[HN Gopher] Australia proposes ban on social media for those und...
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Australia proposes ban on social media for those under 16
Author : robbiet480
Score : 430 points
Date : 2024-11-06 23:38 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| AlexeyBrin wrote:
| I wonder how can you implement such a law without forcing people
| to identify online ? Will they enforce a digital ID that you need
| to use to access the web or social media ?
| davesmylie wrote:
| A drop down list of birth dates/years "works" for most age
| restricted sites - I guess the logic is that if a user is lying
| about their age, it's not the sites problem.
|
| Article states that sites must demonstrate they are taking
| reasonable measures to enforce this though - a lot will come
| down as to how courts interpret that. If they go to the
| extremes of the KYC laws in australia I imagine a significant
| fraction of adults will not want to verify their age.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| > extremes of the KYC laws in australia
|
| Can you provide more details about this statement? I never
| heard anything about it on HN discussions.
| jeeeb wrote:
| I'm not sure how unusual it is internationally but KYC laws
| in Australia will generally require 100 points of
| identification, usually satisfied by showing your passport
| and drivers license. Other options include recent utility
| bills, your birth certificate, medicare card etc.
|
| The system wasn't really designed for the internet era and
| I think a lot of people would not be happy about handing
| all the personal info over to TikTok or Facebook
| alkonaut wrote:
| > I guess the logic is that if a user is lying about their
| age, it's not the sites problem.
|
| If the law is to have any teeth at all, it should be the
| problem of the service provider.
|
| Say for example that a banned feature for minors is having
| media feeds based on past watching behavior. Lacking a
| reliable age verification it's simple for social media
| companies to remove the feature entirely for all users, if
| it's unreasonable or impossible for them to implement age
| verification.
| whstl wrote:
| As much as I am grateful for most of GDPR, it has shown that
| leaving the implementation of anything to websites is a
| recipe for disaster.
|
| It's gonna be cookie banners 2.0.
|
| I bet a lot will just ask for a credit card number, like in
| those old scam fake-porn websites from the late 90s/early
| 2000s.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| It's happening on porn sites in some states in the US right
| now. When you visit the site, they ask you to validate with
| your ID.
| scrps wrote:
| Hell of a time to run a VPN or a blackmail service... Porn
| site profiles with activity history + real traceable
| identities will make the Ashley Madison leak look quaint.
| morkalork wrote:
| How long are VPN services for consumers like that going to
| be viable? All the 5 eyes countries are trending in the
| same direction and they US isn't shy to press other
| countries to follow their regulations with the threat of
| being sanctioned.
| viraptor wrote:
| How so? Ashley Madison was a service for cheating. This
| would be for people watching porn - how is that worse?
|
| The history is extremely unlikely to be available to the id
| validator (beyond the domain at most). VPNs can't see the
| actual history either.
| pc86 wrote:
| They're probably referring to the scope. Very few people
| were directly impacted by Ashley Madison (though there
| was at least one reported suicide due to the leaks), but
| lots of people watch porn and most of those people would
| not be too keen on their browsing history being leaked
| even if it's relatively tame, and especially if it's not.
| clown_strike wrote:
| The funny thing these days is that all porn is tailored
| to appear as far from "tame" as imaginable.
|
| The average PornHub user's history will be full of weird
| incest shit at the very least, not because of any
| specific interest in the genre but because so much
| generic heterosexual porn is labeled as such. Looks
| really bad for you if it makes the newspaper.
|
| So even "tame" leakage is 100x more embarrassing than it
| ought to be, and thus snooping on bf/husband's devices to
| humiliate them over their porn usage is normalized on
| relationship subreddits. Same goes for them plugging your
| email address into the password reset form to try to
| verify whether you have an account on any given site.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| >weird incest shit
|
| Frankly, Stephen King stories are much weirder than any
| porn. Imagine enjoying watching monsters eating people.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| If FBI didn't shut it down, it's all tame, no?
| strangecasts wrote:
| "The domain at most" can be quite sufficient for
| blackmail
| peebee67 wrote:
| You don't!
|
| That's exactly what they're aspiring to here, following on from
| a well-established pedigree of Australian lawmakers and their
| dysfunctional relationship with the Internet.
| donohoe wrote:
| You do! It already happens - just not for everyone.
|
| Example:
|
| https://m.facebook.com/help/582999911881572
| sturadnidge wrote:
| The government is being deliberately non-prescriptive about
| that, as they are about what qualifies as 'social media'
| (statement of fact - no comment on the approach itself).
| Ideally the legislation is accompanied by a government digital
| service that allows 3rd parties to verify age _without_
| divulging full identity, but I don't see that side of things
| being discussed anywhere down here :(
| threeseed wrote:
| They seem pretty clear [1] about what social media is:
|
| Social networks, public media sharing networks, discussion
| forums, consumer review networks.
|
| [1] https://www.esafety.gov.au/sites/default/files/2023-12/Ph
| ase...
| bigfatkitten wrote:
| They haven't got the competence to implement it even if they
| wanted to.
| addy34 wrote:
| The government currently tendering for providers of different
| systems. See here [1] and here [2]:
|
| _Tender documents released on Monday show the technical trial
| is slated to begin "on or around 28 October", with the provider
| also expected to assess the "effectiveness, maturity, and
| readiness" of technologies in Australia._
|
| _Biometric age estimation, email verification processes,
| account confirmation processes, device or operating-level
| interventions are among the technologies that will be assessed
| for social media (13-16 years age band)._
|
| _In the context of age-restricted online content (18 years or
| over), the Communication department has asked that double-blind
| tokenised attribution exchange models, as per the age
| verification roadmap, and hard identifiers such as credit cards
| be considered._
|
| [1] https://www.innovationaus.com/govt-readies-age-
| verification-...
|
| [2] https://www.biometricupdate.com/202409/australia-launches-
| te...
| nick3443 wrote:
| Sales of stick on mustaches will skyrocket
| strangecasts wrote:
| The source for "double-blind tokenised attribution exchange
| models" is this report from July 2024, from the Australian
| eSafety Commissioner: https://www.esafety.gov.au/sites/defaul
| t/files/2024-07/Age-A...
|
| They note that existing age verification setups largely
| either rely on providing ID, or on a combination of manual
| and automated behavior profiling (face recognition, text
| classification, reports from other users), both of which have
| obvious privacy and/or accuracy issues. The "double-blind
| tokens" point to a summary by LINC explaining how they
| _could_ be implemented with zero-knowledge proofs, but I
| could not find an article or a practical implementation
| (could just be a mistake on my part, admittedly)
|
| At _best_ you end up with a solution in the vein of Privacy
| Pass -
| https://petsymposium.org/popets/2018/popets-2018-0026.pdf -
| but that requires a browser extension, a functioning digital
| ID solution you can build on top of, and buy-in from the
| websites. Personally, I also suspect the strongest sign a
| company is going to screw up the cryptographic side of it is
| if they agree to implement it...
| alkonaut wrote:
| > "a functioning digital ID solution"
|
| A functioning digital ID solutions seems like table stakes
| for anything in 2024.
| strangecasts wrote:
| The operative part being "that you can build on top of",
| because the "ID token" approach means it now has to act
| as essentially a mini-OAuth-provider for many other
| websites, not just government services
| alkonaut wrote:
| Yes. But I don't think this type of regulation should
| care about whether it's technically possible to do today.
| You could make a New York proposal type ban e.g banning
| algorithmic feeds to minors, even if it's difficult to
| tell who is a minor and who isn't. Social media companies
| would solve the ID problem or simply stop using those
| algorithms outright.
| squigz wrote:
| It's a bit wild that instead of parents just being
| responsible and teaching their children properly, we'll
| resort to neutering privacy and freedom on the Internet.
| prawn wrote:
| No comment on the implementation, but I wonder if there's some
| value in just allowing parents to be able to point to this and
| say "No, little Fred, you're not allowed to have an Instagram
| account until you're 16. It's the actual rule."
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| I'm guessing you don't have kids
| prawn wrote:
| I have three kids. They have access to devices they use
| primarily for reading and language/music lessons. They
| don't use social media and would likely pay a decent level
| of attention if (in addition to us having explained
| concerns about social media for children) we indicated that
| there was government advice/ruling around this.
| sekai wrote:
| > we indicated that there was government advice/ruling
| around this.
|
| Why would any pre-teen / teen care about what government
| thinks? They care what their friends think about that
| TikTok they saw during recess, though.
| technion wrote:
| I'm listening to Australian radio right now and a group of
| mothers just made this exact point.
| dools wrote:
| Yep, the "everyone else has BLAH" argument is a strong one.
| If we collectively take action through government to set a
| standard it is MUCH easier to shut down those self-fulfilling
| claims.
| jolmg wrote:
| > allowing parents
|
| What? Why would parents need permission from their government
| to forbid their kid from having an Instagram account? They're
| parents, so they can engage in parenting.
| prawn wrote:
| Allowing as in "enabling", obviously.
| the5avage wrote:
| Because not everyone has a computer science degree.
|
| They probably want to allow their kids to use a computer,
| so it would be very easy for the kid to go to instagram
| when they dont look.
| krisoft wrote:
| Not allowing as in "giving them permission", but "allowing"
| as in enabling them to do so.
|
| Right now if a parent says "You can't have instagram.
| Because I say so." the kids answer will be "But I will be a
| looser noob if I can't. All my friend are on it. Jenny has
| 5k followers!"
|
| Vs after the ban: "You can't have instagram. This is the
| law." "But mom! Some of my friends are on it. Jenny has 1k
| followers!" "Is that so? I will ask Jenny's mom if she
| knows about that."
|
| It is not going to stop absolutely everything. (Same as
| prohibiting underage alcohol drinking is not stopping teens
| from drinking any). But it will put a serious damper on it
| and fracture the social networks into smaller more
| underground ones.
| boffinAudio wrote:
| Seems to me that the better solution is to give parents the
| ability to observe their kids' activities, and for <16
| accounts to be able to operate only when tied with an adult
| account, which can observe activity...
|
| Of course many will say this can be abused, but _all
| technology can be abused_ and the reason we 're in this mess
| in the first place is because OS designers haven't figured
| out that the relationship between parent and child is an
| important one which should be strengthened, not made weaker
| ..
| antihero wrote:
| Ah yes, teenagers, people with famously little time on their
| hands and a penchant for following rules.
| _AzMoo wrote:
| You don't necessarily need to actually attempt to globally
| enforce it. It's like speeding, right? Everybody knows the law,
| and a lot of people choose to break it. We can't check
| everybody's speed all the time, so instead we selectively
| enforce.
|
| The real change though comes from parent's perceptions. Right
| now there's age limits of 14-years-old on most social media
| platforms, however most parents just see this as a ToS thing,
| and nobody cares about actually violating it. Once it becomes
| law, the parents are suddenly responsible (and liable) for
| ensuring their children are not breaking the law by accessing
| social media. It's not going to stop everybody, but it'll
| certainly move the needle on a lot of people who are currently
| apathetic to the ToS of social media platforms.
| Affric wrote:
| Not true. Only the social media companies will be liable.
| It's an important part of the legislation.
| jojobas wrote:
| Same as alcohol. If you supply your kids with alcohol, or even
| have it at home and they get drunk without your knowledge,
| you'll be in trouble.
| pests wrote:
| Not sure that is the best example as many states have
| exceptions to allow parents to legally give their children
| alcohol so that scenario you devised could be completely
| legal.
| sureIy wrote:
| Making it illegal could make it taboo, kids are less likely to
| talk about it in fear of "getting caught" and less talking
| means less usage.
|
| This is not like porn which is a solitary activity: on social
| media you have to be social and let everyone know... at least
| for traditional actually-social media, not content-consuming
| apps like TikTok.
|
| It's similar to alcohol usage: you can't stop it completely,
| but also you don't have 50% of kids bringing it to school.
| sekai wrote:
| > Making it illegal could make it taboo, kids are less likely
| to talk about it in fear of "getting caught" and less talking
| means less usage
|
| So like piracy?
|
| > This is not like porn which is a solitary activity: on
| social media you have to be social and let everyone know...
| at least for traditional actually-social media, not content-
| consuming apps like TikTok
|
| You don't? You can stay perfectly anonymous.
| asdefghyk wrote:
| RE ".....how can you implement such a law..."
|
| Request the social media platform to implement the restriction.
| The large social media platform have billions $ cash , so if
| that "really want to implement it" it should not be a problem.
|
| However, I expect social media companies to "drag out every
| reason , why they can ot implement it..." - since it does not
| benefit the social media company. ... and would reduce its user
| base ...
| michaelt wrote:
| _> Request the social media platform to implement the
| restriction. The large social media platform have billions $
| cash , so if that "really want to implement it" it should
| not be a problem._
|
| I'm sure that Facebook, Google and TikTok will be _delighted_
| to make it mandatory that Australians send in photos of their
| face, passport and driving license.
|
| But is it good for _Australia_ to have their citizens hand
| such mountains of PII to unaccountable foreign
| megacorporations?
| asdefghyk wrote:
| RE "...is it good for Australia to have their citizens hand
| such mountains of PII to unaccountable foreign
| megacorporations...." NOT NEEDED , Mega Corp needs to have
| office in Australia where such documents are checked.
| Document never leaves Australia.
| askvictor wrote:
| Well, funny you should mention that - the AU government ID
| system (used to access govt services like medicare and tax),
| has very recently been rebranded from MyGovID to MyID. Most
| states have already got digital drivers' licences.
| alkonaut wrote:
| I don't think lawmakers should describe HOW things are done
| necessarily. Here it's enough to say that "unless you can be
| 100% sure your user is above age X, then you can't provide them
| service Y or feature Z".
|
| It might not even be the desired outcome to have
| identification, the better outcome could be to have feature Z
| stripped for _all_ users (for example video feeds based on past
| watching behavior).
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Law should _not_ be excessively prescriptive, _especially_ in
| the case of rapidly-evolving technologies (and business
| sectors) for all the obvious reasons.
|
| What's far more useful is to propose effective _incentives_ and
| _disincentives_ , and let the participants work this out for
| themselves. There are some useful principles and examples which
| come to mind:
|
| - Business is profit-oriented. Attack the basis of profits, in
| a readily-identifiable and enforceable way, and activity which
| pursues those markets will tend to dry up.
|
| - Business is profoundly risk-averse. Raise the risks of an
| activity, or remove protections or limitations on threads
| (e.g., Section 230 of the CDA in the US), and incentives to
| participate in that activity will be greatly reduced.
| Penetrating corporate and third-party veils would be
| particularly useful, in this case, of service providers (aiding
| and abetting in a proscripted commerce) and advertisers
| (profiting by same). Lifting any limitations on harms which
| might occur (bullying, induced suicides, addiction, or others)
| would similarly be crippling.
|
| As to how age might be ascertained:
|
| - Self-reporting. Not terribly reliable, but a decent first
| cut.
|
| - Profiling. There are _exceedingly_ strong indicia of age
| which can be made, including based on a particular account 's
| social graph, interests, online activity, location data (is the
| profile spending ~6h daily at an elementary school, and not
| lunching in the teacher's lounge?), etc. One strong distinction
| is between _legislation_ and _regulation_ , where the latter is
| imposed (usually with rulemaking process) through the
| _executive_ branch (SCOTUS 's Loper _v._ Raimondo being a
| phenomenally stupid rejection of that principle). Such
| regulation could then on a more flexible basis identify
| specific technical means to be imposed, reviewed, and updated
| on a regular schedule.
|
| - Access providers. Most people now access the Internet through
| either fixed-location (home, work, institutional) providers,
| _or their own mobile access provider_. Such accounts could well
| carry age (and other attestation) flags which online service
| providers could be obliged to respect as regards regulation.
|
| Jumping in before a few obvious objections: no, these
| mechanisms are not _perfect_ but I 'll assert they can be
| _practically effective_ ; and yes, there are risks for
| authoritarian regimes to abuse such measures, but then, those
| are already abusing _present_ mechanisms. I 'd include
| extensive AdTech-based surveillance in that, which is itself
| ripe for abuse and has demonstrated much of this already.
|
| (That said, I'd welcome rational "what could possibly go wrong"
| discussion.)
| Hilift wrote:
| Remember the Silicon Valley episode where they would have been
| fined $21 billion for not verifying the age of PiperChat users?
| Same way. All companies are one slippery slope away from being
| fined by Missouri for not protecting children enough. Or
| Australia.
| brtkdotse wrote:
| There's a near-zero chance of getting caught driving without a
| license. Despite not having a drivers license checking
| mechanism, people generally don't drive without a license
| because of the mere fact that it's illegal.
|
| Societal signaling is pretty powerful.
| Nathanba wrote:
| What even counts as social media? Is Hackernews social media? Is
| my future platform where people can talk to each other social
| media? It's all pure desperation, they could instead force social
| media companies to only promote useful educational, pro-science,
| pro-fitness, documentaries, family style content and then social
| media would be helpful. Forming communities around learning,
| robotics, science? What could possibly be better for children who
| look for purpose in life? It would be fantastic. But of course
| half the grifters on social media are also already hiding in
| those tags and serving the most shallow, useless, fake content
| about e.g ancient pyramid aliens or discussions about how
| veganism will help your body. As you can tell by my last little
| insertion here, half the problem is that even all the adults
| can't come to a shared understanding of what is "good" or true.
| galuggus wrote:
| Yes. Does Roblox count? What about Minecraft?
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Start with the big 4 or 5 and add more in there as and when
| they become problematic. Who decides which one? Some agency.
|
| I think the real solution is banning under 18s from having
| smart phones period.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > What could possibly be better for children who look for
| purpose in life?
|
| They sort of naturally do that if you have the appropriate
| challenges and opportunities around them.
|
| > ancient pyramid aliens or discussions about how veganism will
| help your body.
|
| There used to be a tabloid called "News of the Weird." This
| stuff just exists. You'll find it anywhere people gather. We're
| story tellers. When we don't have a compelling story we just
| make stuff up. It's identical to the point above.
|
| > even all the adults can't come to a shared understanding of
| what is "good" or true.
|
| It's not possible. If the children are intended to inherit the
| future then this is a flawed and reductive strategy. You will
| not achieve what you seek through parochial means.
|
| Really.. I think your biggest problem should be advertising. It
| should be nowhere near children. Ban _that_ but keep the social
| media.
| sega_sai wrote:
| I would say anything with algorithmic personalized feed is a
| social media, and that's I would stop kids having access to. I
| think the main danger is in the engagement maximisation done
| through these algorithmic feeds.
| nick3443 wrote:
| Mandate that the home/landing page of social media sites is a
| chronological display of people/artists/whatevers you've
| legitimately chosen to follow rather than maximization
| algorithm force feeding. For all users. The have to click to
| get to the algorithm zone. Problem solved.
| viraptor wrote:
| I don't think that's really solved. Facebook had lots of
| engagement pre-feed. Reddit has lots of engagement even
| without personalisation. It's still going to be problematic
| for lots of people.
| esperent wrote:
| > What even counts as social media?
|
| I think the way the EU approached this with their "digital
| gatekeepers" is smart. Recognize that policing the entire
| internet isn't possible or even desirable. Focus on those few
| companies with the largest capacity for harm. Different
| criteria might be appropriate when focusing on potential harm
| for children (e.g. Roblox rather than Twitter) but besides a
| few changes you'll probably end up with roughly the same list.
|
| I'm not sure I'd support an outright ban, but rather very
| strict monitoring and requirements around moderation, in app
| purchasing, gambling mechanics, and so on.
| immibis wrote:
| Australia takes a different approach and says (in their Basic
| Online Safety Expectations 2024) that _every online account_
| must be linked to a phone number.
|
| This is the same country that brought you "the laws of
| mathematics are very commendable but they don't apply in
| Australia".
|
| I foresee a two- or three-tier Internet in the future, and
| Australia will probably be the first "western" country to
| block Tor.
| alwayslikethis wrote:
| > every online account must be linked to a phone number
|
| They seem to be learning a lot from the Chinese.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| South Koreans have needed an id to get online for more
| than a decade
|
| Edit: actually never mind it was only active between the
| years 2007-2012
| xyzzy123 wrote:
| > Australia will probably be the first "western" country to
| block Tor.
|
| The Australian way would be to "ban" tor without any
| particular concern for enforceability or technical
| feasibility. Any actual blocking would be pushed onto
| industry somehow, which would then proceed to half-ass it,
| doing the absolute minimum possible to demonstrate they are
| complying with regulation.
|
| I like Australia a lot, but a lot of the time it feels like
| political priority is to "make it look like something is
| being done". No one would actually care if the blocking
| worked or not unless the media made a big song and dance
| about it.
|
| I also wonder how much of this ban is about "punishing" X
| and Meta in particular - Meta for it's refusal to pay for
| news and X because they didn't jump to immediately remove
| stuff the government wanted taken down.
|
| > What even counts as social media?
|
| Anything the government needs more leverage over or wants
| to shake down for money.
| squigz wrote:
| > The Australian way would be to "ban" tor without any
| particular concern for enforceability or technical
| feasibility. Any actual blocking would be pushed onto
| industry somehow, which would then proceed to half-ass
| it, doing the absolute minimum possible to demonstrate
| they are complying with regulation.
|
| Just because it wouldn't be well-implemented doesn't mean
| it's nothing to worry about, not to mention that such
| things are almost always just 1 step on a path of many.
| threeseed wrote:
| > X because they didn't jump to immediately remove stuff
| the government wanted taken down
|
| Yes they did. X has _always_ capitulated to the whims of
| governments.
| threeseed wrote:
| Where in that document [1] [2] does it mention every online
| account must be linked to a phone number.
|
| Because it mentions that an account must be linked to an
| email address or phone number.
|
| Which would be the standard for almost every online
| service.
|
| [1] https://www.legislation.gov.au/F2022L00062/latest/text
|
| [2] https://www.esafety.gov.au/sites/default/files/2024-07/
| Basic...
| Nathanba wrote:
| In a way it shouldn't be tied to size either, it should be
| tied to results. If a social company is clearly only
| interested in profit to the exclusion of societal benefits
| then they deserve to be regulated.
| 22c wrote:
| I think the proposal is fundamentally flawed because of this
| reason.
|
| Facebook, Instagram and X/Twitter are probably what's intended
| here, but what about Tumblr, DeviantArt or Discord? What about
| Reddit or a generic forum? What about VRChat or Webfishing?
|
| If this is about protecting children from harmful depictions of
| body image or misogynistic content, then why not instead
| propose a law that states online services that allow children
| to join need to appropriately moderate the content that is
| shown to children or could face massive fines. I don't
| necessarily agree with that approach, but at least it would
| make sense with what their stated objectives are.
| joshka wrote:
| How about over 60? That's more likely to have a positive effect
| on society
| qup wrote:
| How's that?
| nelox wrote:
| Even better, how about <16 to >16?
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| I've always been a supporter of those, my view on democracy
| is not to be mature enough, but to be a part of society with
| needs and ideas, school students neee to be represented
| because they're part of a society
| skhr0680 wrote:
| Countries around the world need to bite the bullet and
| implement that for voting too.
| omeid2 wrote:
| Voting rights should be proportional to remaining quality-
| adjusted life years remaining based on life expectancy.
|
| I am joking of course, but there is something to ponder about
| the growing number of childless people over 40 voting with
| little concern for the long term.
| Nursie wrote:
| As a childless person over 40, wtf are you talking about?
|
| People don't all vote purely on self-interest, some of us
| vote on how we think human society should be run, and what
| we think is genuinely best for everyone. Not just for our
| own immediate bottom line.
|
| This whole ageist line of reasoning is pretty offensive.
| kortilla wrote:
| It's not ageism so much as they are prejudiced against
| people not raising children.
|
| We childless folk have had a quiet 25ish years and now
| the pendulum seems to be swinging back the other
| direction. I've noticed quite an uptick in memes about
| childless people being selfish monsters and taking away
| our voting rights is right in line with that.
| kredd wrote:
| Doesn't really matter when the percentage of childless
| adults is growing every year. I just scoff and move on.
| omeid2 wrote:
| Exceptio probat regulam.
| Nursie wrote:
| No, I don't believe I am particularly an exception, I
| believe you're just exhibiting prejudice.
| omeid2 wrote:
| Yes, not a snowflake for sure, but as you say "people
| don't all vote purely on self-interest" but most do.
| Nursie wrote:
| I'm not sure that's particularly true.
|
| And it still doesn't come close to justifying taking away
| someone's input to democracy. I find all these
| discussions massively distasteful.
|
| Also short-sighted because they tend to assume that the
| age cohort making the claim have more stake in the
| future, are all of one mind, are thinking long term
| themselves, or are generally going to do things better.
| None of these things hold up to much scrutiny AFAICT.
| omeid2 wrote:
| Claims about "all" are not useful and a distraction from
| useful understanding of human behaviour. People, like any
| animal, as a rule, act largely on self-interest. That is
| with a broad definition of self that includes family
| --specially offsprings, and larger "identities" like
| clan, village, city, country, race, creed, religion, and
| so on.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| Old people with children vote for policies that favor their
| specific children.
|
| Old people without children vote for policies that favor
| the next generation.
| omeid2 wrote:
| No one cares about a race without a horse in it.
| tgv wrote:
| It's hard to stay polite in discussions where people use
| the guise of irony to say things they know they shouldn't.
| You have no evidence for your proposal, and I bet you can't
| even argue why it would be a net positive, without
| resorting to prejudice.
|
| In case you couldn't quite parse that, I mean: fuck your
| comment.
| EasyMark wrote:
| Last I checked if you're over 60 then you're an Adult and can
| do adult things. You have long since stopped growing into your
| body by then. Children are not finished yet, and continue to
| have their brains mature and grow into the early 20s
| tyre wrote:
| and in advanced age there is cognitive decline
|
| the median seventy-five year old's brain is not in the same
| condition as the median thirty year old's
| belfalas wrote:
| 75 and 60 are vastly different.
| foxglacier wrote:
| It doesn't matter because the 35 year old isn't using his
| brain to vote anyway. He's just going by what social media,
| the news, and peer pressure leads him to. If anything, an
| older person has better established understanding of the
| world even if they're not better at working things out.
| tyre wrote:
| Anecdotally the elderly in my life vote far more off of
| vibes than my immediate social circle does. You could say
| it's a bubble or bias, but it's the difference between
| coherent programs and policy decisions vs "anti-freedom"
| or "socialism"
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| If at "over 60 you can do adult things", why do we take their
| drivers licenses away from and make them sit a drivers test
| every year unlike adults under 60?
| kortilla wrote:
| They don't take their license away, they just test more
| frequently to watch for deterioration of vision, etc.
|
| Also, people under 60 still need to test and qualify for a
| license. So I'm not sure why you went down this comparison
| route.
| sangnoir wrote:
| Because it's in society's best interest not to have
| impaired people driving; whether it's due to substances
| taken, illness or age.
| isodev wrote:
| Banning <16 year olds from social media is for their
| protection. Banning >60 from social media (and I'd add
| voting) is for everyone else's protection.
| cyanwave wrote:
| Damn ageism. There's some amazing 60yo assembly devs out
| there.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| And society wants them dev'ing amazingly in assembly, not
| doomscrolling!
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| I could say that for all ages. Having known the world
| pre-social media I really do wish we could go back.
| NavinF wrote:
| There's nothing keeping you here on a social media
| website. Dunno why you wanna control what others do with
| their time
| DavidPiper wrote:
| Seems like a strawman, I can think of plenty of reasons
| people want to control others' time. It's the literal job
| of every CEO for starters.
| pests wrote:
| What happened to Liberty?
|
| The CEO is not controlling their time, he's buying it and
| they're selling it.
|
| What other reasons do you have?
| NavinF wrote:
| No CEO controls my time. What are you on about?
| pests wrote:
| > I can think of plenty of reasons people want to control
| others' time
|
| So can I
|
| - They want to control people like property - They want
| to impose their views and values - They don't want any
| competition - They have a power trip - They want to use
| others time for their own benefit
|
| What else am I missing?
| lukan wrote:
| "There's nothing keeping you here on a social media
| website."
|
| The people for instance, when everyone is on social
| media, you won't find people in the streets anymore,
| except for the homeless and junkies.
|
| (but luckily it is still possible to find people in the
| real world, but it did became hard to find real
| undistracted people)
| phs318u wrote:
| > There's nothing keeping you here on a social media
| website
|
| There's nothing keeping you here in a casino, gambling
| your wages away.
|
| There's nothing keeping you here in a bar drinking
| yourself to oblivion.
|
| There's nothing keeping you here smoking three packs a
| day until you're shitting tar.
|
| The age old advice to "just stop" doesn't quite work for
| those most at risk. Harm minimisation is a reasonable
| thing. We don't think it's a good idea for young kids to
| smoke, drink, drive, vote or have sex. Since we know that
| social media can be specifically harmful to the youngest
| demographic, why wouldn't we want to regulate it based on
| age?
| NavinF wrote:
| > Since we know that social media can be specifically
| harmful to the youngest demographic
|
| Who is this "we" that accepts that uncritically? I've
| been on "social media" since I was 8yo and my little
| brother has been on social media since he was a baby. Now
| he's becoming a doctor. He grew up with the 1st gen
| iPhone which was released 17 years ago.
|
| FWIW I think the drinking age of 21 in the US is kinda
| silly. Many Americans start driving at 14 (with
| employment letter) or at 15.5 and many Americans buy
| their first rifle at 18 years old.
| phs318u wrote:
| Who's being uncritical here? I'm not an alcoholic and
| neither is my sister. That doesn't mean alcoholism
| doesn't exist nor that there aren't very real harms to a
| small subset of the population. Great enough harm (that
| also impacts on non-alcoholics), that we've collectively
| decided to regulate an otherwise legal substance. Would
| you suggest that we shouldn't age-limit alcohol? And even
| with the things you quote - driving and gun ownership -
| there's still an age limit, not no age limit. The
| specific number is irrelevant and up for discussion, but
| we've still decided for those things that there exists a
| "too young" category.
|
| EDITED to remove a stupid phone
| autocorrection/autoinsertion.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| EDIT: I should point out that in general what happens to
| other people does impact me so I do have a stake in the
| behavior of others. No man is an island.
|
| I'm not a social media addict, I only use HN occasionally
| and really only to remind myself what other people are
| like. Without this I would forget and assume things about
| people that are just not true. I treat social media like
| the dangerous drug that it is and intentionally limit my
| exposure. But not everyone can do that. I personally know
| many people who have let social media ruin their lives
| and their minds to the point I'm not even sure they are
| rehabilitatable.
|
| I wasn't proposing a ban, I don't trust the government
| with that much power and regulation would be difficult-
| at what point does a social club become social media. I
| guess my appeal to time travel did not properly reflect
| this perceived futility.
|
| I think the only way would be as an Amish like
| intentional community with a religious level of
| enforcement. E.g. You can use social media but only in
| the shed, not in the house. But that's not realistic so I
| just have to accept that X% of the population are not
| going to make it unscathed. These people will become a
| burden on the state at a time when the state is
| increasingly reaching to voluntary euthanasia for
| solutions. Perhaps in time people will socially and
| genetically evolve in ways that'll be able to deal with
| it.
| EasyMark wrote:
| I think ageism is one of the last safe hold outs for
| those who like to participate in "isms" outside their
| echo chambers.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| I'm against protected class laws and I am for accepting
| reality and making public policy based on that reality.
| It is just my view that social media is unhealthy at any
| age.
| kortilla wrote:
| I think there is a better argument for banning anyone under
| the age of 30 from voting than there is for anything as low
| as a limit of 60 for voting.
| robinei wrote:
| On the flip side, it seems evident that younger people
| tend to vote for the betterment of all, while older
| people tend to shift toward voting for <<themselves>>.
| akkad33 wrote:
| Why is that evident? Any evidence for it?
| robinei wrote:
| I'm talking of the typical left/right split. Where
| leftist policies tend toward redistribution of wealth to
| the benefit of broader swathes, while right oriented
| policies tend to at least lead to more concentration of
| wealth. Maybe it is an outdated bias, but until now at
| least my impression is that young people have had a
| greater tendency toward some form of humanistic idealism.
| akkad33 wrote:
| That's the traditional stereotype, but I have a hard time
| believing those whose internet presence is mostly
| manifested as Twitter stan wars and tiktok trends care
| about greater ideals than the next viral trend
| hnthrowaway6543 wrote:
| Not true; young, childless people don't think about the
| next generation, because why would they? It's game-theory
| optimal for them to maximize laws which benefit them
| personally, as they don't have to worry about their
| children growing up with the consequences.
|
| Frankly, society would be a lot better if the childless
| couldn't vote; leave voting to people who have a stake in
| society's future!
|
| (And yes, adoption counts, doesn't need to be biological
| -- not excluding anyone here.)
| LeafItAlone wrote:
| >Frankly, society would be a lot better if the childless
| couldn't vote; leave voting to people who have a stake in
| society's future!
|
| Whoa now. Just because I am childless doesn't mean I
| don't care about future generations. I still have friends
| and family that do have children and I vote with that in
| mind.
| robinei wrote:
| Maybe idealism is dead and even the youth have been
| corrupted these days.
| maeil wrote:
| Hard to tell whether you are being sarcastic or not; just
| in case you aren't, it's trivial to confirm that few
| people vote in a game-theory optimal manner.
| lukan wrote:
| So as a compromise only allow people between 30 and 60 to
| vote?
|
| (Which would be hilarious, as it means, allmost no one
| voted in office would be allowed to vote themself
| anymore, unless of course that would change, too)
| LeafItAlone wrote:
| >I think there is a better argument for banning anyone
| under the age of 30 from voting
|
| Please expand on this.
| sureIy wrote:
| This is akin to speed limits. Doing 50 km/h on a 20 km/h
| street isn't going to kill you, but can kill people outside
| your vehicle.
| JasonBorne wrote:
| Banning those over 60 is a funny jab against an older
| generation who are susceptible to conspiracy theories and who
| are not media smart. They have lots of trouble
| differentiating sound and noise. I doubt this person was
| serious. Nevertheless, it was funny.
| rwyinuse wrote:
| The young are also susceptible to conspiracy theories. You
| don't get "media smart" by browsing Tiktok and Instagram,
| which is all they know how to do.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| How about we only allow those who have our same ideas? That's
| great for democracy, true democratic values
| ajrehg wrote:
| Do you attribute the Trump victory to people over 60? What
| about German right wing parties? I assume similar can be found
| in the U.S., but I did not have time:
|
| https://www.nzz.ch/english/why-are-young-germans-voting-for-...
|
| The most insane left culture warriors who wanted to relive a
| second spring on the other hand are indeed approaching or over
| 60. Fake culture warriors like Pelosi and Biden are over 80.
|
| Fake culture warriors in software organizations like Python are
| approaching or over 60. You know, the exact same people who
| read Ayn Rand and supported ESR when it was politically
| expedient for their careers 20 years ago, because they always
| go with the herd, no matter how stupid it is.
|
| These culture warriors, through their purges and insane
| statements, have so thoroughly destroyed any trust in the
| Democrats that there is a landslide victory for Trump now. It
| will take years to restore that confidence.
| shirro wrote:
| The claim is that it protects the mental health and welfare of
| young people. Young people have special protection from the law
| in many regards including sexual consent, contracts, employment
| etc.
|
| A 60 year old is expected to have the capacity to make informed
| choices. Whether they do is down to personal responsibility.
| Many of us will be 60 one day.
| georgebarnett wrote:
| What sort of positive effect would you expect?
|
| What do you think is wrong with people over 60?
| the5avage wrote:
| Thats too simple.
|
| The problem is that a lot of democracies have a demography
| skewed towards old people and at the same time a simple
| majority can dictate over s.th. like a minority of 30% of the
| voters.
| teyc wrote:
| Why about Sky News?
| donohoe wrote:
| Start with 16. Increment it every year.
| HKH2 wrote:
| And make the home page an ugly green with disgusting pictures
| of health problems?
| tmshapland wrote:
| Love this!
| omeid2 wrote:
| Tasmania tried doing that with smoking and it kind of didn't go
| through due to technicalities.
|
| https://www.smokefreetasmania.com/new-law/
| slyall wrote:
| New Zealand also tried it. But then we elected a government
| full of [ex] tobacco lobbyists
| dredmorbius wrote:
| I'd suggest 61 as well, and closing the gap ;-)
| bigfatkitten wrote:
| All of these <16s will be voting in a few years, and Australia
| has compulsory voting. I hope they remember this on their first
| visit to the ballot box.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| This will be wholly supported by both parties of our primarily
| two-party system. There's no alternative but a protest vote to
| one of those fringe parties that will never get any real power
| anyway.
| viraptor wrote:
| A protest vote is still free in Australia due to a reasonable
| voting system. And quite a few independents still get in. Is
| not terrible and actually can make a difference.
| viraptor wrote:
| Kids in schools which forbid phone use for everyone are often
| happy with the result. Banning social networks for everyone may
| be popular with them by the time they vote.
| bigfatkitten wrote:
| What about the 14-15 year olds who happily use who happily
| use various apps to keep in touch with their family and
| friends (outside school hours), who will now be prohibited
| from doing so?
| Mashimo wrote:
| I'm not Australian, how are they now being prohibited?
| bigfatkitten wrote:
| They don't really have a plan yet.
|
| Thinking things through isn't a quality that Australian
| governments have ever been blessed with, particularly
| when it comes to tech policy.
| viraptor wrote:
| You don't need social networks to keep in touch with family
| and friends. RCS and a large number of communicators are
| available for everyone.
| bigfatkitten wrote:
| Postal mail is also available to everyone, but it's as
| functionally equivalent to Instagram as RCS is.
| viraptor wrote:
| "I want Instagram" and "I want to be in touch with my
| friends and family" are completely separate things. You
| don't need social networks for that. It was possible to
| be in touch before the internet and I believe that
| Instagram didn't improve it at all.
| throwawaythekey wrote:
| Also note that the government is attacking social media on a
| second front.
|
| Last night they took advantage of the population being distracted
| by the US election by having an extended parliamentary session to
| push forward with a second reading of the controversial
| misinformation bill.
|
| The government and state media apparatus are of course both
| immune from any penalty under the bill.
|
| https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-11/acma-crackdown-social...
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Part of the concerted effort against social media is the
| (sudden?) loss of ability to control the narrative by the
| established power base. Politics and Print / Television Media
| used to have the last word on "facts", but now every man and
| his dog can create their own narrative.
|
| Methinks they're, again, using "think of the children" as a
| bulwark against the inevitability of their own waning power.
| The more things change...
|
| Can we also prevent under 16s from being exposed to religious
| teachings?
| the5avage wrote:
| I really hope you sort this out.
|
| When I have my masters degree finished I would like to live in
| your beautiful country where a lot of wonderful people live.
| yowayb wrote:
| Completely unenforceable
| andrewstuart wrote:
| They're protecting the children.
| jaimex2 wrote:
| They're taking steps to control freedom of speech.
|
| Little steps, get them young.
|
| You should see the misinformation bill they are trying to pass.
| consumerx wrote:
| lol, probably because they have a propaganda leak.
| linuxandrew wrote:
| I put in a submission to the committee for this issue[1]. The big
| issues from my point of view are widespread ID validation and the
| security and privacy consequences of that, definition of social
| media, lack of controls provided by social media websites, and
| further risks to centralisation (like ID providers requiring an
| app that can only run on an iOS or Google Play device).
|
| Many of the ID verification services that have spun up over
| recent years like AU10TIX are private companies that don't have
| their users' interests at heart. It wouldn't surprise me if they
| become more involved with the so-called data economy (data broker
| ecosystem)--if they aren't already.
|
| Meta itself causes harm to users of all ages with their
| algorithms (like suggested content on the feed) which can't
| really be turned off, and fueled the misinformation crisis which
| really took off a few years ago. The social media companies have
| done a good job of convincing the Australian government to
| overlook these harms.
|
| 1: https://roffey.au/static/submission-social-media-2024.pdf
| r4indeer wrote:
| FYI, assuming that is your web server, your TLS certificate
| expired end of last month.
| linuxandrew wrote:
| Ty, I'll fix it very soon :) Something's up with Certbot and
| it's probably a trivial fix.
| VagabundoP wrote:
| Yeah I'm not against it. Please EU follow suit.
|
| What really needs to happen is tough regulators digging through
| the algorithms. Why are boys on YouTube getting served so much
| manosphere crap? Etc.
|
| We have enough studies about what these algorithms are trying to
| do to people to keep them engaged. It's not healthy for society.
| johnny22 wrote:
| Honestly that does not seem enough. Honestly I'm worried about
| the entire age range of human beings in this regard, not just
| children.
| akomtu wrote:
| The algorithm is pretty simple: show random videos, select
| categories that invoke the most reaction, show more random
| videos from those categories and so on. That's why the
| algorithm often converges to a local maximum and keeps showing
| disturbing shit on one topic.
| logicchains wrote:
| The main reason for this ban, like the attempted TikTok ban in
| the US, is the overwhelmingly anti-zionist views of the younger
| generation due to repeated social media exposure to the genocide
| in Gaza. Fundamentally social media facilitates the faster and
| broader spread of information than ever before in human history,
| which is a threat to the gatekeepers who for decades have tightly
| controlled what information the people of Australia have access
| to.
| nutanc wrote:
| This is awesome. I have been telling that social media is like
| smoking. When cigarettes came, even doctors were advertising the
| benefits of cigarettes. Now we know the harmful effects. Same is
| the case with social media. We just dont know they harmful
| effects completely yet.
|
| Ban this. I am addicted and can't stop. Or put a warning on
| social media apps like they do on cigarette packets. Using this
| app maybe harmful for your mental health.
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| This is an attack on freedom.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| I don't know what to tell you... Minors are supposed to lack
| freedom compared to adults in a society.
| johnny22 wrote:
| no, it's OUR freedoms that are being messed with, not just
| the kids.
| immibis wrote:
| How do you think social media is going to verify that
| you're not a minor?
| hello_moto wrote:
| Let kids have guns, can drink booze, and smoke too while
| we're at it?
| bowsamic wrote:
| Yes and rightly so
| dkdbejwi383 wrote:
| I mean you could make an argument that outlawing murder is
| also an attack on freedom. That doesn't mean it isn't a silly
| argument however.
| lm28469 wrote:
| To be fair every single law in the world is an attack on
| freedom if you're a 5 IQ freedom absolutist.
|
| You can't drive a car without headlights, you can't drive a
| car without seatbelts, you can't kill your neighbours if he
| fucks your wife, you can't open a shop selling BBQ dog
| ribs... life is so unfair =(
| amelius wrote:
| No we need to kill the advertisement based monetization model,
| so there is no incentive to produce addictive content.
| Jyaif wrote:
| If mastodon was used by teens, it would have all the same
| problems.
|
| Advertisment is not the problem here.
| amelius wrote:
| Right now this is perhaps true, because mastodon has to
| compete with commercial social media.
| kalaksi wrote:
| Mastodon doesn't have the incentive to try to spy on
| everybody and try to get everybody hooked by any means
| necessary.
| pxoe wrote:
| is that why they're trying to implement better
| suggestions and discovery algorithms
| (https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2024/10/mastodon-4.3/)
| just to get people to stick on their website even a
| little bit cause otherwise it's just kinda dead
| protocolture wrote:
| Masto has no social graph. Its just like IRC and PHP forums
| that many of us here used as teens.
| childintime wrote:
| We all want this regardless. Yet we don't. We also want
| innovation, and that means we have to vote by avoiding the
| amount of shit coming down the pipe. So for starters I use an
| ad-blocker. But platforms will still strangle free speech
| because of their business model acting out.
|
| I think for starters we should have competition, therefore
| mandate federation between platforms. No big winner-takes-all
| tech monopolies. But the USA doesn't want to give up the
| profit, nor the power that comes with it, to own the world.
|
| Perhaps as an example, Google performs an auction in the
| milliseconds before serving up ads. So it's possible.
|
| In the end platforms will integrate an AI buddy that will
| come to know us even better, and that represents our ways. Of
| course we'll want that, but please, federate.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| Advertising is one of the less harmful monetization models
| out there, especially for kids. YouTubers soliciting
| donations, selling merchandise etc. are praying on young
| kids. If you take away advertising, these more direct methods
| will be used more heavily.
| amelius wrote:
| > Advertising is one of the less harmful monetization
| models out there, especially for kids.
|
| No, because it incentivizes the addictive content.
|
| > YouTubers soliciting donations, selling merchandise etc.
| are preying on young kids.
|
| That's a different issue, and already happening. It should
| be banned too.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| > That's a different issue, and already happening. It
| should be banned too.
|
| There's basically no way to ban this (and advertising)
| without banning social media.
| johnisgood wrote:
| You can put a warning everywhere, because everything or
| anything may be harmful to your mental health. _sighs_
|
| "This is why we can't have nice things".
| nutanc wrote:
| You are right. The wording was wrong. It should have been,
| "The usage of this app will be harmful for your mental
| health".
| johnisgood wrote:
| I do not disagree with that.
| maxehmookau wrote:
| Hard agree. It's our generation's smoking. Zuckerberg's recent
| PR glow-up is just this generation's Marlboro man. An
| acceptable face on something much more sinister.
| tnuc wrote:
| While I dislike social media, this ban is as stupid as
| Australia's laws enforcing bicycle helmets. Will this mean I will
| have to register as my real name on Hacker News? Not a chance
| LeafItAlone wrote:
| Don't many US states have laws requiring bicycle helmets for
| minors?
|
| https://www.iihs.org/topics/pedestrians-and-bicyclists/bicyc...
| jamil7 wrote:
| In Australia this is not just for minors, you can be fined as
| an adult for cycling without a helmet which is even more
| absurd when you look at the lack of cycling infrastructure in
| Australian cities and the general cultural distain towards
| cyclists.
| the5avage wrote:
| You dont even have sidewalks to go by foot. You are in
| general cultural distain towards anything that is not a big
| 4WD car.
| threeseed wrote:
| If you are seriously injured and/or disabled then your
| fellow taxpayers will be paying for your health care either
| through Medicare or the NDIS.
|
| In a society it's not fair for your selfish actions to have
| a negative effect on everyone else.
| jamil7 wrote:
| An active society reduces the burden on public health
| care, take a look at the obesity rates in Australia,
| especially childhood obesity, shouldn't we also regulate
| lifestyle choices that contribute to this? How about the
| explosion of massive 4WDs in Australia? Are you not also
| subsidising the health care burden those? If you want to
| keep cyclists safe then build more bike lanes.
| johnisgood wrote:
| It is an excellent defense, because similar logic is
| often resisted when it comes to regulating lifestyle and
| food consumption - even though complications from obesity
| impose a much greater, and growing, financial burden on
| public healthcare systems.
| plantain wrote:
| Why single out cycling for this special purview?
|
| Are you planning to ban all snowsports? Horse riding?
| They produce similar or higher levels of injury and
| disability even with helmets.
|
| >it's not fair for your selfish actions to have a
| negative effect on everyone else.
|
| If negative externalities are the metric we're evaluating
| what is and isn't allowed in our society, you're really
| going to take a pass at cyclist helmets instead of
| _cars_? Do you know what the leading cause of child death
| in Australia is? It 's _cars_
| hooverd wrote:
| Show me your car helmet advocacy. Now.
| phist_mcgee wrote:
| Enforcing bicycle helmets is a good idea. It's about protecting
| your health and reducing the burden on the public health
| system.
|
| I've fallen off a bike before and my helmet definitely saved me
| from a serious head injury. Would I have worn one if it was not
| compulsory and drilled into me as a child that's what you do
| when you ride one? Maybe not.
|
| It saved me that day and I expect it saves many people in this
| country every day too.
| inopinatus wrote:
| > Would I have worn one if it was not compulsory and drilled
| into me as a child that's what you do when you ride one?
|
| Yes. Because this is a false dichotomy. The latter does not
| depend upon the former. I can say that with certainty because
| I received the message growing up in a country with a cycling
| proficiency programme in schools instead of mandatory helmet
| laws.
|
| Everyone should wear a helmet when riding, but _criminalising
| noncompliance_ is an inefficient, reductive, expensive,
| heavy-handed, unnecessarily punitive, and ultimately counter-
| productive approach to achieving it.
| johnisgood wrote:
| > It's about protecting your health and reducing the burden
| on the public health system.
|
| So is controlling what and how much people can eat to prevent
| or reduce obesity.
|
| From now on, you are only allowed to eat broccoli (I actually
| love broccoli) to ensure you will not be a burden on the
| public health system.
| sandbach wrote:
| As sibling comments seem to have missed the point: laws
| mandating helmets reduce the general rates of cycling, as
| people without helmets don't cycle at all. Cycling is so good
| for your health that the risks associated with not cycling are
| actually greater than those that go along with cycling without
| a helmet.
| alkonaut wrote:
| How is a bicycle helmet a bad idea? Many countries have that
| for minors. And obviously most(?) western countries have
| seatbelt laws and motorcycle helmet laws. It's also a natural
| effect of having publicly funded healthcare I guess.
|
| > Will this mean I will have to register as my real name on
| Hacker News?
|
| First of all, age verification shouldn't mean the social media
| provider gets true identities. They shouldn't be trusted with
| that info. There needs to be services that allows verifying
| your age against one service, and the media service just
| getting the receipt of that verification. Whether such a
| service exists already or not shouldn't matter. The law should
| be written so that social media companies are restricted in
| what they can do when they can be sure someone isn't a minor,
| and when they are sure. For extra safety, perhaps it should say
| they _can 't_ be allowed to see for example physical ID:s.
| Because otherwise you'd risk privacy issues.
|
| Second, I think it's better to formulate these laws the way the
| new york draft did: that specific _features_ are restricted for
| minors. Such as: enless media feeds based on past behavior
| (such as any video "shorts" feeds in all the major platforms
| today).
| lm28469 wrote:
| > this ban is as stupid as Australia's laws enforcing bicycle
| helmets.
|
| You're damn right, same as the law enforcing seatbelts, cars
| head and brake lights, ABS, testing of tap water quality,
| testing of food quality, &c.
|
| I want absolute freedom to get utterly fucked by the first mega
| corp or dumbass who want to do it !!!
| jaimex2 wrote:
| And this is why we try our best to have minority governments.
|
| The bills being put forward lately are really concerning and I
| have no idea how to get a party in that would kill the eSafety
| Commissioner and put in strong freedom of speech laws.
|
| I'm pretty content seeing the web destroy their website blocking
| measures. Thank you DoH and ECH!
| gloosx wrote:
| Such a shame of a news, sad to see the level of Australian govt
| when they are trying to ban for "safety" in the year 2024. Good
| thing one smart Digital Industry Group representative already
| told them they are not thinking straight. Of course giving young
| people something better and more exciting thing to do is not in
| their plans.
|
| In their dreams is to BAN, take ID VERIFICATIONS and FINE private
| companies for the rest of their days, any Australian should be
| ashamed of such dull and unsophisticated policies, and BRAVO to
| Sunita Bose.
| jaimex2 wrote:
| It's so sad seeing how many people think its on the government to
| raise kids.
| r3d wrote:
| It's crazy that human beings with the new fandangled ability to
| communicate in ever easier ways have created this problem. This
| is your enemy. Social media, government rules are not the enemy.
| Nor the saviour you think it might be.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| As usual, the problem with this is that it assumes a way to
| perfectly identify somebody on the internet, which in turns mean
| a way to perfectly identify, in real time, somebody carrying
| permanently a tracking device with GPS, microphone and camera.
|
| It's crazy that all the things we considered the worst of
| dystopia in the 80's, thinking nobody would be stupid enough to
| do, and that those societies in SF books were only distant
| fictions, are things we are actively seeking now.
|
| Things like "Find my" and "air tags" are already beloved my
| millions, people use it to track loved ones and they swear by it.
| Even very intelligent, educated people.
|
| There is such a cognitive dissonance between people swearing the
| last election meant a likely dictatorship and the same people
| setting up a tech rope around their necks in case a dictatorship
| does happen.
|
| My now-dead Jewish grandfather met my grandmother during the
| French occupation because she was making fake papers. He would be
| horrified if he knew what we are doing right now with our data.
|
| My German ex was born in East Germany, 11 years before the fall
| of the Berlin Wall. She thinks people are mad to believe that
| tracking is not going to be abused.
|
| What the hell is going on?
| hackernoops wrote:
| "What the hell is going on?"
|
| "...way to perfectly identify somebody on the internet..."
| rgbswan wrote:
| not enough good/grand/noble characters in software engineering,
| management, leadership and so on.
|
| nature-nurture x game-theory anxiety/thrill VS. consciousness &
| planetary/colony-wide awareness; and I'm not talking about some
| esoteric spirituality or whatever the fuck.
|
| we are always in a natural balance, established by those who do
| and those who don't. all of us compartmentalise. and
| good/noble/grand people in law are rare and entirely absent in
| politics.
|
| TV & the radio made a lot of destructive behaviours look cool
| (all that finboy shit) and so did feel-good literature like
| Siddharta.
|
| and then there's the myth of "hard decisions" that can only be
| made by certain kinds of characters.
|
| young ppl are easy to bend towards hierarchies that reward
| certain kinds of behaviour and convictions. makes em feel
| proud.
|
| and in the end we are all just doin our job ^^
| extrememacaroni wrote:
| God was a dream of good government.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| They surf on smartphones anyway, so it's enough to identify the
| device itself. Luckily the devices are already authenticated
| and identified, for your safety.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| SocMed / AdTech cos. can already ID and target users with
| precision. Knowing someone's pregnant before their family does,
| per the canonical example from 2012.[1]
|
| Impose an insanely steep tax (say, 10,000%) on all ads revenue
| tied to underage individuals.
|
| Now it's possible to pursue the Al Capone prosecution: tax
| fraud.
|
| SocMed cos. will avoid anyone underage like the plauge.
|
| ________________________________
|
| Notes:
|
| 1. "How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her
| Father Did"
| <https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-
| targ...>, discussed on HN at the time:
| <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3601354> (17 Feb 2012).
| ben_w wrote:
| Given my experience with ads today is that they frequently
| get my gender, language, nationality, and country of
| residence wrong (and in mutually incompatible ways), I
| suspect that the famous pregnancy story was dumb luck rather
| than a reflection of quality.
|
| But yes, the Al Capone solution seems like it would work.
| xuki wrote:
| They don't have to be right all the time, just enough to
| make ROI positive.
| mulmen wrote:
| I realize this is the prevailing wisdom but it is short
| sighted and simplistic because it ignores opportunity
| cost.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| More on mechanism (and why _specific_ mechanisms should not
| be _legislated_ ) here:
|
| <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42075146>
| graemep wrote:
| > SocMed / AdTech cos. can already ID and target users with
| precision.
|
| Not reliably so, and not people who are deliberately trying
| to fake the system.
|
| Looking at the ads FB are showing me, they are not well
| targetted at all. I can see an add about AI in education that
| seems to be aimed at teachers (not a teacher), one from a
| charity aimed at people with spare rooms that could be used
| to accommodate human trafficking survivors (I do not have a
| spare room), a summer school for kids who might do a history
| related subject at university (that one is well targetted),
| one advertising admin jobs at British intelligence agencies
| (I only just meet security requirements and I do not have
| relevant experience). I get shown multiple ads aimed at
| Muslims (I am not a Muslim). In the past I have been shown
| ads for Judaism GCSE courses (not Jewish either, and my kids
| did not do any religion GCSEs).
| richrichardsson wrote:
| As a counter to this: advertisers not knowing how to use
| the targeting options available to them != the platform
| can't target well.
|
| Saying that though, it does seem like as soon as I click
| one advert (either out of curiosity, or to waste obvious
| scam advertisers budget), I'm suddenly inundated with
| similar adverts.
|
| Worse I've clicked an ad, bought a product and _still_ seen
| adverts for the same product from the vendor after the
| fact. I 'm pretty sure there are ways for vendors to
| preclude such wasteful ad spend.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _As a counter to this: advertisers not knowing how to
| use the targeting options available to them != the
| platform can 't target well._
|
| Also, it's not like the platform is going to give
| advertisers access to its full capabilities. For one,
| they don't need to - they only need to sell the minimum
| it takes to keep the advertisers on board. Two, they
| wouldn't want some clever advertisers to extract juicy
| data indirectly and cut out the middleman.
| high_na_euv wrote:
| Wut?
|
| Better capabilities for customers, they reach more
| customers, more revenue = they may increase ad spending
| because they see it working
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Yes, but you want to minimize the "better" part so you
| get the extra revenue without losing your competitive
| advantage.
| exe34 wrote:
| it's also helpful to extract all the value at the current
| cost before incurring more costs.
| mavhc wrote:
| https://medium.com/@colin.fraser/target-didnt-figure-out-
| a-t...
| cen4 wrote:
| Rather than tax, I would just like to see data on how many
| Ads kids are being shown in a day. And whether its increasing
| year on year.
| alistairSH wrote:
| And yet Netflix, Amazon, etc recommend movies and shows I've
| watched in the last 6 months. They literally know who I am
| and what I've watched and can't/won't build a basic
| recommendation engine that includes "don't recommend things
| watched in the last X months".
|
| Maybe there's a reason they want me to rewatch things, but I
| find it extremely annoying to have the first rows of
| recommendations be things I watched recently.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| That is all but certainly more a sign of enshittification
| than of technical inability to implement that function.
| Marsymars wrote:
| This might make sense given the priors. e.g. someone who's
| hasn't watched Star Wars in the past 6 months might be less
| likely to watch and enjoy Star Wars than someone who's
| already watched Star Wars in the past 6 months.
| emsign wrote:
| Isn't a smartphone exactly designed to track and surveil
| individuals on the internet. I only see legal limitations here,
| and the costs.
| amelius wrote:
| Yeah but the ones controlling the tech are the ones who win
| if teenagers can access the social media.
| taylorius wrote:
| They figured out that if they get a load of hot girls, and cool
| goofy guys to entice people, and don't mention the spying part
| - it works a lot better than a bunch of government goons in
| badly fitting suits telling you to betray your friends and
| neighbours, or else.
| tiew9Vii wrote:
| > As usual, the problem with this is that it assumes a way to
| perfectly identify somebody on the internet, which in turns
| mean a way to perfectly identify, in real time, somebody
| carrying permanently a tracking device with GPS, microphone and
| camera.
|
| It's Australia, who often rank very low for a western country
| on human rights.
|
| https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/asia-and-the-pacific/sou...
|
| Secret trials https://www.hrlc.org.au/news/2023/4/19/secret-
| trials-have-no...
|
| Secret laws https://www.theguardian.com/law/2023/mar/28/more-
| than-800-se...
|
| Secret ministries https://www.theguardian.com/australia-
| news/2022/aug/19/scott...
|
| Secret backdoors
| https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/12/new_australia...
|
| Introducing Digital ID system that may be enabler for this
| https://www.oaic.gov.au/digital-id
|
| While trying to introduce laws to weaken encryption an ex
| Australia prime minister famously said:
|
| > "The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only
| law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia" Malcolm
| Turnbull.
|
| What's crazy the west look at places such as China as dystopian
| with the great firewall etc, it appears China was just ahead of
| the game.
|
| Australia is probably the easiest place to introduce a system
| to block social media, a experimentation ground for five eyes.
| Easy to push things through, protesting isn't an Australian
| pass time, not that big of a country, not that small of a
| country.
| boffinAudio wrote:
| Australia has been a petri dish for the testing of
| totalitarian-authoritarian policies and populist dogma since
| its inception as a nation.
|
| Never forget that the Western worlds first, most successful
| racist genocide occurred in Australia, and the same racist
| reasoning that allowed it to maintain White Australia
| policies into the 80's are still being used to justify the
| slaughter of innocent human beings all over the world.
|
| When the USA wants something dirty done, in yet another
| illegal war, Australia is ready with hat in hand, willful and
| subservient, to commit yet more crimes against humanity and
| get away with it.
|
| Australia is where the apparatus designed, with intent, to
| massively violate the human rights of over a billion human
| beings currently operates, at insane scales, every second of
| the day. Australians are fine with it.
|
| (Disclaimer: White Stolen Generation Australian.)
| immibis wrote:
| Isn't it Israel where they test the technology (on
| Palestinians)?
| boffinAudio wrote:
| 5-eyes and then 9-eyes and then 12-eyes say "whaaaa?"
|
| I think the kinetic testing is done all over the middle
| east. The mind-control stuff is pretty successfully
| deployed down under, though.
| worthless-trash wrote:
| There is no sane discussion to be had around the "stolen
| generation" (I don't believe it was white, they were black)
| due to the mass misinformation that exists, the situation
| is muddy and complex where the facts simply don't meet
| reality.
| boffinAudio wrote:
| >mass misinformation
|
| The White Stolen Generation is a real thing. If you don't
| know about it, you're not qualified to dismiss it:
|
| https://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/politi
| cs/...
|
| (EDIT: please look at the URL, which includes the anchor
| directly to the section on the "White Stolen Generation"
| - for some reason when following the URL through HN, the
| jump to the anchor for that section is not followed,
| giving the impression that there is no "White Stolen
| Generation" section on the given website, when .. indeed
| .. there is.)
|
| Those who don't want to confront this painful aspect of
| Australia's terrible history tend to want to muddy the
| waters, but those of us who actually suffered under the
| forced human trafficking regime that was official
| Australian government policy see things a lot more
| clearly...
| worthless-trash wrote:
| Really, the white one ? You are saying white children
| were stolen, just so we're clear on that. Sounds like
| you're not qualified to talk on it.
| mrbombastic wrote:
| Given that they linked to an article about Aboriginal
| children being abducted I think it is safe to assume this
| was an unfortunate typo
| boffinAudio wrote:
| >an unfortunate typo
|
| No, it was not an unfortunate typo. You have merely not
| bothered to take anything more than a superficial glance
| at the details.
|
| Please, before you rush to be right about something you
| know nothing about, try a simple google search, at least
| - _especially for such a subject where some of us were
| victimized by our own governments_.
|
| The link given goes directly to the section on the White
| Stolen Generation:
|
| https://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/politi
| cs/...
|
| (Look at the URL...)
|
| _The "white stolen generations"
|
| Did you know that in Australia there is another stolen
| generation, one which shares the pain and consequences?
| It's called the "white stolen generation" to distinguish
| it from the Aboriginal stolen generation.
|
| In the five decades up to 1982, the newborn babies of
| young, single women were forcibly removed from them for
| adoption, a practice sometimes called 'baby farming'.
| Mothers were drugged, tethered to beds, not allowed to
| see their babies, told they were dead. [54] Many of these
| adoptions occurred after the mothers were sent away by
| their families due to the stigma associated with being
| pregnant and unmarried.
|
| More than 250,000 white mothers lost their babies to
| forcible removal at birth by these past illegal adoption
| practices. Groups such as Adoption Loss Adult Support and
| Apology Alliance offer help and support.
|
| Between 2010 and 2012 apologies were offered by Western
| Australia, South Australia, ACT, New South Wales,
| Victoria and Tasmania. Prime Minister Julia Gillard
| offered a national apology to those affected by forced
| adoptions in 2013.
|
| Source: A guide to Australia's Stolen Generations -
| Creative Spirits, retrieved from https://www.creativespir
| its.info/aboriginalculture/politics/..._
|
| Then there is this:
|
| https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/white-mothers-of-
| sto...
|
| .. and of course you could read what Wikipedia has to say
| about it:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_adoption_in_Australi
| a
|
| In fact, an "apology" was given by the Australian
| government, but as we can see, it was not enough.
|
| General public awareness of the subject, as you have
| demonstrated, is terrible. And, yet again, Australia gets
| away with it as a result.
| worthless-trash wrote:
| Yep, that ones on me, I had too many tabs open and didnt
| investigate fully on what I was reading.
| mrbombastic wrote:
| Apologies, when I open the link it takes me to the top of
| the page on mobile which says "A guide to Australia's
| Stolen Generations Read why Aboriginal children were
| stolen from their families, where they were taken and
| what happened to them."
|
| I don't have a dog in this fight and know very little
| about this piece of history, so I am bowing out. I did
| think it was legitimately a typo
| boffinAudio wrote:
| Your superficial dismissal of this situation is highly
| offensive. Please inform yourself.
|
| Yes, white children were stolen and officially trafficked
| by their governments, as official policy. From around the
| Commonwealth, in fact.
|
| And some of us are still suffering.
|
| >Sounds like you're not qualified to talk on it.
|
| What part of "(Disclaimer: White Stolen Generation
| Australian.)" didn't you understand?
| aa-jv wrote:
| >(Disclaimer: White Stolen Generation Australian.)
|
| For those who are reading this thread in disbelief at the
| magnitude of Australia's dark history, this is a compelling
| read:
|
| https://research-
| repository.griffith.edu.au/items/02ba5454-5...
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Not that I agreed with the person for doing it, but people
| got arrested for protesting lockdowns on social media over
| Facebook. I remember seeing a video of a self-proclaimed
| pregnant woman being handcuffed. I cant imagine why nobody
| protests in Australia, assuming this is the normal government
| response.
| CJefferson wrote:
| The government, and big tech companies, don't need air tags or
| "find me" to track almost everyone, they have a mobile phone
| constantly chatting with local towers.
|
| I don't understand what is dystopian about knowing where I left
| my keys, and seeing how my wife's commute home is doing without
| phoning her while she is driving, assuming we always both have
| mobile phones.
| afro88 wrote:
| The dystopian bit is the corporation having this data, not
| you. And having this data for all users. Pretty much everyone
| has a mobile phone.
| ilkke wrote:
| Isn't this the point they were trying to make? The
| corporations already have that data, it comes with the
| platform. The bit where you can use some of it for own
| purposes is not really the offending part.
| afro88 wrote:
| It's offending because it's complicit with the dystopian
| mass surveillance. Encouraging of it even. "I can find my
| keys when I lose them, so it's fine that a single
| corporation knows where billions of people are and what
| they are doing"
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| No, I think you having the data is also creepy. I wouldn't
| want my wife to follow all my steps, and neither would she.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Our family (my daughters, wife) has had Find My paired on
| our phones since, well 2010 when it was introduced. We
| like it.
|
| I remember watching my sister and her husband calling
| each other frequently with, "How far are you away from
| home?" and just kind of scratched my head. (I think I
| have sinced talked them into enabling Find My.)
|
| When my wife or I want to call a daughter we can see
| immediately if they are at work or at home... things like
| that are nice. There's also an indescribable sweetness to
| just looking longingly in on a daughter who is far away
| and wondering how her day is going. Empty nest blues? (Or
| maybe Miner at the Dial-A-View.)
| dagw wrote:
| _and just kind of scratched my head_
|
| Can you at least conceive that some people might find it
| deeply creepy that someone can follow their every step,
| and equally creepy to be able to 'spy' on another person
| 24/7?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I can imagine it. (And in this case I think my sister and
| her husband simply hadn't yet adapted to the new
| technology they had at their disposal.)
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Sure but those of us who have this sort of tracking for
| our loved ones enabled arent looking at that 24/7, and if
| you are referring to the corporations, well they already
| were. At least now they have made it useful to everyday
| people.
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| I find the corporations doing it less creepy than my
| loved ones. To be clear, I think both are bad, but for
| different reasons.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| If you don't trust someone with your location, you don't
| have to give it to them. Personally I find the
| corporations angle more creepy. You cannot personally vet
| the people they hire, but you know who you give access to
| your address to. Outside of family, only one friend ever
| drops me his location information temporarily because he
| drives his truck and he uses it to give me a heads up
| when he's near him in town, in case we can hang out. I
| mostly ignore it though unless he tells me how close he
| is.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| _" The dystopian bit is the corporation having this data."_
|
| I find data collection and tracking disconcerting not
| because I'm doing anything nefarious, unlawful or something
| I'm ashamed of--my life is pretty boring and uninteresting
| --but because it has the effect of reducing one's autonomy.
| If one knows one's data is monitored and one is being
| tracked then one acts differently. For some, they'll make
| minor changes in behavior, for others a lot. Even for those
| who've no idea about others tracking or collecting data
| about them there's the broader issue of how society ought
| to be conducted. That's a very big issue I can't address
| here.
|
| Of course, the authoritarians amongst us would argue that
| monitoring is good thing as people won't be tempted to
| misbehave, commit crimes and such. I'd answer that by
| saying those who've nefarious intent will find ways of
| circumventing the surveillance so the net effect on society
| is negative as the 'innocent' are the onrs who are targeted
| without a good or just reason.
|
| Right, pretty much everyone has a mobile phone. What has
| truly surprised me is how many people are prepared to trade
| data and being surveiled for convenience. I often wonder if
| they make such conscious decisions knowing the full
| implications of that surveillance. I suspect most do not.
|
| Having a mobile phone it's inevitable I will be tracked by
| multiple entities from government to Google. My response is
| governed by how much I am prepared to trade privacy and
| autonomy for convenience and I reckon that's a large
| amount. Not having Google account and killing and or
| removing all Google services goes some considerable way but
| I'm under no illusion that Big Tech is still tracking me.
| That said, the info colllected wouldn't hold much value.
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| Watching your wife's commute also makes me uneasy. Maybe she
| wants to get you a surprise birthday present or something.
| Anyway, I wouldn't want to track someone like that (including
| children) or be tracked like that.
|
| EDIT: toned down the term I used.
| seunosewa wrote:
| It's for safety.
| johnisgood wrote:
| Of our women and children!
|
| Way to rationalize stalking away.
|
| They do the same in Chris Hansen's show. They are there
| only to check upon the safety of the minor.
| EraYaN wrote:
| I mean Apple even added a native feature to iMessage with
| full on tracking, exactly because of safety. Sure someone
| needs to send it manually but the whole point of Check-in
| (tracking someones progress home) is safety. Just too
| many shady blokes out on the street at night.
| verisimi wrote:
| As you immerse yourself in technology, you hand over privacy,
| signals to act, and the framing of reality to an adversarial
| third party. It is an adversarial relationship as
| corporations and governments are not interested in your well
| being (if they appear to this is merely the 'candy' to draw
| you in) - they are interested in divesting you from your
| resources (time, money). If they are able to intermediate
| reality for us, the very means to experience a
| natural/unmanipulated mode of existence will be no longer be
| available.
| xeonmc wrote:
| Relevant SMBC: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2014-05-27
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| "He already has pneumonia, adding lung cancer doesn't matter"
| the5avage wrote:
| > worst of dystopia in the 80's
|
| Huxley's "Brave New World" was published 1932
| simion314 wrote:
| And there is a super obvious solution to this,assuming children
| can't buy phones then the parents should setup the account for
| the children and enter the birthdate. Now the OS the browser
| int eh phones know if the user is an adult in that country, or
| whatever age level needed.
|
| If say an adult is incapable to setup a phone/tablet, then a
| person at the store would help them set the initial part but
| skip the login with Google/Apple etc.
|
| No idea why this was not tried and then see if it fails.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Just because there is no solution to a rat infestation
| doesn't mean you should burn the house with the people in it.
| simion314 wrote:
| >Just because there is no solution to a rat infestation
| doesn't mean you should burn the house with the people in
| it. reply
|
| What? you mean asking the parent to enter a date of birth
| before giftin the child a phone and setting it in child
| mode is like burning things?
|
| Did you really relied to me? Then explain
|
| Seems to me a better idea then government IDs or sending
| your ID to Facebook.
|
| I could guess why Google did nlot add this feature to
| Android , they want the money from ads, and maybe Apple
| wants Google to bhave money to share with them.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _What? you mean asking the parent to enter a date of
| birth before giftin the child a phone and setting it in
| child mode is like burning things?_
|
| How do you want to enforce it? Everyone who grew up as
| Internet started knows that everyone is over 18 on the
| Internet. Or did you, as a kid, ever put your real birth
| date on a form asking for it for purposes of age-walling
| you?
|
| And if not voluntary, then... it's either companies
| asking for government-issued IDs on a case-by-case basis,
| or a larger system, perhaps legally mandated, that forces
| you to tie your government-issued ID into it so age
| information is automatically propagated in the
| background.
| simion314 wrote:
| >How do you want to enforce it? Everyone who grew up as
| Internet started knows that everyone is over 18 on the
| Internet. Or did you, as a kid, ever put your real birth
| date on a form asking for it for purposes of age-walling
| you?
|
| Easy
|
| 1 make it illegal for children to buy smarthpones,
| tablets.
|
| 2 make the OS vendors to add a parent mode/child control
| API, when the phone starts first time the parent enters
| the details
|
| 3 inform the buyer that if he is a parent he is
| responsible for the child not the government, the parent
| must set the correct birthdate on the device and set the
| device in child mode , they can decide to trust the child
| but then the government is not responsible.
|
| 4 the browssers on this locked devices will report to the
| websites if the user is adult or not, they will not
| report he brithdate just a true /false
|
| 5 if a website fails to read the age from the browser and
| still offers oillegal content to a browser that is marked
| as minor then the website is repossible and it is fined.
|
| At no point the child is asked to enter his age so there
| is not similar to current place where you click I am over
| 18.
|
| If you have children you might have made an account for
| them to use a smartphone, Did you lied bout their
| birthdate ? Did you gave them the new phone in a box and
| let them set it up because you were to busy ?
| lm28469 wrote:
| > It's crazy that all the things we considered the worst of
| dystopia in the 80's, thinking nobody would be stupid enough to
| do, and that those societies in SF books were only distant
| fictions, are things we are actively seeking now
|
| 8 years old doom scrolling tiktok is a dystopia we are
| experiencing right now, pick your flavor
| tacocataco wrote:
| I pick social media being regulated into becoming healthy for
| everyone so it doesn't have to be banned for teenagers.
| dmwilcox wrote:
| It seems like we don't need a technical solution for this and
| making one would be dystopian as you point out.
|
| Why not just (a) make it illegal so the parents and tech
| companies see it that way and (b) put some fines on the
| responsible adult parties if violations are found?
|
| Sure enforcement would be spotty and loose, but tickets for
| parents and fines for tech companies would go a long way to
| establish the cultural change without the need for
| "verification"
| djtango wrote:
| Yeah - exactly.
|
| If companies are motivated and parents are motivated to
| prevent it and schools have the cover to also police it, then
| social media usage probably won't hit critical mass for kids
| and they won't feel FOMO to get it.
|
| "it's illegal" is usually a decent enough hard stop to most
| kids for "why can't I have it"
|
| Should just age-restrict smartphones altogether imo lol.
| Entire generations survived without mobile phones and it
| would remove entire issues around addictive mobile games,
| social media abuse, attention/focus issues
| johnisgood wrote:
| I would not know English nor how to code were it for age-
| restricted access to computers.
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| what prison time should a 15 year old get if they sign up to
| Instagram claiming to be 16?
| itishappy wrote:
| How about a small fine and a short ban? Similar to driving
| underage.
| EraYaN wrote:
| If you put the parent in jail for 6 months and fine the
| company 1 million per user account, they for sure will
| start thinking real hard about fixing the problem.
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| Similar prison time to the one that a 17 year-old faces for
| buying alcohol by claiming to be 18.
| clown_strike wrote:
| 1 year of community service.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| > Sure enforcement would be spotty and loose, but tickets for
| parents and fines for tech companies would go a long way to
| establish the cultural change without the need for
| "verification"
|
| A company can't work like that - the tech company will need
| to do it's upmost to avoid the fines, and so will implement
| verification that is both unsafe, incredibly invasive,
| discriminatory but crucially has an audit trail, and it's
| insane to suggest they would do anything else.
| cassepipe wrote:
| Have you read this book ? :
| https://www.fnac.com/a12617239/Sarah-Kaminsky-Adolfo-Kaminsk...
| Etheryte wrote:
| I agree with everything you said. Leaving the morale and
| ideology aside for a moment though and looking at the technical
| side, couldn't this, at least in theory, also be implemented in
| a way that's not so dystopian? Everyone has a SIM card, whether
| physical or digital, and also a cell plan. If you make carriers
| mark all underage customers and then have the SIM forward that
| boolean value to the phone and nothing more, could you in
| theory still implement something like this without any further
| breach of privacy? Of course, as with any system there's
| workarounds, but as a baseline this would work, no?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Maybe things have changed since I was a kid, and I'm not up
| to date as my kids are too young to operate cell phones, but
| - does anyone actually buys a plan for an underage person?
| I'd think it's usually an adult parent/caregiver who buys
| another SIM card under their own name and just gives it to
| the kid; the carrier shouldn't have a way of knowing which
| phone/SIM card belongs to an underage person.
| Etheryte wrote:
| Functionally yes, the plan is in the parent's name. But at
| least where I'm from, you already have plans that are
| geared at kids, e.g. they have limits on how big their bill
| can be so they don't blow it up, certain services are
| turned off for them such as pay-per-minute calls, and so
| forth. Perhaps to put a different way, the carriers might
| not have this info right now, but it would be
| straightforward to implement this limit this way. Any other
| approach that I can think of would be both more technical
| work and also a bigger breach of privacy.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> couldn 't this, at least in theory, also be implemented in
| a way that's not so dystopian?_
|
| It depends on the assumptions you're willing to make.
|
| Imagine if Australia introduces a block that works really
| well, and preserves privacy, but you can bypass it by using a
| VPN, or by rooting your phone.
|
| Would that be good enough, because only 1% of kids will
| figure out those bypasses? Or will the knowledge spread like
| wildfire until 90% of kids are using VPNs or rooting their
| phones?
|
| If you assume such bypasses would spread like wildfire,
| Australia would also need to block all VPNs or make every
| phone impossible to root. Tough to do _that_ in a way that
| isn 't dystopian.
| EraYaN wrote:
| That is why you always regulate the provider/seller (ie.
| the social media site) and not the consumption side. We
| already learned this in the war on drugs, prosecution of
| consumption has never really worked all that well.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| No, the tracking is irrelevant. The important point is to
| establish a shared cultural norm.
|
| In the US, children under 13 are usually forbidden from having
| online accounts. Do some kids lie? For sure, but the sites will
| try to ban those accounts.
|
| In practice, this legislation would be very positive because it
| would establish the expectation that young teens _are not on
| social media_. This only works if it's national legislation: No
| kid will feel left out because his/her friends are on
| SnapGramTok. They are all banned. They can be mad at the unfair
| government/adults together.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Is GitHub social media? How about stack overflow?
|
| What is social media exactly?
|
| This would need to be ban on specific blocklisted companies
| and services which might be a good thing because alternatives
| might arise that could try to do their best to not end up on
| the blocklist.
| rob74 wrote:
| Now that you mention it, the would-be dictator that was just
| elected in the US is allied with both the stereotypical hand-
| wringing think-about-the-children people (religious groups) as
| well as with Elon Musk, owner of a major social media platform
| and future "efficiency czar". Talk about cognitive
| dissonance...
| scotty79 wrote:
| A knife can be stuff of nightmares or a very useful tool (even
| with constant threat of abuse and accidental harm).
|
| Location tracking is just another knife.
| anilakar wrote:
| Exactly. You don't allow people to carry knives in public
| because it does more harm than good.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Some places don't. Some do. In Poland news about ban on
| knife carrying was April fool's joke. In UK it's a serious
| law with serious punishments. In UK people who'd carry a
| knife with malicious intent just moved to carrying caustic
| chemicals. It's often not specific tech that's a problem,
| but the culture and incentives for its misuse.
|
| Although reasonable restrictions on all technologies aren't
| inherently bad.
|
| Restrictions imposed pre-emptively just because nightmare
| scenarios are easy to imagine and captivating are not
| great.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > just another knife
|
| Not in the hand of a government that has a monopoly on
| violence. Most governments in the world dont have your best
| interests in mind and being tracked 24/7 is a bad deal to
| get.
| scotty79 wrote:
| People say "monopoly on violence" as if it's a bad thing.
| As if the opposite of that is no violence at all. But the
| opposite is commonality of violence which was the case
| before government became strong enough to enforce monopoly
| on violence and still is the case in places where the
| government is weak enough to lose the monopoly.
|
| Monopoly on violence is the most significant cultural
| development that allowed incredible wealth and societal
| development.
|
| Currently we are in the age of commonality of surveillance.
| If this turns out to be harmful enough we might as well
| move towards monopoly on surveillance and it might be an
| improvement.
|
| Personally I think it won't be necessary.
|
| I'm sure of one thing. Surveillance won't go away because
| it's a useful technological tool.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Yes, but:
|
| - You don't have full control over the knife. In fact it's
| not about your use of the knife.
|
| - The people in control of the knife have a poor track record
| at caring about you, and belong to a category that history
| has proven we should not trust.
|
| - Every time you use the knife, you sign a blank contract
| giving full authorization to future non-specified knife usage
| to people you don't know nor do you know their motive. And
| you trust none of those people, for an indefinite length of
| time, will abuse it.
|
| - Cumulative use of the knife can accumulate stabs that may
| be delt to you and all your love ones one day all at once.
|
| - Use of knife can be automated and scale at the level of all
| countries.
|
| - Most people are not knowledgeable about the knife, don't
| know much about it, and it's invisible to them.
| scotty79 wrote:
| > You don't have full control over the knife. In fact it's
| not about your use of the knife.
|
| There are many knives in your relative proximity all the
| time. Some of them are used for your benefit, other are
| used for other's benefit, every one have potential to be
| abused against you by evil actor.
|
| > The people in control of the knife have a poor track
| record at caring about you, and belong to a category that
| history has proven we should not trust.
|
| Scrutiny should be proportional severity of harm times the
| frequency of harm.
|
| > Every time you use the knife, you sign a blank contract
| giving full authorization to future non-specified knife
| usage to people you don't know nor do you know their
| motive. And you trust none of those people, for an
| indefinite length of time, will abuse it.
|
| Everytime you enter restaurant or even leave your house you
| are giving full authorization to people around you who
| posses knives to use those knives for non-specified
| purposes. You can only hope they are reasonable and won't
| cause you harm.
|
| > Cumulative use of the knife can accumulate stabs that may
| be delt to you and all your love ones one day all at once
|
| Knives don't need to accumulate anything. One
| misapplication can end your life literally
|
| > Use of knife can be automated and scale at the level of
| all countries.
|
| There are many machines that are basically bunch of fast
| moving knives. It's on you to not be where they are. Their
| operators are bound to take precautions proportional to
| harm times the frequency of harm.
|
| > Most people are not knowledgeable about the knife, don't
| know much about it, and it's invisible to them
|
| You usually can't really tell how many knives are around
| you and most are hidden at most times.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _It 's crazy that all the things we considered the worst of
| dystopia in the 80's, thinking nobody would be stupid enough to
| do, and that those societies in SF books were only distant
| fictions, are things we are actively seeking now._
|
| > _What the hell is going on?_
|
| Because they _weren 't all that dystopian_? Maybe people had
| the good sense of being able to see the amazing aspects of
| those future technologies _even when_ the authors tried to
| paint them darkly? Or maybe we rightly all realized - even if
| just at subconscious, emotional level - that those fictional
| dystopias are thin, simplistic narrative devices, and "no one
| would be stupid enough to" actually implement them?
|
| What we didn't predict was adtech. For all the anti-corporate
| fiction that was part of, or adjacent to, science fiction of
| that era, the western culture is still obsessed with self-made
| people, glorifying entrepreneurship, making money. Well, turns
| out there's hardly a difference between small businesses and
| large corporations. The incentives are the same regardless of
| size; sole proprietorships and multinationals aren't some sworn
| enemies, they're just _different size of the same thing_.
|
| What we didn't realize - and many still don't - is that, while
| no one may be stupid enough to implement the techno-dystopia
| outright, many will happily do _whatever it takes_ , no matter
| how unscrupulous and underhanded, to secure their income. We
| didn't realize that glorifying "business sharks" means creating
| an entrepreneurship culture where customers are resources to be
| exploited, not human beings. Iterate on it enough, and we get
| to techno-dystopia _indirectly_ , with no stupid steps made on
| the way - just plenty of exploitative ones.
|
| Perhaps the memory of the first 3/4 of the 20th century has us
| put too much focus on the governments, and blind to private
| interests. A particular pet peeve of mine, for example:
|
| > _My German ex was born in East Germany, 11 years before the
| fall of the Berlin Wall. She thinks people are mad to believe
| that tracking is not going to be abused._
|
| Yes, and at least some people who think alike also like to
| bring up Nazis pulling census records to make their purges more
| efficient. But frankly, I don't think this is a good argument
| against censuses, or contact tracing. It's not the census that
| put minorities in concentration camps, it's the Nazis. They
| wouldn't have stopped if that data didn't exist, they'd find
| some other proxy or just do it systematically, like they did
| elsewhere.
|
| A better argument is to perhaps not collect data you don't
| need. A census without religious affiliation would be less
| useful to Nazis and the like, and it's questionable how useful
| having this information was for the purposes it was collected.
| But my ultimate point is, when your government turns evil, _you
| 're screwed anyway_. We need to try and prevent it from going
| bad in the first place. It may indeed involve fighting against
| _badly justified surveillance overreach_ , but trying to take
| away tools that an okay-ish government uses for good, only
| because they'll be used for bad things when the government
| turns evil, is just self-destructive behavior.
|
| I mean, you could argue that teaching a person how to grow
| strength and keep a healthy body, how to read, write, plan,
| think, negotiate, convince, are all bad because _what if that
| person becomes a criminal or a dictator_? Yes, it would be much
| better if murderers and tyrants didn 't know how to use a knife
| or a gun, or how to talk people into helping them. But we
| consider that risk to be worth it because of all the good it
| brings to _everyone else_ , continuously.
|
| And yeah, we're all so focused on the idea of governments going
| full-Nazi again, that we've ignored the gradual overreach of
| private interests, which at this point not only actively screws
| with our everyday lives all the time (hello advertising
| industry), but also undermines our governments too. Even worse,
| all the "dual-use" tech and data private interests have, that
| okay-ish governments _would love to access_ but have good sense
| to refrain themselves, sits there gift-wrapped for any evil
| government willing to reach for it. We ended up choosing the
| worst option of all: all the downsides of tech being abused by
| private interests now and evil governments in the future, with
| none of the upsides of okay governments using it for good
| today.
|
| So perhaps we should concentrate less on things like AirTags
| being potentially deadly in hands of the next Stalin, and focus
| more on fighting private and public attempts at abusing them
| early, while maximizing the benefits society can get from such
| technologies.
|
| Or, in short, let's pay less attention to how some tech could
| be abused in principle, and more attention to _people_ who are
| trying to abuse others.
| amarcheschi wrote:
| In italy we have a digital ID (spid) that's actually managed by
| third parties authorized by government and you can use it to
| log in on some services, I think this way it would work
| willvarfar wrote:
| Sweden has had a "BankID" system since 2003. It's run by the
| bank branch organisation. It works really well. Almost
| everybody has it.
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| > As usual, the problem with this is that it assumes a way to
| perfectly identify somebody on the internet
|
| Nope, it does not require this.
|
| What you can do is to construct a zero-knowledge proof of the
| age of the smartphone user. You can do this based on the
| certificate that is provisioned in modern electronic passports.
| The proof construction can choose to ignore expiry date, so the
| government can offer to issue expired passports with blank
| photos for the instances of people who should not have
| functioning passports.
|
| Then you need the social media sites to agree on a common auth
| mechanism that uses the zero-knowledge proof, and if the same
| proof gets used on multiple devices, you log out the previously
| used device.
|
| So even if a parent lets their kid use the parent's passport to
| generate the proof on the kids phone, every time the kid uses
| this proof, the parent gets logged out of Facebook and all
| other social media apps.
|
| Then no parents are going to let the kids use their ID, because
| of the negative impact to themselves. And you have no more
| means of tracking than already exists today.
|
| This also offers interesting possibilities for a startup! In
| the EU today, there are essentially zero legal ways for a
| 12-year-old to have a group chat with their friends, apart from
| RCS and iMessage, which then divides the friend group into two
| halves. Imagine then a chat app aimed specifically at group
| conversations for teens, where every user has a verified age.
| This type of app is something parents will pay good money for.
| LegionMammal978 wrote:
| > Then you need the social media sites to agree on a common
| auth mechanism that uses the zero-knowledge proof, and if the
| same proof gets used on multiple devices, you log out the
| previously used device.
|
| > So even if a parent lets their kid use the parent's
| passport to generate the proof on the kids phone, every time
| the kid uses this proof, the parent gets logged out of
| Facebook and all other social media apps.
|
| Doesn't this automatically give the "common auth mechanism"
| perfect knowledge of all the parent's social media accounts,
| whether under a real name or a pseudonym? That sounds like an
| additional means of tracking.
|
| Also, what if the parent legitimately has multiple devices
| that they use for social media (e.g., a phone and a laptop)?
| You might say, "log them out if it's used _simultaneously_
| from multiple devices ", but then you're tracking all social-
| media usage everywhere in realtime.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| I hope European 12-year-olds are still wise enough to know
| the age-old tradition of claiming to be 22 when creating
| online accounts.
| whiplash451 wrote:
| > As usual, the problem with this is that it assumes a way to
| perfectly identify somebody on the internet
|
| It does not require this, and in fact the solution may be
| almost entirely outside of the technology realm.
|
| Simply making it illegal would be enough to:
|
| 1. Deter a lot of people from enabling social media on the
| smartphone of their kids
|
| 2. Enable a lot of parents to tell their kids that what they
| are doing is illegal
|
| 3. Force BigTech to implement whatever solution fits best to
| control the age of the user before install. The onus to respect
| the law is on them.
| xnorswap wrote:
| Exactly, if cigarettes were currently available at any age,
| and it was proposed to be limited to 18+, you'd get people in
| here decrying the law, saying it's completely unworkable to
| prevent absolutely every under age person ever from consuming
| tobacco, and therefore we shouldn't limit it at all.
|
| It's a very technical misunderstanding of how law works, or
| the effects law have on society. Legality isn't technicality.
| Something being physically possible doesn't "break" the law,
| and breaking a law doesn't render that law useless.
| sekai wrote:
| Apples to oranges.
|
| Piracy would be a good comparison to this law. We all know
| how that turned out.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Or CP.
|
| Also we have to consider that gov spying programs are
| developed everywhere in the world, and the fact CP has
| been used as an excuse to pass questionable bills again
| and again.
|
| What's even crazier is that we have to even argue this is
| a problem.
|
| And that intelligent people are arguing that this is all
| OK. People that read history books, saw PRISM and
| Snowden, heard about cops abusing their system already,
| etc.
| whiplash451 wrote:
| Piracy is also apples to oranges.
|
| There aren't big tech companies running piracy services.
|
| You could put them under the rule of law if they did.
| everforward wrote:
| > Something being physically possible doesn't "break" the
| law, and breaking a law doesn't render that law useless.
|
| No, but the ease of breaking the law does need to be
| weighed against the costs it imposes on everyone else.
| Carrying a driver's license is almost a non-cost, and is
| really only necessary til people hit 28 or so and cashiers
| largely stop checking.
|
| Needing to verify age online could place very real costs on
| people. Enabling surveillance is an issue. The chilling
| effect of knowing that database leaks are going to tie your
| real identity to your online one is an issue (think the
| Ashley Madison leaks, but for your old angsty teenager
| Reddit account). There are a lot of small groups who don't
| want their membership revealed, like LGBT people in
| countries with laws against it, domestic abuse victims,
| support groups for people with trauma, etc, etc.
|
| I don't think I've seen a system that doesn't involve those
| issues. I'm sure one is hypothetically possible, but that
| never seems to be a goal of these laws.
|
| So the question is whether restricting social media use by
| age is worth those drawbacks. My personal values say it's
| not, but I do recognize that's a value call to some degree
| and views will differ.
| xnorswap wrote:
| Those are very valid but separate concerns.
|
| You can make social media illegal for under 16s without
| requiring online age validation.
|
| After all, a form of this already exists with the US
| COPPA [1] law, and the presence of that law hasn't forced
| age validation on everyone.
|
| If the US can make it de-facto illegal for companies to
| let under 13s use social media, and has been the case for
| over 20 years, then it shouldn't be a sudden privacy-
| ending problem for Australia to make it illegal for under
| 16s to use social media.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Online_Pri
| vacy_Pr...
| ryandrake wrote:
| Kids get around COPPA all the time. Everyone in my kid's
| middle school knows that you have to simply lie about
| your age when you sign up for an Internet service,
| because most of them won't let you in if you are stupid
| enough to say you are under 13, and the services that let
| you in are nerfed to the point of uselessness.
|
| Furthermore, now I have to navigate the morality of
| _encouraging my own kid to lie_ , just so she can use an
| online service that I approve of as a parent. Terrible
| law.
| eastbound wrote:
| > whatever solution fits best to control the age of the user
| before install. The onus to respect the law is on them.
|
| If it becomes commonplace, the iPhone could vouch for you
| about your age, without disclosing your identity.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| > If it becomes commonplace, the iPhone could vouch for you
| about your age, without disclosing your identity.
|
| No, it really couldn't. If it can't disclose your identity,
| then there's no mechanism to revoke a compromised or cloned
| identifier, and no ability to demonstrate in court that you
| performed the necessary diligence correctly.
|
| Age verification systems must, inherently, either produce a
| secure proof of age with no genuine anonymity, or a
| chocolate teapot highly insecure proof of age that's no
| better than a "I am over 18" tickbox that isn't going to
| protect websites in court from these clumsy laws.
| LegionMammal978 wrote:
| Eh, companies would probably be permitted to keep using
| the systems since "it's the industry standard, there's
| nothing more we could've done", and it would just become
| another instance of regulatory capture.
|
| See, e.g., the GDPR, which as written has strong language
| against storing data, but as applied is riddled with
| 'reasonable' exceptions that have never been tested in
| court. It's like Schrodinger's regulation, it's both
| incredibly restrictive and trivial to comply with (unless
| you're Super Evil(tm)) at the same time, somehow.
| Cpoll wrote:
| > no better than a "I am over 18" tickbox
|
| Surely even a flag locked behind the "parental controls"
| section of an iPhone is much better than a tickbox.
| protocolture wrote:
| The government in question is literally working through a
| plan for a national online proof of age thingy in line with
| this.
|
| When it comes through, theres like 10 other interest groups
| who want to immediately use it for their thing.
| dsvnasd wrote:
| > Simply making it illegal
|
| The problem is, what is "it"? Are applications like WhatsApp
| and iMessage social media? They seem to be significant
| sources of teenage angst but they are also incredibly useful
| tools. What about Hacker News? Is it social media?
|
| How do you prove it?
| jancsika wrote:
| Sounds like you are advocating for a much different law: one
| that bans (or at least makes prohibitively expensive) the kind
| of data mining/tracking that social media companies currently
| rely on for their business models.
|
| Am I correct in this assumption?
| myflash13 wrote:
| Typical hacker misconception regarding the law. You don't need
| to implement perfect tracking to enforce a law. Make it illegal
| and then let BigTech use their AI algorithms to detect and
| block minor accounts. Parents will also play a major part.
| tacocataco wrote:
| My personal theory is that powerful people didn't want people
| to be digitally free. It might make them think about fighting
| for freedoms offline as well.
| sourcepluck wrote:
| It really is almost hilariously formulaic. I mean, it'd be
| hilarious if it didn't have such disastrous consequences.
|
| The slide to dystopia which is described or implied by
| countless fictional books is, in fact, really easy to pull off.
| It's death by a thousand socially convenient compromises.
|
| I remember when a significant portion of people thought
| carrying phones around was creepy, or that spending your life
| looking at screens was antisocial, and these things were
| actively proclaimed. Contrary to popularly repeated historical
| revisionist tropes, lots of people had to be cajoled and
| prodded and pressured into the "digital revolution". Surely
| others remember that?
|
| And now we're at a stage now where if you _don 't_ have
| something like whatsapp or facebook or instagram or whatever,
| depending on the culture and the age group, there's a real
| chance that you'll be socially confronted, and even belittled
| in some circumstances.
| lrvick wrote:
| I would remind everyone that the ban of porn below 18 is not
| enforced, but it is enough to ensure it is not consumed openly or
| at school. That is how this will play out too.
| Tronno wrote:
| Not sure what kind of maniac would "consume" porn openly at
| school. In contrast, I doubt most kids will have any such
| misgivings about social media, especially if not enforced.
| deergomoo wrote:
| Teenagers can be weird and dumb and like to show off. A kid
| in my class used to pull porn up on the computer connected to
| the projector if the teacher left the room, just because they
| thought it was funny.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Back in my HS years, we had a sped student who loved having
| a wank in the library.
| cnity wrote:
| Porn isn't consumed openly or at school because of social
| effects (read: it is embarrassing), not because of laws. If
| schoolchildren are the pliable rule-followers you imply, why do
| they all vape?
| shirro wrote:
| If a kid wants to find porn then so be it. If an adult
| Australian citizen or media company wants to show them porn
| then that is probably a criminal offense.
|
| Kids also find alcohol. Can't supply as an adult or company.
|
| The problem for the social media companies is that their
| recommendation algorithms and content make it very clear they
| know exactly what ages are watching and what they are showing
| them. They are multi-billion dollar multi-national operations
| and not some kid running an iffy image board. I usually hate
| the Australian government's dumb takes on anything tech or
| Internet (cryptography, internet filters) but in this case I
| think pushing regulatory compliance on large companies is what
| makes this doable.
| squarefoot wrote:
| Good, but not enough if you ask me. Mainstream social media make
| money out of angering people and the addiction it creates, and it
| affects everyone, not just kids: had a few grown ups among
| friends and other people, even over 60 and older, completely
| ruined by that crap. I don't see any reason why corporations that
| don't obey any moral obligation should be motivated to change
| their business model anytime soon, unless forced from above.
| squigz wrote:
| What about non-mainstream social media? What about news
| services? What do you think would happen if we banned both,
| those people that get angry and addicted will just be happy and
| healthy? Or do you think corporations will find another avenue
| to try and manipulate people, which those people will happily
| flock to?
| squarefoot wrote:
| Non mainstream media by its definition probably doesn't
| attract much people and damages would be restricted; I think
| the most damage happens in crowded echo chambers where a
| critical mass, assuming there is one, would be easily
| reached. Yes, very likely corporations would find other ways
| to exploit people addiction, and educating kids before it's
| too late is a good move, however I don't expect much
| cooperation by parents.
| squigz wrote:
| > however I don't expect much cooperation by parents.
|
| Why not? Most parents don't tend to hand their children
| drugs.
| squarefoot wrote:
| I meant parents who are among the grown ups I was
| referring to in my original post. Kids become addict to
| social media also because of their absence as parents,
| and giving bad example.
| tessierashpool9 wrote:
| prohibition never worked and won't ever - the only way to make it
| work is by implementing a total surveillance state with draconian
| punishment for noncompliant citizens. but given that i'm more or
| less the only one realizing that i just make peace with what is
| coming.
| pie_flavor wrote:
| 'Prohibition didn't work' is an almost meaningless statement.
| It's always some variation on 'yeah, drastically fewer people
| drank, but it didn't eradicate it _entirely_ and cost a nonzero
| amount to maintain '. Same as banning anything ever, like
| murder, or unregistered securities.
| tessierashpool9 wrote:
| prohibition of alcohol didn't just cause less people to drink
| ... it provided the breeding ground for organized crime,
| caused people to go blind from drinking self-made liquor and
| started the war on drugs which eventually led to the fentanyl
| crisis.
|
| my body, my choice.
| Sabinus wrote:
| But we already prohibit children from drinking alcohol. How
| is social media any different?
| aniviacat wrote:
| And that's where the analogy falls short.
|
| You think teens are going to start using darknet social
| media?
| lupusreal wrote:
| That assumes "make it work" means making it work 100% with no
| gaps or misses. If it only works 90% of the time then it's
| still working quite well and you get most of the benefit from
| it without needing _" a total surveillance state with draconian
| punishment for noncompliant citizens"_
|
| For instance, it has always been possible for sufficiently
| motivated kids to acquire hard liquor. If nothing else they can
| steal it from their parents. To stop this you would need
| surveillance inside every home and extremely harsh punishments.
| But we _don 't_ actually need that, because an imperfect
| prohibition works reasonably well.
|
| The whole premise that if a law isn't perfectly enforceable
| then it's a bad law is a weird thing that techies on the
| libertarian/autism spectrum come up with a lot, but it's not
| the way the world actually works.
| tessierashpool9 wrote:
| prohibition of alcohol didn't just cause less people to drink
| and more to drink less ... it provided the breeding ground
| for organized crime, caused people to go blind from drinking
| self-made liquor and started the war on drugs which
| eventually led to the fentanyl crisis.
|
| my body, my choice.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Prohibition of hard liquor _for kids_ causes negligible
| organized crime. Furthermore, it is unlikely that
| prohibiting <16 kids from using social media will trigger
| an organized crime wave.
|
| The failings of blanket alcohol prohibition in America do
| not automatically transfer to all forms and instances of
| prohibition. Thinking otherwise is a trap that techie
| libertarians often fall for, for some reason. Science
| should study it.
| tessierashpool9 wrote:
| or you are looking at this maybe a little rosy colored.
| the tabacco ban in new zealand, as well as same ideas for
| england, would affect also grownups. also - what is
| social media anyway? i don't think this can be as easily
| defined as a molecule. and it's supervision would require
| surveillance. and that's not a good thing. sure kiddies
| need boundaries and guidance but the broader picture
| shows that such ideas are usually connected to extending
| the same thinking to adults. and again - my body, my
| choice. i do not accept the state telling me what not to
| do when it isn't impacting somebody else on an individual
| and direct level. end of story.
| aniviacat wrote:
| > when it isn't impacting somebody else on an individual
| and direct level
|
| But it is. Children using social media put active
| pressure on other children to use social media too. Not
| using social media today is very difficult for children,
| since it can make social integration a lot more
| difficult. Children using social media are actively
| pushing other children into addiction. Children using
| social media are actively harming others.
|
| Your body, your choice. But if you regularly run over
| people, I will take away your drivers license.
| tessierashpool9 wrote:
| > Your body, your choice. But if you regularly run over
| people, I will take away your drivers license.
|
| do i really have to explain this to you ...
| aniviacat wrote:
| Yes, please.
| pxoe wrote:
| hey, it definitely works! it lets politicians pat themselves on
| the back like they did something and get some brownie points
| and maybe even more people to vote for them.
| aussieguy1234 wrote:
| I support the ban.
|
| In terms of enforcement, social media platforms already use
| algorithms and gather huge amounts of data on their users, enough
| to make a good estimate of age even if a user has signed up with
| a fake age.
|
| So, when the algorithm detects that a user is likely to be
| underage, that's when they'd be required to show ID.
| turing_complete wrote:
| I wouldn't have said this a few years ago, but I think this is a
| good idea.
| metalman wrote:
| this is fake legislative action, there is no way to legaly
| enforce this, short of a complete and total policing of the
| internet and peoples phones,and the quiet part is that by
| seperating the "law" into all of its beurocratic bits,such as
| needing to "ratify" it later....., and then actualy create and
| fund some sort of enforcement body at some further and impossible
| to predict time which all then points to a desperate and
| floundering government, resorting to the lamest kinds of tacticts
| to buy a bit more time at the trough oink oink
| gU9x3u8XmQNG wrote:
| Given the lack of interest in the industry "self" regulating,
| and/or taking responsibility of, the content; what other option
| is there. It seems there's little interest globally.
|
| With my direct and indirect experiences of social media; I
| strongly support this.
|
| That said; how does a young individual get updates to public
| transport outages that are only available via twitter/x, or read
| the menu of the local cafe that is only posted on Facebook?
|
| I do worry about the implementation, especially if government
| owned. The government has, in the past, said one thing and
| executed another. (DNS metadata collection for ISP's, for
| example) Whilst I have nothing to hide, and am happy to be
| entirely transparent with them; I can appreciate, respect, and
| understand the hesitation.
|
| And, if government owned; how long until it's "privatised".
|
| Will be interesting to see how this plays out.
| immibis wrote:
| "The spying industry isn't spying on people enough, so the
| government has no choice but to force them to spy harder"
| quitit wrote:
| There is zero willingness by Meta and others to even follow
| through on their own guidelines or government requirements. I
| think it's time a hard decision was made about the harms spread
| by these networks.
|
| I am definitely not alone in submitting a report about a fake
| profile only for the system to nearly automatically deny it.
| Even when the real person being impersonated is literally
| sitting next to me asking me to help them submit the report.
| Even illegal drug dealers operate in the open on Meta
| properties with no recourse whatsoever.
|
| The process of eliminating a huge swath of fake and harmful
| content could be implemented trivially, we have so many ways of
| muting or limiting the spread of information which is unvetted,
| dubious origin, has outlier qualities and so on - yet nothing
| of the type is engaged by these networks to obvious harmful
| consequences.
| gU9x3u8XmQNG wrote:
| Thanks for your reply.
|
| On a similar note; a family member was being exposed to
| intense and violent content over Facebook. There was no
| block, ignore, or report feature on the content exposed. The
| only option we could find, after researching it; was a "show
| less of this content" setting buried deep in the Facebook web
| app (not even available on the standalone app).
|
| Honestly; if the account owner has little option to manage
| the content they are exposed to.. ugh!
| quitit wrote:
| Your experience brings about an excellent point (and
| something that is coming up in discussion frequently with
| the proposed under-16 social media ban in Australia - a ban
| that is being supported by all sides of their government.)
|
| That point is that even the user making positive attempts
| to moderate their experience on the platform is futile and
| in my experience largely ignored. (I actually have the
| experience that it then shows me more of that content.)
|
| Social media platforms are keenly aware that anger and fear
| drive significantly more engagement and whistleblowers have
| detailed how Facebook prioritises this content, shovelling
| it to users specifically to drive usage (and with that ad
| value and ad impressions).(1)(2)(3)(4)
|
| There is a deep commercial incentive for social media
| networks to act against their own "community guidelines"
| and legislation. I applaud Australia's direction for
| recognising that these networks are not acting in good
| faith and introducing measures that address the proven
| harms.(5)
|
| 1. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-whistleblower-
| frances-...
|
| 2. https://thehill.com/changing-america/enrichment/arts-
| culture...
|
| 3. https://time.com/6103645/facebook-whistleblower-frances-
| haug...
|
| 4. https://time.com/6097704/facebook-instagram-wall-street-
| jour...
|
| 5. https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-facebook-
| files-11631713039
| mcdeltat wrote:
| > Given the lack of interest in the industry "self" regulating,
| and/or taking responsibility of, the content; what other option
| is there
|
| This is surely an important point. People often make the
| argument of individual freedom. But at the same time, evidently
| we are excellent at using those freedoms to screw ourselves
| over. Globally, we've been speedrunning fucking up society in
| critical areas for decades now. Could the solution be less
| freedom? Is there some hidden hook whereby more freedom can
| solve everything?
| johnisgood wrote:
| History should have taught us that the answer is no, the
| solution is not less freedom.
|
| It does make me want to watch the movie Equilibrium though.
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| > Globally, we've been speedrunning fucking up society in
| critical areas for decades now.
|
| Social media has also been enormously beneficial in terms of
| crippling the propaganda power of centralized, commercial
| media. It would be very bad to simply return to the authority
| of editorial boards. What we actually need is to grapple with
| the social responsibility that comes with this power, which
| could take decades or even centuries of living with the
| internet to wrangle.
|
| Especially now that we know how little of the world
| traditional newsrooms are even willing to cover, let alone
| fund coverage of.
|
| Besides, the cat is out of the bag.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| >Social media has also been enormously beneficial in terms
| of crippling the propaganda power of centralized,
| commercial media
|
| This is just plain wrong. Social media has _moved_ the
| propaganda power to foreign hostile nations on a golden
| platter. That is not an improvement.
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| > Social media has moved the propaganda power to foreign
| hostile nations on a golden platter.
|
| I mean it's not like the power of domestic propaganda has
| _waned_ , it's just in a war for the attention of the
| ignorant with other interests (most of which aren't
| foreign powers, by the way, but simply capital). Social
| media that enabled independent coverage and discussion is
| still there for the adults in the room and it would be a
| true loss for any society to sweep the rug out from under
| the people who care to look _beyond_ the for-profit
| newsroom (i.e., almost all media that 's readily
| accessible at least to americans).
| bigfudge wrote:
| > Social media that enabled independent coverage and
| discussion is still there for the adults in the room
|
| I'm not actually sure that's true. The only reliable
| sources on social media (in the sense of 'usually not
| horribly wrong') are actually traditional media companies
| like bbc, guardian. Perhaps I'm holding it wrong, but
| finding other trustworthy sources is actually really
| hard...
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| > Perhaps I'm holding it wrong, but finding other
| trustworthy sources is actually really hard...
|
| Yes, it is hard, but there's no such thing as easy trust,
| and you should always be questioning whether such trust
| is actually earned or just comforting.
|
| I don't think the "bbc" or "the guardian" are very
| trustworthy, either (at least by themselves)--both have
| obvious polemics and blind spots. They also only cover a
| very narrow, western-centric view of the world, leaving
| you with piss-poor understanding of world politics. I'm
| not saying you should _ignore_ them but they 're still
| propaganda.
|
| Substack is invaluable; blogs are invaluable; twitter, as
| miserable as it is, is invaluable (for direct access to
| reporters sans newsrooms, if nothing else).
| EraYaN wrote:
| They are not propaganda in the classic sense since that
| requires intent and a goal.
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| Sorry, why do you believe these entities have no intent
| nor goals? That's a very odd assumption to make.
|
| As always, I highly recommend Manufacturing Consent,
| which well illustrates how to examine financial interests
| to determine the above. Propaganda does not require
| conspiracy nor explicit instructions on what messages to
| convey; it only requires a class of people produced from
| the same environment, aiming to reproduce that same
| environment.
| alxlaz wrote:
| This is especially untrue _today_ , when reaching a wide,
| relevant audience requires significant resources,
| including financial -- either outright paying for
| sponsored places at the top of people's timelines, or
| paying for the expertise that delivers the right content
| to the right people in the right formulation.
|
| There's obviously still room for exceptions (especially
| in small niches, where individual content creators can
| still make a dent) but this isn't 2006 anymore. The vast
| majority of the content that covers social, political or
| economic issues on social media platforms is paid for and
| pushed by directly interested parties (political parties,
| companies etc.) with ample funding and is often _part_ of
| campaigns that span both social media and traditional
| media. The "indie" outlook is part of the packaging.
|
| The terms of the "paid by" disclaimers are sufficiently
| generous that they're all but useless once you get past
| things like goodie bags for influencers or regulated
| campaign ads.
| doodaddy wrote:
| There is some truth to this crippling power and I don't
| doubt that there are examples of it. But social media has
| been the vector for massive amounts of propaganda. Sorry to
| say I'd rather just have the commercialized editorial
| boards. At least that's a single problem that can be
| reigned in. Instead we have the worst of both worlds -
| commercialized media plus a million-headed hydra spewing
| falsehoods and nonsense.
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| > At least that's a single problem that can be reigned
| in.
|
| I don't understand what you're referring to. How do you
| recommend reigning in a newsroom? Especially one beholden
| to owners and advertisers with interests directly opposed
| to those of readers? How do you as a consumer opt out of
| the financial barriers to quality reporting? The only
| answer is the peer to peer nature of social media and the
| internet.
|
| Perhaps what you're missing is that traditional media has
| zero incentive to highlight the positives of direct
| communication between disparate populations, creating
| farcically-negative hysteria about the dangers of
| worldviews not beholden to giant interests (yes,
| including domestic and foreign state powers, but also
| individual entities with massive capital to throw
| around).
| broken-kebab wrote:
| >Sorry to say I'd rather just have the commercialized
| editorial boards
|
| Not me. Having a solid experience living in some far-
| from-democracy countries, I can state with all certainty
| that social platforms opened at least a crack to
| alternative opinions for a lot of people. Yes, they are
| full of propaganda, but I think they still provide more
| pluralistic picture compared to the world where old media
| ruled supreme. The real problem with those platforms is
| not "misinformation" (which will be everywhere anyway),
| buy addictiveness, and the fact they incentivize
| aggressive tribalism
| dsvnasd wrote:
| > Besides, the cat is out of the bag.
|
| That's what I was thinking too.
|
| I am not sure what the value is in severely regulating half
| a dozen or so companies when work arounds are so easily to
| implement. Maybe as a stop gap solution while we figure out
| long term solutions (which the government has a horrible
| track record on).
|
| But for any long term solution we would first have to
| define what social media even is, and in a way that's
| testable in court. Don't run away from the hard things, but
| wow, that's hard.
| gU9x3u8XmQNG wrote:
| Not sure I agree with this entirely, especially the points
| on media. And I don't think it's been beneficial at all.
|
| I'd argue the problem here is more so quality, and can
| really only be solved with regulation. I want to read news,
| not a blog and opinion.
|
| There should be clear and concise standards media outlets
| need to adhere to, but as per my suggestion in regards to
| social media; will not self regulate.
|
| Additionally; there is no accountability and
| responsibility.
|
| I would argue that the only benefit that has been made is
| making this more apparent and obvious.. and hopefully for
| the better.
| Neonlicht wrote:
| Social media could include everything including forums
| and websites were people can leave a comment.
|
| I know that some people here on HN want to go full
| Unabomber and live in the woods but I kind of like the
| internet.
| whiplash451 wrote:
| > how does a young individual get updates to public transport
| outages that are only available via twitter/x, or read the menu
| of the local cafe that is only posted on Facebook?
|
| Solutions will appear naturally to fill the gaps. This is not
| rocket science.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Agree. Like, local cafe, don't do that.
| RadiozRadioz wrote:
| And indeed, solutions have already appeared: RSS
| whiplash451 wrote:
| > I do worry about the implementation
|
| The government does not own the implementation.
|
| As mentioned in another comment, simply making this illegal
| would create a significant incentive for soc media companies to
| implement the solution.
|
| The onus is on them to respect the law.
|
| They've been slapped in the face in EU court enough now that
| they'd think about it seriously.
| exe34 wrote:
| The law could force a "for kids" version like youtube, and
| businesses would automatically start there unless they were
| unsuitable.
| y1426i wrote:
| I don't think this is a practical solution. And it does not
| solve the underlying issue, which is the attention economy.
|
| Here's a better solution option that is easier to implement;
| even adults can benefit, and I think it solves some of the
| problems:
|
| 1. Have an easy option to turn off feeds and enforce for non-
| adults. This would apply not just to meta, twitter, but also to
| Youtube, LinkedIn, etc.
|
| 2. Disable like display. The like counts are what hooks people
| and gives the dopamine kick. Add the ability to hide it and not
| show for under 18 easily.
|
| 3. Social and news sites should not be allowed to send
| notifications, period. Not on phones or browsers, at least not
| for those under 18.
|
| Something along these lines would improve social media for
| everyone, not just kids. Parents' mental health affects kids
| the same. So blocking it just for kids only goes so far.
| gU9x3u8XmQNG wrote:
| Thanks for your reply.
|
| I think you have valid points, but as noted; the industry has
| no interest in any form of regulation or responsibility.
|
| I don't see any alternative.
| latentsea wrote:
| >That said; how does a young individual get updates to public
| transport outages that are only available via twitter/x, or
| read the menu of the local cafe that is only posted on
| Facebook?
|
| If such regulations come in to effect, I think those business /
| institutions will adapt (eventually) to cater to communicating
| via additional channels.
| elric wrote:
| Can't we just ban exploitative & manipulative social media
| instead? This is another case of the baby and the bathwater.
| Giorgi wrote:
| Ahh yes, government knows what is best for you.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Ok, they will join places like 4chan instead.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Another development that makes me happy for the US 1st Amendment.
| ghssds wrote:
| In the '90s, a lot of dial-up BBS were owned by <16yo teens.
| Later the same happened with internet forum. Today, you'd think
| 16yo is old enough to have your own social media. Maybe a
| Mastodon or Lemmy instance, or something unfederated like an old
| phpBB forum or something. Yet the australian gov think these same
| people aren't old enough to access a social media! They should
| incite their teens to have one in their bedroom, fcs.
| Benjamin_Dobell wrote:
| I'm not sure precisely how this legislation is to be phrased,
| however I assume all the use cases you presented from the 90s
| are still permitted. Social media is a very different beast
| than closed communities / interest groups.
| im3w1l wrote:
| I don't think it's nearly that clearcut. Just to take an
| example, these days a lot of communities / interest groups
| are organized as Facebook Groups. Or subreddits. Is reddit
| social media? It has an algorithmic feed mainpage, it has
| profiles and likes and dms. You can make self-posts that are
| not posted to any subreddit just to your own profile. So if
| you think about it, it's actually very similar to facebook
| from a feature standpoint. But the culture is different. What
| about discord? I think it was originally meant for voice
| chat, but it also hosts communities / interest groups and
| quite a lot of other social network features. It does however
| not have a feed of posts, and you can't post things to your
| own profile. But you can set a status, which often is the
| precursor to a feed.
| bigfatkitten wrote:
| > Social media is a very different beast than closed
| communities / interest groups.
|
| Those are explicitly within scope for this plan also.
| jappgar wrote:
| Funny how so many middle-aged tech workers, who were almost
| certainly using some primitive social media themselves as
| teenagers, are now in support of a full ban.
|
| I don't like the outcomes we see with modern social media, but
| this feels like we're punishing the victim instead of the
| perpetrator.
| jpalawaga wrote:
| social media for us was chronological timelines of content our
| friends produced.
|
| Not... _waves hands_ whatever the f*%k this is.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Profit, it's profit, almost free, self-perpetuation, self-
| promoting profit, build on addictions and exploitation of
| users.
| maxehmookau wrote:
| Social media that tech workers in the 30s and 40s were exposed
| to was never any more intense than a bulletin board or a chat
| room.
|
| Social media now is a very different beast. It's designed to be
| addictive, and it generates engagement through polarization.
|
| Is banning social media for children a punishment for the
| child? Some parents would argue the opposite, that it's a good
| thing that the child isn't developed enough to realise yet.
| ev7 wrote:
| Banning social media for a single child creates social death;
| banning it for all promotes social life.
| mrweasel wrote:
| > this feels like we're punishing the victim instead of the
| perpetrator.
|
| Wouldn't placing the limits on the social media companies
| potentially prevent them for operating at a profit? I don't
| think you're wrong, but I question if you're not removing
| social media for child and teenagers regardless, the difference
| is if there will be social media for them to use later in life.
|
| Banning social media for those under 16 (or 18) or killing off
| social media in general do to restrictions in how they operate
| doesn't really matter to me, even if the latter seems like a
| bigger win for society in general.
|
| Social media was an interesting and at times fun experiment,
| but it might be time accept that it's not working out as we had
| hoped.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Same happened with the Drug War. The generation that spend
| their entire teenage years in the 60s in a haze of MJ smoke
| became the fiercest prohibition advocates during the 80s and
| 90s.
| dsvnasd wrote:
| Actually this could be a really good analogy on many levels.
|
| For example: Comparing the THC levels of the 60s to the THC
| levels today, and the potency social media of the 90s to the
| social media today seems appropriate. I mean one can only do
| so much social media over a slow modem on a home that has a
| single shared phone line.
|
| https://www.newscientist.com/article/2396976-is-cannabis-
| tod...
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Using social media as a teenager is why I think teenagers
| shouldnt be allowed to now. It was not a healthy experience.
| nottorp wrote:
| Doesn't everyone lie about their age anyway, to get around the
| stupid restrictions?
| whiplash451 wrote:
| I'm not sure to see the value of going all the way to 16. 14yo
| would be a massive win already.
|
| The cost/benefit of social media between 14 and 16 is much more
| favorable to social media than <14.
| Perenti wrote:
| 13-15 is when the brain is driven mostly by hormones, not
| thought. It's worst at 14. 14 is NOT the age to let teens off
| their leash.
| whiplash451 wrote:
| I'll take your word for it since I don't have kids in that
| age range, but I'd tend to think that hormones are in the
| driver seat all the way up to the 20s.
| ossobuco wrote:
| So when China regulates the internet, it's a dictatorship; when a
| western-affiliated democracy does it, it's... good?
| rty32 wrote:
| I can't answer "whether censorship good or bad", but one thing
| I think is true and needs to be clarified is that there is a
| democratic process for such legislation -- representatives
| debate the topic and vote on them, and if they do become law,
| they may be challenged in the court. They don't just happen. By
| comparison, censorship in China is mandated by a number of
| different laws and "rules" with extremely broad and vague
| words, some of which date back decades, with the explicit
| intention to be able to arbitrarily enforce the laws based on
| whoever is in power to interpret them, and... good luck
| challenging them in courts.
|
| Of course there are lots of caveats here -- e.g. in the US
| model, what if the executive branch, legislation and the court
| are controlled by one person (which we'll see very soon), and
| in the other hand, in China there is actually a parliament and
| a formal process for many of the legislations (even though that
| doesn't mean much). Still, at a very high level, there is a
| distinction.
| sigmar wrote:
| uh yeah, dictatorships are bad. Society determining their
| government and enacting laws through consensus is good. Is that
| controversial now?
| self_awareness wrote:
| It's only democracy if it's the government on which we have
| voted for, otherwise it's a disgrace and a Russian
| manipulation.
| Perenti wrote:
| The way to give this teeth is for any proposed law to charge the
| parent or guardian of social networking children, as well as the
| social networking site. Once it hits the parents' pockets they'll
| start to get involved in their kids lives and see what they're
| looking at on the web.
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| That, or they'll just give their own kid access to their social
| media accounts.
| looopTools wrote:
| I agree with others whom see the identification problem. But I
| also think that it is a right step on the way to help improve the
| current situation
| protocolture wrote:
| "Australia Proposes Ban" is way too common a headline.
| nashashmi wrote:
| This might force children to be social in the real world. And
| disabled children will remain unsocial.
| benabbott wrote:
| I fully support this. In fact, make it 18. I see it like a new
| type of drug. Future generations will be horrified that we
| permitted children to connect their brains to attention-
| optimization algorithms running on supercomputers.
|
| Children can not consent. They can't sign contracts. They don't
| understand the ramifications of what algorithmically delivered
| content does to you.
| dataflow wrote:
| 18 seems terrible. You're making a fraction of the kids miss
| out on their friends' lives just before they're about to go
| their separate ways and potentially never see each other again.
| At least give them a bit of time to naturally settle into the
| new social environment before they permanently part ways?
| OptionOfT wrote:
| I disagree.
|
| If the relationship is valuable to you, it requires
| maintaining. Following each other on social media isn't the
| same.
|
| Not to mention social media is filled with someone's best
| moments which give you a bad view on how you're doing against
| your peers.
|
| Not to that half of the posts on social media are ads, which
| aren't good for you at any age.
| dataflow wrote:
| > If the relationship is valuable to you, it requires
| maintaining. Following each other on social media isn't the
| same.
|
| Maybe not to you, but to some people it is incredibly
| valuable for maintaining relationships. And these are kids
| about to part with most of their friends for the first
| time, you can't rely on them having learned your insightful
| life lessons by this point. I'm guessing you've never been
| felt the negative effects being left out of a social circle
| can have? Relationships aren't binary, not everyone is best
| friends or strangers. Lots of room in between for people to
| bond or be left out.
| dsvnasd wrote:
| With any regulation there are pro/cons. You've
| highlighted a con but there are significant pros to
| overcome.
|
| I grew up in a pre internet world. We had "negative
| effects being left out of a social circles" then too.
| Social circles being hard is not going away regardless of
| how this decision lands.
| dataflow wrote:
| > I grew up in a pre internet world. We had "negative
| effects being left out of a social circles" then too.
| Social circles being hard is not going away regardless of
| how this decision lands.
|
| The fact that you never grew up in the social media world
| highlights exactly why you don't understand the problem
| despite thinking you do. Your good old "social circles
| being hard" issue is _not_ the problem here.
|
| Please understand that there are plenty of situations
| where someone gets invited to something if and only they
| are _visible_ to others and _easy_ to invite. i.e. there
| exist plenty of situations where being on the platform is
| the _sole determining factor_. And that being off the
| platform that the majority use puts a _very significant,
| ongoing, and asymmetric burden on the host_ (or invitor,
| if it 's a different person) to keep them posted on all
| the details that did not exist otherwise, and this
| fundamentally makes one less likely to be included, in an
| entirely natural and unavoidable fashion that is no fault
| of anyone involved, and has nothing to do with "social
| circles being hard".
|
| You have to recognize when the system is making a problem
| worse than it naturally is.
| dsvnasd wrote:
| > You have to recognize when the system is making a
| problem worse than it naturally is.
|
| The irony. How can you be certain that it's not social
| media making "problem worse than it naturally is"? Many
| people believe that social media is.
|
| As someone who was not particularly visible, and was not
| invited to every party, I am very aware that "there are
| plenty of situations where someone gets invited to
| something if and only they are visible to others and easy
| to invite". Is "not being on social media" really all
| that different than "not being on the <insert sport>
| team"? The same arguments apply. Easier to see and invite
| teammates, more social cache, etc.
|
| In any case, if all teens were off social media then it
| would not be a determining factor, and I'm sure
| alternative systems would emerge for inviting people to
| places.
| dataflow wrote:
| > The irony. How can you be certain that it's not social
| media making "problem worse than it naturally is"? Many
| people believe that social media is.
|
| It _is_ the problem. I don 't think you understood my
| point. If _nobody_ in high school had it, I wouldn 't be
| bringing it up. The problem here is some students will
| have it the last year and some won't. By seeing it at 18,
| you're making it worse for the younger kids. Either 19 or
| 16 would be better.
| dsvnasd wrote:
| I didn't think that was your point so I did misunderstand
| it. I agree this is a concern but I'm not sure how it's
| totally avoided. 12% of high school seniors graduate at
| 19.
|
| In any case, I'm probably not the right person to
| determine the cutoff criteria. Whatever the boundary,
| that's going to be a rough time for those going through
| it.
| dataflow wrote:
| > I'm not sure how it's totally avoided. 12% of high
| school seniors graduate at 19.
|
| I mean there's a reason (well, multiple) why I suggested
| 16 instead of 19. I just pointed out that 19 to try to
| get my point across about social media being harmful.
|
| > Whatever the boundary, that's going to be a rough time
| for those going through it.
|
| Again, this wasn't the point. The point was that if you
| do this in the last year of high school, you're not
| _just_ giving younger kids a temporary rough time for
| that one year. You 're _also_ robbing them of their very
| last opportunities to form the stronger long-term
| connections they would have made during that time, which
| inflicts life-long damage to them socially. If you put
| the cutoff a little earlier so they all have a year or
| two to adjust to the new social environment, you avoid
| that long-term harm.
|
| Also, nobody said the cutoff _has_ to be rounded to the
| exact day. It could just as well be moved to coincide
| with the start or end of a school year, avoiding this
| problem entirely. And it 'll be easier to enforce in
| school too.
| hooverd wrote:
| They can build those relationships without being hooked into
| the slop machine.
| cathalc wrote:
| On that point, I don't think most adults understand the
| ramifications either!
| mezzie2 wrote:
| I have one primary worry about this. Do you spend much time on
| college campuses or around military bases? If so, you know that
| credit card companies and shady car dealerships _loooove_ the
| newly 18 year old adults.
|
| I think that introducing people to social media right when
| they'll be on the hook for all their bad decisions during the
| exploratory period is going to result in a lot of 18-20 year
| olds in a ton of debt + them being even more hooked on social
| media than kids are now because they'll also be away from adult
| supervision. Imagine the sports betting ads for the newly 18.
| The influencers puffing up the newly 18 about how adult and
| mature they are and all adults buy product X, etc. They'll have
| no way of knowing what's normal to share and will probably
| overshare, but unlike minors, they'll be legally able to
| torpedo the rest of their lives. Etc.
|
| Making it 18 puts a target on their back for the ad and social
| media companies: Fresh meat that aren't entitled to any
| protection. That seems like a bad combination to me.
| uhtred wrote:
| I fully support this.
|
| Fuck google, meta, tiktok, all of them, they are ruining the
| world.
|
| And fuck amazon too.
| scudsworth wrote:
| australia proposes big button that says "are you really old
| enough to read posts? please do not lie"
| ElCapitanMarkla wrote:
| This is the wrong approach, to achieve the desired effect they
| should make social media compulsory for anyone over ~40.
| asdefghyk wrote:
| Social media companies would have a strong motivation to ensure
| the plan fails. They would want it to fail to stop spreading to
| other countries. They could help it fail by several methods, in
| my opinion. Social media companies would have NO motivation to
| ensure its success. Maybe there needs to be a significant penalty
| to social media companies if the proposal fails?
| asdefghyk wrote:
| The penalty for potential failure needs to be very high - such
| as banning a app from a country. It could be done. ( Something
| that would give social media companies significant motivation.
| ) Social media implication efforts should be examined and
| audited for software experts and other experts - even down to
| viewing every part of their software system. Actually tested by
| outside experts. I used to work for large gambling organisation
| and the companies systems where audited such by experts - they
| could reques tto see ANYTHING . Included their own test
| scenarios . included auditing of our test results. Depending on
| change , audit could take days . Penalty for hiding anything
| was so high , it was not done. Same type of system needs to
| apply to social media companies. I would predict they will
| claim it can not be done
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