.
Now we even have to worry about chatbots leading kids to suicide.
What a hell of a world are we building - no wonder people don't want to
make kids anymore.
(HTM) [1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyp9d3ddqyo
grahar64 wrote 14 hours 33 min ago:
Social media is cigarettes. There are lots of studies showing the
negative impacts to say that limiting their reach is probably good for
society and individuals.
Just about all arguments against this are the same arguments that would
stop governments limiting booze or tabaco
jdthedisciple wrote 14 hours 51 min ago:
I "endured" the same simply by virtue of my upbringing: our parents de
facto banned not only social media but even just mobile phones until
our mid teens.
Can't say I mourn it, quite the opposite.
So, good move by our Aussie friends.
verisimi wrote 15 hours 3 min ago:
Is this dystopian enough yet?
random9749832 wrote 8 hours 30 min ago:
Dystopian is hijacking your mind using recommendation algorithms.
yason wrote 15 hours 50 min ago:
How are they going to verify it's not some kid telling he's 18 with a
fake picture? Demand a photo of driver's license? Got one here, right
out borrowed from dad's pocket. The article also mentions inferring age
from the usage which sounds as vague as it is.
The counter point is that doesn't this basically mean everyone,
including adults, now has to identify in order to use social media?
Without a national electronic ID where personal data never leaves
government's systems (they've already got it) and the social network
just receives a yes/no bit when they ask "is this person old enough?"
this would mean a huge amounts of identification data would be
willingly and voluntarily "leaked" to foreign private services. Scan
your passport and send it to China in order to use TikTok?
This mass identification process could either make also large groups of
adult people leave social media sites or condition people to upload
their ID data to whatever site happens to ask for it.
eimrine wrote 15 hours 36 min ago:
I am not protecting non-FOSS practices but you can not register on
crypto cx by just showing some papers with not showing your fare.
That answers the fake picture case.
eimrine wrote 16 hours 11 min ago:
Please explain me anybody, why not to ban any software which is not
FOSS? It will lead to the world I want to live in. Banning just social
media just for kids makes the Government to do too much for us - D E C
I D I N G who is a kid and what is a social media.
It is similar to the tax approach - it is not bad that we are paying
taxes, what is bad that the Government implies how to count the taxes.
firefoxd wrote 16 hours 13 min ago:
I'm all for keeping kids away from social media. My main concern is how
we verify that they are under 16 [0].
> showing my ID [in person] was a simple, controlled transaction: one
person looked at it for three seconds, handed it back, and forgot about
it. The information never left that moment. But online, that same
verification process transforms into something far more risky. A
digital journey through countless servers, databases, and third-party
services, each one a potential point of failure.
> What appears to be the same simple request "please verify your
identity", becomes fundamentally different when mediated by technology.
The question isn't whether these digital systems will be compromised,
but when. And unlike that movie theater clerk who can't perfectly
recall my birthdate minutes after seeing it, computers have perfect
memory. They store, copy, backup, and transmit our most sensitive
information through networks we don't control, to companies we've never
heard of, under policies we'll never read.
[0]:
(HTM) [1]: https://idiallo.com/blog/your-id-online-and-offline
waterTanuki wrote 16 hours 20 min ago:
I'm in favor of banning all social media for under 18s.
I'm heavily against any form of mandatory form of identification for
using non-government online-services.
Is it even possible to do the former without doing the later?
insane_dreamer wrote 16 hours 25 min ago:
I wonder how many of the people who are against it have young teens.
It's easy to rail against the ban, or paint it as some plot to get
everyone's IDs, when you're not personally affected by it. As a parent
of young teens, I 100% support it.
chocoboaus3 wrote 16 hours 32 min ago:
Including youtube is where it became stupid, even teachers pushed back
against that
Mikhail_Edoshin wrote 17 hours 41 min ago:
One purpose of laws us that they clearly state: this is good and this
is bad. Many such barriers are cultural, but sometimes they do not work
or are actively attacked, so they may be backed with a law.
t1234s wrote 17 hours 52 min ago:
Did they publish a list of what they consider social media sites? If
you are 15 and active on GitHub is this now considered against the law?
Duwensatzaj wrote 17 hours 34 min ago:
Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, X, YouTube, Reddit, Twitch and
Kick.
GitHub is not included, nor is Discord.
nntwozz wrote 18 hours 48 min ago:
Society is like poorly written software with lots of patches, new
features are added (social media) and then stuff randomly breaks. A fix
is eventually deployed, sometimes the fix works; sometimes the fix
causes more bugs.
And so we move forward, like Gordon Freeman in unforeseen consequences.
Nobody said nothing as social media and the attention economy took over
the world.
"Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they
didnât stop to think if they should.â â Ian Malcolm, Jurassic
Park
nromiun wrote 18 hours 58 min ago:
Everyone supporting this in the comments deserves to live under CCP
style internet censorship.
gorgoiler wrote 19 hours 17 min ago:
Itâs worth calling this by its other name: the taking away of
anonymity and pseudonymity.
To date, proving you are old enough is almost always (over-)implemented
by having to reveal your legal identity and the exact date you were
born.
If the whole world goes down the route of AV / age-bans then I hope we
at least get some kind of escrow service where you visit an official
office, prove your age to a disinterested public official, and then
pick a random proof-of-age token out of a big bucket. The bucketâs
randomness is itself generated when it was filled up with tokens at the
Department of Tokens, and maintained by a chain of custody.
You could do it on polling day: ballot boxes get sent out to polling
stations filled with tokens and get sent back filled with ballot
papers, with the whole process watched by election monitors. Now
everyone has (a) voted (b) picked up a proof of age/citizenship token.
It would improve turnout, though I believe thatâs already mandatory
in Australia.
triceratops wrote 7 hours 31 min ago:
Another proposal to achieve anonymity, similar to yours:
(HTM) [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46223051
sothatsit wrote 17 hours 18 min ago:
We already have digital IDs in Australia, and it seems like a natural
fit for this. The digital ID doesn't need to share much information
with social media companies, it just needs to confirm your age. And
then we don't need new 3rd-parties holding our personal information.
Also yes, voting is mandatory in Australia. You get a small fine if
you don't vote.
ulrashida wrote 7 hours 30 min ago:
It's a very good system. $20 is the right number to get you off
the couch, but not so much as to cripple you. There are exceptions
if you have a valid reason for not voting. The maximum fine is
~$180 so you can't simply ignore the Elections Commission and hope
it goes away.
WhyNotHugo wrote 19 hours 23 min ago:
I've not seen any mention of how this affect families.
A lot of my family growing up lived in different cities. We kept in
touch via social media. PSTN was expensive and impractical. Postal mail
was obviously less practical.
Does this new ban move kids to using email to keep in touch with
friends and family? Are they now completely isolated from the rest of
the world?
brailsafe wrote 19 hours 17 min ago:
> Does this new ban move kids to using email to keep in touch with
friends and family?
You had social media but no ability to send DMs?
In an attempt to not deliberately misinterpret you, next to zero of
my current ability to keep in touch with anyone in my life via the
internet, distant or otherwise, depends on social media, so forgive
me if this seems like a strange take. Kids need access to YouTube in
order to talk to their family?
> Are they now completely isolated from the rest of the world?
It's only in extremely recent history that anyone, especially kids,
had access to the rest of the world in any meaningful way, or at the
resolution available now. I don't think it's remotely healthy for
adults to concern themselves with the hourly regional issues wherever
they're occuring in the world; it costs society a great deal more
than it earns imo (but it's very profitable for the companies on this
list)
WhyNotHugo wrote 10 hours 37 min ago:
> In an attempt to not deliberately misinterpret you, [â¦] Kids
need access to YouTube in order to talk to their family?
Your attempt has failed; obviously Iâm not taking about YouTube,
but about things like WhatsApp, Telegram, WeChat, Instagram, and
other social media which families actually use to talk to each
other on a dialy basis.
Perhaps you donât use these, but most of the world population
uses some of these (or something similar) to keep in touch with
family and friends.
Heck, even when I was a teen (before smartphones) I kept in touch
with friends over social media. Weâd even organise meeting up
through it.
brailsafe wrote 1 hour 46 min ago:
Seems like you're conflating chat with social media. If we throw
out the posts and dopamine abuse I don't think we lose much.
BlueTemplar wrote 6 hours 17 min ago:
Out of all of those, only Instagram is on the list (or I have
heard has complied despite not being on it).
You seem to be confusing messaging software and social media ?
Do (the others than Instagram) have an algorithmic feed, or
(effectively) do not work without making an account ?
I guess that there's also Discord (that isn't on the list but has
still complied) that is in an awkward in-between ?
(IMHO both Instagram and Discord ought to be banned anyway, for
everyone, because they're deep web platforms that are owned by
Meta/Tencent, and are therefore a threat to the open web and
liberal democracy.)
reassess_blind wrote 19 hours 46 min ago:
Iâm concerned this will drive teens to dodgy apps and services that
have lax data security and no oversight.
tjpnz wrote 20 hours 0 min ago:
This is what happens when there's a lack of robust options for parents
to deal with the issue themselves. As a technical person I can prevent
my kids from accessing these apps on any of their devices, regardless
of whether they're at home or not. But if you're a parent who is not
you're pretty much limited to the flawed offerings from Apple and
Google, who are financially incentivized to make it as hard and as full
of holes as possible.
CommenterPerson wrote 20 hours 4 min ago:
Yay for the Aussie government. Hope the sociopath tech bros take notice
and clean up their toxic products. And the little tech bros protesting
here.
The Aussies passed strict gun control laws in 1996 .. suicides and
homicides decreased significantly. Another field where we Leaders of
the Free world (or not) can learn from the "World down under"!
jaimex2 wrote 20 hours 24 min ago:
HackerNews used to be full of moderately smart people. This is
basically Reddit level comments.
Think for a moment instead of just accepting whatever the media is
telling you to think.
How many social networks are there?
Are some of those decentralised?
Will kids move to unmoderated underground ones in response to this?
Will the government expand these laws now that it achieved a foothold?
Parenting and teaching your kids to think and understand how the world
works is how you really solve the problems. Not building weak fences
and encouraging government over-reach. Raising and guiding your kids is
YOUR responsibility, not the governments.
All this came about because some absolute slog of a parent had their
kid kill themselves and blamed social media. Where the hell was he
while their kid struggled?!
yunnpp wrote 19 hours 49 min ago:
Obviously you have no kids or live in a remote cabin isolated from
society.
Banning social media in principle is like banning the sales of
alcohol and other drugs to underage people. Those bans are good for
society irrespective of your parenting ability. It helps that those
negative things are less accessible to the vulnerable.
Now, how the social media ban is effected in practice is a different
point. And people here are rightfully skeptical of ID verification
and such things, since that opens the door for way more surveillance
outside social media.
stevefan1999 wrote 20 hours 27 min ago:
That wasn't world first, the world first is China
koopuluri wrote 20 hours 34 min ago:
i agree there are a lot of concerns with allowing teens / children to
use social media as it is today without any sort of way to help them
benefit from these tools instead of being harmed by them (which is
sadly far too common).
but my concern is that will lead to a less educated population. there
is positive, life changing learning that can happen on social media.
kids finding their tribe by connecting with people like them in other
parts of the country / world. kids discovering skills / crafts they
become passionate about. heck, even learning how to communicate
effectively with others. i think social media is a treasure when it is
used correctly.
ofc, i agree with the concerns and ofc the right "solution" is one that
enables the positives and minimizes (and ideally eliminates) the
negatives. and having social media as a closed, proprietary,
centralized product that can't be tweaked (e.g, choose your own
custom algorithm, or filter out a "type" of content that you don't want
to see, etc.) is the core problem here. a decentralized social media
would allow even regulators to apply much more fine-grained controls so
that they don't have to remove access entirely.
but sadly bec. we don't have a good way to apply fine grained controls
to how we use social media, it seems blanket banning entirely for an
entire group of people is the best approach. like, i get why it may be
necessary (it seems like most / many australians are currently on
board), but i really hope this inspires people to build better social
platforms that give more control to users.
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote 20 hours 53 min ago:
It will be interesting to see how this pans out. I think many in tech
are afraid that this will lead to a positive outcome.
mrweasel wrote 7 hours 30 min ago:
Really, I think most people in tech generally believe that getting
teens of social media will be a positive thing. The question is how
to go about it.
It's understandable, to some extend, that people will protest
government interference, but it's also an industry that have
repeatedly show itself to be incapable of regulation itself. I don't
really see the big surprise, most government are relatively hands of,
until you prove that you're incapable of regulating yourself. Most
regulation happens after the damage is done.
I do think that 16 is a bit low, I'd like to have seen it be 18, or a
complete ban on algorithmically generated feeds (I believe the latter
would be the better option).
squigz wrote 20 hours 28 min ago:
I'm afraid that this will lead to no change to the issues it purports
to fix, and then we'll... do nothing with that information.
beached_whale wrote 20 hours 54 min ago:
We really need the age verification standards to catch up. I think
there was stuff in the works, but something like OAuth that doesn't
require the two third parties to know about each other and the
browser/client is in the middle.
whywhywhywhy wrote 9 hours 39 min ago:
The age check push isnât about checking ages itâs about linking
IRL identity to account.
beached_whale wrote 5 hours 21 min ago:
Yes and no, it depends. But that the standards/services don't
exist is more an issue as it prevents doing it correctly and
safely. Most websites that will/already need to verify someones
age are not capable of doing so safely.
whywhywhywhy wrote 36 min ago:
Yes and yes, look at the rollout, within weeks it's got through
in multiple countries across continents. There is nothing organic
about this, it's being pushed and bribed into existence.
kybernetikos wrote 21 hours 4 min ago:
I think a better approach might be to require that any algorithm used
to suggest content to users must be made open source so that people
whose world views are being shaped by the content you're feeding them
can analyse how you're deciding what to show them.
I feel like there's definitely a problem here with social media and its
effect on society, but our first approach should be to increase
transparency and accountability, rather than to start banning things by
force of law.
Bad_Initialism wrote 21 hours 10 min ago:
To all the parents defending this: you are responsible for your
children and what they do.
Passing laws that affect all of us because you are too lazy and
ineffectual to raise your children properly is unacceptable.
stein1946 wrote 19 hours 57 min ago:
> To all the parents defending this: you are responsible for your
children and what they do.
Stop delegating action to the individual.
Me and missus are full time employees, I do not have oversight to
what my kid is doom-scrolling on his lunch break.
> Passing laws that affect all of us because you are too lazy and
ineffectual to raise your children properly is unacceptable.
How does it affect you? Unless you are a corporate mouthpiece this
does not affect you at all.
I do not want my kid to watch any degenerate pornography on his
formative years just because some lobbyist wants to shove
freemarketeering ideologies down our throats.
beached_whale wrote 20 hours 4 min ago:
This completely negates the nuance and social pressures and sounds
like you just want to be edgy. The network affects are huge and
others like teachers and clubs are pushing these services as a means
of communication instead of using, other, safer services. There is
no choice if one wants to be a part of society currently.
brikym wrote 20 hours 44 min ago:
The topic is very nuanced. Social media is bad but so are the
authoritarian actors wanting more and more control over everything.
The government control aspect is a huge concern of mine too but it's
already well covered here so I want to go over the reasons it might
be a good idea.
Yes this is true parents are responsible for their kids but it's also
true that the village a kid lives in actually influences the kid more
than their parents. So it's up to the parents to choose a good
village. If every village has the same global social media apps then
obviously that's more difficult and not a pit of success. Keep in
mind most parents also have a shitload of other stuff to do
especially with inflation requiring two incomes to operate a
household.
Individualist types don't seem to get the whole village thing at all.
It's hyper-individualism with no acknowledgement that we DO affect
other people with our actions. Pollute as much as you like, fly noisy
planes, drive oversized killer-SUVs. Let every company do what it
wants because free market competition and better technology, or
something. We're actually social animals and our happiness has a lot
to do with how we stack up socially. Hence if just one kid has a
device the other kids get jealous and want to keep up; The obvious
answer is to enforce a culture of no-phones. But that would take a
some agreement so a individualists don't like it.
presentation wrote 21 hours 4 min ago:
I disagree. Itâs easy to say this from your armchair, but when your
kid is the one kid not on social media because youâre such an
righteous parent, and that kid is getting bullied by all the other
kids for not knowing whatâs going on in TikTok or Insta, you start
seeing this as a problem that requires the coordination of large
numbers of people who you may or may not know, many of whom are kids
who lack executive function.
If you just disdain children in general, you can go ahead and say
that instead.
rjdj377dhabsn wrote 20 hours 21 min ago:
Maybe you should move to a community that shares your values rather
than getting the state to impose those values on everyone.
presentation wrote 19 hours 42 min ago:
In fact the majority of the electorate in Australia supports
this, so that is exactly where youâd go to be in a community
that shares your values. Social media has an addictive and
infectious nature, even people who hate it end up using it
because of the crippling network effects.
sunaookami wrote 12 hours 5 min ago:
>the majority of the electorate in Australia supports this
because they don't know the consequences and the question that
was asked was literally "should kids be banned from social
media?". You can bet the opinion will shift when more and more
sites demand age verification and sending government IDs to
random websites. It will also be widened to more than just the
big social media sites, let's not kid ourselves.
latency-guy2 wrote 18 hours 50 min ago:
I look forward to the Great Australian firewall, maybe they can
contain themselves without infecting the rest of the world.
brikym wrote 20 hours 42 min ago:
Agreed. Individualists don't understand how people actually don't
have much free will and decisions are mostly influenced by culture.
Having an anything goes culture is a massive head wind.
energy123 wrote 20 hours 26 min ago:
> influenced by culture
And by prisoner's dilemma / double bind type phenomenon, such as
being forced to choose between being a social outcast, or to be
on social media. That double bind would not exist if you nuke the
whole thing. The libertarian theory of the world does not have
such phenomenon within its descriptive aperture.
macinjosh wrote 21 hours 46 min ago:
Wake me up, when September ends.
kledru wrote 21 hours 54 min ago:
unlike me, these young people might even be able to travel to the
United States one day...
gus_massa wrote 21 hours 57 min ago:
Next election is in 2028, so 15 an 16 y.o. will be able to vote. I
expect a strong preference in that group, but IIUC Australia has single
seat per district, so I'm not sure if that changes the result.
ropable wrote 22 hours 8 min ago:
I fully support this legislation, and government regulation around this
topic. Given the current (2025) state of the social media landscape, I
believe that the positives of restricting access to them for teenagers
well outweighs any potential harms.
As the parent of a teenager affected by this ban (plus one who has aged
past it): I wish that it had been in place 8-10 years ago, before
either of my kids got smartphones. We tried to be reasonably
conservative in their introduction to devices and social media, on the
rationale that it would do them no harm to delay using those for a
couple of years through their early brain development. The real
difficulty turned out to be the network effect of their peers having
access to social media, which increased the social pressure (and
corresponding social exclusion) to be online. Not having access to
Snapchat/Discord/etc. at that point meant that they were effectively
out-group, which is a Big Deal for a teenager.
We ended up allowing them onto social media platforms earlier than we'd
have liked but imposed other controls (time and space restrictions, an
expectation of parental audits, etc.) These controls were imperfect,
and the usual issues occurred. My assessment is that it was a net
negative for the mental health of one child and neutral for the other.
I realise that HN is primarily a US forum and skews small-government
and free-speech-absolutist. I'm not interested in getting in a debate
with anyone about this - my view is that most social media is a net
negative with a disproportionate harm to the mental health of
non-fully-developed teenage brains. This represents a powerful
collective-action failure that is unrealistic to expect individuals to
manage, so it's up to government to step in. All boundaries are
arbitrary, so the age of 16 (plus this set of apps) seems like a
reasonable set of restrictions to me. I am unmoved by the various
"slippery slope" arguments I've read here: all rules are mutable, and
if we see a problem/overreach later - we'll deal with it in the same
way, by consensus and change.
grvdrm wrote 5 hours 11 min ago:
Did you also find the intro negative for your own mental health in
the sense that you had to bother thinking at all about it?
Feels like a huge component to me as a parent. What do I now need to
know and do and react to, and how does my behavior affect the mental
health of my kids.
fortydegrees wrote 8 hours 58 min ago:
Thanks for sharing your opinion.
I strongly disagree with this legislation and have found it hard to
'steelman' the other side, which your comment/opinion does well. I
found it very informative so just wanted to share my appreciation for
you posting it here.
akersten wrote 21 hours 4 min ago:
So, you haven't identified any actual problems with them being on
social media though. For example, were this lament that parenting is
hard written 50 years ago:
> As the parent of a teenager affected by this ban (plus one who has
aged past it): I wish that it had been in place 8-10 years ago,
before either of my kids got introduced to Rock n' Roll. We tried to
be reasonably conservative in their introduction to music and lyrics,
on the rationale that it would do them no harm to delay using those
for a couple of years through their early brain development. The real
difficulty turned out to be the network effect of their peers having
access to Rock n' Roll, which increased the social pressure (and
corresponding social exclusion) to be dealing with vinyl. Not having
access to The Stones, AC/DC, etc. at that point meant that they were
effectively out-group, which is a Big Deal for a teenager.
> We ended up allowing them a radio earlier than we'd have liked but
imposed other controls (time and space restrictions, an expectation
of parental audits, etc.) These controls were imperfect, and the
usual issues occurred. My assessment is that it was a net negative
for the mental health of one child and neutral for the other.
I'm being a bit facetious here but my point is that everyone who is
in support of this kind of Parenting-as-a-Service is not identifying
any real issue the government should concern itself with. Just that
kids are doing something new and sometimes scary and gosh it's just
hard being a parent when they don't listen.
h4ny wrote 17 hours 54 min ago:
> I'm being a bit facetious here...
Maybe just don't do that? It's never helpful in good-faith
discussions and just indicates a lack of empathy and maybe a lack
of understanding of the actual issue being discussed.
> So, you haven't identified any actual problems with them being on
social media though.
The problems GP raised seem pretty clear to me. Could gives us some
examples of what you would consider to be "actual problems" in this
context?
> Just that kids are doing something new and sometimes scary...
Any sane parent wouldn't send their kids to learn to ride a bicycle
on the open road and without any supervision. You'd find a park or
an empty lot somewhere, let them test it out, assess their ability
to deal with potential dangers and avoid harming others at the same
time, and let them be on their own once they are able to give you
enough confidence that they can handle themselves most of the time
without your help.
The problem with today's social media for children is that that
there is no direct supervision or moderation of any kind. Like many
have pointed out, social media extends to things like online games
as well, and the chance that you will see content that are
implicitly or explicitly unsuitable for children is extremely high.
Just try joining the Discord channels of guilds of any online game
to see for yourself.
Not all things new and scary come with a moderate to high risk of
irreparable harm.
ropable wrote 18 hours 26 min ago:
Sigh, I'll bite (even though I know I shouldn't, and it's
pointless).
> So, you haven't identified any actual problems with them being on
social media
Anonymous cyber bullying (multiple times), performative social
exclusion (multiple times), anonymous death threats (twice),
deepfake porn with their faces spliced in (twice).
Your straw-man example is absurd and TBH it comes across as
patronising. I'm trying to avoid assumptions, but it reads like
someone who hasn't needed to grapple with this issue personally as
a primary carer. Apologies if that isn't the case; everyone has
their own view for what parenting should be.
Somehow we've seen fit (as a society) to regulate the minimum age
for sex & marriage, obtaining alcohol, acquiring a vehicle licence,
etc. We (as a society) recognise that there are good & bad
tradeoffs to these activities and have regulated freedoms around
these (primarily via age). Somehow, our society hasn't
spontaneously regressed into North Korea.
AuthAuth wrote 20 hours 28 min ago:
Its not parenting as a service. Its not even in the same world as
rock in roll. Do you think its ok to have smoking, gambling and sex
ads shown on tv during the afterschool 3pm-5pm timeslot? Social
media is effectively that x100 because TV ads followed advertising
restrictions.
On social media kids will be subjected to undisclosed advertising
for all kinds of products legal and illegal. They will be directly
targeted and manipulated into real world harm situations and mental
manipulation into harmful mindsets.
Most of this cannot be prevented by "being a watchful parent". If
your kid watches andrew tate and you see and put a restriction
youtube will recommend them a tate adjacent channel or one of the
1million alts that posts clips. Same for tiktok, X and
Instagram.The only control you have is to ban them from using the
platform which is a roundabout way of achieving the same thing.
eimrine wrote 15 hours 30 min ago:
Being a watchful parent is neither required nor enough. Being a
witful parent is another thing. Try not to ban some digital
goolags but to show the real beauty of the world which makes
these disservices looking miserable in teen's eyes.
gverrilla wrote 22 hours 17 min ago:
Full support.
steve_taylor wrote 22 hours 21 min ago:
The real news is that age verification will be required to use a search
engine from the 27th. This has flown completely under the radar because
of the social media ban.
Initially, it will only be required if you're logged in. Obviously that
won't be effective, so the next logical step would be to require that
everyone logs in to use a search engine.
(HTM) [1]: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-11/age-verification-search...
osculum wrote 22 hours 8 min ago:
That's your reading of the situation, and far from logical to
everyone else.
SpaceManNabs wrote 22 hours 29 min ago:
Anything done "for the kids" is always a scam. When you get asked to
use KYC to get on hacker news, just remember you fell for it if you
supported this.
poplarsol wrote 22 hours 46 min ago:
Every concern about "teens" is explicitly mirrored by a concern about
low-capacity adults, which is why Australia et al are so concerned
about "disinformation" and the need to control speech of all kinds.
This effort should be seen in that light.
shirro wrote 22 hours 46 min ago:
So far from my experience this has been kind of low impact for adult
users with existing accounts. Social media companies obviously have
extremely good demographic data on their existing users as targeted
marketing and influence is their core business.
Unfortunately this legislation hasn't addressed any of my real concerns
with social media (it's the algorithms and engagement farming) and it
is creating new problems.
cjpartridge wrote 23 hours 11 min ago:
Absolute joke, most Australian parents will just ID for the kids, if
the kids don't figure out how to get around it themselves, especially
the typical ipad-kids and their parents.
The average Australian punter is getting absolutely screwed by our
current government and all involved parties.
delis-thumbs-7e wrote 23 hours 15 min ago:
So-called social media is proven to be just a huge scam operation and
manipulation mechanism for the ultra-rich robber barons at Silicon
Valley. Denying it from kids is same as denying tobacco or alcohol
companies sell amd advertise to them. Hopefully future generations have
spend their childhood reading, studying and socialising with other
kids, not living fake lives and being hunted by slimy adult men.
Hopefully they take a one look at this shot and go ânope, not for
meâ and do something with their lives.
Good for you Australia. I hope EU follows suit soon.
timoth3y wrote 23 hours 26 min ago:
I think if we are going to ban people under 16 from social media, we
should also ban people over 70 from social media.
At least as much mental and societal damage is done by elderly falling
for bigoted, scammy, manipulative nonsense online than by teenagers
having their self-esteem lowered.
As recent holiday gatherings have shown us, the young handle social
media far better then the elderly.
/s
Nevermark wrote 23 hours 30 min ago:
I grew up without television. We had a TV until I was 7, but it was
never left on, and I was rarely allowed to watch it.
When I was 9 we had a cheap TV for about 3 months and it broke. Family
decided we didn't need one.
At 36 I got a TV for a couple years. My kids watched Blue's Clues, etc.
At 38, I again got a TV for a couple years. Then decided dumb late
night shows were not helping the insomnia, so cancelled cable, but
started streaming HBO.
Since then, I have enjoyed high quality streaming series on occasion.
But no live TV, no TV "news", and strictly avoid anything with ads.
When I see a live TV on, with the strange voices and non-logic of ads,
and the bizarre posturing they call "news", I get a little sick. Even
"nature" and "history" shows have strange pacing and repetition. The
transparent sucking sound of ads needing tamed attention-providers
warps everything.
I think being sheltered from regular TV, TV ads, and TV news, has been
tremendously positive for my mind and life.
Not being exposed to "social" media sites, which are often not actually
social, and often unhealthy when they are, is a great win. Quality can
sometimes survive in rare small social-conversation sites, not driven
by ads or agenda.
akersten wrote 20 hours 43 min ago:
> I think being sheltered from regular TV, TV ads, and TV news, has
been tremendously positive for my mind and life. Not being exposed to
"social" media sites, which are often not actually social, and often
unhealthy when they are, is a great win.
Incredibly, you were able to do that without the government's help! I
suppose people just aren't built the same these days, so we need laws
instead of letting people decide on their own.
Nevermark wrote 17 hours 58 min ago:
Without commenting specifically on Australia's approach, I think it
does make sense to have some laws for children.
But I would prefer that surveillance-manipulation based practices
be made illegal first. That would remove a lot of the means, and a
lot of profits, from manipulating people via feeds, warped
searches, and a host of other ways and uses for digging into, and
leveraging, people's idiosyncrasies and vulnerabilities against
them.
Dossier's on children, resulting in manipulative feeds for them are
bad. But it is a bad practice for everyone. One of those deceptive
business practices, that gets claimed to be not deceptive, because
the deception is "out in the open".
Fraud doesn't have an "everyone is doing it" defense. Neither
should surveillance-manipulation practices.
It isn't just a case of individuals, who need to be "saved from
themselves". Our society, as permeated with surveillance and
manipulation, has become permeated with "personalized" media driven
dysfunction. We all have to put up with the bullshit it creates,
and divisiveness it magnifies. Dystopian.
AI slop would be less effective, and less promoted, if there wasn't
a surveillance dossier to customize who saw what. People don't like
it now. Getting non-"personalized" slop? That would create exactly
the intense pushback that is needed.
--
My ad free life, and ad-funded media free life, has left me utterly
disgusted with manipulative social media. When people mount a
defense of keeping it legal, it makes me very sad for their quite
visibly slowly boiling brains. The practices are clearly both
highly unethical and toxic.
(I am all for social media as a service/resource. I don't even mind
ads (too much), when they are placed to match content, not the
consumer. Just not when both are irreversibly compromised by
massive tech scaled conflicts of interest.)
macleginn wrote 23 hours 32 min ago:
Makes one wonder if/how quickly they will come for closed WhatsApp
groups and Telegram channels next.
nish__ wrote 23 hours 56 min ago:
I support it.
justatdotin wrote 1 day ago:
I enjoy participating in wildly diverse online communities and I hate
censorship.
I have seen the way heavy social media use changes some peoples
personalities. it's scary. these platforms don't just home communities:
they're engines, with tendencies. including numerous ways in which
these platforms are implicated in youth suicide.
I am absolutely convinced that children should be discouraged from
these engines just as they should be discouraged from alcohol.
I totally recognise that if that means these platforms demand proof of
ID, that changes their privacy profile and some people will choose to
stop participating.
perhaps this can offer some stimulus for other ways of online community
forming. Thanks everyone here: I've participated in a few online
conversations about the topic this week, and this is the only
interesting one :)
notepad0x90 wrote 1 day ago:
I support this greatly. But I think instead of debating whether this
makes sense or not, or speculating, let's consider that it is already
in effect and consider it an experiment. Let's see how Australia is
doing in 10 or 15 years, will those kids be resentful or regret the ban
when they're 30?
Extremes are bad on either end. unrestricted internet access, even to
those who can't defend themselves against harmful content is an
extreme, some balance is long due. Since most other western countries
chose to risk their kids in the name of liberty, let's wait and see
whose trade off works out for the best instead of speculating what will
or won't happen.
I wish more countries would experiment like this, and even more
countries would learn.
You can't argue for UBI or drug decriminalization because some country
experimented and succeeded and then oppose this sort of stuff. In the
US, states are supposed to experiment with laws like this, but they
don't have enough power to regulate interstate communication or
commerce.
morgengold wrote 1 day ago:
I am so glad a country finally took action. Can't wait to see data on
its effects. At this point in time I lost interest in nuanced
discussions about the details here. We are in one big experiment and it
might end in catastrophy. We need counter experiments and hard data
fast.
roguecoder wrote 1 day ago:
I feel like just making kids lie about our age was pretty effective
back in the day. Those of us who lied knew we were going into adult
spaces, hid our irl identities, and learned how to behave.
Then Facebook convinced people social media was supposed to be about
your "real" identity, which made us sitting ducks for scammers and
propaganda. Now we have governments demanding we provide our identity
papers before we are allowed to participate.
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote 1 day ago:
Alternative to archive.md, archive.ph
Text-only: [1] [2] echo
url=https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/world/asia/australia-social-medi
a-ban-under-16.html \
|curl -K/dev/stdin -Agooglebot > 1.htm
firefox ./1.htm
links -dump 1.htm|sed -n '/Effect/,/region./p'
More [3]
(HTM) [1]: https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1S3fVC/
(HTM) [2]: https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1S2nVb/
(HTM) [3]: https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1S5G8h/
(HTM) [4]: https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1S5sYp/
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote 6 hours 59 min ago:
No CAPTCHAs
philipwhiuk wrote 10 hours 0 min ago:
Your script broke.
echo
url=https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/world/asia/australia-social-me
dia-ban-under-16.html \
|curl -K/dev/stdin -Agooglebot > 1.htm
firefox ./1.htm
links -dump 1.htm|sed -n '/Effect/,/region./p'
aussieguy1234 wrote 1 day ago:
A bunch of people in local LGBT community Discord servers that marked
themselves as NSFW have been locked out of those servers and now need
to prove their age to get back in.
These communities already had active mods that would remove anyone
underage that they found, so it doesn't really make sense in this case
that Discord is now requiring them to prove their ages.
Meanwhile kids are finding ways around the ban. Kids are asking their
older looking friends to pass facial scans for them.
rarisma wrote 1 day ago:
now do the rest of the world
0x_rs wrote 1 day ago:
An absurd decision with dangerous second order effects, many of which
lead to VPNs and other privacy tools being next, just look at UK hyping
and building that up right now. I hope they will vote accordingly when
they're of age, not forgetting what liberties were taken away from them
in the name of very dubious benefits, easily circumvented, and prone to
exposing them to greater danger going through unofficial channels.
Trying to really address the issues younger generations are facing is
clearly too difficult for the geriatric, decrepit ruling class that
just won't let go, and this helps them further every government's
ambitions of increasingly regulating the means of communication between
people. Actually, it's not that it's difficult, they simply don't care.
reassess_blind wrote 1 day ago:
Discord isnât banned, but Twitch is? Interesting.
Surely Discord harbours more bullying than Twitch (where image sharing
isnât even a feature).
skwee357 wrote 1 day ago:
The next step is to outlaw social media in general, and maybe the world
will become a bit better.
Edit: in case someone decides to disagree with me, here is a
non-exhaustive list of issues that social media has created: isolation
from the real world, unrealistic expectations in terms of
looks/status/success, dehumanization by turning people into
likes-dislikes, dehumanizations by creating influencers whose sole
purpose it to pump cheap crap to their "followers", a vessel for state
actors to spread the current flavor of propaganda/racism supported by
"the algorithm" that creates echo chambers rather than promoting
diversity of opinions, dopamine producing machines that glue us to the
screens.
There is nothing social in social media, in-fact, it should be called
the "anti-social media".
i5heu wrote 15 hours 22 min ago:
This must be the modern version of Fahrenheit 451.
Books are bad because âlist of bad thingsâ, letâs not weigh in
if people like it or not⦠just burn the books.
skwee357 wrote 13 hours 8 min ago:
I truly don't understand how people can make such comparisons, and
in general defend social media. Is this some sort of Stockholm
syndrome?
Social media has ruined my mental health, when I fell into a deep
hole of propaganda. It took me a year to recover, and I'm still not
fully recovered, and I'm still trying to separate between what I
truly think, and what social media "made" me think. People
underestimate the power of echo chambers created by the algorithm.
I saw how friends and family got radicalized thanks to social
media. Social media is currently fueling at least one war and
multiple regional conflicts, where people who know nothing about
the events, get "educated" by social media. Social media is fueling
hatred and bigotry, further diving already fragile societies.
Social media disinformation campaigns were behind Brexit. And
social media is used as a tool by government to spread
misinformation or influence social opinions. All these in addition
to everyone being an influencer and showing their phone into the
faces of people in public places, while selling crap from
AliExpress for 500% markup, as if you drink electrolytes, put a
nose tape, and clean your face every day -- your life will become
ten folds better.
I can't name one good thing that came out of social media. None.
And even if there are things, and I'm sure someone will name them
out, they are minor comparing to the negative sides, or could be
achieved in a more sustainable way.
energy123 wrote 22 hours 16 min ago:
I would start by outlawing the algorithmic feed. Force them to show a
chronological timeline of who you follow with no influence from
likes, no For You feed, basically no algorithmic recommendation
engine.
You probably solve most of the problems with 10% of the
legal/social/implementation difficulty.
insane_dreamer wrote 16 hours 18 min ago:
And no ads.
I agree that would go a long long way.
When it becomes a place to share photos with your friends, like the
OG Instagram, a lot of the harmful effects go away.
crowbahr wrote 1 day ago:
You do know that HN in in the category of social media right?
insane_dreamer wrote 16 hours 16 min ago:
No, it's not.
You can't follow people or have followers. There's no notification
system when someone "likes" your comment. It doesn't lend itself
towards pulling you back with the latest comment or post. There is
the front page algorithm, but you can always just go to /latest or
/active. It's about the content, not the users.
Critically, there's no ads or monetization (which is where all that
garbage comes in).
skwee357 wrote 23 hours 42 min ago:
No, itâs not. Itâs a link aggregator and a discussion platform,
it is not centered around social aspects like user profiles and
followers.
GuB-42 wrote 3 hours 16 min ago:
Hacker News is almost indistinguishable in spirit from a well-run
subreddit. Reddit is not centered on user profiles and followers
and yet, Reddit is included in the Australia's social media ban.
It is clear from the ruling that by including YouTube, Reddit and
Facebook, they take a broad definition of what social media is,
essentially anything with user interaction and Hacker News
definitely fits the bill.
And if your criteria includes "social aspects like user profiles
and followers", then GitHub would fit too: it has user profiles,
followers / stars, and allows for discussion. It is even included
in the "social media" list for ESTA and visa applications for the
US. We could even include StackOverflow, I mean, it used to be
common practice to build a profile, chasing a reputation score so
that you could show off to recruiters.
rbits wrote 21 hours 55 min ago:
So Reddit isn't social media either?
famahar wrote 19 hours 56 min ago:
Originally it wasn't. It was more similar to hackernews, just
more general. Lately it's going all in on wanting to be a
social media platform full of dark design patterns to keep
people hooked. Hackernews has barely changed from its
beginning. I don't feel overwhelmed browsing it. Five minutes
of reddit and I fall into a dopamine hole that can be hard to
get out of. It's no longer part of my daily routine for that
reason.
stickfigure wrote 21 hours 58 min ago:
Your profile here is [1] and your Social Credit Score, as of this
posting, is 927.
HN is social media.
(HTM) [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=skwee357
deadbabe wrote 23 hours 43 min ago:
HN is an anti-social media. It is not inclusive. If you are not a
tech geek or cannot articulate well you are not welcome here, and
will be ignored.
You cannot follow or be followed. There is no attention drawn to
your username or profile. Everything about HN is designed for you
to just read a comment and move on, not caring much about the
human behind it.
multiplegeorges wrote 1 day ago:
There is nothing that social media provides that a private group chat
with your closest people doesn't fulfill.
It could be banned with nothing of value lost.
Spivak wrote 21 hours 57 min ago:
???? We're on social media right now.
multiplegeorges wrote 6 hours 20 min ago:
Come on, you know what is meant by "social media" in this
context. An algorithmic feed with tuning to be as addictive as
possible.
No one outside of someone trying to be obtuse would put HN and
Tiktok in the same category.
Spivak wrote 2 hours 41 min ago:
HN literally has an algorithmic feed and the karma system is
the most addictive system used on forums. It's why Reddit is so
addictive.
Either HN is part of the evil social media club or the rule for
what separates the good ones from the bad ones needs updated.
HN and TikTok are different and I think being able to
articulate what actually makes them meaningfully different is
the first step toward useful legislation.
quectophoton wrote 4 hours 4 min ago:
> No one outside of someone trying to be obtuse would put HN
and Tiktok in the same category.
Definitely not the ones enforcing it, when it serves their
purpose.
jonwinstanley wrote 1 day ago:
The whole world seems to be hooked on TikTok, reels and shorts for
entertainment.
Reversing that would take some doing.
bluerooibos wrote 22 hours 53 min ago:
It's quite dystopian. Seeing people in your family, and friends,
just mindlessly consume that shit, for hours upon hours - and
many of them are completely oblivious to the fact that these
reels and shorts are engineered to keep them engaged.
Using ML/Data to keep people hooked on content - I'd be
embarrassed to be an engineer at any of these companies actively
destroying our society.
seanmcdirmid wrote 22 hours 50 min ago:
TV had the same effect before the internet. It just had to use
less effective Nielsen instead of AI/ML. People make this
complaint about all new media when it appears, including books
even (well, that kids and adults would spend their time reading
trashy novels rather than study the Bible), and later serial
articles (which were designed to keep readers hooked with
literary cliff hangers so they would buy the next issue).
morgengold wrote 1 day ago:
There will definitely be hellish withdrawal symptoms.
indymike wrote 1 day ago:
Father of five here, and founder of a social media marketing company
(exited). Our kids are up against problems we didn't have during the
great expansion of social. The three big things:
1. State level actors and well funded not for profits are fighting an
information war to influence our kids. And they are very good at it.
Down to having troll farms to talk one on one. Every time something new
happens in the world, my younger kids ask me about what they saw on
Tik-Tok and their initial understanding is shaped by a well funded
actor, and is often completely a false narrative. The solution is be
open and talk about it with your kids.
2. Criminals are even better at social than state level actors. They
are smooth. And they are on platforms you wouldn't expect - like games.
And criminals aren't all about fraud. They sell drugs, they try to
physically steal in real life from your kids,they'll try to get your
kids to do something embarrasing and blackmail them with it, and even
can be human traffickers. Again, the solution is be open and talk about
it with your kids - and make sure they know it's ok to ask, and it's
especially ok if you think I shouldn't share this with Dad or they
person is saying not to show your parents.
3. Sexual predators are even better at social than the criminals. The
difference is that the predators can't hide behind national borders so
they are very careful. Same solution as $#2, but this one is really
tough because when your kids come to you about it, they may have shared
something with the predator that the predator is using to extort them
into hooking up. Don't attack or blame your kid, focus on making sure
the predator never gets to them
I do not believe for a minute that social media was good for my kids as
they grew up, but I'm not sure that you can even begin to fix it the
way AU is trying to - regulating speech, association using prohibition
is dipping a colander in the river to filter the silt.
eimrine wrote 16 hours 6 min ago:
It is OK if your kids "and their initial understanding is shaped by a
well funded actor, and is often completely a false narrative."
I bet that if I would meet you, I would unleash multiple similar
cases to you personally for less than 1 hour. I am almost sure I can
ask such kind of questions that would reveal your kids giving better
(less brainwashed) result than you do.
mxfh wrote 21 hours 31 min ago:
Seriously, the biggest and most prevalent danger to kids online, is
unregulated marketing directed towards them building unhealthy habits
and potential loss of self worth due to unreachable ideals potrayed
in advertising.
Not any of the three points you bring up there.
Those superpredator bogeymans you make up here, have to actively seek
you out and have a limited budget in comparison.
State actors are after everyone, not kids primarily.
In the current state of thing I would have no qualms just shutting
down X, Facebook, YouTube Shorts and TikTok live for starters for
all.
uplifter wrote 21 hours 38 min ago:
Is this really an attempt to regulate children's speech or
association any more than denying kids entry to a pub?.
I don't think the framers of this law are even worried about what
kids are saying or who they associate with, as long as it isn't the
criminals, sexual predators and state actors you mention.
Frankly if kids were visiting a physical hang-out where they could
expect to be attacked by such people, any and every responsible
guardian would order them to never go there.
jancsika wrote 22 hours 7 min ago:
> Every time something new happens in the world, my younger kids ask
me about what they saw on Tik-Tok and their initial understanding is
shaped by a well funded actor, and is often completely a false
narrative.
As someone who remembers the near lack of anti-war voices on
network/cable news in the lead-up to the Iraq War (Donahue on MSNBC
being the lone example), I'd like to get more details on your
strongest example here.
concinds wrote 10 hours 56 min ago:
I'm guessing they mean Gaza, and that the author is pro-Israel.
Which really undermines their point.
mkoubaa wrote 20 hours 46 min ago:
The average adult has a carefully curated understanding of the
world based on a completely false narrative but nobody clutches
their pearls about that
le-mark wrote 21 hours 58 min ago:
There wasnât much but the mostly fabricated WMD narrative was
questioned a lot. Now the current administration makes an endless
stream of fantasies and lies which go almost entirely unchallenged.
jancsika wrote 17 hours 37 min ago:
> There wasnât much but the mostly fabricated WMD narrative was
questioned a lot.
Cable and network news did not question that narrative, aside
from the exception I mentioned. Read David Barstow's
Pulitzer-winning stories in NYT-- cable news shows even had
retired generals pushing for war without disclosing all kinds of
conflicts of interest.
Edit: I should add that in reality there were protests with
record numbers of people during the buildup to the Iraq War, and
there were many articulate arguments against the war by all kinds
of people. However, that was not the narrative presented in
Network/Cable News.
polalavik wrote 1 day ago:
I really really hate the term "troll farm" it completely minimizes
nation state level propaganda machines down to something that sounds
like its just one big internet joke for gags.
The cutesy 'fun' language of 'troll farm' itself deflects
accountability from what are coordinated psychological operations. It
makes it sound like some rambunctious kids in basements having a
little weekend fun.
Gigachad wrote 20 hours 20 min ago:
It was very illuminating though obvious when recently Twitter
started showing account country of origin and all of the MAGA
political accounts pretending to be American get revealed as run
out of Nigeria and Russia.
The scale of the operations is immense now.
eps wrote 9 hours 35 min ago:
> run out of Nigeria and Russia
... and India. Wasn't expecting that at all.
phantasmish wrote 1 day ago:
I'm not sure why a person would want to let their kids hang out any
place where that stuff you report is common, if it's at all possible
to avoid it. I'm gonna continue to run with "no social media", which
has worked so far. They can message people they actually know IRL,
somewhere without a feed full of crap from people they don't know.
That's plenty.
Like I can't think of any analogous place in physical space I'd let
my kids hang out unsupervised, and the amount of time I intend to
spend watching (supervising) them scrolling Insta or TikTok on
anything like a regular basis is zero, and the likelihood of their
choosing that as a thing they want to do if I'm otherwise available
to do something fun with them is also probably somewhere around zero,
which means... no social, since it ain't happening supervised.
Like I also wouldn't take them to a bad part of town and leave them
there for hours. Why would I do the digital equivalent? Even if we
talk about it afterward... why? Maybe occasionally as a "here's how
to spot shit" lesson but not enough that they'd need an account or
anything.
zelphirkalt wrote 11 hours 18 min ago:
The issue is, that many people think social media like TikTok and
FB and so on are good and that they are letting their children
"participate in modern life" or something like that. They are
utterly uninformed about these things, or so media brainwashed
themselves, that they will fight you to the teeth standing up for
things like FB.
I had that happening. I explained to someone, that FB is a criminal
company, that's spying on everyone and everything they do, and just
had that 5 billion sum to pay for mishandling personal data. But do
you think that that person would come to their senses? Nope, ofc
not. They argued on and on about how it is a force of good and
whatnot.
Gigachad wrote 20 hours 34 min ago:
What Iâm seeing in Australia is most parents know itâs bad, and
want their kids off social media. But itâs a Herculean task when
the social media companies have such a grip on their kids and when
all the other kids have it.
Itâs the same story with banning phones in schools. Everyone
knows itâs the right thing to do but individual parents or
teachers donât have the power to do it alone.
zelphirkalt wrote 10 hours 54 min ago:
Here is the thing: It seems there are many people out there, who
are so much influenced, that they worry about something like:
"But how will I reach my child via phone, when they are at
school! My kids need their phones!" Not realizing, that not too
long ago, no parent had to reach their kid at school via phone,
and if they did, they would call the school itself and have a
message delivered or get the kid on the phone. This happened so
rarely, that it was not common over the whole amount of students.
josephwegner wrote 6 hours 59 min ago:
This assumes there is no added benefit to being able to reach
your kids/be reached by your kids easier than it was
historically. While I agree it's probably not as critical as
many parents might make it seem, there are tangible benefits.
Off the top of my head:
- Before cell phones, we were also in an age of far less mass
violence in American schools. I completely empathize with
parents wanting their kids to have an emergency contact device,
given the relative increase in violence at schools.
- There is a long history of kids being abused, sexually or
otherwise, by authority figures in their school. Having a
lifeline like a quick text to a parent can easily be the escape
hatch from a predator convincing a kid to do something unsafe.
gradientsrneat wrote 5 hours 9 min ago:
In the United States specifically, deaths from violent crime
have mostly been trending down over the past few decades,
with the exception of a year or so.
kelnos wrote 6 hours 28 min ago:
Having a cell phone isn't going to help even a little bit if
there's an active shooter at a school. The only thing a kid
should be doing in that situation is hiding, or escaping if
it's safe to do so. Likely it'll make things worse... some
kid will get a loud notification on their phone, which will
give away their location to the shooter.
The predator example sounds pretty flimsy and unlikely to me
as well.
Honestly, your reaction to this just seems to follow the
fear-based rationales that people put forth for a lot of
things, when the fears are overblown or the risks are low.
kjkjadksj wrote 18 hours 9 min ago:
Of course individual parents have the power to do something. Take
the phone when they go to school. Problem solved.
seb1204 wrote 13 hours 20 min ago:
I agree but this sounds harder than it is.
Not every parent is an expert in arguing against these actors
that have very deep pockets.
kjkjadksj wrote 12 hours 18 min ago:
You donât need to argue to anyone you can do what you want
and lay down whatever law you want.
Gigachad wrote 2 min ago:
I know HN users often fantasize about being the hardass
parent who puts their foot down, but this obviously isn't
something that scales to solve a population wide issue.
Coordination between the government, tech companies, and
parents is going to solve this a million times better than
just telling individual parents to deal with it.
Gigachad wrote 17 hours 50 min ago:
Ok that's been tried and didn't work. So clearly something new
needs to be tried.
kjkjadksj wrote 12 hours 19 min ago:
How does it not work? The phone is in your pocket and not
your kids during the school day.
Gigachad wrote 11 hours 30 min ago:
It hasn't worked because basically every kid today is on
social media despite a decade of information about it's
harms. Getting over a million kids off tiktok is going to
take coordination between the government, tech companies,
and parents. Not just berating parents for not winning the
war against big tech.
heresie-dabord wrote 19 hours 6 min ago:
> the social media companies have such a grip on their kids
We are talking about US companies in particular. Everything that
was being done to try to mitigate the vileness and toxicity has
been forcefully rescinded in the name of US profiteering.
There is only one viable option, and that it for countries that
reject poisonous US social media to choose/identify/build a
better platform that is safe for children, safe for news and
information, and safe for society and for Democracy itself.
BlueTemplar wrote 7 hours 4 min ago:
Them being platforms is most of the issue. Protocols (like
Mastodon or PeerTube), not platforms.
IMTDb wrote 8 hours 9 min ago:
I know few countries that reject poisonous US social media in
favor of better platform that is safe for children, safe for
news and information, and safe for society and for Democracy
itself: the peoples democracy of North Korea, the democratic
republic of Iran, the not authoritarian society of Russia, etc
I see tremendous correlation between restriction of access to
some websites and straight up dictatorship that pretend to
protect it's population from the evils of foreign influences.
ncruces wrote 22 hours 24 min ago:
> They can message people they actually know IRL, somewhere without
a feed full of crap from people they don't know.
Just how do you think they get introduced to TikTok? What do you
think gets posted in the school class WhatsApp group chat?
My kids' WhatsApp group chats are mostly a torrent of sharing
idiotic TikToks, YouTube Shorts, and celebrity Instagrams.
Which my kids can't watch⦠until they're savvy enough to bypass
my restrictions. Until then, they'll watch it in school, on their
friends' phones - little consolation there.
And when that pauses, they just have stupid sticker wars, and the
kind of impolite banter (often misogynist/homophobic in nature,
definitely not age appropriate) that may well have been par for the
course when I was their age, but that I would never have committed
to in writing, in essentially a public space. Not to mention the
almost bullying.
The mere suggestion by my kid (on my advice) that a separate space
was created to discuss actually important stuff, like forgotten
homework assignments, test dates, etc, was met with incredulity and
laughter by peers (the almost bullying).
Kids teach their peers how to act. Peers have way more influence
than their parents. We need a majority of kids to understand
TikTok/etc are bad for them.
phantasmish wrote 20 hours 14 min ago:
Ah, the inevitable "meh, give up, it's hopeless" post, to go
along with the "why don't parents do their fucking job and leave
us alone?" posts. No thread on HN related to parenting and
technology is complete without a healthy dose of both sorts of
post.
Sorry, I'm trying to do my fucking job, as others demand.
zelphirkalt wrote 10 hours 42 min ago:
To look past the "give up" post, it did have a good point about
how children will get into contact with such feed monsters.
I think it will be a good idea to try and get other parents on
board. Other parents of the kid's classmates. Maybe they are
struggling with this too, but don't see the way forward. And
you can show them the content of feeds and shit that kids
consume. You can come up with some minimum age or other idea,
which you suggest for children to have, before you as a group
of parents allow them to access things. Or you can come up with
a once a month special lesson or something, where you show what
can go wrong to the kids, and cooperate with the school.
intended wrote 15 hours 36 min ago:
I dont think that comment materially undermined your position,
if anything it supported it?
ncruces wrote 12 hours 39 min ago:
Exactly.
My kid has a smartphone but no data plan; no social media;
can't take it to school.
When I did that, I was the annoying one, who they fought
every inch of the way.
When the school banned phones in the playground, I was
suddenly one of the first to get it right, in their eyes.
I'm trying to do my job too. But we need certain rules to be
consistent throughout our society. Even if they will be
broken, it matters that the rules are there and we can agree
to them.
makeitdouble wrote 23 hours 15 min ago:
> let their kids hang out any place where that stuff you report is
common, if it's at all possible to avoid it.
You're talking about cutting kids from all online services,
including multiplayer games and community wikis.
It also means your kid has no experience of online interactions
with strangers, basically no SNS literacy, which also sounds like a
disaster waiting to happen to me.
arkey wrote 8 hours 27 min ago:
> It also means your kid has no experience of online interactions
with strangers, basically no SNS literacy, which also sounds like
a disaster waiting to happen to me.
I think it would be better to allow them to be exposed to all
this in a later phase, once, for example, they have plenty of
experience with offline interactions with strangers. Learn how to
walk, then learn how to run.
I really don't think the opposite order would work.
phantasmish wrote 22 hours 46 min ago:
> You're talking about cutting kids from
> all online services
Not even close? I donât know how you got that.
> including multiplayer games
Nah. My kids play plenty of multiplayer games. Localâs fine,
online with people they know is fine, online in games with no or
extremely limited communication is fine (Nintendo consoles are
good for those)
> community wikis
Are community game wikis hotbeds of scams, predation, and
astroturf rage-bait influence campaigns? Iâve read them much of
my life (if we also count Gamefaqs) and never noticed this.
makeitdouble wrote 21 hours 49 min ago:
> Nintendo
For online gaming, that's 5ish game lines ?
Then Splatoon communities are pretty active, with third party
tournaments, discord channels especially during fest flourish.
Private matches are a pretty core component of getting good at
the game in team events, and Nintendo rightfully limits how
much it wants to deal with that side of things.
As a result, if your kid gets into the game, they'll be looking
at that from the sideline while other kids get a lot more
support.
> game wikis
In general any wikis that allows for limited scope
communication, like a discussion between two users in some
obscure thread where only the two will be notified of updates,
is ripe for abuse. Then game wikis are where kids will be
found.
While moderation teams are usually doing a stellar job, it's a
cat and mouse game with utterly motivated attackers and highly
valuable targets. So stuff will happen.
That kind of stuff won't surface outside of very egregious
incidents, but working in an adjacent field to gaming
communities, it's definitely a thing.
intended wrote 15 hours 40 min ago:
> While moderation teams are usually doing a stellar job,
This is an assumption, that I would argue, is more muddled in
practice.
T&S teams largely want to do a good job, but they are a cost
center, and currently they are being defunded or shifted into
simple compliance.
The biggest weakness, and the current shift, is for the
conversation to move towards talking about the benefits of
moderation to community, rather than only reduction of harms.
That process has largely started since last year, and the
defunding of teams is also underway.
All of that aside, we do not have any publicly available
data, or independent third part assessment that gives us some
estimated prevalence rate. (Not that prevalence is truly
calculable)
phantasmish wrote 20 hours 19 min ago:
"This is good for this" doesn't mean it's the only thing we
use?
People are real eager to tear down a point that was simply
"maybe don't let kids use algo-feed social media, because
it's an actual garbage fire". The vast majority of the
Internet does not have the same problems, to the same degree,
as places like Instagram and TikTok. Some of it may have
other problems and may be worth looking out for! But most of
those other places also have, like, some redeeming features.
Am I also to let my kids wander in toxic waste dumps? I'm
pretty surprised at the kind of push-back this is getting. I
don't got time to supervise my kids on TikTok or whatever,
so... no TikTok. I also don't have time to supervise them
playing with boxes of rusty razor blades, so I try not to
give them access to boxes of rusty razor blades, either
[edit: I can predict the disingenuous replies to this part,
so further suppose the blades are bubble-gum flavored and
literal hundreds of billions of dollars were spent on
packaging and presenting the box and blades to encourage kids
to put them in their mouths; there, that's closer to algo
feed social media, pretty much no reason to engage nor allow
your kids near it, loooots of reason to keep it way the hell
away].
This seems really straightforward and reasonable to me.
makeitdouble wrote 19 hours 35 min ago:
This comes down to how people raise their kids, so I don't
expect we'll all agree.
> Am I also to let my kids wander in toxic waste dumps?
[...] I don't got time to supervise my kids on TikTok or
whatever, so... no TikTok.
Ideally I don't want to supervise my kid, in the sense that
trying to watch over everything they do, every service they
use and every possible interaction is a lost cause.
They can IRL go to toxic waste dumps, buy razor blades at
the store and let them rust, there will be no way to
foolproof even at that level, and I don't to have to watch
over them every single time they go to the store in case
they buy razor blades. Teaching them to not buy sharp
stuff, avoid rusty things, and not listen to people
advising them to do so has better time/effort ROI to me.
Kids not allowed to go to the store without parental
supervision also has to me a lot more negative impacts.
Arguably teaching kids what to avoid on Tiktok or Youtube
is a lot trickier, and there will be craftful attempts at
bypassing most parent advices, but I hope we have enough of
a safety margin and communication occasions to detect when
something's going wrong. And if it happens, I'd prefer it
happens now when there's many eyes on the kid to detect the
issue, than 5 or 10 years from now when they're alone in
the ir dorm, can sign contracts, buy a lot of delicate
stuff, get access to drugs, drive, get people pregnant etc.
indymike wrote 1 day ago:
> I'm not sure why a person would want to let their kids hang out
any place where that stuff you report is common,
A great percentage of serious crimes (from rape to fraud) are
committed by family and friends of the victims. Should we not leave
our children with our family alone?
The best move is to teach your children how to not be victimized.
It is part of "being responsible for yourself". My parents taught
me how to be safe in a bad neighborhood because sometimes you have
to go there. They taught me how to pick good friends who wouldn't
do bad things to me. They taught me how to spot the precursors to
bad things.
They let me hang out unsupervised. Because they taught me how to be
responsible for myself. Why not teach your kids how to navigate the
internet safely.
0dayz wrote 11 hours 11 min ago:
Teaching your kid being street smart is only a band aid or cope
as the younglings say these days.
Because the issue is:
- your street smartness is an outdated smartness
- there are multiple different types of assholes waiting to
victimize someone that you don't know about
When the police, court, positive socioeconomic factors work only
then do you for sure minimize the risk of your child being
victimized.
The internet has open the floodgates to be a piece of shit and
made it hard to do something about it.
Because if you live in the wild west it's a matter of when not
if.
tennysont wrote 2 hours 43 min ago:
FYI âcopeâ is closer to âdelusion used to help you cope
with realityâ rather than âsuperficial fixâ
Also, I think that some strategies, such as âcomfort asking a
parent for help navigating a situationâ are timeless defenses
against strategies like blackmail. There are probably some
street smarts that change and some that stay the same.
HaZeust wrote 13 hours 52 min ago:
>"The best move is to teach your children how to not be
victimized."
Your GP advocated world-building a child's physical environment
to avoid digital - which is simply unrealistic for their later
years as it is, and coddling them so nothing that could even
potentially victimize them in the digital world would be able to
reach them. So, genuinely: What's it gonna be?
Are you going to teach a child the real-world application and use
cases for being responsible for themselves, not becoming
victimized and carrying themselves well, and learning to act
appropriate in an increasingly-digital world; or not?
Otherwise; saying you'll teach your kids real-world application
for being responsible for themselves and not being victimized,
and then not giving them a space to see the importance of those
practices out of fear that they'll succumb to it, is having your
cake and eating it, too.
9dev wrote 23 hours 37 min ago:
That sounds great in principle, but many parents are either not
interested or present enough to do so, or themselves lack the
skills for it.
indymike wrote 8 hours 28 min ago:
If you have kids it is your responsibility. If you have kids
and are not interested or present enough, this is literally the
problem.
9dev wrote 6 hours 6 min ago:
Again, you being right doesnât change anything. This is the
world we live in, and that means we need to work with what we
have. Which includes inattentive parents.
indymike wrote 3 hours 2 min ago:
So... what's the point. Outlawing being an inattentive
parent doesn't fix that problem. I'm not sure human beings
have found a fix for that that has optimal outcomes for the
kids.
InvertedRhodium wrote 1 hour 32 min ago:
This is wildly unpopular, for good reasons, but if I want
to get a third dog I need to apply for and get a license
from the council - theyâll come round, inspect my
property and ensure that itâs adequate for a number of
dogs, that itâs secure and my current pets are well
treated before issuing it.
The disconnect between this and children seems wild to
me. Why donât we display the same amount of concern for
children?
9dev wrote 2 hours 31 min ago:
Well. A possible solution might be to limit the
exposition to social media children have by creating a
law, which is the topic of this thread?
arkey wrote 8 hours 32 min ago:
And that's the root cause of many, many issues.
It's a pity so many of these issues get simply patched up
through other means instead of properly addressing the real
root cause.
phantasmish wrote 1 day ago:
> A great percentage of serious crimes (from rape to fraud) are
committed by family and friends of the victims. Should we not
leave our children with our family alone?
But I'm pretty sure that like 50+% of interactions with family
aren't crime.
> Why not teach your kids how to navigate the internet safely.
No reason to involve any serious amount of time browsing feeds of
shit in that. I don't make them roll around in poison ivy,
either. Absofuckinglutely not more than once. Exactly how much
exposure to something of approaching-zero value and significant
harm do they need? I'm going with "just enough to notice it's one
of those so they can run the other way".
[EDIT] To put all my cards on the table, I think an extremely
reasonable middle ground for Internet targeted ad networks and
content-promoting algo-feed social networks would be to saddle
them with an appropriate amount of liability for content they
promote, which amount would surely be enough to put them all out
of business. I see their feeds as the Internet equivalents of a
crack house. I'm not gonna send my kids thereâI'd rather see
them gone, period. I will tell my kids what they are, and how and
why such places might hurt them, in hopes they stay away. But I
don't think some kind of "exposure therapy" or something is
appropriate. The correct, moderate use of social media feeds is
to avoid them entirely.
heavyset_go wrote 21 hours 4 min ago:
90% of all childhood sexual assaults are perpetrated by close
family and friends[1].
If stranger danger is a motivating factor here, statistically,
you should side-eye your close friends and family much, much
more often and never leave them alone with your kids.
> But I'm pretty sure that like 50+% of interactions with
family aren't crime.
You can say the same thing about social media interactions.
(HTM) [1]: https://www.cdc.gov/child-abuse-neglect/about/about-ch...
phantasmish wrote 20 hours 36 min ago:
You've misunderstood this conversation and/or are applying
statistics extremely poorly. This is not serving whatever
point you're trying to make, and is a distraction from
productive discourse.
indymike wrote 9 hours 21 min ago:
Not really. You asserted that unknown people are dangerous,
while most of the replies to you are is pointing out that
there are serious classes of crimes where people your child
knows well are the most likely to commit them. I think
sometimes perception is not reality, and the greatest
danger to your child isn't society as a whole. It's a lot
closer to home than anyone wants to think.
brailsafe wrote 19 hours 22 min ago:
I think you established too broad of a scope for discourse
to be within the parameters you were hoping.
Immediately upon reading your comment, I thought about the
general overprotection and over-supervision of kids which
leads parents to drive their kids everywhere, prevent them
from learning to use the subway on their own, or even live
in cities. But what I think you were getting at is more
about smaller hypothetical physically analogous places, but
it's hard to think about what those places are in real life
without relying on assumptions that may be more likely to
occur online than in any significant concentration in the
real world.
Imo, the most threatening place for kids to be in real life
in terms of external factors, day to day, is around cars,
bullies, bad actors within the family, and then maybe
church/sports teams, but all of those are usually safe
unless they're not, you can't realistically do anything
productive about that without sacrificing their development
as a human, except prepare them and guide them.
Online, it's just a whole different beast, and I'd think it
would be games and social media, anywhere a gaurd would be
let down, but imo the greater threat isn't criminality as
much as it is nearly every other aspect except basic chats.
basisword wrote 1 day ago:
>> Our kids are up against problems we didn't have during the great
expansion of social.
I'm not sure I agree with this. Our societies globally have become
hugely polarised and are manipulated daily because of social media.
The damage done by social media is 100x greater than any good that
came from it and the lives of adults have been affected by on it a
societal level at least as much as the danger to kids.
It isn't possible, but if social media was suddenly completely
unavailable I think the world would get a lot better in a very short
period of time.
lurk2 wrote 23 hours 41 min ago:
> Our societies globally have become hugely polarised and are
manipulated daily because of social media.
Watching 18 year old kids getting drone striked every other day has
done more for the anti-war movement than a hundred years of
post-WW1 globalist utopianism. The only demographic of war hawks
you find online anymore are psychotics and boomers, both being
unfit for military service.
This is the fundamental reason why western countries are turning on
social. The TikTok ban had less to do with Chinese influence
campaigns and more to do with it being a platform where Israeli war
crimes were openly discussed without being hindered by shadow
algorithms.
Youâre seeing Zionists like Larry Ellison make plays in the media
space for the same reason; military-aged white men are going off
the plantation, and Zionists feel threatened by it. That is
literally all these bans are intended to remedy.
CommanderData wrote 13 hours 35 min ago:
Scrolled too far to find this. It is largely about the points you
made.
eimrine wrote 15 hours 38 min ago:
I am from Ukraine. Tell me anything you know about drone striked
humans. For you it is just pictures from Internets happening far
far away, you never know why do they find themself being drone
striked.
What anti-war actions have you done to prevent the end your life
by drone striking? Post some dislikes, duh?
gertlex wrote 1 day ago:
Am I wrong in feeling like the solution you outline is only
applicable to an individual's kids? But at the societal level, it
clearly seems we can't depend on enough parents to do what you talk
about. Something else is needed.
I don't have answers to give. Certainly not a fan of the government
approach of "everyone must prove their age online now", which I
believe is how the AU law is done. (casual listening to Security Now
podcast about this for a long while now)
deminature wrote 18 hours 7 min ago:
>not a fan of the government approach of "everyone must prove their
age online now", which I believe is how the AU law is done
This is not how the law is implemented. The vast majority of
verification is being done by 'age inference', ie analysis of the
content the user consumes or posts to infer likely age. Only
accounts suspected to be children by the inference process are
being required to verify or have the account disabled. In practice,
the inference process means very few accounts are required to
provide any proof of age. Personally, I haven't been asked to
verify by even a single website.
The age inference process is described on this page under 'What is
Age Assurance?'
(HTM) [1]: https://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy/your-privacy-rights/social...
makeitdouble wrote 23 hours 10 min ago:
If you think we can't depend on parents for the kids education,
school should handle it.
anon84873628 wrote 23 hours 36 min ago:
Yes, this is one of those game theory traps like the prisoners
dilemma, because it requires coordinated action across a large
group of people. Unfortunately the lowest common denominator
parenting is not able to handle the problem, because the parents
don't understand the situation, are addicted to platforms
themselves, and just generally don't have the necessary skills.
Government regulation is a ham fisted approach that risks
unintended consequences / secondary effects, but it is generally
good at breaking the game theory traps because it changes the
playing field for everyone. That is fundamentally why we have
government at all - to solve coordination problems.
Gigachad wrote 20 hours 22 min ago:
The government can also act as the faceless bad guy who 13 year
olds can get mad at while parents shrug and say âsorry thatâs
just the lawâ.
indymike wrote 1 day ago:
"Everyone must prove their age online now" creates a trail of
identity that kills anonymous speech dead. Anonymous speech is very
important to maintaining freedoms... such as freedom of speech and
freedom of association.
intended wrote 15 hours 23 min ago:
It is frustrating, to have this argument, when the current state
of the art to mould speech, has already found ways around this
defensive line.
Currently speech is shaped by producing a glut of speech, and
then having the most useful narratives platformed by trusted
personalities. Simultaneously, any counter views which do not
support the goals of the media-party, do not get aired.
Education, science, evidence and journalistic standards are
eschewed and authoritarian techniques of loyalty and trust are
used to take advantage of whatever story is currently most
engaging.
The churn in anonymous forums is used to identify narratives that
are the best evolved to spread and gain engagement.
Donât mistake me for saying anonymity must be given up. Do
recognize that worrying about anonymity today, is very much like
people talking about the way things were back in their time.
If it helps - from a utilitarian perspective, free speech enables
the free exchange of ideas in the service of debates to
understand reality. The marketplace of ideas.
Currently the marketplace is captured, and it is not a fair fight
between state actors, media teams, troll farms, A/B tested
algorithms, and regular folk on the other side.
The invisible hand of the market IS working, ensuring the optimum
outcome given the current constraints, or lack thereof.
If we want to defend speech for individuals, if we want a fair
fight, we need to address the asymmetry of powers, and lack of
recourse.
tzs wrote 21 hours 28 min ago:
> "Everyone must prove their age online now" creates a trail of
identity that kills anonymous speech dead.
That depends on the implementation. Do it the wrong way, like
many countries or US states, and that is a problem.
Do it right, like the EU is doing in their Digital Identity
Wallet project, which is currently undergoing large scale field
trials, and the site you prove age to gets no information other
than that you are old enough, and your government gets no
information about what sites you have proved age to or when you
have done so.
indymike wrote 9 hours 19 min ago:
> That depends on the implementation.
Not really. Either you have freedom of speech or you have
restricted speech. The more restriction, the less freedom you
have.
> the site you prove age to gets no information other than that
you are old enough, and your government gets no information
about what sites you have proved age to or when you have done
so.
As long as the broker in the middle can be trusted, cannot be
extorted by government power or private wealth... in other
words: unpossible.
tzs wrote 5 hours 11 min ago:
In the system the EU is using you are the broker in the
middle.
Briefly, your government issues you a digital copy of your
identity documents cryptographically bound to a hardware
security module that you provide. For the first iteration
this will be the security module in your smartphone. Later
iterations will support standalone smart cards and plug in
security modules like YubiKeys.
If you wish to prove your age to a site a cryptographic
protocol takes place between you and the site which
demonstrates to the site that you have a government issued
identity document that is bound to a hardware security
module, and that you have that module, and that the module is
unlocked, and that the identity document says that your age
is above the site's minimum age requirement.
No information is transmitted to the site from the identity
document other than the age is above the threshold. There is
also nothing transmitted that identities the particular
hardware security module.
zelphirkalt wrote 10 hours 36 min ago:
The EU is very double edged though. It has great projects,
undoubtedly. For example GDPR was a gigantic step forward, even
if many people here, who are US-centric mostly, don't want to
hear that. But on the other hand the EU also has loads of shit
that members and lobbies try to push, like for example chat
control.
Let's hope that this project you mention works out, if indeed
it works like you describe.
rdm_blackhole wrote 14 hours 59 min ago:
> Do it right, like the EU is doing
Doing it right like the EU? You mean like the EU, scan
everything that is sent through anybody's phone in the name of
protecting the children?
> the site you prove age to gets no information other than that
you are old enough, and your government gets no information
about what sites
That is the case for now. What happens when the lobbies get in
there and decide that this info is actually very valuable and
that they should have the right to know who is visiting their
client's websites and apps, will the anonymity remain? I think
not.
And what about the defense industry who in the name of fighting
terrorism will demand that users that identify themselves on
"suspicious" sites now need to have their data recorded?
The issue is that once everyone is using this system, then it's
very easy for any government to come and start expanding the
scope of the data recorded and as always under the cover of
good intentions.
This is how it goes:
- In 2025, they record nothing
- In 2026, they start logging IP addresses and passing along
suspicious log ins to the cops
- In 2030 they start recording more and more data until all
anonymity is gone
I wouldn't touch the EU's identity wallet with a 10 foot pole
and I certainly wouldn't use anything that the EU is doing now
as a benchmark considering what happened with the Chat control
law recently.
BlueTemplar wrote 7 hours 5 min ago:
Logging IP addresses for use by law enforcement started in
like 2004.
I remember ISPs and Web cafés complaining quite a lot.
But I guess you mean on the client software side itself ?
SiempreViernes wrote 22 hours 41 min ago:
> Anonymous speech is very important to maintaining freedoms...
such as freedom of speech and freedom of association.
Ha! Tell that to an American and they would laugh if it wasn't
for ICE threatening to shoot you for trying to get close enough
to ask.
lovich wrote 1 day ago:
Hard disagree on anonymous speech. Individual humans should have
free speech but that is divorced from anonymous speech.
With anonymous speech you donât even know if youâre talking
to a person or a program.
If you want to say something, then say it with your identity. You
donât get to be anonymous when saying something to my face so
why should it be allowed across a screen?
zelphirkalt wrote 10 hours 29 min ago:
Probably only works for as long as you are not living in a
dictatorship, authoritarian state, utterly corrupt country, or
similar. Then suddenly we would want our anonymity back.
While anonymity comes with its own issues for society, I am not
convinced it would be worth it getting rid of it.
heavyset_go wrote 12 hours 45 min ago:
Just thought I'd share the EFF's take[1] on the importance of
anonymity and its long history with free speech:
> Anonymous communications have an important place in our
political and social discourse. The Supreme Court has ruled
repeatedly that the right to anonymous free speech is protected
by the First Amendment. A frequently cited 1995 Supreme Court
ruling in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission reads:
> > Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. . .
. It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights and
of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular
individuals from retaliation . . . at the hand of an intolerant
society.
> The tradition of anonymous speech is older than the United
States. Founders Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John
Jay wrote the Federalist Papers under the pseudonym "Publius "
and "the Federal Farmer" spoke up in rebuttal. The US Supreme
Court has repeatedly recognized rights to speak anonymously
derived from the First Amendment.
> The right to anonymous speech is also protected well beyond
the printed page. Thus in 2002 the Supreme Court struck down a
law requiring proselytizers to register their true names with
the Mayor's office before going door-to-door.
To build on that, the Fourth Amendment protections against
general warrants stems from the fact that general warrants were
used to identify and persecute anonymous authors, many of which
were founders and framers.
(HTM) [1]: https://www.eff.org/issues/anonymity
squigz wrote 23 hours 21 min ago:
> If you want to say something, then say it with your identity.
You donât get to be anonymous when saying something to my
face so why should it be allowed across a screen?
My face is not my identity. Do I have to tell you my full name
and address when I talk to you? I sure hope not!
Beyond that, what about the threat of violence for saying
something? As another commenter points out, this is a real
issue for marginalized groups, but also could easily become an
issue for your average citizen sharing their political opinion.
While I agree it would be nice having some level of assurance
that you're talking to a human, particularly going forward, the
only way I could support such a system is if no party involved
would be able to track what I visit or pin an actual identity
to me as a user - but, perhaps more importantly, it also needs
to not be easily broken by those actors who it's trying to
stop. Otherwise it's useless and just hurts your actual
citizens.
lovich wrote 22 hours 56 min ago:
> My face is not my identity
Nah, itâs infinitely more identity than a screen name. If
you speak in person I know which human being had those
thoughts. In the medium weâre communicating over right now
neither I nor you could tell if the counterparty was just a
computer program.
> Beyond that, what about the threat of violence for saying
something? As another commenter points out, this is a real
issue for marginalized groups, but also could easily become
an issue for your average citizen sharing their political
opinion.
If youâre in that situation then you already donât have
free speech, so honestly that tradeoff seems like it
doesnât matter
> While I agree it would be nice having some level of
assurance that you're talking to a human, particularly going
forward, the only way I could support such a system is if no
party involved would be able to track what I visit or pin an
actual identity to me as a userâ¦
Thatâs a lot of words to say you donât agree with the
idea. Pinning an actual identity to you is what makes it non
anonymous
squigz wrote 22 hours 44 min ago:
> If youâre in that situation then you already donât
have free speech, so honestly that tradeoff seems like it
doesnât matter
What? Are you saying that if you face the threat of
violence for saying something, you don't actually have free
speech? By this logic, literally nobody anywhere has free
speech.
grog454 wrote 18 hours 45 min ago:
> By this logic, literally nobody anywhere has free
speech.
Nobody anywhere has freedom of speech. And a majority of
people don't really think about what it means and don't
want it in the purest form despite what they say.
Two examples of "free speech" that are protected in the
U.S. under the first amendment:
1. Overt racism (less threat of imminent violence).
2. Nazi apparel.
Say the wrong word or show the wrong symbol in certain
settings and you'll quickly understand what I mean.
Furthermore I'm confident > 50% of U.S. citizens would
find you in the wrong and would support whatever happens
to you without much consideration of legality.
Freedom of speech is an ideal with no successful
implementation and I don't think that's a bad thing. I
prefer to live in the real world where saying stupid shit
has consequences and people think just a little bit more
carefully about what they say.
lovich wrote 22 hours 37 min ago:
Yea, if you donât say what you think because of fear of
violence, you donât have free speech.
Iâm actually surprised at your surprise. Is there a
definition of free speech that includes not speaking
because of violence?
To be clear Iâm speaking of âfree speechâ as a
right in the absolute sense. I am aware that various
situations and events degrade that in every attempt to
implement it. Having anonymous speech lets your
circumvent that somewhat, but comes with the tradeoff of
disinformation and societal manipulation weâre
currently dealing with.
Also for clarification are you describing violence from
other citizens or violence from the government? I need
the clarification as I wasnât specific enough myself in
that I donât think there is currently any anonymous
speech if the government wants to identify you, only
anonymity from the average Joe.
squigz wrote 22 hours 30 min ago:
I'm speaking of violence from other people, yes.
> but comes with the tradeoff of disinformation and
societal manipulation weâre currently dealing with.
I'd rather solve those issues in ways that don't
eliminate anonymity and privacy on the Internet.
Furthermore, as I noted in a previous comment, any such
system must be immune to being circumvented by those
actors doing those things. Otherwise, they will quickly
adapt and we go back to business as usual but with less
privacy.
eimrine wrote 15 hours 43 min ago:
> I'm speaking of violence from other people, yes.
Is this the violence from other citizens? Is this the
violence from state actors? Your answer is not
clearly answering the question.
squigz wrote 10 hours 20 min ago:
I'm talking about other citizens.
lovich wrote 22 hours 25 min ago:
> I'd rather solve those issues in ways that don't
eliminate anonymity and privacy on the Internet.
Then we will have to disagree. I think the anonymity
is the source of the problem and there is no
workaround for it. I would prefer this problem solved
instead of waiting around for someone to possibly
figure out an alternative while we suffer under the
weight of all discourse being flooded by
disinformation so that no one can agree on reality.
If your ideology leads to its own destruction than
itâs a failed set of values, and thatâs what I
believe is happening to people who value free speech
without divorcing that from anonymous speech
squigz wrote 22 hours 7 min ago:
You continue to ignore the very glaring issue with
trying to address these issues by de-anonymizing
speech - that is, any such system will be easily
circumvented.
Furthermore, the idea that we can't address this in
any other way is wrong. We can work to combat and
ban misinformation and propaganda campaigns. We can
outlaw it for domestic politics. We can work with
other countries where such efforts come from to
stop them. We can put warnings and other labels on
misinformation. To say nothing of the education
angle.
lovich wrote 18 hours 24 min ago:
When you say ââ¦any such system will be easily
circumvented.â What do you mean by
âcircumventedâ?
If Iâm proposing that your statements are tied
to your identity whatâs the circumvention
there? Just fake IDs?
> Furthermore, the idea that we can't address
this in any other way is wrong. We can work to
combat and ban misinformation and propaganda
campaigns. We can outlaw it for domestic
politics. We can work with other countries where
such efforts come from to stop them. We can put
warnings and other labels on misinformation. To
say nothing of the education angle.
I donât see how you can have a problem with
making statements tied to identities as an attack
on free speech but then suggest that the
government decides what correct speech is. That
seems like a direct attack on the âfreeâ part
of speech separate from the less important
âanonymousâ part
Edit: also sorry for the delay, HNâs automatic
blocker kicked in
squigz wrote 10 hours 21 min ago:
> When you say ââ¦any such system will be
easily circumvented.â What do you mean by
âcircumventedâ?
I mean... bypassed. Ignored. Fooled. This might
be with fake IDs, it might be by compromising
the system itself, it might be something else.
> I donât see how you can have a problem with
making statements tied to identities as an
attack on free speech but then suggest that the
government decides what correct speech is. That
seems like a direct attack on the âfreeâ
part of speech separate from the less important
âanonymousâ part
Interestingly, I really haven't said anything
about "free speech", nor have I taken the
position that the government is unable to
already tie your identity to your online
activity. Anyway, those responsibilities I
outlined could be put on the platforms, if you
somehow trust them more, or perhaps a third
party service.
Out of curiosity, supposing identity
verification doesn't work out, what ideas might
you propose for tackling the issues of
misinformation and propaganda?
Doxin wrote 1 day ago:
While what you're saying sounds like a reasonable enough stance
on the face of it, keep in mind that this would deeply fuck
over closeted queer folks among other marginalized groups.
lovich wrote 23 hours 0 min ago:
It would. Currently they and everyone else are getting deeply
fucked because the signal to noise ratio on the internet has
been obliterated and everyone is being manipulated all the
time by misinformation from humans lying to bots.
I think the trade off for a lack of anonymity is worth it.
This is crass and old but the penny arcade guys identified
this decades ago
(HTM) [1]: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/greater-internet-fuck...
zmmmmm wrote 1 day ago:
A lot of the criticism is based on the concept that it won't be
technically watertight. But the key is that it doesn't have to be
watertight to work. Social media is all about network effects. Once
most kids are on there, everyone has to be on there. If you knock the
percentage down far enough, you break the network effect to the point
where those who don't want to don't feel pressured to. If that is all
it does, it's a benefit.
My concerns about this are that it will lead to
(a) normalising people uploading identification documents and hence
lead to people becoming victims of scams. This won't be just kids -
scammers will be challenging all kinds of people including vulnerable
elderly people saying "this is why we need your id". People are going
to lose their entire life savings because of this law.
(b) a small fraction of kids branching off into fringe networks that
are off the radar and will take them to very dark places very quickly.
Because it's politically unattractive, I don't think enough attention
has been given to the harms that will flow from these laws.
j45 wrote 5 hours 3 min ago:
Some fair points to consider.
Consistency at school means more and more parents and families are
practicing their internet exposure the same way as well.
How this is being done might not be the greatest, and it might change
how social media is used, or invite the next thing after social
media. Most platforms have dreamt of being a users core identity
service as well and that might be it.
The multiple independent studies that show the effect on children
developing brains from scrolling and screens alone, let alone the
content (be it social media etc) is something worth offering an
approach to as well, parents can't be expected to be DIY and
self-educate against the types of software that are so optimized to
achieve their independent objective of the software - keep us using
them.
shevy-java wrote 6 hours 9 min ago:
But you have not addressed the problem that governments control the
flow of information in this case here.
The antisocial media may be irrelevant, but I still fail to see why a
government should be able to proxy-control the flow of information.
So I am totally against this. I am also against antisocial media, but
I don't see why a government actor should filter and censor
information here.
retube wrote 8 hours 5 min ago:
Yeah I never understood the watertight arguments. Just about any law
can be circumvented or violated, that doesn't invalid having the law.
BlueTemplar wrote 9 hours 3 min ago:
Normalizing ID and ID uploading (instead of banning it) is really
what makes this bad.
A good law would just have completely banned these platforms from the
country. (Even the Canadian Kik, because freeware, therefore closed
source, therefore a platform.
EDIT : Looks like it's instead the Australian Kick, The Register had
it wrong ? Same deal. (Especially with its owners having a gambling
background.))
I wish the EU would be bold enough to do this, especially with
Trump's bullying, but I have already been disappointed in the past,
despite the situation clearly calling for strong actions like
these...
SecretDreams wrote 9 hours 21 min ago:
> Because it's politically unattractive, I don't think enough
attention has been given to the harms that will flow from these laws.
I ask if those harms are worse than what social media has done to a
generation of young people?
I fully support this ban and even restricting online time marginally,
tbh, until they're adults. The internet is not the place it once was.
The primary focus of the internet today is to entrap you and monetize
you at any cost. Social media is absolutely vile and ruinous for the
development of young people (it's not helping adults either, mind
you).
jjcob wrote 10 hours 27 min ago:
> fringe networks that are off the radar and will take them to very
dark places very quickly
Soo... we already have a problem with some youths running into
extremist content on Facebook, TikTok, Telegram ... no "fringe"
network needed.
scotty79 wrote 10 hours 43 min ago:
> normalising people uploading identification documents
It's also important uploading to where. To Facebook. And the bulk of
advertisements Facebook runs are literal (with literal meaning of the
word literal) scams. And they are powerless[1] to stop it.
[1] not incentivised
bigB wrote 11 hours 12 min ago:
The criticism is not that it wont be watertight, its that it will be
ineffective in achieving what they say the reasoning is.
1. Kids are already moving to platforms that are not included in the
ban, groups of friends will choose their own apps to make their group
home, including Russian and Chinese apps ( already happening now)
2. Some kids have found ways around the included platforms...not
surprising
3. One of the reasons they are spruiking is to stop Cyberbullying.
Its ironic then that a big problem in schools across the country is
physical bullying in the school grounds, with the educational
authorities doing nothing about it. I know this one to be fact and
have multiple instances that I personally know of where it happens
and no action is taken. Our Government doesnt want to know about this
at all
4. The platforms that have been banned are mostly "Big Tech"
something that our Government hates with a passion, while many others
go untouched. Discord is not included nor Telegram (how are these not
social media, they literally allow people to socialise). I feel this
is more of a weakening jab at Big Tech by our government to "stick it
to them"
5. Day 3 and its pretty ineffective so far. There are many under 16's
still have accounts on the blocked socials, and within the Family
circle the only one that has been banned is actually 17, having her
Instagram blocked ??? so not an awesome start at all.
BlueTemplar wrote 9 hours 19 min ago:
Discord might not be officially included, but they still complied.
«Big Tech» is a bad term to use IMHO, but if you do, why wouldn't
it cover Discord(/Tencent) or even Telegram ?
eigenspace wrote 12 hours 6 min ago:
> normalising people uploading identification documents and hence
lead to people becoming victims of scams.
This law in Australia explicitly prohibits companies from using ID
document verification for their age gating specifically because of
concerns like this
mgh2 wrote 13 hours 41 min ago:
(HTM) [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkDAXsF4oXA
somenameforme wrote 14 hours 4 min ago:
> a small fraction of kids branching off into fringe networks that
are off the radar and will take them to very dark places very
quickly.
I don't think this is much of an issue at all. The path of least
resistance, by an overwhelmingly wide margin, is just using a proxy,
TOR, or whatever else to bypass the filtering. Sites will be doing
the bare minimum for legal compliance, and so it won't be
particularly difficult.
Beyond that I'd also add that for those of us that were children
during the early days of the internet, "we" were always one click
away from just about anything you could imagine in newsgroups, IRC,
and so on. It never really seems to have had much of any negative
effect, let alone when contrasted against the overwhelmingly negative
effect of social media.
I don't really know why that is, and I half suspect nobody really
does. You can come up with lots of clever hypotheses that are all
probably at least partially true, but on a fundamental level it's
quite surprising how destructive 'everybody' communicating online
turned out to be. And that obviously doesn't end just because
somebody turns 18.
triwats wrote 4 hours 20 min ago:
> a small fraction of kids branching off into fringe networks that
are off the radar and will take them to very dark places very
quickly.
I've been grappling with this all afternoon and I still cannot
determine what my stance on this.
I grew up when the internet was a bit of a wildwest, and I've
definitely seen things online that I wish I never had without my
consent.
But there's also a bizarre thought that mayb exposure to this isn't
such a bad thing because it keeps us human, and aware of privilidge
and our safety - and why that is such an important thing to think
about
I'd equate it at some level to seeing the inside of the production
of food and being put of eating meat, or eating anything
non-organic again.
I'm not sure I would like my own children to see it, but I'm hyper
aware of what conflict and crime looks like as a result.
Comparatively to social media at least I was making a choice to
click on something risky or that I would not like to see rather
than having a algorithm choose for me. Not sure if I am just
becoming a middle-aged tech dinosaur though.,
ActorNightly wrote 3 hours 53 min ago:
When we were growing up, internet was for smart people. Chat
rooms and video games were for "nerds", the "cool" people all
hung out in person.
When someone wanted to do something counter-culture (i.e the
*chan websites), there was actually a shared interest behind it.
People would spend time making content and actually doing things
on the web.
These days, internet is so ubiqutious that the majority of the
users are simply consumers. There is no drive to build anything.
Modern day kids aren't going to be spending time trying to figure
out how to get around social media bans with technology, because
most internet users simply just don't care enough to organize and
build something.
oxfordmale wrote 13 hours 52 min ago:
The real problem is social media. Their machine learning algorithms
are optimised to boost toxic content, as they result in more
engagement (time spent). This is a fundamental trait of humans.
Even babies look at angry faces longer than happy faces.More time
spent means more advertising revenue.
It means the current generation gets exposed to a lot of toxic
content all in the name of driving advertising revenue. In the
olden days you could get everything, but it wasn't forced down your
throat, or rather your reels.
evanharwin wrote 13 hours 18 min ago:
> a small fraction of kids branching off into fringe networks
that are off the radar and will take them to very dark places
very quickly.
âFringe networksâ, and âoff the radarâ feel like a very
negative framing for a kind of smaller, more intimate, and often
pleasantly communal feeling internet that I quite like!
Old fashioned online forumsâmaybe even Hackernews
itself?âwould likely fit into this âfringeâ, âoff the
radarâ internet, and yet, it still feels much less toxic here
than it does on twitter.
> The real problem is social media. Their machine learning
algorithms are optimised to boost toxic content
â¦and you need a massive network to enable this, right? You
canât do it without the money, and the volume of content, that
the giants in this space have.
If this just pushes kids onto the small webâsure, itâs not
_all_ wholesomeâbut at least itâs not as carefully, as
deliberately manipulative.
mk89 wrote 13 hours 26 min ago:
I agree with you 100%, but I would add the bubble effect.
You watch something, you like it, then you get all the time
similar things.
Simple example: you click on a post about vegetarian meals. Then
the next you see is cows ending up in a slaughterhouse. And then
etc.. In less than a week, your posts are all about "why become a
vegan".
The end effect is that they shape our children culturally, and
it's very hard to explain what is true vs what is fake. Or why
something is right vs wrong. They are just not there yet.
CalRobert wrote 14 hours 1 min ago:
I think one difference from how we grew up (remember bbsâes?) is
that it was something in your desktop, not an omnipresent force in
your pocket
kakacik wrote 13 hours 25 min ago:
And here lies the actual fix unless you just want to sit back and
wait for regulators to pick it up - phones should be the means of
communication, not consumption.
Remove those apps that make you do so, and the world becomes a
little bit brighter over time. I did it years ago with FB apps
(which was draining battery while unused, typical fb crappy
engineering when they can't even snoop on you in more subtle
ways) and have 0 need to put anything there. I can check FB on
desktop if I need to, and do so rarely due to lack of any
actually interesting stuff there.
Same can go for any other social cancer out there.
CalRobert wrote 13 hours 7 min ago:
Yeah the current situation is akin to having to open a pack of
cigarettes every time you wanted to check the weather or use
satnav.
mk89 wrote 14 hours 9 min ago:
> (a) normalising people uploading identification documents
You might not know it or think too often about it, but most "real
life" services we use require online identification, at least in
Europe. Even on a simple rental agency portal in Germany it's
recommended to "verify" your online identity to get more chances.
Which means: just do it. Sure, you're free not to do it, as landlords
are free not to care about your application at all.
Do you want to renew your car papers? E-ID is there (or whatever
existing alternative).
Bank? The same.
In Germany the government[s] are pushing for Digitalization since
years, which many laugh at as "ahah, what a joke, it's just filling
an online module and sending a fax". It was true 5 years ago. Now I
was super surprised because I recently had to do some bureaucratic BS
and it's like any "normal" internet service that would require an
identification (which is not just via a credit card or so). It's
still not 100% accurate or "frictionless" but they're seriously
getting there, which is super hard in a country where govt office A
won't share data with govt office B. Compared to standing 1 hour in
line to get just a stamp on a paper this is light years ahead.
The same will happen to these platforms, because that's the only
solution we can think of, as of today. We all stand and watch
Facebook making profits off our kids, making them depressed, etc. If
you fine them, you're a communist, if you block them, you're a Nazi.
This is the most balanced alternative: you can still run your
business here, people can still use social media, but let's not fuck
up anymore our new generations, children, teenagers. They are the
grownups of tomorrow.
Also, as some other comments mentioned elsewhere on HN: assume your
data is already stolen or "publicly" available (maybe hidden
somewhere).
lencastre wrote 14 hours 55 min ago:
triggering thoughtsâ¦
itâs a difficult balancing act, and I tend to agree as blocks are
put in place, there are very likely two groups of outcomes: the kid
gives up and finds other alternatives which can be healthy or
unhealthy, the kid perseveres and bypasses the block
both provide good learnings and shape development, but blocking
isnât the answer, communication, understanding, and moderation is
the alternative that one could flood the kid with unfettered access
till the kid becomes nauseated and desensitised doesnât really work
either because it can be too risky
the best solution may be something in between, make it a hinderance
more than an inconvenience, like the parent post, and go for the
greatest impact on network effects, the evil genie in me would make
all these platforms super unreliable, spotty at best
but hey, itâs a developmental milestone for the average generation
member to rebel against the memberâs previous generations
de6u99er wrote 19 hours 27 min ago:
It's very simple. Parents can configure parental controls on their
children's devices.
I personally think, Facebook and Twitter need to be taken down
because Zuckerberg and Musk are using the ppatform to interfere with
politics.
Nursie wrote 19 hours 49 min ago:
> normalising people uploading identification documents
This is dependent on implementation.
From what I have heard (from ConnectID), some sites are using
services like ConnectID as a way to have your bank verify you are of
age without releasing any ID or specific details.
But I don't think it's all of them, and I agree it's a risk.
stein1946 wrote 19 hours 51 min ago:
> A lot of the criticism is based on the concept that it won't be
technically watertight
Those who do that, are not interested in this ban working, they are
the individualists assaulting the community.
> a) normalising people uploading identification documents...
we have technical measures for which there is no need for the end
user to upload anything. With oath you can basically have a simple
age check; nothing more.
> (b) a small fraction of kids branching off into fringe networks
that are off the radar and will take them to very dark places very
quickly.
You can always minimize the fraction, but you can never make it go
away.
> Because it's politically unattractive, I don't think enough
attention has been given to the harms that will flow from these laws.
This was a politically bold move and there will be no harms that will
come out of it; especially when compared to the status quo.
Those who feign concern about this usually have vested interests into
stopping this bill; their "interest" is just another attempt in
stopping it albeit with a more "nuanced" approach.
lbrito wrote 21 hours 5 min ago:
(b) a small fraction of kids branching off into fringe networks that
are off the radar and will take them to very dark places very
quickly.
This already happens, and I don't see how a law like this would
significantly change the volume of edgelords and incels funneling
into imageboards
heavyset_go wrote 20 hours 26 min ago:
There's internet culture precedent for this. 4chan itself has an
early history of picking up leftovers from communities that were
banned on other sites/forums/platforms.
4chan's origin itself fits that archetype, as well. It was created
when a hentai subforum got banned on a larger forum, and the
community moved over to the new imageboard.
It acts as sponge for more than just edgelords.
dclowd9901 wrote 21 hours 21 min ago:
On your second point, that might be a little less of a concern.
Granted there can be dark places anywhere, they're _so much easier_
to find online, and have to potential to be so much more reinforcing
for problematic behavior.
heavyset_go wrote 22 hours 8 min ago:
> (b) a small fraction of kids branching off into fringe networks
that are off the radar and will take them to very dark places very
quickly.
Congratulations, Australia, you just drove a ton of kids into the
arms of psychopaths like 764.
If you think Instagram and even 4chan are bad, that's nothing
compared to the groups that sadly, are usually kids that were groomed
themselves, who goad other kids into self-harm, violence and suicide
through extortion, love bombing and literal cult shit.
Instagram might make you feel sad, but it doesn't threaten to kill
your family if you don't strangle your pet cat and carve CVLT into
your chest for a bunch of organized pedophiles online.
boomlinde wrote 9 hours 47 min ago:
My understanding is that 764 are mostly active on mainstream social
media platforms, where most "fringe networks that are off the radar
and will take them to very dark places very quickly" tend to
operate, contrary to GP's concern.
stephen_g wrote 22 hours 33 min ago:
> If you knock the percentage down far enough, you break the network
effect to the point where those who don't want to don't feel
pressured to.
I've seen this argument a lot, and I don't think it really matches
reality - I very much expect that the problem users of social media
who are teens will tend to be the ones that will want to get around
the ban (and will easily be able to).
Kids who just have an account because they are "pressured" to
probably aren't actually really using it much or problematically?
And the other problem is that everyone knows it's a silly law so I
don't think there will be any less pressure to have accounts because
enough kids will be evading it. The ban will only motivate many kids
(if you know much about how teenagers think)
voxleone wrote 22 hours 43 min ago:
Iâd say you made a good risk-benefit analysis, recognizing the
potential upside of the ban (breaking the network effect, reducing
social pressure) while raising important concerns about security,
privacy, and a possible migration to more dangerous online spaces.
That kind of debate is essential.
But I also think some of the consequences you fear (widespread scams,
a mass shift to âdarkâ networks, extreme social isolation) are
not guaranteed. They will depend heavily on how the law is
implemented, how platforms handle age verification, and what healthy
social alternatives (offline or moderated) are offered. I do believe
itâs possible to design a safe system.
Personally, having seen many dire predictions fail to materialize in
the past, I donât view this as either a âclear net benefitâ or
an âinevitable disaster,â but rather as a social experiment with
real potential for success as well as serious unintended
consequences.
I support the Australian law and would like to see something similar
in my own country. We canât simply assume an invisible hand will
resolve this issue for the better. Still, itâs worth watching
closely and following the empirical data over the coming months.
energy123 wrote 19 hours 32 min ago:
Like anything it's a matter of magnitudes. My best guess is that
any negative side effects are going to be of a trivial magnitude,
cancelling out a small amount of the upside on net. At the very
least it's an experiment worth running, and if successful, worth
extending to further regulations for adults too, especially around
mechanics (not the content itself) such as the algorithmic feed.
aetherspawn wrote 23 hours 17 min ago:
Australia already has a government digital ID verification service,
so this social media ban is just a first step towards legislators
realising they can force people to just integrate and use that, then
there is no user data changing hands.
Edit: > or use an Australian Government accredited digital ID service
to prove their age
Here you go. If youâre concerned about your personal data, only use
platforms that integrate and use this.
protocolture wrote 19 hours 6 min ago:
>Here you go. If youâre concerned about your personal data, only
use platforms that integrate and use this.
The Australian Governments IT Security is a joke.
steve_taylor wrote 22 hours 31 min ago:
There has only been one accredited Digital ID that sort of isn't
government and that's Australia Post's Digital ID which they're now
winding down in favour of the government's. While the Digital ID
act does allow for these third-party accredited providers, I think
we can realistically expect that the only one that will be in use
will be the federal government's.
aetherspawn wrote 14 hours 19 min ago:
Itâs called âmyIDâ
(HTM) [1]: https://www.myid.gov.au/
NoPicklez wrote 23 hours 18 min ago:
"the Social Media Minimum Age legislation specifically prohibits
platforms from compelling Australians to provide a government-issued
ID or use an Australian Government accredited digital ID service to
prove their age.
Platforms may offer it as an option but must also offer a reasonable
alternative, so no one who is 16 or older is prevented from having a
social media account because they choose not to provide government
ID. This includes situations where other age check methods return a
result the user does not accept."
steve_taylor wrote 22 hours 28 min ago:
Digital ID is optional by default. Service providers that integrate
with the Digital ID can apply for an exemption to make it
mandatory. Given the mandatory nature of age verification checks
for social media, the fact that social media is typically free to
use and ad-supported and the cost of age verification would be
prohibitive for smaller apps without significant VC backing, an
argument for exemption could be made on the basis that their legal
obligation can't otherwise be fulfilled without a prohibitive
upfront cost.
chillfox wrote 23 hours 38 min ago:
Australia has APIs that can be used to verify ID without uploading
them, but American tech companies has always refused to use them.
freefaler wrote 23 hours 40 min ago:
Social networks aren't that social anymore. Around 65% of the
facebook content is not shared/generated by your friends in your
social graph. So they're all just a Tik-Tok clones basically. Short
dopamine addiction info-snacks with more and more AI generated slop.
(and some of the slop is interesting like Cold War military tech
stories from books read and visualized by AI).
The network effects doesn't matter that much for the Tiktok's of the
world.
jmward01 wrote 23 hours 43 min ago:
These are exactly my thoughts as well, both the positives (it doesn't
need to be air-tight) and the negatives (providing documentation). I
don't know that there is a great system here. The best I can think of
is having independent third parties that people can register with and
that can provide a 'proof of eligibility' token tied to an e-mail
address or something similar with the explicit, backed by law,
understanding that sharing more than that proof of eligibility with a
third party is a criminal offense. The money side of things would be
that FB and the like would pay the proof company a service fee so
they make money and FB gets the proof without getting access to your
documents. Just a thought.
roenxi wrote 1 day ago:
Well, yes but the other problem is this is putting authoritarians in
charge of more stuff. I had a comment comparing this to allowing
people to eat too much food and that is literally where the logical
outcome of this sort of thinking goes - it happens in practice, that
isn't some sort of theoretical risk. The more the government decides
what people can and can't want to do the worse the potential gets
when they make mistakes. And this is further normalising the
government making decisions about speech where they have every
incentive and tendency to shut down people who tell inconvenient and
important truths.
The risks are not worth the rewards of half-heatedly trying to stop
kids communicating with other kids. They're still going to bully each
other and what have you. They're still going to develop unrealistic
expectations. They're probably even still going to use social media
in practice.
ActorNightly wrote 3 hours 58 min ago:
>And this is further normalising the government making decisions
about speech where they have every incentive and tendency to shut
down people who tell inconvenient and important truths.
You really should think about how idiotic this libertarian talking
point is
It would be valid if you had a populace that was educated (implying
that when people heard the inconvenient truths, they would be able
to parse fact from fiction and not be ideologically driven),
combined with a tyrannical government that would be in power and
afraid of the general populace knowing that information and
starting a revolt.
This situation is pretty much impossible. How can an educated
populace elect that government in the first place? If the
population was dumb and elected a fascist government (i.e USA),
they would just ignore anyone speaking inconvenient truths (i.e how
MAGA is blind to all the stuff that is going on).
Secondly, information dissemination is pretty much impossible to
stop these days with everyone being on the internet all the time.
The only people who complain about government silencing them these
days are racists who wanna push some racist or "anti-woke"
narrative, or the brainrotted people like anti-vaxxers. Because in
their mind, they live in this false reality where they believe that
everyone is brainwashed by the evil government and they are the
actually "woke" ones.
kelnos wrote 6 hours 40 min ago:
I don't put much stock in slippery-slope style arguments. If you're
going to make an argument like that, you need to support it with
other instances where the same group/government has actually fallen
down that slippery slope, to great detriment, in a similar enough
situation for it to be likely to happen here.
Without that, it just comes off as hand-wavy anti-government
fear-mongering. It's telling that you used the term
"authoritarians", as if any law that's passed that can restrict
what someone can do is necessarily authoritarian... which, well, as
I said, it's telling.
I'm more concerned with the fact that these sorts of laws don't
just affect kids: they require adults to supply government-issued
identification in order to use these services, which I think is
crap.
rb666 wrote 6 hours 41 min ago:
You know we kids did perfectly fine before there was social media?
The point is, arguably we did a lot better.
jfjfnfjrh wrote 15 hours 4 min ago:
Why not compare it to smoking cigarettes or drinking alcohol? You
need to be an adult to decide legally you can do that and that
makes sense. Its the same thing here.
throwawayqqq11 wrote 14 hours 37 min ago:
Exactly, go tell your physician, that any kind of authority is
bad.
Its a two sided bias, on the one, governmemt authority is
categorically bad and on the other you cant participate and
change it. You could frame social media corporations in the way,
but not, when you are a libertarian, i guess.
kraf wrote 15 hours 5 min ago:
This is not about stopping kids from communicating. The list of
negative consequences of being on social media is long and real.
A government regulating something is also not authoritarian.
"Government bad" is not an argument by the way, and also not a
given. It's just libertarian confusion.
petesergeant wrote 15 hours 29 min ago:
Itâs Australia, itâs a nanny state and always has been, and
much as the locals complain, they also love it, and keep voting for
it.
The rest of the Anglo world is much less obsessed with government
control than the US is; UK is absolutely fine with cameras
everywhere, for example, and has almost no protection against
parliament. Law enforcement is much more seen as by the people and
for the people in these countries.
stinkbeetle wrote 14 hours 47 min ago:
> Itâs Australia, itâs a nanny state and always has been
Australians think of themselves as carefree but good hearted
larrikins who snub their nose at authority, and would always be
ready to duff a steer or two from a wealthy cattleman for some
hungry orphans. The reality is this type of Australian only
remains as fading memories in Henry Lawson stories, the few that
ever existed. The real Australian is not only a spineless
sticklers for the rules completely subservient to authority, with
little sense of adventure, but is also very envious of others
driven by their greedy and selfish nature.
During covid "lockdowns", Australians were far more eager to
tattle on other commoners for breaking the precious rules than
they were concerned with questioning government's hypocritical
behavior or unscientific rules and policies. It was fine in their
minds that their rulers misbehaved, so long as their neighbor
didn't get to take their kid to a park if they weren't allowed to
as well.
EDIT: I don't mean this to sound overly harsh to Australians,
it's not unique to them. What is funny is just their opinion of
themselves. At least the British are admittedly subservient
sticklers.
globular-toast wrote 15 hours 37 min ago:
> I had a comment comparing this to allowing people to eat too much
food
We do that for drugs already. Of course, the correct way to do it
is not to try to ban a substance or control supply but simply to
ban advertising for addictive stuff. I don't think that works for
social media, though, due to the viral nature of it.
ares623 wrote 17 hours 1 min ago:
We wouldnât have this problem if the tech companies can âself
regulateâ (lol). But us engineers just canât help ourselves but
find even more effective and efficient ways to harvest eyeballs and
stoke hate.
And yes, I mean engineers. Just a few âinventionsâ off the top
of my head that got us here:
- infinite scroll
- Facebookâs shadow profiles
- recommendation algorithms
Donât pretend itâs not engineers that came up with these.
anakaine wrote 13 hours 58 min ago:
The issue is that lower profits are attached to self regulation,
as is community backlash. Large tech companies rarely have a
moral compass and their decisions are attached to return on
investment to their financiers.
hyperadvanced wrote 18 hours 17 min ago:
Now tell us what you think about drivers licenses
cde-v wrote 18 hours 20 min ago:
Authoritarians were already in charge of social media. At least
these new âauthoritariansâ are elected and have some duty to
people and society rather than just a few rich shareholders.
nutanc wrote 18 hours 31 min ago:
The question here is, is social media addictive and is it harmful.
If we have enough evidentiary proof, then yes, it should be banned
just like we do for alcohol or cigarettes.
We also ban porn for kids. And we don't need any ID proofs in
implementing the ban. So we have a precedent. It's not perfect, but
society knows it's bad, government, family, schools come together
and implement the ban. No need for IDs etc and give more control to
government.
manindahat wrote 19 hours 24 min ago:
That is an argument and worth monitoring, but IMO it's not a strong
enough argument to stop this.
This sort of ban is the same as existing laws banning the sale and
consumption of alcohol or driving until kids are of age they will
(on average) have sufficient maturity to handle the responsibility.
Something we accept.
Kids are not banned from digital communication. My daughter can
still send text messages and make phone calls.
Kids are not banned from the consuming content on those platforms.
They simply can't have an account to create their own content as it
was too often abused. For example, my 12yo daughter was asked by a
friend to message bomb and abuse a 12yo her friend had a crush on.
That's mild compared to some of the stories I've heard from
platforms like Facebook, and between about 10 - 16 many kids are
just nasty.
I believe that the line in the sand over which platforms this
applies to is the ones that leverage account history to supercharge
the already addictive behaviours caused by UI designs optimised to
manipulate your attention and direct your purchasing power towards
whoever is paying them. Something kids are particularly vulnerable
to. The algorithm doesn't care if it is pushing you towards
radical content as long as you are watching it for as many hours in
a day as possible.
bigB wrote 11 hours 5 min ago:
How long will it take them to ban communications ?
A big reason they are pushing this is Cyberbullying....yet a
recent death in the news this week, the kid was literally
bullied/sextorted via SMS....not social media.
Without banning SMS and possibly calls as well, it debunks this
argument
testing22321 wrote 4 hours 56 min ago:
> How long will it take them to ban communications?
Following your reasoning:
Alcohol is banned for children. How long until they ban all
drinks?
Driving is banned for children. How long until they ban all
self-directed transport?
Voting is banned for children. How long until they pan all
political opinion?
No. Just no.
fugalfervor wrote 7 hours 6 min ago:
That's the slippery slope fallacy. You assert that
communications will be banned as a consequence of this, but
provide no evidence that this will cause the banning of all
communications.
Extropy_ wrote 6 hours 37 min ago:
The assertion is not that something will inevitably happen
because of this other than the further normalization of
government authority over individual autonomy. That is an
inherent result of this, as well as the prohibition of sale
of alcohol and drugs to kids. You can argue on and on whether
or not these are good, righteous, moral laws, but you cannot
deny the intrinsic fact that widespread acceptance and even
support of widening the scope of government control
normalizes government control
immibis wrote 10 hours 3 min ago:
This appears to be a slippery slope argument: if they ban
specific algorithmic social media platforms that have a
verified extremely negative effect on children, soon they'll
ban all communications.
It could happen that they ban all communications, but if you
think so, it needs its own argument; it can't hang off the
social media ban. Otherwise it is like saying that if they ban
children from drinking beer, soon they'll ban them from
drinking liquids.
Swenrekcah wrote 10 hours 41 min ago:
Bullying is not new and was performed via sms before the
internet. Social media however allows for easier targeting
especially for bad actors that are not in the kidâs
friend/acquaintance group.
petsfed wrote 3 hours 20 min ago:
I remember when a bully would have to go up to you themselves
to mete out whatever harassment, and you could avoid a lot of
it by just being aware and avoiding that particular person.
Juxtapose that with today, where any one bully can create
dozens of accounts to bully in a swarm, and the bully has
constant access to you from your own pocket. Also, a person
in Minsk or Timbuktu or whatever couldn't just come up to
your house in the middle of the night to harass you out of
boredom.
This "we could do X before computers, why are we trying to
ban X-with-computers now?" line of arguments is just
intellectually lazy. If a bad behavior was well moderated in
the past because it was labor or resource intensive, the
sudden removal of those constraints is a material change that
demands revisiting. Put another way, if a constraint stops
working, we should change constraints, not just do the old
constraint with a confused expression on our faces.
heavyset_go wrote 1 hour 43 min ago:
You can do all of this with SMS.
Kids know how to download or use free texting apps and
sites, giving them access to potentially thousands of
different numbers from which they can engage in harassment
campaigns. In fact, it's an incredibly common tactic.
Similarly, someone from Minsk and Timbuktu can do the same
thing, they have access to the same tools.
zikduruqe wrote 5 hours 4 min ago:
> Bullying is not new and was performed via sms before the
internet
I seem to remember real bullies would do it to your face
before the internet. Not just anyone behind a keyboard.
mjparrott wrote 6 hours 53 min ago:
Funny enough, adults are also prone to bullying in large
groups online. This does not go away later in life.
Swenrekcah wrote 5 hours 0 min ago:
That is true and we have certainly seen our fair share of
that.
Adults are however also better equipped to deal with that,
especially if they have not been subjected to such abuse as
children.
It is worth noting that online bullying is however not the
most serious matter here, rather (in my mind at least) it
is the systematic targeting of kids/teenagers to get inside
their head and get them to perform violent acts against
themselves or others around them.
iamacyborg wrote 10 hours 19 min ago:
> Bullying is not new and was performed via sms before the
internet.
Pretty sure the internet was a thing well before kids got
dumb phones.
SecretDreams wrote 9 hours 20 min ago:
> Pretty sure the internet was a thing well before kids got
dumb phones.
The internet has evolved meaningfully over the last 10
years, even. Evolved might be generous, though.
Swenrekcah wrote 9 hours 23 min ago:
That is true. The ubiquitous mobile internet and social
media I should have said.
re-thc wrote 10 hours 59 min ago:
> How long will it take them to ban communications ?
Just ban Australia themselves.
> A big reason they are pushing this is Cyberbullying
Oh really now? It has been going on for so many years... A big
reason they've been pushing this is it impacts their own
pockets i.e. the traditional media companies.
bigB wrote 10 hours 41 min ago:
Well I should have worded it "A big reason the say they are
banning it is Cyberbullying" , I don't believe that at all,
but you are 100% correct, they hate big tech as it always
beats our corrupt, biased and inept traditional media.
re-thc wrote 13 hours 1 min ago:
> I believe that the line in the sand over which platforms this
applies to is the ones that
You know a law is broken when its definition is defined by random
people "knowing" where and how it applies.
> This sort of ban is the same as existing laws banning the sale
and consumption of alcohol or driving
No it's not. Is every social media platform banned? How is it
defined? This is the equivalent of going into a supermarket with
a "kids" alcohol section and 1 for everyone else hand-picked by
whoever in charge.
rusk wrote 12 hours 56 min ago:
Like the worlds richest man claiming to be a free speech
absolutist. Because you just know the sappy fuck has your best
interests at heart.
> You know a law is broken when its definition is defined by
random people "knowing" where and how it applies.
fogj094j0923j4 wrote 17 hours 49 min ago:
All those services are wall-gardened so without an account, you
already cannot consume the contents.
BlueTemplar wrote 9 hours 25 min ago:
No, about half of them (mostly) aren't : Reddit, YouTube,
Twitch...
(That's also not what «walled garden» means. You're thinking
about «deep web».)
texuf wrote 14 hours 26 min ago:
I feel like people are either arguing in bad faith, or weâre
trying to talk to fish about the water. Its so obvious to me
that people are going to get their identities stolen and the
internet is going to get so much worse that I canât
understand how someone would think otherwise.
skrebbel wrote 15 hours 25 min ago:
Thatâs a choice made by those services. They can change it.
re-thc wrote 13 hours 0 min ago:
> Thatâs a choice made by those services. They can change
it.
Why do these services have to lose? That's a choice made by
this country's government. They can change it.
skrebbel wrote 12 hours 44 min ago:
Theyâll lose revenue in Australia. If more governments
copy this move, theyâll lose revenue there too.
re-thc wrote 12 hours 39 min ago:
> If more governments copy this move, theyâll lose
revenue there too.
That's like saying every government should copy the new
tariffs too. If only it was so simple...
> Theyâll lose revenue in Australia.
Why is it always 1-way? Australia can also lose people
and lose people's interest.
skrebbel wrote 10 hours 40 min ago:
Lol you think people are going to leave Australia
because their kids cant go on Tiktok?
johnisgood wrote 9 hours 48 min ago:
Well, who knows what they will be doing if it is not
Tiktok. Hopefully they will pick up a book, but
doubtful. They need a way to communicate with their
peers.
5upplied_demand wrote 6 hours 21 min ago:
I'm not seeing how this stops kids from
communicating with their peers. That seems like a
bad-faith argument as they can send an SMS, make
phone calls, send emails, meet in-person, play
video games, etc. The things many of us grew up
doing with our friends.
johnisgood wrote 1 hour 27 min ago:
Yes, I did those things in 2000. Except when I
look at the city I grew up in, it is no longer
safe for kids, and kids do not even go outside
anymore, and I do not think social media is at
fault here.
BTW SMS and phone calls cost money.
Sending e-mails was not a thing even when I was a
kid, 25 years ago.
Playing video games, yeah well, that may be the
only thing where they may communicate. Except
that is going down in the shitters too these
days. Say "shit" or "fuck" (especially) and get
banned from chat for days.
throaway123213 wrote 6 hours 26 min ago:
Families aren't going to move because their teens
can't use social media.
jrochkind1 wrote 20 hours 11 min ago:
The government has laws saying people under 16 can't drive cars, do
you think that's part of the slippery slope that has led to all of
those happening-in-practice bad things?
9rx wrote 17 hours 46 min ago:
> The government has laws saying people under 16 can't drive cars
We did, though. The chances of getting caught were slim to nil.
Will kids (and adults for that matter) have the same easy
opportunity to evade enforcement here?
komali2 wrote 13 hours 0 min ago:
I thought the point of laws was not that enforcement is perfect
but rather that the consequence of getting caught created a
counter-incentive to doing the thing?
9rx wrote 9 hours 1 min ago:
The point of laws is to document what everyone in a community
has come to agree on, assuming a democracy. Or, in a
dictatorship, what the dear leader has decided upon. Any
punishments encoded into those laws may serve as a
counter-incentive, I suppose.
But baked into that is the idea that enforcement isn't
perfect so you can still disappear into the night when you
have that urge to do whatever it is that is technically
illegal. This allows acceptance of laws that might be
considered too draconian if enforcement was perfect. However,
it seems in the case of these digital-centric laws that
enforcement will become too close to being perfect as,
without the need to hire watchful people, there is strong
incentive to make it ever-present.
Or maybe not, but that is why the question was asked.
madeofpalk wrote 19 hours 29 min ago:
Yes but every time you drive on the road you don't need to prove
you're over 16.
eimrine wrote 16 hours 26 min ago:
It would be true if the windows are totally black or humans
under 16 are looking totally adult.
vaylian wrote 11 hours 30 min ago:
No. It would be true if the car didn't turn on the engine
unless you showed your face and ID to some on-board computer
of the car.
johnwheeler wrote 20 hours 30 min ago:
Some of us donât mind government regulation as much as your
parents told you not to like it. I just say this because itâs
usually those types of parents that instill this kind of stuff and
their children not to trust the government but some of us actually
do. We are pretty happy with the way things are. Itâs not naïve
either. Itâs seriously a problem when people talk like the
government is meant to be not trusted.
johnnyanmac wrote 20 hours 2 min ago:
>Some of us donât mind government regulation as much as your
parents told you not to like it
I wasn't told to hate government regulations. 30 years of
horrible, ineffective regulation taught me to hate these poorly
thought out regulatoins. I grew up under No Child Left Behind. I
saw the TSA form before my very eyes. I'm right now seeing ICE
roam free, regulations be damned.
I don't hate the idea of regulation. I don't trust the people
who are trying to regulate.
hello_moto wrote 17 hours 28 min ago:
US seems the only western nation with high trust issue with its
own government.
Aussie, Canada, much of the Europe have no issue.
synecdoche wrote 12 hours 38 min ago:
Had no issues.
chillfox wrote 19 hours 47 min ago:
From the outside it does look like the US is especially bad at
it.
Australia has had a pretty good track record with
writing/implementing regulations.
nostrebored wrote 20 hours 15 min ago:
I typically think regulation is ineffective and poorly
structured. Banning social media for teenagers is such an obvious
social good that I canât see a downside. The kids are not
alright.
raw_anon_1111 wrote 19 hours 50 min ago:
You donât see a downside from having the government tie your
ID to your online presence?
nostrebored wrote 19 hours 41 min ago:
No, not really. Any sufficiently motivated state actor
already can. I would be unsurprised to be able to dox you as
a mildly interested individual. It is usually not very hard.
People usually reference things that they are ashamed about
as a reason to justify this fear of ID based services. I
donât find this compelling whatsoever. Every platform Iâm
on that is even mildly associated with identity is more
enjoyable and interesting. The idea that the marketplace of
ideas is slowed by identity is not something Iâve seen in
practice. In authoritarian regimes we already see ways to
circumvent internet anonymity. So no, I donât see the
downside.
Open to being persuaded here though, about 5 years ago I
would have agreed with you.
raw_anon_1111 wrote 19 hours 34 min ago:
You realize right now today the US is forcing people to
have public social media profiles to enter the country and
they just started firing people for saying mean things
about an irrelevant racist podcaster?
Why make it easy for them.
mason_mpls wrote 20 hours 36 min ago:
We regulate kids in all sorts of ways, this isnât different. Kids
donât need social media to communicate.
rapind wrote 20 hours 45 min ago:
These are government regulations regarding kids. Nothing new here,
weâve been regulating what you can market to kids for decades.
Iâm not buying a slippery slope argument.
As a parent myself, it definitely helps when you can collectively
avoid having your kids on these platforms. I canât express how
much easier it is to restrict it and not seem like a kook when
authorities are also on board.
carimura wrote 5 hours 10 min ago:
Personally I'll take "kook" (or worse) as a trade off for safety
and sanity of my children any day of the week.
lII1lIlI11ll wrote 11 hours 34 min ago:
> As a parent myself, it definitely helps when you can
collectively avoid having your kids on these platforms. I canât
express how much easier it is to restrict it and not seem like a
kook when authorities are also on board.
This pattern of thought is exactly the issue. Stop offloading
parenting of your children to government! That won't end well for
neither children nor adults.
5upplied_demand wrote 1 hour 53 min ago:
This is not "offloading parenting of your child to the
government" it is acknowledging that a certain action can be
far easier to take (getting a child off social media) if the
government puts in laws to support those actions. Social media
relies on network effects, this might weaken those effects and
make it easier for individual parents to keep kids off those
tools. Not sure why it upsets you so much.
Are environmental laws are a way of off-loading all
environmental care to the government?
Are laws against violence a way of off-loading physical
protection to the government?
lII1lIlI11ll wrote 1 hour 22 min ago:
> This is not "offloading parenting of your child to the
government" it is acknowledging that a certain action can be
far easier to take (getting a child off social media) if the
government puts in laws to support those actions.
Compromising my privacy in order to allow you to omit having
some tough but needed conversations with your child (i.e.
_parenting_) regarding harms of social media is not a
sacrifice I'm willing to make. Homer Simpson was supposed to
be a parody on a bad father, not a role model with his
"You're the government's problem now!".
> Are laws against violence a way of off-loading physical
protection to the government?
Of course they are! I support government protecting me from
violence in some capacity, although I don't support "chat
control"-like laws since the cost/benefit doesn't seem to be
favorable.
mx7zysuj4xew wrote 8 hours 32 min ago:
Yeah except the guy is a kook and an enemy to a free and open
society.
immibis wrote 9 hours 55 min ago:
This pattern of thought is exactly the issue. Stop offloading
the responsibility for creating a reasonable environment! That
won't end well for neither children nor adults.
It's an extremely American religious belief that everything is
an individual problem. Luckily, almost no other country has
this religion.
lII1lIlI11ll wrote 8 hours 57 min ago:
Firstly, I'm not from the US. Secondly, I don't agree that
forcing bunch of random web sites and apps (i.e. not
government or banking sites/apps) to demand ids from their
users is a "reasonable environment".
immibis wrote 6 hours 30 min ago:
Luckily, they aren't doing that - the Australian law
actually bans them from demanding IDs, unless they provide
an alternative as well.
Here is the law:
(HTM) [1]: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/displa...
p2detar wrote 7 hours 21 min ago:
Itâs quite simple really - you have the choice not to use
those services. I donât get what the anger is about here.
lII1lIlI11ll wrote 6 hours 21 min ago:
You are being obtuse. The anger is about services I'm
used to may be forced to demand my id in the future
because modern parents can't be assed to configure
parental controls on their brat's phones (or are too
afraid to do that).
immibis wrote 1 hour 52 min ago:
I agree it would be more privacy-conscious to do the
banning in the opposite way, by putting the banning
logic on the end device, and mandating websites to send
a signal that they are banned for minors. This header
already exists (and for some reason it's a really long
random-ish string). Someone should propose this to
lawmakers.
Since the law doesn't actually say how it should be
implemented, it's compatible with existing law.
Actually I wonder if simply sending the "I am 18+"
header would already be legal in Australia. Probably
not, on the basis that it doesn't actually work right
now, but maybe they could convince a judge that it's
actually the browser's fault it doesn't respect the
header.
lII1lIlI11ll wrote 1 hour 36 min ago:
You are giving authoritarians benefit of a doubt for
no good reason. Vagueness in such laws is usually to
allow selective enforcement by the people in power
and not for you (a regular user) to have an "escape
hatch" from negative consequences of the law. The
reality of the situation is that there are currently
no other ways to enforce age checks besides asking
for an id and any kind of theoretical
parental-controls-configured browser headers are
years away from deployment, best case.
arrrg wrote 10 hours 25 min ago:
It takes a village to raise a kid.
You cannot parent in isolation and outside of society. How
society is structured has an huge impact on parenting. It is
delusional to think of parenting as some kind of thing that
exists in isolation separate from and not influenced by the
rest of society. Parents often can only have little influence
themselves.
This is a value neutral description. Though I do think total
parental autonomy in parenting is not a worthwhile goal and
also not at all realistic. As parents you have to deal with
society.
What does that mean for social media bans? To me mostly:
network effects are wicked strong and fighting against them as
an individual parent is basically impossible. This can lead to
parents only having bad choices available to them (ban social
media use and exclude them from their friends, allow social
media use and fry their brains). Are bans that right solution?
Donât know. Iâm really not sure. But I do know that itâs
not as simple as âparent betterâ.
lII1lIlI11ll wrote 9 hours 0 min ago:
In discussions similar to this I often see parents expressing
their happiness with a state taking the role of a "bad cop"
so that the parents can just wash their hands off telling
their children it is state's fault they can no longer use
TikTok ("I canât express how much easier it is to restrict
it and not seem like a kook when authorities are also on
board." from OP) instead of having a proper conversation
about harms of social media with the children. This is
literally a cop out for them from a proper parenting.
From my point of view I'm already paying for their brats with
higher taxes, now I will also have to gradually give my
documents to random web sites more and more just to reduce
the "burden" of parenting on lazy parents...
5upplied_demand wrote 6 hours 15 min ago:
>I often see parents expressing their happiness with a
state taking the role of a "bad cop"
As an actual parent, I have never heard of this or seen it.
Can you provide some real examples?
lII1lIlI11ll wrote 5 hours 32 min ago:
> Can you provide some real examples?
How is the quote from OP's comment that is right at the
end of the sentence you cited not a "real example"?
5upplied_demand wrote 2 hours 0 min ago:
You said you've seen it happen "often" and provided no
examples other than the one you are using to make your
point. You implied that you have heard it multiple
times in different contexts. I was asking for some of
those contexts because as someone who is a parent and
interacts with other parents frequently, it is not
something I've encountered.
heavyset_go wrote 19 hours 18 min ago:
We're literally at the point where we have KYC laws just to post
on the internet.
The slippery slope is long behind us, we're already at the
bottom.
rawbot wrote 10 hours 29 min ago:
Once you hit rock-bottom, it's time to bring out the
jackhammer.
ptek wrote 15 hours 30 min ago:
I thought you had to use your real name when posting on USENET
back in the day before spoofing.
salawat wrote 6 hours 34 min ago:
No. What is this revisionist nonsense? Where the hell did you
think the meme of "On the Internet, no one knows you're a
dog" came from? Conventional wisdom was alias up, or maintain
a well-known handle. Do not use or share personal info. Ever.
hexasquid wrote 18 hours 52 min ago:
First they came for the people who worry about slippery slopes.
I didn't speak out because I don't worry about slippery slopes.
And that's that.
kill_nate_kill wrote 18 hours 56 min ago:
Oh, we can go bottomer.
dragonwriter wrote 19 hours 27 min ago:
> These are government regulations regarding kids.
No, they aren't just that, because they are government
regulations requiring everyone wanting access to something that
cannot be marketed to children under the rules to prove that they
are not a child, which is not inherently essential to a
regulation of what can be marketed to children.
There is a difference between regulating what can be marketed to
children and mandating that vendors secure proof that every user
is not a child.
(Just as there is a difference between prohibiting knowingly
supplying terrorists and requiring every seller to conduct a
detailed background check of every customer to assure that they
are not a terrorist.)
immibis wrote 9 hours 58 min ago:
It actually doesn't say they must verify ID. It says
"reasonable steps". Actually, it says they must NOT verify ID
unless they also have a way to do it without verifying ID. The
fine for requiring an ID upload is the same as the fine for
letting minors on the platform (30k penalty units, whatever
that means).
Of course, nobody is sure what "reasonable steps" actually
means, other than a selfie or ID upload.
Here is the text of the bill:
(HTM) [1]: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/di...
ulbu wrote 17 hours 6 min ago:
alcohol, cigarettes?..
bgbntty2 wrote 16 hours 29 min ago:
It's different. You show an ID card to a human if you don't
look old enough. They look at it and return it. The ID card
doesn't get scanned or tied to all your future recreational
drug purchases - you don't have an account or a trail that
identifies you.
When uploading ID documents, your account gets tied to your
real world identity. That's not a precedent the government
should be setting, because private entities having an excuse
(the law) to require identification erodes privacy, and
because in the future other services could be required to ask
for an identification, too. Yes, it's the slippery slope (aka
"boiling the frog") argument, but that's how laws that erode
privacy evolve - step by step.
Now it's account for social media, then it's porn sites, then
it's forums where you might see porn or discussions on
suicide, drugs or anything deemed morally hazardous. They
might require an ID just to view the site or require the site
to not make it public. If (or "when", if we don't oppose such
laws) enough countries mandate something like this, most
sites will likely require an account for all content,
regardless of where the person is located, as otherwise
they'll likely have to prove that they've not only geolocated
the IP of the visitor, but checked that they weren't using
VPNs, Tor or similar services.
As for using zero-knowledge proofs and similar technology to
make it less infringing on privacy - I very much doubt the
government (any government) to implement this with 100%
privacy and security.
malnourish wrote 9 hours 33 min ago:
They scan IDs at every gas station I've bought a lottery
ticket in now for at least a year or two. US.
johnisgood wrote 9 hours 46 min ago:
> As for using zero-knowledge proofs and similar technology
to make it less infringing on privacy - I very much doubt
the government (any government) to implement this with 100%
privacy and security.
I wish they did, that would be huge.
nmfisher wrote 15 hours 34 min ago:
> they look at it and return it. The ID card doesn't get
scanned
Actually in Australia, IDs usually do get scanned and
stored. About the same time I was getting too old for
clubs, they were starting to introduce ID scanners. You
line up, hand over your driver's licence or passport, they
slap it on a wall-mounted scanner, the scan goes into a
database and in you go. No scan, no entry. Nowadays I
think they just use phone/tablet scanners.
ecocentrik wrote 8 hours 40 min ago:
In the US they also get scanned and stored.
austinjp wrote 12 hours 32 min ago:
In some bars and clubs in various countries it's common
for the door staff to take your ID, hold it up to the
security camera, then return it before you can go in.
I've seen it in France and the UK. The reason I've been
given is so that anyone who causes trouble can be
identified for potential prosecution.
throaway123213 wrote 6 hours 26 min ago:
This has been the case in Canada for 20 years
sxde wrote 13 hours 24 min ago:
This must be an exception, and not a rule. I've lived in
Melbourne for years, and have never had my drivers
license scanned.
anakaine wrote 14 hours 5 min ago:
Parent of kids old enough to go clubbing, and have been
to a few venues in the city myself recently because of
that. Have also worked on this tech in a small capacity
in government.
Yes, handheld is now used. If you use the digital
licences app on your phone in NSW/QLD the licence details
are picked up by a QR code and cross verified via an auth
API with Services NSW / TMR QLD. You are also checked
against a database of banned patrons, against court
ordered exclusions, and police issued exclusions. If you
use the physical licence, an extra step of ID â>
licence details extracted occurs, then the same process
is followed.
I agree that people will lose their identity online if
age checks become normalised. Thatâs not been the case
with the club and inner city alcohol venues checks.
wolfpack_mick wrote 12 hours 40 min ago:
Aren't those things organised the same way Apple face
id is organised where the app itself can't get the
biometric information, they just get a yes or no? That
would be stupid as hell.
In Finland the government has allowed banks to offer
(2fa) identification services to those that are using
their services. If I sign into a government site using
my banking ID, the bank gets paid for providing the
service. To my understanding none of my actual ID
information is transferred to a party wanting to
identify me.
The Linkedin 'validate your identity' was the first
time i was asked to actually take a picture of my
passport/scan the chip. I'll refuse until they'll allow
me to identify with my banking ID.
dragonwriter wrote 16 hours 27 min ago:
> Now it's account for social media, then it's porn sites
Actually, in lots of places it was porn sites first, but...
notpushkin wrote 16 hours 31 min ago:
Yes, but those are in the physical world. [1] In digital
realm, having to verify your ID has way more consequences. My
passport has been leaked and I have a âquick cash loanâ
in my name as a result of that.
---
[1]: Tangentially, those are trivially circumvented in many
countries. When I was a teenager in St. Petersburg, weâve
used a âduty free delivery serviceâ, which (I suppose)
just stocked liquor at the duty free shop on the border with
Finland, and then sold it. Not sure how legal was the core
premise (probably not), but we used it because their couriers
didnât even pretend they need to check our passports
(definitely illegal).
In many countries, alcohol is available in grocery delivery
services. Couriers happily leave your order at the doorstep
even though they are supposed to check your ID. In many other
countries, even buying in-store is possible (e.g. Japan,
where in any konbini you can just press a button on screen
saying âyes, Iâm 21â).
SoftTalker wrote 6 hours 24 min ago:
So stupid. An image of an ID should never be a replacement
for the actual ID for future use. I hope that loan was easy
to dispute.
madeofpalk wrote 19 hours 31 min ago:
The problem is that it's a government regulation regarding
everyone, because now everyone must prove that they're not a
subject of this new law.
Do you think there should there be police on every corner you
must submit your ID to to prove you're not an illegal immigrant?
lkramer wrote 6 hours 50 min ago:
Is that not literally what everyone has to do in order to
consume alcohol?
mrcode007 wrote 19 hours 19 min ago:
Imagine having to show your ID demonstrating youâre not
subject to the law punishing you for driving a car without a
driving license.
heavyset_go wrote 19 hours 5 min ago:
I don't have to scan my face, upload my ID and share my
biometric data with multiple 3rd parties, who will then lose
and leak my private data, every time I drive a car.
This law isn't letting anyone use social media freely until
they're suspected of not being an adult, at which point they
have to age verify. It requires everyone to identify
themselves whenever they want to view, interact, reply or
share content on the internet.
ntSean wrote 18 hours 52 min ago:
This is not true. Its users suspected to be underage which
will be asked.
Additionally, the law makes no judgement on the technology
used to identify age, just that social media companies need
to make an effort. I suspect that companies will not want
to deal with the data security issues (very illegal to
share pictures of underage people without consent), and
will not be "sharing" with 3rd parties.
ntoskrnl_exe wrote 14 hours 52 min ago:
Thatâs actually part of the problem.
Pretty much every company will contract a 3rd party
service to perform those checks, making sure they get as
much bang for as little buck as possible. Said services
are usually the weak link that shares the data with
others, often through PNGs in public buckets so that
Russian teenagers have an easy job CURLing them.
If the government took security seriously, itâd endorse
a solution and then take responsibility for it, given it
came up with the law in the first place.
heavyset_go wrote 17 hours 52 min ago:
To comply with the law, platforms are gatekeeping content
they deem controversial/NSFW/inappropriate/inconvenient
behind age verification walls.
Everyone who wants to view, interact with or share that
content has to verify their age to do so.
> I suspect that companies will not want to deal with the
data security issues (very illegal to share pictures of
underage people without consent), and will not be
"sharing" with 3rd parties.
There are countless instances of exactly this happening,
over and over again, not to mention that it's the way age
verification's implemented now nearly everywhere lol
raw_anon_1111 wrote 19 hours 56 min ago:
So it âhelpsâ so you donât have to be the bad guy to your
kids and instead now everyone needs to give the government a
method to tie your online presence and speech to you.
dizlexic wrote 20 hours 12 min ago:
And if the government regulates your children join an after
school program where they learn outdoor survival skills,
exercise, and learn the popular political parties glee club.
There would be nothing new here?
The argument is that kids being online isnât the governments
business one way or the other.
The slippery slope argument is always secondary, but how often
has government regulation not grown in size and scope? Combine
that with how norms shift and the type of large scale identity
infrastructure put in place to support this, can you honestly say
this isnât going to grow?
All of that also ignores the possibility (read inevitability)
that a bad actor/authoritarian would exploit this access further
without popular support.
raw_anon_1111 wrote 19 hours 54 min ago:
And we already see what India is trying to do - force phone
manufacturers to have an always on GPS feature where the
government can track you and disable the phoneâs feature
where it notifies you if something is using your location.
And they tie your SIM card with your ID.
31337Logic wrote 19 hours 40 min ago:
This got rejected in the end, btw.
raw_anon_1111 wrote 19 hours 33 min ago:
Only because Apple refused. Iâm not saying Apple is a
good guy. If Trump had asked, Cook would have hired people
from DOGE to implement the feature.
jaimex2 wrote 20 hours 34 min ago:
The government isn't helping you, they just pushed every child in
Australia to un-moderated and decentralised social networks.
Complete free for alls.
4chan, Mastedon, BlueSky, PeerTube, Pixelfed
They have millions of users. They're about to get more.
No, you can't block these. No, you can't order these to do
anything.
stackghost wrote 17 hours 14 min ago:
As others have mentioned it's the critical mass and the
algorithmically-addicting dopamine treadmills that are the
problem this law seeks to address.
ryan_lane wrote 20 hours 12 min ago:
What social networks are these? If they aren't complying with
the law, they can (and should be) blocked.
You're also missing what folks keep saying: the network effect
isn't there. It needs to be popular enough that there's social
pressure to be there. If it's that large, it's going to be
large enough to be on the radar and then be under enforcement.
Slippery-slope arguments, for the most part, exist to fear
monger folks away from change, even when the argument itself is
non-sensical.
salawat wrote 17 hours 25 min ago:
>Slippery-slope arguments,
Slippery slope arguments exist because the act of governing
has the tendency to converge on ratchet effects. It never
bloody loosens, do every damn inch has to be treated with
maximal resistance.
fogj094j0923j4 wrote 20 hours 4 min ago:
>What social networks are these?
That's the point, there are always fringe social networks you
don't know, and they are probably x10 toxic than reddit
comment sections.
johnnyanmac wrote 20 hours 7 min ago:
>What social networks are these?
well for one: I find it humorous how this law has an
exception for Roblox. That really speaks to how up to date
lawmakers are on the situation (or worse: how easy it was for
Roblox to pay them off). I don't see how it's a slippery
slope when the corruption is before our very eyes.
ntSean wrote 18 hours 56 min ago:
Each company was required to put a statement to the eSafety
commission explaining why they should be exempt from the
law, even GitHub. The eSafety commission also have an open
monitoring period where they'll repeal the law if it isn't
working as intended, and will release research.
I don't think it's just corruption, there are people who
are trying to do the right thing, even if flawed.
iamnothere wrote 19 hours 0 min ago:
Roblox AND DISCORD. Somehow YouTube is considered
âdangerousâ though.
anakaine wrote 13 hours 59 min ago:
YouTube didnât make it through because of how it
actively pushes alpha male crap at teenage boys. The Tate
brothers and others who push the whole toxic masculinity,
man are superior, men must protect women even from
themselves, to be a man you must be able to fight, men
are owed a position of power and women should be
subservient, etc. It was a very strong feature in the
early debate, and something educators put in as part of
their submission as being an extremely noticeable shift
for young men, and those same young men quite
consistently stating the same content they viewed.
YouTubeâs tendency to push extreme rabbit holes and
funnel towards extremism and conservatism in young men is
what led to them being included.
AnthonyMouse wrote 10 hours 14 min ago:
"YouTube is targeted for a ban because it shows
children conservative viewpoints" seems somehow
simultaneously an obvious free speech violation and a
proper own-goal for the conservatives pushing these
rules.
OccamsMirror wrote 7 hours 7 min ago:
You seem to be telling on yourself if you think
Andrew Tate's viewpoints are representative of
conversative viewpoints and not just toxic misogyny.
Popeyes wrote 14 hours 53 min ago:
YouTube is just a content hose though and it does not
care what it shows you, you can go down some dark routes
with YouTube just by letting it play.
nostrebored wrote 20 hours 17 min ago:
This idea that regulation fails to destroy industries is
farcical. Most examples of âfailed regulationâ like
American prohibition were runaway successes as public policy.
Whether it is good or desirable is a different question.
The idea that someone is going to make an engaging experience
on a âdecentralizedâ network is honestly a bit silly to me.
The market potential of this business is low. Decentralized
networks with much larger incentives have failed to capture
critical mass.
There will be side effects, but social media has been so
ridiculously corrosive to the welfare of teenagers that I
canât imagine a ban would be worse.
mx7zysuj4xew wrote 8 hours 28 min ago:
Aaannd then the mask came off, proving you were a moralistic
authoritarian. I suppose you support cartels destabilizing
entire nation-states with billions of criminal funds too
api wrote 8 hours 44 min ago:
The âengaging experienceâ is the entire problem. The fact
that itâs harder to do addiction engineering on a
decentralized network is a feature.
AnthonyMouse wrote 10 hours 30 min ago:
> The idea that someone is going to make an engaging
experience on a âdecentralizedâ network is honestly a bit
silly to me. The market potential of this business is low.
Decentralized networks with much larger incentives have
failed to capture critical mass.
When decentralized networks win, they often win so big that
they become invisible. AOL is dead, the web isn't. Email, the
global telephone network, the internet itself, these are all
decentralized networks.
The hardest part of doing this for social media is actually
discovery. It's easier to show people an "engaging" feed when
your algorithm has access to the full firehose to select
from. But that doesn't mean doing it in a decentralized way
is impossible, and if you pass a law that drives people away
from centralized services, the incentive to do it goes up.
johnnyanmac wrote 20 hours 10 min ago:
>Most examples of âfailed regulationâ like American
prohibition were runaway successes as public policy.
You pick one of the worst examples? Prohibition drove a black
market for spirits . the 21st amendment repealed it because
the government missed out on hundreds of thousands in taxes.
The reason to make the law and repeal it were both awful. The
lessons learned were all wrong. It's just awful all around
(and I speak as someone that doesn't really drink much).
nostrebored wrote 19 hours 49 min ago:
Yeah, this is absolutely one post hoc interpretation of it.
The black market for spirits absolutely pales in comparison
to public health and legal data, which conclusively show
that second order effects of drinking like liver disease,
public intoxication, and domestic violence plummeted.
This prohibition era retcon is a way to justify the fact
that people like to drink and there were many people who
stood to make money on re-legalization.
Which is why I said the question of it being a good thing
is different. I encourage you to look at the data, as
someone who also enjoys to drink.
Government bans are surprisingly effective in most
developed countries.
johnnyanmac wrote 19 hours 39 min ago:
"success" can be viewed in different lenses. In your
lens of "did it make America healthier", sure. I wouldn't
be surprised.
My lens is "did America actually learn anything valuable
from this period?". And all I see is "We The Government
are fine poisoning our citizens as long as we profit from
it". A lesson that passed on to cigarettes, then hard
drugs, then fast food (which persists to this day), and
now with social media. Then The Government wonders why no
one trusts them to do the right thing.
In that lens, I'd say prohibition and its downstream
effects on how to regulate in general was absolutely
awful and damning.
JoshTriplett wrote 18 hours 3 min ago:
> poisoning our citizens
*allowing our citizens to make their own choices about
what they consume
eesmith wrote 15 hours 17 min ago:
May I interest you in my ReVitaleZ water? Every
bottle is energized with radium!
I've got a marketing campaign ready that will sweep
the nation and convince millions to ReVitaleZ!
nickpp wrote 11 hours 16 min ago:
Oh, nothing like a little radiation fear mongering
to convince the public they need government
approval for every single drop of drink and byte of
food we put into our bodies. It's for our own
good, after all!
Meanwhile, years after the actual Radithor radium
water [1] scandal, the very same government was
merrily blowing up atomic bombs in open air, in the
desert [2].
And even today there are crazy people around the
world happily consuming radioactive gas in
specially designed spas [3]. They should be locked
up for their own good, the government always knows
better! [1] [2]
(HTM) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radithor
(HTM) [2]: https://www.pbssocal.org/shows/artbound/do...
(HTM) [3]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9...
eesmith wrote 9 hours 42 min ago:
Nothing like a snakeoil-monger bemoaning pesky
government regulations with misguided
exaggerating of the dangers of Big Government.
I'm shocked the same government which supports
global warming and mass species extinction, and
which threatens to bomb "shithole countries"
"back to the Stone age", has a less than perfect
attitude about nuclear weapons. Shocked I say!
Next I suppose you'll say that this same
government hasn't clamped down hard on coal power
plants which, in addition to their CO2 emissions,
generates ash which destroys waterways, kills
people, and is full of radioactive waste?
I'm so glad our governments always know better
than that!
It would be a shame if food and drug laws were in
place mostly because even rich people and
politicians can't ensure their food and drugs are
safe.
It's time to take my protein powder supplements.
I'm glad the government inspects every
manufacturer so I don't have to worry about doing
my own lead tests each time I buy some. Thank you
Orrin Hatch for your diligence!
komali2 wrote 15 hours 21 min ago:
Is that what happened with cigarettes?
Remember how pervasive cigarette ads used to be?
Human behavior is variable and can be influenced,
even against our best interest.
At what point do we acknowledge advertising as a form
of psychological attack that causes people to do
harmful things they wouldn't otherwise do?
The government's role in this imo shouldn't be to
allow corporations to try to convince people to hurt
themselves and then to sell them things to hurt
themselves with, but then turn around and restrict
people's rights to slow down the self harm. Rather I
believe the government should seek to annihilate
corporations that try to harm the population.
Is not the implicit relationship between
corporations, people, and government, such that
corporations want to be allowed to exploit a
population for profit in return for some nominal
good, and the government allows that only so long as
the good outweighs the harm?
Why not?
nostrebored wrote 19 hours 32 min ago:
Thatâs a fair interpretation! I meant in terms of the
stated goals of the Prohibitionist movement. I imagine
they would agree with both of us (and be very angry
about it)
kubb wrote 21 hours 30 min ago:
Authoritarians use social networks to undermine democratic
principles so not exposing kids to that takes power away from them.
Or did I misunderstand something?
hsuduebc2 wrote 10 hours 59 min ago:
It seems to me that this is much bigger problem for vulnerable or
stupid adults. You can be naive when you are young but you can
change.
I would say that much bigger problem is possibly the influence of
these sites on development of young people.
We know it's addictive, we know it's harmful. Cigarettes and
alcohol are banned for the same reason so I'm kinda glad for this
Australian experiment. We'll see.
dizlexic wrote 18 hours 53 min ago:
Authoritarians use power. Thatâs why consolidation of power is
bad. Government is historically the most dangerous place to
centralize power.
nomel wrote 21 hours 5 min ago:
Authoritarians also use state influenced media to undermine
democratic principles.
kubb wrote 12 hours 49 min ago:
Yeah but with social media they can also undermine them outside
of their state.
nomel wrote 42 min ago:
Agreed!
I guess the question is, how should citizens communicate with
each other? Who should apply the restrictions? If the
authoritarian state is applying the restrictions, then it's
probably for their own goals.
Gigachad wrote 20 hours 52 min ago:
Social media is the worst state propaganda machine ever
created. Destroying it would be a huge hit to authoritarians.
DaSHacka wrote 18 hours 16 min ago:
Bahaha right, so that way dissidents have no way of speaking
out. Man, I'm sure they'd hate to see that happen.
kubb wrote 12 hours 50 min ago:
When did social media enable dissidents to do anything?
AlOwain wrote 11 hours 55 min ago:
The Arab Spring, the Mahsa Amini protests, the recent
resurgence of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, have all
been conducted primarily using social media.
This is a very narrow scale when taking the bigger
picture, as these are just prominent events in Middle
Eastern history since the growth of social media usage,
say after 2011.
You are not even considering the travesties avoided due
to social media, what regulatory action has been avoided
(or taken) to avoid social media backlashes.
You are being extremely disingenuous, and you are
directly attacking some peoples' only hope of minimizing
repression. I urge you to reconsider your beliefs. This
directly and critically affects me.
kubb wrote 6 hours 22 min ago:
Iâm sorry for you and by all means, keep social media
where you live. Maybe the next Arab spring will work
out better than the first one and TikTok will enable
that.
Where I live, weâre already free from repression and
social media threatens to reintroduce it.
komali2 wrote 13 hours 2 min ago:
The civil rights movement was organized before social media
existed.
expedition32 wrote 10 hours 6 min ago:
MLK would have been banned from YouTube.
komali2 wrote 5 hours 49 min ago:
Yes, absolutely, and most of the media would have
portrayed him as an antifa rioter.
Maybe the civil rights movement wouldn't even be
possible in this era.
api wrote 21 hours 20 min ago:
My take for a while has been that authoritarian ideas (both hard
right and hard left) dominate on social media because of the
short form short attention span format. Authoritarianism tends to
run on simple slogans, grievances, and identity politics. That
stuff is very well suited to 140 characters, memes, and short
videos.
Liberal ideas require more explaining and historical context, and
they donât play well when everyone has been triggered and
trolled into limbic system mode by rage bait.
Liberal politics speaks to the neocortex. Authoritarianism speaks
to the brain stem.
bamboozled wrote 17 hours 12 min ago:
My take for a while has been that authoritarian ideas
That's odd because I don't see a lot of that. Care to
elaborate?
eimrine wrote 16 hours 28 min ago:
In what country do you need to be shown some of that?
bamboozled wrote 9 hours 53 min ago:
Australia
nxor wrote 21 hours 8 min ago:
Liberals can also be authoritarian. See reddit, where ideas
that don't conform are typically downvoted out. Here too.
tired-turtle wrote 16 hours 12 min ago:
While your point (about the potential for liberal
authoritarianism) is true, reddit is an example of partisan,
not authoritarian, behavior.
mason_mpls wrote 20 hours 34 min ago:
Youâre confusing democracy with tyranny.
exoverito wrote 7 hours 20 min ago:
You're assuming mutual exclusion. Democracy is two wolves
and a sheep deciding what's for dinner.
strbean wrote 20 hours 43 min ago:
> authoritarian
>downvoted out
Erm...
iamtedd wrote 16 hours 18 min ago:
Russia has elections, where people overwhelmingly vote for
Putin..
positr0n wrote 20 hours 54 min ago:
Pretty sure OP means liberal in the sense of "classical
liberalism". Ideas like free market, rule of law, private
property, etc.
api wrote 20 hours 55 min ago:
Iâm using the word liberal to mean things like liberty,
individual rights, democracy, and the rule of law. Thatâs
why I also mentioned hard left authoritarianism.
Also thereâs a world of difference between people
registering dislike on an online forum and the use of state
power. It seems like a lot of people these days draw no
distinction between removal from a private space or even
people just showing disapproval and actual state force.
docmars wrote 18 hours 15 min ago:
This doesn't surprise me much; social networks have worked
in tandem with governments, allowing them to call the shots
to remove any content that opposed their political agendas,
narratives, and opinions, to the extent that facts were
flat-out censored to paint certain political opponents in a
bad light, or worse, create potential legal issues.
It created a world where: when disapproval inside an
echo-chamber fails to a critical mass of people telling the
truth, just pretend the content doesn't exist and then
gaslight people using official media outlets, including
Congress and the White House.
So it gave people the impression there's no difference
between the two. Not only were disapproval and state force
in agreement, they colluded.
avereveard wrote 22 hours 49 min ago:
and the other other problem is that this does nothing to
disincentivize toxic advertisement and predatory behaviors they
will just follow where the target are.
phs318u wrote 22 hours 58 min ago:
The "stuff" is already in the hands of authoritarians. When huge
swathes of the world's "social estate" lies in the hands of a very
small number of individuals with overwhelming incentives to tweak
the "stuff" for their own benefit (exerting their authority over
the estate if you will), then you're already in that territory. At
least with elected authoritarians you have some theoretical
influence. Good luck getting a Facebook/X policy changed.
hedayet wrote 23 hours 59 min ago:
Still, even the most libertarian among us generally won't oppose
restricting youth access to tobacco, or restricting recreational
access to hard drugs.
johnnyanmac wrote 19 hours 52 min ago:
That's the thing. We don't really ban "youth smoking". We ban
sellers selling to youth. Who's accountable is everything in law.
Targeting platforms is like only banning one brand of cigarette.
People will just find another. We should instead attack the
"seller" here, being the algorithms optimized for selling and not
for the enrichment of society.
DocTomoe wrote 23 hours 29 min ago:
So, considering there is a clear health issue with fast food and
television, shall we ban them from having anything other than
fruit and books (but not too complicated ones, we don't want them
to get potentially suicidal ideas)?
hedayet wrote 23 hours 24 min ago:
Youâre framing this as an all-or-nothing choice. The logical
inverse of your argument would be: "should we unban hard drugs
for everyone, and allow alcohol, tobacco, or porn for kids?"
That kind of binary framing doesnât really move the
discussion forward.
A more constructive approach is case-by-case. Different things
sit at different levels of harm, and "ban everything" vs. "ban
nothing" isnât a workable model for society.
DocTomoe wrote 15 hours 35 min ago:
You know, I am in a country that allows alcohol for children
(in different intensities, e.g. beer at age 14 with parents
present, age 16 in the supermarket, age 18 for the hard
stuff). As it turns out, our kids are alright.
Tobacco and porn have been more strongly regulated lately. In
my teenage years, they were easily available to anyone with
coins in their hands. Turns out: that didn't destroy us
either.
The first beer, the first pack of strong tobacco (Rothändle,
the dirtiest, hardest stuff), the first tiddie magazine from
the railway station kiosk, those were rites of passages. It
was a way for teenagers to push the envelope, realise alcohol
makes you wobbly, tobacco causes diarrea (believe me, that
Rothändle stuff was more chemical weapon than 'smooth'), and
ultimately, all women look about the same undressed, so it is
pointless to keep buying. They were small, recoverable
mistakes that taught teenagers where their limits were.
Now we have banned all that away - but the teenage urge to
self-realization and rebellion found a new way to social
media. And: social media is safer: no-one got lung cancer
from TikTok. No-one woke up in a hospital for facebook
poisoning.
Ultimately, it is the rebellion the fascists dislike, not the
fact that people earn money with it. So we ban that, driving
teenagers to ever-more-destructive behaviour.
Teenagers need an outlet to be teenagers without living in a
state sanctioned panopticum. If society pathologizes every
form of adolescent experimentation, if you let control freaks
raise your children, do not be surprised if they turn out to
be either actual rebels, or something much, much darker.
raw_anon_1111 wrote 19 hours 40 min ago:
Yes because it is so hard for kids to get alcohol and
cigarettes. Kids have been sneaking and smoking cigarettes
forever.
hedayet wrote 15 hours 41 min ago:
Prevention policies work:
"In 2015, 9.3% of high school students reported smoking
cigarettes in the last 30 days, down 74% from 36.4% in 1997
when rates peaked after increasing throughout the first
half of the 1990s"
raw_anon_1111 wrote 15 hours 26 min ago:
I am seeing 22%
(HTM) [1]: https://www.getsmartaboutdrugs.gov/news-statisti...
lII1lIlI11ll wrote 23 hours 32 min ago:
> restricting recreational access to hard drugs.
You might want to double-check your definition of "hard drugs",
"libertarian" or both.
armenarmen wrote 23 hours 55 min ago:
As one of the libertarian people here, my concern is that this
âwhat about the childrenâ will force IDs to post. Because how
else could it be done?
That said smoking and Instagram are probably best avoided by kids
owisd wrote 23 hours 45 min ago:
Itâs already a solved problem-
load a digital ID into a wallet app, the operating system can
then perform a zero knowledge proof for each website that the
user is over 16. The government issuing the ID doesnât know
which websites itâs being used for and the website only gets
a binary yes/no for the age and no other personal info:
(HTM) [1]: https://blog.google/products/google-pay/google-wallet-...
raw_anon_1111 wrote 19 hours 44 min ago:
Well, phones and computers have had parental controls for
well over a decade.
heavyset_go wrote 21 hours 34 min ago:
How does this solve the problem of both governments and
corporations wanting to implement this in ways that allow
them to hoard datasets?
As it stands, the government in the US uses an identity
verification vendor that forces you to upload videos of
multiple angles of your face, enough data for facial
recognition and to build 3D models, along with pictures of
your ID.
I use Tor, so I get to see how age verification is
implemented all over the world. By large, the process almost
always includes using your government issued ID and live
pictures/videos of your face.
There are zero incentives to implement zero knowledge proofs
like this, and billions of dollars of incentives to use age
verification as an opportunity to collect population-wide
datasets of people's faces in high resolution and 3D. That
data is valuable, especially for governments and companies
that want to implement accurate facial recognition and who
have AI models to train.
mat_b wrote 19 hours 33 min ago:
I suspect that this is going to happen one way or another
anyways. You already have to scan your face at the airport
here.
akoboldfrying wrote 21 hours 20 min ago:
Nothing "solves" the problem of governments wanting to
collect data on you. Governments will likely always want
this, until we start caring about the issue enough to elect
ones that don't.
The important point is that such invasive approaches are
not required; clearly, however people already authenticate
with government agencies for getting a driver's licence or
passport would suffice. I think it's the responsibility of
knowledgeable tech people to advocate for this.
wizzwizz4 wrote 23 hours 38 min ago:
That doesn't solve the problem: it just defers it. Who's
allowed to have a digital ID?
bawolff wrote 20 hours 36 min ago:
Most people in western countries already have id. I think
the ship has ling sailed on that.
wizzwizz4 wrote 50 min ago:
Most being the operative word. In human-centric
bureaucracies, people who don't have ID (for whatever
reason: religious conviction, a feud with the relevant
government agency, a legal status the computer system was
never designed to represent) can still access services in
many cases. Naïvely computerising everything will
effectively remove rights from those whose paperwork
doesn't check out.
ID verification is a universal hammer, to which all
problems look like nails, but we shouldn't be so quick to
reach for it. Not all of its downsides can be solved with
cryptography.
akoboldfrying wrote 21 hours 32 min ago:
Everyone the government decides can have one, the same way
every other government ID works.
IOW, this problem is as "unsolved" as the problem of
deciding who's allowed to drive a car, or travel to another
country.
nottorp wrote 22 hours 48 min ago:
Microsoft users :)
Or do you expect the government to understand there are
other operating systems out there?
delbronski wrote 1 day ago:
Come on dude, you are on HN. You probably know that social media is
no longer about free speech. Itâs a targeted advertising machine
that is extremely effective on kids and teenagers. It preys on them
so, so efficiently. Itâs a technical work of art. A young mind is
extremely susceptible to the algorithms on those platforms. Much
more than adults are, and adults are already really susceptible.
This is what this ban is trying to shield kids from. Not from them
talking to each other.
The Social media platforms of today are very clearly harmful to our
youth. Just like alcohol and cigarettes are to a developing brain.
Why can we ban those and not this?
rossy wrote 19 hours 42 min ago:
> Itâs a targeted advertising machine that is extremely
effective on kids and teenagers. It preys on them so, so
efficiently. Itâs a technical work of art. A young mind is
extremely susceptible to the algorithms on those platforms. Much
more than adults are, and adults are already really susceptible.
Sure, but the Australian government's definition of an
age-restricted social media platform doesn't mention advertising
or algorithms at all. Technically, their definition also covers
algorithm-free social media like Mastodon, which I'd argue isn't
nearly as harmful.
The framing of social media as something that's inherently bad no
matter how you do it is a framing that helps social media giants
like YouTube, Instagram and Facebook to continue to "do it" in a
way that harms people. I'm sure they love the idea that the ills
of social media can be solved by banning their least profitable
users while doing nothing to regulate what they do with the
others. They're probably thrilled that their healthier
algorithm-free competitors haven't even entered the conversation.
They want to be the tobacco companies of the future, because
making addictive things for adults is incredibly profitable.
johnnyanmac wrote 20 hours 0 min ago:
>Why can we ban those and not this?
we didn't ban cigarettes, we disincentivized them. Why can't we
do the same here? regulate the algorithms, not the platform (the
platform ultimately being "the internet").
This is just a cat and mouse game where every few years the
government will ban whatever the kids like. That's not how you
create a high trust society.
defrost wrote 19 hours 34 min ago:
> we disincentivized them.
In Australia, not that much and we (Australia) passed the point
of diminishing returns and moved into the zone of incentivising
a criminal black market.
The state of play today is that foreign nationals, Syrians and
others, are chasing billions in illicit tobacco revenue,
denying that to the Government as income, firebombing and
shooting up cars, shops, and families of rivals.
The brutality levels have risen to the point where old school
leg breaking Chopper Read era crims are speaking out about
going too far, involving families and "breaking code".
Social policy always has a balance.
raw_anon_1111 wrote 19 hours 47 min ago:
Yes we disincentivized cigarettes. But now both illegal drug
use and legal weed use is up - win?
(HTM) [1]: https://nida.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/2024/08...
Nursie wrote 19 hours 16 min ago:
Comparatively, sure. I don't think either of those are as
addictive or as deadly as tobacco use.
raw_anon_1111 wrote 18 hours 40 min ago:
Citations?
Itâs not that I have an opinion either way. Having
anything that messes with my lungs is something I donât
touch. Not that Iâm a health nut. But I have been a gym
addict for over 30 years.
Nursie wrote 18 hours 1 min ago:
I mean, your source there is telling us that cannabis and
hallucinogen use are up, vaping (weed and nicotine) is up
and smoking is in decline.
Hallucinogens are generally considered not very
addictive, they are drugs that people use infrequently
and their direct health effects are usually pretty
minimal - LSD for instance is a mild stimulant and
vasoconstrictor, but that's no real health worry for
younger users. There are mental side effects in a
minority of users (HPPD etc).
Compare this to tobacco which is well known to be one of
the world's most addictive substances and kills fully
half of lifetime users, I'd say a society in which people
9% of people used hallucinogens in the last year is
preferable to one in which (like the US was in 1965) 42%
of people smoke daily.
Cannabis consumption doesn't have to involve your lungs,
people consume all sorts of edibles and drinks these
days. Vaping cannabis is definitely worse for your health
than abstaining from both vaping and smoking, but it
doesn't contain the combustion products from burning
plant material. Smoking cannabis; well I honestly don't
know how that compares to smoking tobacco in terms of
health risk, but it is less addictive and users are less
likely to be "pack a day" types than they are with
cigarettes AFAICT.
Vaping nicotine, similarly, is widely considered worse
than not vaping nicotine and users may be more prone to
respiratory infections, plus there is often poor quality
control on ingredients. But again, tobacco kills half of
lifetime users.
So yeah, if I had to choose whether to have higher
smoking rates or higher hallucinogen and weed use rates
in society, based on expected health outcomes, I'd go
with the hallucinogens and weed.
If you want to read about the comparative risks of drug
use (including tobacco and alcohol, but written prior to
the explosion of vapes) I highly recommend "Drugs without
the hot air", a book by Prof. David Nutt, one of the UK's
foremost experts on the topic. The general takeaway is
that heroin, cocaine, tobacco and alcohol are the worst,
and that most other drugs slot in below there somewhere.
nonfamous wrote 19 hours 52 min ago:
In the US, all persons under 21 are banned from purchasing
cigarettes.
Fnoord wrote 18 hours 6 min ago:
How popular is vaping under teens in USA?
enaaem wrote 21 hours 6 min ago:
Biggest problem of social media is the addictive effects. Itâs
a dopamine creation machine. Hopefully people will see it like
alcohol and cigarettes in the future.
bongodongobob wrote 21 hours 29 min ago:
It is a targeted advertising machine, that is one of its
functions. I also don't think there is anything wrong with that.
I don't think the government has any businesses banning speech
either. I also don't believe they want to "save the children".
devmor wrote 23 hours 39 min ago:
Why do we have to ban networked communication for teens instead
of regulating it?
Nearly everything about it thatâs bad for teens also sucks for
the rest of us.
hilbert42 wrote 18 hours 27 min ago:
Right, it sucks for all. What truly pisses me off is that early
on very smart people in Big Tech realized that to make a
financial killing they'd have to get in quickly and lock in
populations before governments et al realized the negative
implications and introduced policy/regulations.
As with addiction or clicking a ratchet forward, they knew that
reversing direction would then be nigh on impossible. Society
seems to have little or no defense against such threats and I'd
bet London to a brick that it'll be repeated with AI.
jksmith wrote 21 hours 20 min ago:
How many degrees of separation is this from adult regulation?
Want to provide age information to a site so you can look at
porn without any guarantee that information won't be used for
additional profit? That's a real thing in the US.
Government assumes zero expected trust reciprocation because
they don't have to provide trust reciprocation and can do what
they want, and government is comprised of co-opted humans.
Err on the side of sovereign freedom. Arguing about banning
this or regulating that is all second principle stuff, and
nanny states all strike me as the tail-end of civilization.
expedition32 wrote 9 hours 53 min ago:
Mate for 1000 years priests decided what we could eat on
Friday's.
You've never been more free.
devmor wrote 16 hours 37 min ago:
I think you might be confused here.
Providing age assurance is what banning teens from social
media requires. This is already happening in the US in
several states.
Regulating social media is the alternative.
hilbert42 wrote 18 hours 7 min ago:
"Want to provide age information to a site so you can look at
porn without any guarantee that information won't be used for
additional profit?"
That's the Orwellian payoff: people self-censoring and
frightened to act for rear of retribution or their
reputation. It's the authoritarian's ideal approach to
control.
nostrebored wrote 19 hours 54 min ago:
I value my kid not being exposed to porn as a child well
above your right to privacy while watching it.
The ubiquity of the internet and childrenâs access to it is
something we havenât reckoned with yet. The differences
between pre social media and mobile vs now is immense. The
people seeking to capitalize on getting children addicted to
something are numerous and well motivated by LTV.
Their incentives and the wellbeing of children are directly
at odds. We already regulate things that are addictive for
children.
People might give their kids a drink extralegally. Nobody is
saying âhey kid, why donât we watch porn together so you
can develop healthier habits.â Nobody is creating a
âstarter Instagramâ with their teenage daughter.
These forms of media are NOT SAFE FOR KIDS. They have
observably negative population wide outcomes and are as
reasonably banned as lead in pipes.
raw_anon_1111 wrote 19 hours 46 min ago:
Then be a parent and turn on parental controls.
nostrebored wrote 19 hours 33 min ago:
Oh, I donât let my children have electronic devices at
all.
But schools do. Their friends all have Internet enabled
devices in their pockets. The library he goes to has
poorly secured devices. The school library does too.
This is what I mean by the ubiquity of the internet. It
is functionally impossible to control access to the
internet as a parent and allow your children to develop
independence.
I do what I can, and have paid hundreds of thousands of
dollars at this point to opt in to like minded
environments. My oldest at ten is observably different
than children at his age and doing great.
His friends that come from poorer families, like the ones
that I grew up in, might as well have Roblox as a third
parent and suffer from ridiculous behavioral problems.
The school curriculum in SFUSD is years behind my
curriculum was in Georgia when it was a bottom quintile
outcome program.
It does not take much looking to see something is
thoroughly wrong. I think a lot of it has to do with the
mass experiment of Internet access weâve run on
children.
hilbert42 wrote 17 hours 46 min ago:
"It does not take much looking to see something is
thoroughly wrong."
Agreed, but observation suggests that it takes much
more effort to do something about itâeffort that the
majority cannot muster or are unwilling to commit to.
raw_anon_1111 wrote 18 hours 52 min ago:
Fair.
Funny enough I lived in the Atlanta metro area from
1996 to 2022. I had a house built in Decatur in 2003.
I started dating my now wife in 2011. She lived in
Alpharetta. As soon as I met my now step sons who were
9 and 14, my first thought was in going to have to sell
my house and move. There is no way in hell they are
going to survive Decatur public schools.
We moved to Johns Creek at first and then had a house
built in Forsyth County. Yeah this Forsyth County [1]
The attitudes in the burbs of Forsyth changed since
then as people came from other places and it grew. But
we very much stuck out. My son loved it there and
still lives in that area and rents a house nearby where
you use to live.
(HTM) [1]: https://youtu.be/WErjPmFulQ0?si=qfgRouGzQvm_nI...
devmor wrote 16 hours 34 min ago:
Strangely enough I live in the same general area -
right in the middle of Gwinnett. What an odd
coincidence that the three of us happened to come
across eachother in an HN thread before knowing this.
walt_grata wrote 21 hours 34 min ago:
It's not networked communication that's a problem, it's a
company pumping algorithmicly prioritized feeds of content
while being run by unscrupulous profit driven people.
devmor wrote 16 hours 32 min ago:
Well thatâs kind of my point. If we regulated against that
kind of content pipeline, we wouldnât have an excuse for
big brother to be demanding we prove our age to access
websites.
api wrote 21 hours 45 min ago:
Social media isnât social anymore. People donât use it to
talk to anyone. Itâs about mindlessly scrolling through chum
guided by an algorithm.
sardon wrote 23 hours 35 min ago:
hey they can still use networked communication - e.g. whatsapp,
signal, etc. This ban is only concerning the following services
Facebook
Instagram
Threads
Kick
Reddit
Snapchat
TikTok
Twitch
X (formerly Twitter)
YouTube
drunner wrote 9 hours 45 min ago:
I was all for this legislation, thinking the positives
outweighed the cost, but after reading the list of affected
services, I now disagree.
Why didn't they just legislate that all social media apps
content must be like Facebook in 2005. No recommendations,
chronological timeline only, and you only see posts from
users you explicitly added. That would have benefited
everyone forever, and not enabled some small subset of apps
to collect your govt id or the law to be irrelevant when the
next popular social network comes along.
They effectively banned only the popular cigarette brands,
instead of regulating nicotine.
If services would argue this would make them all the same,
then add a clause where the user can opt in to have an
algorithm shove content at them like now if they are over 18.
This way everyone can use the basic service for true
socializing, but the harmful stuff is actually regulated out
by default.
Too much money etc for this to ever happen, but geez they
could have done a lot better.
ekianjo wrote 22 hours 46 min ago:
Oh, and how do you know it will stop there? Control freaks
don't stop at the first step.
stOneskull wrote 23 hours 2 min ago:
yeah, there's always 4chan.. and rumble might get an uptick
in users today, where they can view all the content youtube
has banned
DocTomoe wrote 23 hours 26 min ago:
First they came for Facebook, and I didn't protest, I was not
on facebook.
Here's what's going to happen next: Whatsapp/signal/telegram
groups will become wildly popular. Which gives the
wannabe-fascists the excuse to ban those as well 'for the
children'.
We've seen this salami tactic often enough to know the
pattern.
SiempreViernes wrote 22 hours 47 min ago:
You are too modest! You should start your poem denouncing
those pesky spam filters than hinders the honest viagra
pill salesmen!
Then you could regret your inaction when google
downweighted zit-popping videos, and maybe you have reached
the point where it becomes reasonable to regret losing
Facebook the genocide facilitator.
DocTomoe wrote 15 hours 5 min ago:
There is a qualitative distinction between 'I filter for
myself what I don't want to see' and 'The State decides
what everyone is allowed to see.'
Not too sure about those zit-popping videos. But in my
time, we had rotten.com - so I might be immunized to that
kind of stuff. Personally, I find a honest zit-popping
video no worse than yet another AI voice going on and on
about some non-topic, clearly written by AI as well. I
don't seek out either, but the zit-popping at least is
over after 10 seconds.
But that's Google curating content. State censorship is
something else entirely. Once justified "for the
children" or "for security", it never stops at the first
target. It grows, layer by layer. Weâve watched that
pattern repeat for centuries across every medium humans
have ever invented.
Facebook, the genocide facilitator? If we are honest, so
has the printing press. Let's ban letters, they have
facilitated genocide.
The printing press spread enlightenment, propaganda,
revolutions, and atrocities. The State tried to control
that too. It failed every time. It will fail with the
net, for young people and for old ones.
Repression never works long-term, it always creates
pressure that eventually breaks the system that produced
it. Historically, societies tend to get worse before they
correct themselves, because authoritarian overreach
generates exactly the instability it claims to prevent.
Jeffersonâs warning about the recurring need to renew
freedom wasnât a call for violence - it was an
observation about the cyclical nature of power,
repression, and reform. Every attempt to restrict
communication has eventually collapsed under its own
contradictions, and the internet will be no exception.
FpUser wrote 23 hours 45 min ago:
>"You probably know that social media is no longer about free
speech, Itâs a targeted advertising machine"
Youtube for one is an advertising machine. On the other hand it
is one of the few places where one can find some amazing
educational and entertainment content. Prohibiting it I think is
a crime.
Besides, lately Politicians stick their noses everywhere. It is
just way too much.
osn9363739 wrote 23 hours 30 min ago:
It's not banned for under 16s, they just can't sign up.
DocTomoe wrote 23 hours 25 min ago:
Which means they also do no longer benefit from
family-grouped Youtube Premium, which means MORE ADS ...
which is exactly what we tried to prevent, right?
Gigachad wrote 20 hours 48 min ago:
YouTube just needs to create a kids account feature which
canât post or comment.
johnnyanmac wrote 19 hours 57 min ago:
They already have that. Youtube Kids. And it works
horribly because apparently Family Guy counts as "for
kids". And that's not even the tip of the iceberg on the
problems presented.
Tech is trying to push all these wonderful LLM's on us,
telling us how it works like magic. Meanwhile, it can't
even follow basic public TV labeling.
Gigachad wrote 19 hours 42 min ago:
Youtube kids is designed for toddlers, and should
probably be shut down entirely. What I'm talking about
is something designed for 14 year olds where they can
still subscribe to channels, have paid ad free,
parental controls, etc. But not upload videos or use it
in a social media way.
eimrine wrote 16 hours 16 min ago:
Youtube (regular one) is already designed to be
kids-friendly. There are no war images since recent
AI moderation rollout. There are a lot of very
forbidden words which can lead to ban account. There
are a lot of mildly forbidden words which just do not
appear in subtitle. You can not say anything bully on
comments - it will be removed instantly. I don't
consider anything bad in YT except of the whole top
of popular bloggers - because they are clearly aimed
at low-IQ people. Just don't be a stupid, and your
kids will not watch the bloggers. Buy more
instruments of all kinds for your kids and they will
watch a lot of educational videos explaining
different know-hows.
osn9363739 wrote 23 hours 1 min ago:
The main target of these bans algorithmic content curation
and the addictive nature of such algorithms and the
possible harmful content that could be presented. So no?
fogj094j0923j4 wrote 19 hours 58 min ago:
Yeah but content curation ( e.g. building your own
Alrogrithm TM ) is the only way you get out of the
advertisement hell of Youtube. Browsing Youtube on
Incognito and your feeds filled with Mr Beast and
Tryphobia AI Generated contents.
eimrine wrote 16 hours 14 min ago:
Don't use recommendations unless showing to YT that
your request are always great and just don't click
lowball content even once on your first hours of using
YT new profile.
tigroferoce wrote 22 hours 26 min ago:
Maybe that instead of protesting against the regulation
we should ask the platforms to provide ads-free and
algorithm-free service to kids under 16.
osn9363739 wrote 20 hours 37 min ago:
I'd support that.
fireflash38 wrote 21 hours 13 min ago:
Interesting. I don't know if you intended it, but
algorithm free means no recommendations to me - even no
recommended videos alongside existing videos. You want
a video? You have to search for something.
I think that is a surprisingly good solution. You can
still access educational information, or really
whatever videos you want, but you have to actively seek
them out rather than ingest whatever is spit out at
you.
mat_b wrote 19 hours 59 min ago:
Search results are pretty much the same thing though.
It's a ranked list of recommended videos. It's just
based on your text instead of the video you're
watching.
osn9363739 wrote 20 hours 38 min ago:
I've used plugins like unhook in the past which do
exactly this and it's nice. Now I just follow
channels via rss and block everything else on the
page. Same deal.
bigfudge wrote 1 day ago:
The attempt is to remove the market do exploiting the attention of
children for profit.
This doesnât have to be perfect to be worth it.
Whatâs more, the idea that this puts children at the mercy of
authoritarians is laughable. The US tech industry has shown us
beyond doubt that they are perfectly ok with genuine authoritarians
in charge, provided the dollars keep rolling. Fuck them, and good
on ya Australia.
twelvechairs wrote 23 hours 16 min ago:
If you read the rhetoric it is not about removing commercial
exploitation of children. It is about removing child bullying,
grooming and algorithms that lead to things like misogynist
content and eating disorders.
I generally agree with parent commenter - some of this will be
helped by the ban but theres a serious risk a small number will
go through fringe social media even less policed or normalised
than the big American ones and have much higher risk on some of
these issues than before.
pryce wrote 23 hours 54 min ago:
It is not that simple: Authoritarians that want to "protect"
their gender-questioning or orientation-questioning children from
having online access to trans and gay spaces online are not only
enthusiastically backing Australia's social media ban, they are
involved in the very creation of this legislation, and are
delighted in its negative affects on LGBTQ teens.
There is considerable overlap between those who subscribe to the
"trans people are a contagion" moral panic of writer Abigail
Schrier, and the "ban social media" advocates in AU who were
instrumental in creating this legislation.
heavyset_go wrote 21 hours 52 min ago:
> It is not that simple: Authoritarians that want to "protect"
their gender-questioning or orientation-questioning children
from having online access to trans and gay spaces online are
not only enthusiastically backing Australia's social media ban,
they are involved in the very creation of this legislation, and
are delighted in its negative affects on LGBTQ teens.
Lawmakers in the US have said this explicitly[1] concerning
laws like KOSA[2]:
> A co-sponsor of a bipartisan bill intended to protect
children from the dangers of social media and other online
content appeared to suggest in March that the measure could be
used to steer kids away from seeing transgender content online.
> In a video recently published by the conservative group
Family Policy Alliance, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., said
âprotecting minor children from the transgender in this
cultureâ should be among the top priorities of conservative
lawmakers.
A bill that implements mass surveillance, chilling of free
speech and the hurting of marginalized kids is really killing
two birds with one stone for some legislators. [1]
(HTM) [1]: https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-politics-and-polic...
(HTM) [2]: https://www.stopkosa.com/
holbrad wrote 21 hours 57 min ago:
I thought it was pretty settled that it was social contagion
similar to other mental illnesses in the past.
badc0ffee wrote 23 hours 34 min ago:
On the contrary, that has nothing to do with the LGB. Shrier
believes the T concept, specifically, is a social contagion
like anorexia.
pryce wrote 16 hours 42 min ago:
A wall street journal opinion columnist - Shrier- with zero
medical training wrote a book to create a moral panic in the
public about trans teens, based on the discredited ideas from
Lisa Littman's ROGD "research", where in this case the word
"research" actually means: reports from parents recruited
from well-known anti-trans websites.
pseudalopex wrote 22 hours 13 min ago:
Their comment did not attribute to Shrier any view of sexual
orientation. People who consider gender identity illegitimate
and people who consider sexual orientation illegitimate
overlap.
badc0ffee wrote 20 hours 52 min ago:
And, people who consider gender identity illegitimate and
people who consider sexual orientation legitimate overlap.
nuggets wrote 23 hours 38 min ago:
There's not really any plausible explanation as to why
referrals to pediatric gender clinics became so skewed towards
girls who want to be boys, other than social contagion.
The sticking point is that it's politically controversial to
point this out because of progressive beliefs about gender
identity as an unquestionable facet of someone's being.
nxor wrote 21 hours 5 min ago:
You are correct. And when they try to undermine you they
prove your point. There are more mtf people than ftm people
because until recently, the it was not a trend among teen
girls.
heavyset_go wrote 21 hours 47 min ago:
There's not really any plausible explanation as to why so
many left-handed students tend to skew towards boys, rather
than girls, other than social contagion.
When my parents were kids, there were no left-handed kids.
Social contagion is the only explanation for as to why there
are suddenly so many left-handed kids today, especially since
many of them are boys and not girls.
nuggets wrote 20 hours 10 min ago:
But the adult demographic of left-handers doesn't have, and
didn't have, a sex ratio skewed in the opposite direction
to the youth demographic. So how is this a relevant
comparison?
pseudalopex wrote 22 hours 34 min ago:
People assigned male at birth come out later than people
assigned female at birth on average. Trans men and trans
women receive different stigma. Many AFAB children and
adolescents referred to gender clinics identify as non
binary. AMAB non binary people reported less acceptance in
LGBT circles even. And biology could be a factor.
yearolinuxdsktp wrote 22 hours 45 min ago:
No plausible explanation? I disagree.
Itâs about the social safety of transitioning. The paper
you referenced is from the UK, which is famously a TERF
island (trans-exclusionary radical feminists). In the TERF
island, itâs much less safe to be a trans woman than a
trans man. Adolescents can sense the risk of being a trans
woman is much higher, so many trans women stay in the closet
and donât come out.
nuggets wrote 22 hours 31 min ago:
Then why were there more boys who want to be girls referred
prior to a decade ago, compared to girls who want to be
boys?
The radical feminist movement in the UK has existed much
longer than this, since around the late 1960s to early
1970s.
heavyset_go wrote 21 hours 29 min ago:
Because a decade ago marks when the American right
decided to scapegoat transwomen after losing their
previous scapegoat, gay people and marriage, to SCOTUS in
2015.
2015-2016 is when rhetoric online and globally shifted
towards villainizing trans women that weren't on the
public's radar before. This was exported to UK politics
and has been an incredible political success.
nuggets wrote 19 hours 10 min ago:
If that is the cause, how does it explain both the sex
ratio shift and the rapid increase in referrals
starting from around 2011-2012 onwards? There were
gender clinics across Europe reporting similar
demographic changes in pediatric referrals. This
precedes the political developments in the US that you
mentioned.
nxor wrote 20 hours 58 min ago:
[flagged]
tomhow wrote 20 hours 32 min ago:
Please stop. HN is not a place for
political/ideological battle, including about this
topic. What HN is for is curious conversation,
including about difficult topics, but the guidelines
apply, particularly these ones:
Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't
cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive,
not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer...
Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit
internet tropes.
Please don't use Hacker News for political or
ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
(HTM) [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines....
heavyset_go wrote 20 hours 53 min ago:
Speak for yourself, literally. I'm in that "rest of
us in LGB".
It's actually quite the contrary, the rest of the LGB
looks at gay transphobes as the hypocrites and useful
idiots they are.
exoverito wrote 6 hours 55 min ago:
Trans ideology harms young gays and lesbians
through the risk of irreversible medical
interventions. Many gay boys are effeminate, and
trans ideology would pressure them into the belief
that they're not actually males, and sterilize
themselves. Similarly, trans ideology pressures
tomboyish girls to not identify as female, remove
their breasts, or worse.
pryce wrote 23 hours 1 min ago:
To claim there are not really any other candidates for a skew
(in that direction or the other) you would have to (like
Shrier herself) go out of your way to not bother to talk to
trans people, or their doctors, or their families, or
sociologists, or talk to any of the people who spend their
lives researching gender, what it means, how it affects us,
what assumptions we make, whether those ideas stack up when
confronted with empirical research, etc etc. I'm not really
interested in discussing further with a 30 minute old
account.
nuggets wrote 22 hours 57 min ago:
What is your alternative explanation for why referrals have
so sharply skewed towards girls who want to be boys, within
the past decade or so?
It is doctors who first drew attention to this phenomenon.
See for example Tavistock whistleblower David Bell.
pryce wrote 20 hours 0 min ago:
Increasing social acceptibility and awareness is not
mysterious to people who understand that many perceptions
about gender are constructions that occur in social
contexts.
Why do I owe you any specific "explanation" when the
context here is that you are treating Shrier's
pseudoscientific book that literally tells parents in the
closing chapters that if their kid has a trans friend
they should consider moving cities to get their child
away from their trans friend as though we are supposed to
take transphobic hate literature at face value.
Maybe a better step than me agreeing to do that is that
instead you should take the entire corpus of medical
literature on the subject, as well as the voices of trans
people on the subject of trans people at face value
first.
I have no interest in your JAQing off[1]
(HTM) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_Asking_Questi...
nuggets wrote 18 hours 59 min ago:
You don't have to suggest an explanation for this
demographic change if you don't want to.
defrost wrote 18 hours 54 min ago:
The statistical evidence for a change in the paper
you linked and the other papers in the area is
extremely weak.
At one end of the scale is very little data that
gives an unreliable picture with a high degree of
variability, at the other end of the not very long in
time scale is somewhat more data that provides a
better picture.
To make such a fuss about " this demographic change "
indicates a lack of exposure to such statistics.
Why are you attempting to make such a big deal of bad
data here?
alchemism wrote 7 hours 44 min ago:
The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
beepbooptheory wrote 22 hours 31 min ago:
Maybe just think critically, without conspiracy about it
for two seconds. With anything else, I'm sure you'd see
the classic survivorship bias error you are making here.
nuggets wrote 20 hours 3 min ago:
Could you elaborate on what you're alluding to, please?
yosame wrote 23 hours 25 min ago:
I'm pretty sure this take is incorrect on multiple accounts.
Trans demographics tend to skew towards trans women by about
a third, not trans men - at least in all the research I've
come across.
And regardless, increased acceptance and awareness of
different gender identities can very plausibily explain
increased numbers, not "social contagion". Calling it a
contagion is pretty indicative of your underlying beliefs
here.
nuggets wrote 23 hours 19 min ago:
Regarding the change in sex ratio for childhood referrals,
this is well documented. See for example this paper: [1]
"Social contagion" is social science terminology. It's
meant as an analogy not a pejorative.
(HTM) [1]: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324768316...
pseudalopex wrote 22 hours 28 min ago:
> "Social contagion" is social science terminology. It's
meant as an analogy not a pejorative.
Some social scientists say the analogy is misleading, the
term is poorly defined, and contagion has a pejorative
connotation irrespective of intent. They are correct.
defrost wrote 22 hours 43 min ago:
Well documented should imply multiple papers across
multiple countries and across multiple time periods.
If that's the one and only paper you have, then it's a
single UK paper that covers seven years of GIDS referrals
from numbers that are near zero in 2009 to 1800 referrals
in 2016.
Statistically, looking at the last graphic in the paper,
it's less a case of "becoming so heavily skewed" and
likely more a case of "taking several years to reveal the
pattern and weights".
There's scarce numbers to begin with to make a strong
claim as to the "natural balance" of referrals being
evident at the start and this "being skewed toward" the
later clearer pattern.
nuggets wrote 22 hours 33 min ago:
There are other papers showing the same sort of pattern
elsewhere. For example, you can see one cited in that
paper within the introductory paragraphs.
As the commenter upthread noted, the adult demographic
is more weighted towards men who want to be women. Why
would childhood referrals have become shifted in the
opposite direction, much more towards girls who want to
be boys?
defrost wrote 22 hours 4 min ago:
Why is the question;
> There's not really any plausible explanation as to
[..] other than social contagion.
is a leap.
> Why would childhood referrals have become shifted
\1 Have they really shifted, or have the stats on a
relatively new thing in a few countries firmed up
from nothing, to bugger all, to enough to see a
pattern?
\2 As to the pattern now seen - a few boys question
whether they like being boys at an earlier age than a
few more girls then question whether they like being
girls ..
there are other factors, eg: I heard there's a "big
change" in the lives of young girls at an age that
coincides with a 'surge' (small numbers in a country
the size of the UK) in girls exploring whether they
want to be girls after all.
Social patterns, depth of communication about places
existing where gender question can be asked, word of
mouth, etc are factors that play a role - but they
are not the sole factors at play in these very low
incident observations.
My suggestion to yourself, looking at the questions
you've raised and how you've framed them, is to
perhaps study some epidemiology and find a mentor
with first hand real world experience with low
frequency data that gradually comes to light as
social norms about reporting evolve - eg: SIDS data
in the 1970s / 1980s.
You seem to be making a great many mistakes based on
preconceptions and "feels".
If only the Dutch hadn't destroyed quite so many
records in "their" East Indies .. there might be
other gender frequency records to draw on .
samename wrote 1 day ago:
What about future governments in Australia? This is ripe for
abuse and scope creep. It also ties a uniform ID to an account,
simplifying tracking and surveillance by corporations and
governments.
Plus, this is asking everyone in the country to give up their
biometrics (face scanning is one implementation) or link your
government issued ID to your social media account (look at the UK
to see how this turned out - people are being arrested for simple
tweets against the government). Sacrificing the freedom to be
anonymous online to "protect the kids"
twelvedogs wrote 1 hour 46 min ago:
In actuality websites just have to do something, not use an id.
Most of them currently just want you to upload a story then
use ai to guess your age, it's as accurate as you might suspect
if you're very sceptical
bigfudge wrote 12 hours 29 min ago:
I don't know the details of the implementation, but this sounds
like an argument for strong data protection laws (and so no
data retention) rather than inaction.
Also, I'm really struggling to think of examples where people
have been arrested for "tweets against the government". The
Linehan case? Most of the ones I can think of are like that â
so basically culture war bullshit and overzealous policing of
incitement laws.
hilbert42 wrote 17 hours 20 min ago:
"...simplifying tracking and surveillance by corporations and
governments."
Decades ago when the Australia Cardâan ID system for
Australiansâwas first proposed there was an almighty outcry
from the citizenry and the project was seemingly shelved.
What's happened since is that our Governments quietly ramped up
their computer systems and collected the data anyway, this Law
will only enhance that collection further. Moreover, recently
Government introduced what at the moment are voluntary digital
IDs which it sold under the guise that having a single ID will
make it easier to deal with government services, etc.
Unfortunately, most will unquestioningly swallow the official
line and miss the fine minutiae.
I've never heard any politician or Government official come out
and say "We'll never introduce an Australia Card because we're
free people" or such and I'd bet that I never will. Fact is, we
Australians already have had an 'Australia Card' for years,
it's just that we don't carry it around in our wallets as we do
with our credit cards.
Our democracy would be vastly improved if those whose
governance we're under would actually tell us the truth.
Edit: Despite my comment about this new law, I agree kids need
protectionâso we're damned either way. I see no easy
solution.
fwip wrote 20 hours 15 min ago:
> simple tweets against the government
Which tweets do you have in mind? Because it not does not
describe any of the high-profile tweet-related arrests I have
heard of.
Gigachad wrote 20 hours 46 min ago:
They donât need age verification for that. If you ever
connect to social media even once without a VPN and a number of
other protections, they can link an account back to you.
phatfish wrote 22 hours 7 min ago:
Sorry, you are crazy if you trust American tech companies (that
you have zero control over) rather than your own government
which in theory you have a lot of control over, but it does
depend on your flavour of democracy.
Until these controls on American tech companies Trump (via all
the tech CEOs fawning over him) had more control over
Australian society than your own government.
The rest of the world needs similar restrictions on American
tech and social media unless we all want to have American
bonkers (and increasingly authoritarian) politics fully
exported to us.
hilbert42 wrote 16 hours 35 min ago:
"The rest of the world needs similar restrictions on American
tech and social media..."
Yes, it does but don't kid yourself, all of Big Tech will
cooperate with governments for mutual benefit. Big Tech
collects data that governments would otherwise have
difficulty collecting, if Big Tech is refrained from
collecting data because of regulation and privacy laws then
both lose out.
We should never expect governments to maintain our privacy or
protect us from Big Tech leaching our data. In short, we're
fighting different enemies on two fronts and that's a
difficult and invidious position to be in.
chris_wot wrote 22 hours 23 min ago:
You can't link your government ID to your social media account.
The legislation doesn't allow social media companies to gather
this data. It's specifically not allowed.
In other words: this legislation is useless, and entirely
stupid, and kids will bypass it trivially. Teenagers are
exceptionally good at bypassing that which they find stupid, or
gets in their way of what they consider to be fun, or a right.
Gigachad wrote 20 hours 45 min ago:
It doesnât have to be impossible to bypass. It just has to
create friction so less and less kids end up on social media
over time.
chris_wot wrote 19 hours 36 min ago:
There will be next to no friction.
raw_anon_1111 wrote 19 hours 38 min ago:
How much friction isnât going to create then?
9dev wrote 23 hours 57 min ago:
> It also ties a uniform ID to an account, simplifying tracking
and surveillance by corporations and governments.
That is by no means the only solution. A lot of work is
happening in the area of cryptographically verified assertions;
for example, a government API could provide the simple
assertion "at least 16 years of age" without the social media
platform ever seeing your ID, and the government never able to
tie you to the service requiring the assertion.
selcuka wrote 20 hours 41 min ago:
> a government API could provide the simple assertion
Yes, it could, but we don't have that, do we? They launched
the ban without implementing a zero-knowledge proof scheme as
you described. In a very short amount of time the providers
will have associated millions of people's accounts to their
biometric information and/or their government issued IDs.
hekkle wrote 21 hours 17 min ago:
While this is a good thought.... Do you really trust the
Government to implement a cryptographically verified
assertion correctly, and not track which website is making
the request, for which individual at what time, and then
cross reference that with newly created accounts?
9dev wrote 15 hours 0 min ago:
I trust the EU for one, yes, because it doesn't really have
the capability or agencies to create massive databases on
citizens. Aside from that, there's really a lot of research
going on around zero knowledge proofs and verified
credentials and such; involved researchers have very
obviously already thought about most of the knee-jerk
concerns voiced in this thread.
exoverito wrote 7 hours 9 min ago:
Seems foolish to trust them. The EU is fundamentally
undemocratic with the unelected Commission proposing laws
and decision making hidden within councils. It has been
steadily centralizing and concentrating power, creating a
dense web of regulations that have been strangling member
states' stagnant economies. Right to free speech is
notoriously bad in Europe. The EU is trying to increase
military power, and ultimately a centralized European
army.
heavyset_go wrote 21 hours 59 min ago:
Companies and governments see age verification as an
opportunity to hoard data for facial recognition and other
ML/AI training sets.
It will always be cheaper to go with a vendor that forces you
to scan your face and ID, because they will either be
packaging that data for targeted advertising, selling the
data to brokers, or making bank off of using it as
population-wide training datasets.
Governments will want the data and cost savings, as well.
Both corporations and governments will want to use the
platforms to tie online activity to real human beings.
Arguments like these end up like arguments for PGP in email:
yes, in a perfect world we'd be using it, and platforms would
make it easy, but the incentives aren't aligned for that
perfect world to exist.
9dev wrote 15 hours 6 min ago:
Don't project the contemporary US administration on other
countries, please. Not everyone lives in a cynical regime.
lukan wrote 23 hours 33 min ago:
Does that work already? If so, how?
If the API asks for a users minimum age at a certain time,
how can the government not know which data set it has to
check?
danpat wrote 22 hours 53 min ago:
It can be achieved with a zero-knowledge proof - there are
many schemes, but in essence, they all allow you to prove
something (e.g. your birthdate, validated by a government
agency), without revealing who you are. You can prove to a
third party "the government authenticated that I was born
on 1970-01-01" without exposing who "I" is.
Some worthwhile reading on the topic if you're interested:
[1] [2] It should even possible to construct a protocol
where you can prove that you're over 18 without revealing
your birthdate.
Zero-Knowledge Range Proofs: [3] "Zero-knowledge range
proofs (ZKRPs) allow a prover to convince a verifier that a
secret value lies in a given interval."
(HTM) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof...
(HTM) [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_signature
(HTM) [3]: https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/430
bawolff wrote 20 hours 38 min ago:
> It should even possible to construct a protocol where
you can prove that you're over 18 without revealing your
birthdate.
Not just theoretically posdible, people have done it:
(HTM) [1]: https://zkpassport.id/
selcuka wrote 20 hours 38 min ago:
ZKP is better, but still not foolproof. Depending on the
implementation, the government may now know that you have
an account, or at least attempted to open an account on
that service. You will have a hard time denying it in the
future if the government asks to see your posts (as the
US is currently doing at their borders).
bawolff wrote 20 hours 37 min ago:
> ZKP is better, but still not private. The government
now knows that you have an account, or at least
attempted to open an account on that service
Umm, no. That is not how a scheme like this would work.
selcuka wrote 18 hours 53 min ago:
> That is not how a scheme like this would work.
When implemented correctly, yes. I've edited my
wording slightly to indicate that.
I just don't have faith in most countries, including
Australia, to implement it with protecting the
privacy of their residents in mind.
bawolff wrote 3 hours 54 min ago:
> When implemented correctly, yes.
I disagree. I can't think of an implementation
mistake that would allow just the government to see
what services you sign up for.
You could of course screw it up so everybody could
see. If the government put a keylogger on your
device then they could see. However broadly
speaking this is not something that can be screwed
up in such a way that just the government would be
able to see.
The protocol wouldn't even involve any
communication with the government.
SiempreViernes wrote 22 hours 56 min ago:
The anonymity is that the government doesn't know who is
asking for the verification, not that the the government
doesn't know whose majority it should attest.
fnikacevic wrote 1 day ago:
So are we banning all advertising to children? Or only banning
them from communicating and posting with each other?
If it's about monetizing child attention not about speech control
why isn't every single toy ad, food ad, movie ad, also banned?
stephen_g wrote 22 hours 26 min ago:
Haha, no, here in Australia we can't even ban gambling/betting
app ads on TV during sports when lots of kids are watching!
optionalsquid wrote 23 hours 48 min ago:
> So are we banning all advertising to children? Or only
banning them from communicating and posting with each other?
Kids are not banned from communicating and posting with each
other; the ban exempts a number of direct messing apps, as well
as community apps like Discord: [1] If I had to over-simplify
it, then the ban appears to mostly target doom-scrolling apps.
I say mostly, since I'm not sure why Twitch and Kick are
included
(HTM) [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/dec/10/social-m...
awillowingmind wrote 23 hours 4 min ago:
Twitch & Kick are likely included because they can breed
parasocial relationships between streamer & viewer.
hshdhdhj4444 wrote 1 day ago:
Because all those arenât close to being as harmful as social
media is.
We do ban the things that consume children the way social media
does.
Alcohol, addictive drugs, etc.
fnikacevic wrote 23 hours 43 min ago:
The data on social media harms is mixed at best. We know for
a fact fast food, cosmetic ads for girls, are strictly more
harmful.
This is nothing more than speech control under the guise of
"won't someone please think of the children"
tigroferoce wrote 22 hours 29 min ago:
> The data on social media harms is mixed at best. We know
for a fact fast food, cosmetic ads for girls, are strictly
more harmful.
True, but let me remind you that we didn't have conclusive
data on smoke harm until the 50s, but this doesn't mean
that smoking was not harmful before, nor that we were
lacking any clue before coming to a conclusive study.
At the moment we don't have any conclusive study about
e-cigarettes, but I'm sure you would never give kids
e-cigarettes just because we don't have 30/40 years worth
of data.
> This is nothing more than speech control under the guise
of "won't someone please think of the children"
This is a bit more complex than this. Kids and adolescents
online are targeted with all sort of techniques to leverage
their attention in order to make money. I understand the
speech control worry, and I agree up to a certain point,
but I don't see how ignoring the problem makes it any
better. What are the alternatives we have? I'm genuinely
asking, not advocating for TINA. I have two kids and I see
the effects of social media on them and on their friends.
Keep in mind that this cannot be offloaded to families, for
multiple reasons:
- many family just don't have enough data or knowledge to
make informed decisions
- until the network effect is in place, banning your kid
from social media while all of their friend are online can
be impractical and cruel
- parent decisions can affect kids health and overall
society outcome; allowing a wrong decision by the parents
(because the society doesn't want to handle the problem)
would be unfair for the kids and no wise for the society.
As in many aspects of life the best solution is neither
white nor black, but a shade of grey, and is far from being
perfect. Looking for a perfect solution is a waste of time,
resources and unfair for those that are affected in the
meanwhile.
I understand the concerns, and probably Australia approach
is not the best, but it's also the first. We probably will
need a period of adjustments to reach a sound solution.
jen729w wrote 1 day ago:
> normalising people uploading identification documents and hence
lead to people becoming victims of scams
We've long lost this war.
I'm in Italy, staying at my 3rd Airbnb. I was surprised when the
first asked me, casually, to drop a photograph of my passport in the
chat. I checked with Claude: yep, that's the law.
(I'll remind you that Italy is in the EU.)
On checking into this place last week, the guy just took a photo of
our passports on his phone. At this point I'm too weak to argue. And
what's the point? That is no longer private data and if I pretend
that it is, I'm the fool.
rtpg wrote 21 hours 37 min ago:
I'm pretty sure in most places in the world if you are travelling
from abroad you are asked to share your passport, and have been for
a very very very very long time.
The difference between sending it over a chat and handing it over
to a clerk (who then photocopies it or types in the data into the
computer) feels almost academic. Though at least "Typing it into
the computer" doesn't leave them with a picture, just most of the
data.
jen729w wrote 1 hour 22 min ago:
Yeah but previous attack vector:
- Fraudster has to bribe hotel staff, or get on staff and then
work there and steal documents. Tricky.
New attack vector:
- Fraudster rents out Airbnb. Trivial.
fn-mote wrote 20 hours 52 min ago:
> The difference between sending it over a chat and handing it
over to a clerk (who then photocopies it [...]
The difference is that the paper copy is local and only
accessible to the hotel (and any government employee that might
come knocking).
The digital version is accessible to anyone who has access to the
system, which as we know well on HN includes bureaucrats (or
police) with a vendetta against you and any hacker that can
manage to breach the feeble defenses of the computer storing the
data. That computer isn't locked down because the information is
not valuable to the person who holds it; they're paid to satisfy
a record-keeping law, not maintain system security.
> at least "Typing it into the computer" doesn't leave them with
a picture, just most of the data.
Agreed, except now uploading a scan is the easiest way to file
the data.
rtpg wrote 19 hours 52 min ago:
Good points.
I do agree that "not without a warrant" is a pretty
load-bearing thing and it _should_ be tedious to get
information. When a lot of info is just so easy to churn
through that can activate new forms of abuse, even if from an
information-theoretical point of view the information was
always there.
And it's not even just about public officials. All those
stories of people at Google reading their exes emails or
whatever (maybe it was FB? Still) sticks to me.
zmmmmm wrote 23 hours 58 min ago:
Well, even there, you're doing a transaction worth hundreds to
thousands of dollars probably.
This pretty much lowers the bar to any random website on the
internet can ask for ID to do something as trivial as look at a
photo.
In a world where social engineering is the last unsolvable security
vector, this is significant even if it is just a matter of degree.
hintymad wrote 1 day ago:
I'd even go one step further: it does not have to be enforceable at
all. This has to do with teen's psychology. For whatever reason, kids
just fight their parents but listen to their schools and government a
lot more. Of course, there are exceptions, but I'm talking about
trend. The kids in my school district were generally angry towards
their parents when they couldn't get a smartphone when their peers
did. However, when my school district introduced the strict ban of
electronic devices in school, the kids quieted down and even bought
the same reasons that their parents were saying: attention is the
most precious assets one should cherish. Kids complained that the
problem sets by RSM (Russian School of Mathematics) are too hard and
unnecessary (they are not by the standard of any Asian or East
European country), yet they stopped complaining when the school
teacher ramped up the difficulty of the homework.
So, when the government issues this ban, the kids would listen to
their parents a lot more easily.
codebje wrote 21 hours 8 min ago:
Absolutely this. We have limits in place for usage of a bunch of
this sort of stuff, from not at all to up to an hour, and we'd be
constantly tested and pushed on these limits. Constantly. "But my
friends are..." is the usual start to it.
Government says you can't chat with just anyone in Roblox, and
suddenly it's accepted that this is just what it is. Not only that,
but limits and rules on how much and when you can watch YouTube and
the like are also suddenly more acceptable.
So far what my kids are saying is that this is broadly true across
their peer groups. The exceptions are just that, exceptions. The
peer pressure to be in on it all is lessened. And in turn, that
means less push-back on boundaries set by us, because it's less of
a big deal.
(And I face less of a dilemma of how much to allow to balance out
the harm of not being part of the zeitgeist vs. the harm of short
form, mega-corporation curated content).
amelius wrote 22 hours 42 min ago:
Yes, there is a normative aspect to it.
This also works with other things such as alcohol and (old school)
smoking (neither of which has watertight control, but the control
is still very effective).
NoPicklez wrote 23 hours 0 min ago:
That's exactly what its part of it.
So many people are looking at this from a technical stand point and
how water tight or perfect its going to be.
But there is a large psychological part of this that helps parents
and I know that part of it is what a number of parents I've spoken
to like about it.
Its not just about the current generation, but the next wave of
kids who have grown up under these laws, the psychology of it will
have changed.
yladiz wrote 1 day ago:
In the EU you donât need to upload your ID anywhere, the service
can use the governmentâs portal for ID verification. In the case of
age verification they can get a yes/no response if the age is above
some threshold. This is opaque to the service so they wouldnât get
any additional ID details.
drnick1 wrote 23 hours 3 min ago:
> In the EU you donât need to upload your ID anywhere, the
service can use the governmentâs portal for ID verification. In
the case of age verification they can get a yes/no response
The issue is that now the government knows what you are doing
online, and that should never be allowed to happen.
I grew up when the Internet was truly free, before Facebook even
existed. People shared source code, videos, MP3s, games, regardless
of "copyright" or "intellectual property." To some extent, it is
still possible to do all of this, but these freedoms are being
eroded every day by making the Internet less anonymous. The endgame
is obviously to force people to pay for things whose "marginal
cost" is zero in the language of economists. "Protecting the
children" is just a convenient excuse.
pbmonster wrote 9 hours 5 min ago:
> The issue is that now the government knows what you are doing
online
There's zero technical necessity for this. You could do zero
knowledge proofs with crypto key pairs issued together with the
eID.
The Swiss proposal for eID includes stuff like that. If a service
needs proof of age, you use an app on your phone to generate the
response, which is anonymized towards the requester and doesn't
need to contact a government server at all.
yladiz wrote 21 hours 31 min ago:
I donât really get your point. Your government is generally
able to compel your ISP to give them logs of all of your traffic,
if they donât already vacuum it up, so itâs honestly a bit
naive to think it shouldnât be allowed to happen, because in
practice it absolutely can.
There is a distinction between getting data from an ISP and
getting it via your use of their portal, but Iâd argue itâs
without much of a difference in reality.
Levitz wrote 21 hours 18 min ago:
There's an enormous difference in the government having
channels allowing for the disclosing of private material to
them and just giving them all of it from the get go, and it is
not unlike the difference of allowing the government to jail
people and allowing it to arbitrarily jail people for life.
codebje wrote 20 hours 59 min ago:
The difference is legislation, in both cases. Permissible
data exchange between government services is legislatively
encoded. Permissible sentences are legislatively encoded.
Since we don't see a whole lot of moderately healthy
democracies arbitrarily jailing people for life, one might
reasonably assume these sorts of controls work.
BoppreH wrote 1 day ago:
That's a very good technical solution, but socially it can be
foiled by an official-looking alert saying "failed to scan card,
please do X instead".
And that's assuming the technical solution is deployed everywhere.
I'm in the EU with one of those IDs, and I still had to upload
photos of my passport and scan my face to open a bank account. The
identification process even had its own app that I had to install.
9dev wrote 23 hours 50 min ago:
But then again, should the EU follow up with a similar policy, it
could mandate the use of these checks and prevent/penalize ID
photos. Iâm very optimistic here.
zmmmmm wrote 23 hours 54 min ago:
Exactly. I'd concede this point if I'd seen a giant public
awareness campaign informing people which official sites to use
and general safety awareness about it. I can tell you, literally
nothing like that has happened. Not an insufficient effort at it
- no effort, nothing. It's clear the people in charge are just
head in the sand about this aspect of it.
petcat wrote 1 day ago:
> This is opaque to the service
The "service" is irrelevant. I think most people would trust Porno
Hub to be discreet about their visits. That's in their business
interest. But now they have to tell your government about all the
times you're visiting Porno Hub.
And nobody should trust their government.
Also, keep in mind that western governments share with each other.
There will come a time when Australians will try to enter USA but
they'll get flagged at the border because the AUS government shared
that this particular individual visited Porno Hub and a few other
age-restricted websites 7,000 times in the last 30 days. Red Flag!
monksy wrote 23 hours 28 min ago:
Not just the US, but image entering Qatar or Indonesia with them
having that knowledge of your access to "adult content".
simgt wrote 23 hours 31 min ago:
> And nobody should trust their government.
Nobody should trust a billion dollar corporation, that's why we
have democratically elected governments. All these power hungry
fucks counter balance each-other, to some extend at least.
pennomi wrote 22 hours 2 min ago:
Hot take, nobody should trust anybody. Trustless systems could
certainly exist for this, if the government took the time to
care.
Tarq0n wrote 13 hours 55 min ago:
Trust is key to modern society. Any measure aimed at
supplanting trust increases transaction costs in the economy.
ekianjo wrote 22 hours 45 min ago:
> democratically elected governments.
51% of a vote can go the wrong way now and then.
simgt wrote 16 hours 5 min ago:
Yes but winner takes all is not the only voting system in
existence, and democracy goes beyond just voting once every
few years.
Tadpole9181 wrote 1 day ago:
To be entirely fair, a government that would abuse your vague "am
I allowed to access porn" history seems well into the territory
of a government that would just make it up. A nefarious, powerful
entity has no real requirement to be honest in their
maliciousness.
They also have more direct means of accessing more specific data
via ISPs, audits, banks, etc.
knowitnone3 wrote 1 day ago:
Cops do it all the time even when bodycams show otherwise
crabmusket wrote 1 day ago:
I think the government making stuff up is worth considering,
but isn't it a kind of different threat model?
The hypothetical government isn't going to make stuff up about
me, some nobody, on a flight to the US to be a tourist or
something. They statistically don't care about me. However, the
US morality police might decide to statistically care about
everyone who watches porn.
But if I'm a somebody, say a former or potential whistleblower,
or a local politician, etc. then a government might have a
specific motive to do me dirty and not care about being honest.
I guess there's a wide and blurry line between being a "nobody"
the government has no motivation to lie about and being a
"somebody" that deserves special malicious treatment.
codebje wrote 20 hours 46 min ago:
The moral outrage crowd in the US have no power. The people
who can and will act against you will only use morality as an
excuse, not a cause. Being some nobody, the government has no
interest in you anyway. You can watch porn, they can know it,
and nothing changes, because you're still a nobody.
(If you watch porn online, you can be pretty sure they
already "know" it, because you're not doing it in the privacy
of your own home, you're doing it on a public network with
next to no secrecy about who you are or what you're doing).
nrhrjrjrjtntbt wrote 1 day ago:
That is an assumption. The games the powerful play leverage
truth and provable things. I think there is a lot of need for
privacy and abuse of dragnet information before you get to the
government framing people.
LinXitoW wrote 23 hours 29 min ago:
You mean like Epstein? We've got a bunch of truths about rich
people and nothing happens.
The fear of an evil government misusing something, more often
than not, is a thought terminating cliche. It means we cannot
regulate, or create any laws about anything, because evil
people could abuse those laws. In reality, evil people do
evil shit, irrespective of the laws available for abuse.
nrhrjrjrjtntbt wrote 23 hours 15 min ago:
Right... but I don't think I was suggesting anarchy.
Tadpole9181 wrote 23 hours 57 min ago:
Like January 6th and vaccines causing autism and climate
change denial and election rigging and Haitians eating dogs
and Venezuela drug boats?
Are you and I living in the same reality? They're constantly
just making things up out of nowhere from nothing and
refusing to back down. Now to the point of arresting US
citizens with a secret police and committing international
war crimes in open waters.
hunterpayne wrote 22 hours 10 min ago:
> Like January 6th and vaccines causing autism and climate
change denial and election rigging and Haitians eating dogs
and Venezuela drug boats?
That you categorize all of those things in the same boat is
very partisan. And it is exactly why a government
controlling access to information is a very bad idea. Some
of those things aren't real phenomena, others are just over
hyped and some are real and very much proven. The news
sources you got those opinions from are highly partisan but
you trust them implicitly even though you have access to
the Internet and can cross check many of them. That you
can make such blind mistakes is exactly why elected
officials should never control the flow of information.
And to give you an example of an opinion that very much
matters, consider is nuclear power green or not? The wrong
answer about that is doing more damage than your most hated
official could ever do.
Tadpole9181 wrote 5 hours 27 min ago:
Reality isn't partisan.
- January 6th was an attempted coup of the government
coordinated by Republican interest groups and antagonized
by Trump.
- Vaccines do not cause autism.
- Climate change is real and anthropological in origin.
- The 2020 election was not rigged for Biden and there
exists no evidence of impropriety of any kind.
- Haitians did not eat people's pet dogs in the USA. This
was just plain, out-in-the-open racism.
- The US military is using the WMD, sorry, I mean the
"drug boat" excuse on vessels 1,200 miles away from US
waters to execute a dozen people at a time. They are
providing no evidence and performing no seizures or
investigations. Then they are violating international law
and their own documents on war crimes and service
member's duty to refuse by having them execute shipwreck
survivors.
Everything above is a fact. Not an opinion. Not partisan.
A fact.
nrhrjrjrjtntbt wrote 23 hours 10 min ago:
I didn't say people don't lie and do bad shit. Not sure
where that came from.
Just because people lie, doesn't mean we need to shrug ok
lets just hand over all our private data everywhere.
But I dig ya! What the current US government does is
abhorrent.
wrxd wrote 1 day ago:
a) is solvable by a system that instead of collecting IDs reveals
only the single bit of information required
b) parents still need to do their job
Arguably parental control should have been enough to avoid all of
this but the regulation still helps parents.
Itâs way more difficult to ask kids not to have social media when
all of their friends have it.
I would have preferred stricter social media platform regulation for
everyone forcing tech companies to take responsibility for what
happens on their platforms. Itâs not that they are dangerously only
for kids
anon84873628 wrote 23 hours 47 min ago:
In other words it solved the multi-agent coordination problem
amongst parents, which otherwise would require the majority of them
to be rational and good (a tall order).
ivan_gammel wrote 1 day ago:
> a) normalising people uploading identification documents and hence
lead to people becoming victims of scams
The reasonable approach to solve this problem is verification
protocol that mandates integration with the apps chosen by users. You
have your wallet with digital ID and you use only it on any website,
sharing the bare minimum of details. No uploads of anything anywhere.
Independent wallet providers ensure privacy and prevent state
overreach.
> (b) a small fraction of kids branching off into fringe networks
that are off the radar and will take them to very dark places very
quickly.
Unfortunately dark places existed in mainstream social media too.
Itâs something that should receive sufficient attention from law
enforcement, nothing has changed here.
pajamasam wrote 1 day ago:
> sharing the bare minimum of details
The reasonable approach, yes, but the approach most in the interest
of the governments and corporate players driving these laws...?
rtpg wrote 21 hours 39 min ago:
I think people are overindexing on how much of this is "get more
data on users".
I don't get why people believe there's a conspiracy here. There's
perhaps a large tent, but "social media bad" is not a
controversial opinion! "The gov't should do something about it"
is more controversial, though I think the controversiality is
less heavy in spaces with parents, teachers, places where people
have to deal with kids.
Not that this is how things should be determined, but... I think
reading this as a "get more data and track people" play feels
like giving everyone involved too much credit. It really just
feels like what it says on the tin here.
basisword wrote 1 day ago:
Curious about your thoughts on (a). I understand privacy concerns but
not your point about scams. How are people going to lose their life
savings? A photo ID is useful because you can compare the photo on it
to someone human. Passports contain mirochips. If losing your ID was
so dangerous people would be in trouble all the time, because people
lose them all the time.
zmmmmm wrote 1 day ago:
I guess it comes back to again not whether things are technically
watertight, but how socially normalised something is. People are
used to giving their ID out for significant transactions. This law
says now that pretty much any random website has a good reason to
ask you for ID documents. So when someone seeking to steal your
identity already has two forms and is just trying to fill in that
3rd document to get over the line to where they can call up the
bank to reset your password - the bar just got lowered. They no
longer have to trick you into thinking it's a message from your
bank or anything else significant. It can literally be "oh my
cousin sent me pictures of their grand kids, let me just get my
passport to upload so I can see them".
downsocialmedia wrote 1 day ago:
b) This was always the case in past too, but I think this is
handleable.
But most importantly, there's no expectation of kid to be on social
media anymore, which is much more important than whether they are
actually there or not.
spullara wrote 1 day ago:
very few laws and law makers take into consideration secondary (and
beyond) effects.
jgilias wrote 1 day ago:
Kids being banned from social media is just one side of the coin.
_Everyone_ else being forced to KYC with random websites is the other.
I canât help but wonder, which of the two outcomes is the actual goal
here.
denismi wrote 20 hours 1 min ago:
So far I haven't been KYCd by anything.
Aside from YouTube I don't particularly engage with any of these
often, but my Google, Facebook, Discord, Twitter, Bluesky, (current)
Reddit, Slack, Telegram accounts all seem to be BAU without new
requirements.
If the 80% of us currently holding unambiguously-over-16 accounts are
exempt, and it only affects future over-16 users as they're
onboarded, then it is a very blunt and very slow form of data
harvesting which won't yield useful results until years/decades after
all of the relevant decision-makers have moved on, retired and/or
died. So this seems unlikely?
denkmoon wrote 23 hours 30 min ago:
Nobody is forcing you to use facebook
wiredpancake wrote 23 hours 9 min ago:
You're right, but Social Media was one of the last places one could
be critical of the Government whilst also being anonymous or
pesudo-anonymous.
PunchyHamster wrote 1 day ago:
It's wet dream of politicians that think the key to reducing crime is
invigilation. So, that goal
I don't think there is all that many politicians gullible enough to
think that kind of massive breach of privacy is a worthy tradeoff
fortran77 wrote 1 day ago:
While I'm not sure about this ban, _something_ is causing normally
nice, peaceful Australia to be somewhere I don't feel safe anymore. My
relatives in Melbourne have left, after being physically attacked and
had their property vandalized by mostly young "activist" types who, no
doubt, get all their news from social media.
tonyhart7 wrote 1 day ago:
how Corporate/Gov knows who is Teen on these account???? isn't this is
just precursor to digital ID ?????
SunshineTheCat wrote 1 day ago:
I actually feel that teens shouldn't be on social media at all. But I
also don't think I should be able to lord that opinion over other
people via fiat.
Sugar is pretty bad for teens as well but I don't think banning that
will solve health issues anymore than this will help teens.
Personal decisions > a government trying to be mom
Governments always end up doing the most damage when their control is
"for the good of their constituents."
This might seem like a good thing while they're parenting for you on
things you agree with, however, there will likely come a time when they
do something you don't and by then it will be too late.
bloppe wrote 1 day ago:
I agree with you when I believe a choice can be freely made. But peer
pressure as a child is extremely intense, and if you're the one
weirdo you know whose parents don't allow them on Snapchat, it can
cause lots of strife and probably be ineffective anyway.
SunshineTheCat wrote 1 day ago:
So I'm assuming weed laws have put an end to the "peer pressure" of
teens getting other teens to smoke it?
Life always comes down to personal choices and it's always the hard
ones that are the most important. No law will ever change that.
morshu9001 wrote 1 day ago:
Not saying that laws are the reason, but there isn't much
childhood peer pressure to smoke weed. There is peer pressure
around iMessage in some countries just cause of Apple, rather
than kids finding the obvious workarounds.
singpolyma3 wrote 1 day ago:
If it's bad for teens it's bad for everyone. Banning for only teens
makes little sense
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