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Australia Social Networks

Australia To Ban Under-16s From Social Media After Passing Landmark Law (yahoo.com) 214

Australia will ban children under 16 from using social media after its senate approved what will become a world-first law. From a report: Children will be blocked from using platforms including TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook, a move the Australian government argue is necessary to protect their mental health and wellbeing.

The online safety amendment (social media minimum age) bill will impose fines of up to 50 million Australian dollars ($32.5 million) on platforms for systemic failures to prevent young children from holding accounts. It would take effect a year after the bill becomes law, allowing platforms time to work out technological solutions that would also protect users' privacy. The senate passed the bill 34 votes to 19. The house of representatives overwhelmingly approved the legislation 102 votes to 13 on Wednesday.

Australia To Ban Under-16s From Social Media After Passing Landmark Law

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  • by dskoll ( 99328 ) on Thursday November 28, 2024 @09:16AM (#64977435) Homepage

    Given the incredible damage social media has done to democracy and our mental health, I'd like to see it banned for anyone under 200 years old.

    • by JBMcB ( 73720 )

      Keep in mind that most of the outlets telling you how terrible social media is, are the direct competitors to social media.

    • by jenningsthecat ( 1525947 ) on Thursday November 28, 2024 @10:03AM (#64977517)

      Given the incredible damage social media has done to democracy and our mental health, I'd like to see it banned for anyone under 200 years old.

      As drinkypoo pointed out above, it's all about the algorithms. If social media wasn't driven by advertising and engagement - if it was implemented as societal infrastructure for the well-being of all citizens and the financial profit of nobody - then it would be a great good in society. As it exists currently, it's a Trojan horse whose belly is full of contagious cancer.

      • by sinij ( 911942 )
        Both political power gain AND financial profit has to be accounted for. If you only remove financial profit, then the end result will be political foodball with operatives on all sides trying to get their opponents banned.
      • Every High School could set up their own BlueSky server for algorithm-free social media focused on the immediate community: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
      • by dskoll ( 99328 )

        Yes, exactly. If Facebook let me connect with friends and see only what they post in strict reverse-chronological order, and didn't feed me any ads or sell my data to marketers, I'd happily pay $5/month for that. And that's probably about what Facebook's revenue per user is currently.

        Unfortunately, that business model will fail, so we're stuck with the cesspool that is for-profit social media.

  • How? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Retired Chemist ( 5039029 ) on Thursday November 28, 2024 @09:21AM (#64977439)
    How are the social media companies supposed to enforce this? What test is available that would distinguish between say a sixteen-year-old and an adult or prevent a child from using a parent's access? Most teenagers are savvier about these things than their parents.
    • Re:How? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Thursday November 28, 2024 @09:29AM (#64977449)
      On top of authentication, it will be interesting to see where the line is drawn on what constitutes "social media." Person-to-person texting is OK I presume, being on group emails is probably ok (if any kid wanted to do that), but there is some point in the size of the group where people start performing for the group instead of communicating as individuals any more and things change.
      • Re: How? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by i_ate_god ( 899684 ) on Thursday November 28, 2024 @10:31AM (#64977609)

        Social media is engineered specifically to be addictive. Most countries have age restrictions and other regulations on such industries such as gambling, alcohol, and cigarettes. This is no different. Free speech is not violated in any way whatsoever.

        • by Striek ( 1811980 )

          Parent poster didn't say anything about whether social media is good or bad. Rather, they pointed out that "Social Media" as a term is not easy to define.

          And you can't ban "social media" until you can first define what, exactly, social media is.

    • Re:How? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by NewtonsLaw ( 409638 ) on Thursday November 28, 2024 @09:40AM (#64977475)

      This law is a trojan horse. "How are social media companies supposed to enforce this?"

      The only way they can enforce it is to take advantage of the Australian Government's Digital ID. In effect, if you want to access social media in Australia you'll have to sign up to this government-issued digital ID so that the social media companies can authenticate your age.

      This isn't about protecting kids -- it's about effectively mandating the Digital ID for every man, woman, child and VISITOR to Australia.

      If it was about protecting kids then why doesn't the ban include hardcore pornography sites such as PornHub?

      Yeah, that's right... under this law PornHub will be exempt from its provisions but YouTube, Facebook, Tiktok etc won't.

      Asutralians should be marching in the streets to show their opposition to the way they've been shafted.

      • by dskoll ( 99328 )

        Maybe PornHub is less harmful than social media? I certainly think that's the case.

      • If it was about protecting kids then why doesn't the ban include hardcore pornography sites such as PornHub?

        Fun fact minors accessing pornhub is already illegal. Don't confuse something not working (just like this social media ban won't work) with indifference.

      • ... PornHub will be exempt ...

        Translation: A good law will have more censorship, more oppression.

        Really! Yes, it's a slippery slope, yes, it can be circumvented. But the idea is setting limits: Usually that's bad because the proverbial "big gorilla" will "alter the deal". In this, case, it's quite narrow: PornHub is not included for that reason, as well as others.

        This law is currently equal to claiming one can't open-carry an M-4 rifle while shopping. (In Australia, that also includes knives and scissors, but that's a differe

    • The kids will instead move to smaller offshore ones. This will put them at higher risk because there will be significantly less content moderation. But this isn't about protecting children this is about a nice little political issue and probably also about keeping large foreign countries out of your countries internal affairs as much as you can.
    • A social media company's entire business is knowing the demographics of its users. If a Social Media company's ad targeting continues to support defining audiences that are likely under 16, then clearly that company still has that audience to target. There is no way these companies can't already figure this out, so all Australia has to do is demand a count of accounts that likely belong to people of a given age ... and then watch these numbers decline until the counts are withing error bars. Done properl
    • by mjwx ( 966435 )

      How are the social media companies supposed to enforce this? What test is available that would distinguish between say a sixteen-year-old and an adult or prevent a child from using a parent's access? Most teenagers are savvier about these things than their parents.

      There in lies the problem with this law, well one of them... it's completely unenforceable. None of these companies are Australian, they can simply tell the Australian government to go do one and the Australian government can't do anything about it. Its extremely daft to make a law you know can never be enforced, it just makes a government look weak and Albo really doesn't need to look weak right now.

      The other problem is thinking that banning something means that kids wont see it, as you've pointed out.

    • Re: How? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by reanjr ( 588767 ) on Thursday November 28, 2024 @11:15AM (#64977661) Homepage

      "teenagers are savvier about these things than their parent"

      I don't think that's true anymore. There was a time when exposure to computers and youthful learning have them a leg up, but with the introduction of phones that are locked down, most teenagers have lost the basic understanding of how computers work.

      As a notable example, teenagers no longer understand hierarchical file systems. It's Clarke's technology/magic threshold. To teenagers and boomers, this stuff has always appeared magical, so there's no reason to try to understand it.

    • by e3m4n ( 947977 )

      The same way you enforce no cigarettes to under 18 and no alcohol sales to under 21. Its not a violation of your rights to require ID to prove you are old enough to but cigarettes or alcohol. Now you will have to have ID to use certain websites. Most likely using a 3rd party site like ID.me that scans your ID card barcode, and compares the image on file with a special rendering with your phone camera using different filters. Even the IRS uses ID.me to authenticate you. No ID, no access. Just like booze.

    • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      The US passed a law twenty years ago that restricted data collection on kids under 13. Many of the social media sites just said you're not allowed to use them if you're under 13, and figured out the age verification. I think mostly parents are happy if they can just report their kid and get their profile deleted.

  • nobody under 16 in .au knows how to use a VPN

    • by mjwx ( 966435 )

      nobody under 16 in .au knows how to use a VPN

      However there will be absolutely no need. The sites aren't being banned, they're just saying under 18's aren't permitted to use them.... which means they'll still be able to access them.

  • by sinij ( 911942 ) on Thursday November 28, 2024 @09:50AM (#64977491)
    Lets talk about the (un)intended consequences of this legislation. Age verification likely means no more anonymous speech for adults. It also means that adults in Australia will have to get digital IDs or get blocked from using social media.

    Moving forward, Australia will have dubious privilege of joining China and the likes for mandatory VPN for simply using internet for people that do not want to comply with "Papers, please" government overreach.
    • Adults in Australia already have digital IDs. It's not like the backward country you probably come from.

      • And no child has ever used their parents id?
        • Oh you're right. The only suitable laws are laws which have never been broken! We need to cover 100% of all cases in society otherwise we can't progress anything! /s

          • The only worthwhile laws are enforceable ones. There are so many ways around this, it would be tedious to list them all.
            • The laws are perfectly enforceable.

              Laws don't prevent people from doing things. Laws describe what happens to people who do certain things.

              Murder has been illegal for millennia. People still murder. The law just provides codified consequences for making that choice.

      • And a much lower crime rate

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by fru1tcake ( 1152595 )
        They exist, but they're optional, and you don't have to use them (or any other form of ID) to sign up for anything that I can think of.
    • Does your tv have the Fox logo burned in? It’s really affecting your thinking.

    • by dskoll ( 99328 )

      Age verification likely means no more anonymous speech for adults.

      Not necessarily. Recently, for some reason, LinkedIn decided that I needed to verify my account. However, it used a third party to do the verification. If what I was told in the terms I agreed to is true, the third party verified my government identity document, and once it was verified, discarded the info and simply told LinkedIn "Yup, she's OK."

      Some mechanism like this could be used for social media to verify your age without obtain

      • by kubajz ( 964091 )
        Thank you for mentioning this - why, in a tech community such as Slashdot, does everyone assume that age verification assumes that people's identity will be made public?
      • "verified, discarded the info and simply told LinkedIn "Yup, she's OK." "

        LOL, well surely if they said they discarded it... just like they're really deleting your posts and not just marking them to appear deleted but still accessible to LE. And there were never any secret closets full of mass surveillance equipment at major telecoms... no, you can trust totally they deleted your info and no one else knows it.
        • by dskoll ( 99328 )

          As I said, the procedure they claim to use was mentioned in the terms I agreed to. If we find out they were lying, that's fraud. I don't think they would jeopardize their business by lying.

          In Australia's case, the government could offer a similar verification service... they already have your info, so it's not like it's leaking anywhere else.

  • In 2016, the Australia federal court ordered ISPs to block piracy sites.
    They responded by just blocking lookups in their DNS servers. So now every kid knows that setting your DNS server to 8.8.8.8 will bypass the roadblocks.

    Easier to remember than 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 :-)

    So how much effort will anyone really make to keep kids off TikTok?

  • A better idea would be to ban anyone under the age of 116 from accessing social media.

  • It'll work just like banning alcohol, cigarettes, drugs and porn. Done by idiots who make laws that apparently were never young or had children.
    • It's like banning certain guns in Australia, having gun laws. Did it stop all gun crime, no, but unlike raw USA which has daily mass shootings, Australia does not. Port Arthur was in 1996.
  • by Petersko ( 564140 ) on Thursday November 28, 2024 @12:18PM (#64977781)

    Apparently I play one online. I'm concerned that we are running a terribly unsafe alpha test on two generations of kids. We have no idea how it will turn out. A never ending supply of porn and toxic connectivity are part of their formative experience, and neither should be. I shudder to think of what it must be like to be constantly online without the "born in 1970" suit of armor I wear effortlessly that renders the internet powerless over my basic wellbeing.

    I'm not going to declare the experiment a failure just yet, but the trend doesn't seem positive to me. It might just be me being the stereotypical old guy viewing the incoming cadre with disdain... but this X-er thinks perhaps we are making an unviable populace, and maybe this restriction of access isn't a bad start.

    • I'm concerned that we are running a terribly unsafe alpha test on two generations of kids.

      Yeah, two generations, and the oldest members of the former of those two generations are already adults. Has having smartphones as teenagers screwed up Gen Z far worse than any of the previous generations? I'm not talking about a subjective Gen Zers are so weird kind of thing, but where they're truly less equipped to deal with adult life at that age than the generations which came before.

      According to this article [cnbc.com], Gen Z is actually doing better at achieving home ownership at a younger age than Millennials

  • Work on addressing the underlying causes/issues? Nah, too expensive and takes too long. We'd rather keep applying lipstick to a pig.

    In the meantime, VPN/proxy use will surge a bit, and the youth this is supposed to stop will just lie about their age, etc. to get on anyway.

  • Will this lead to a renaissance of USENET to continue the flamewars? No central authority to bully.

  • ... to bypass these blocks

    Never! The blocks will be foolproof.

  • Silence (Score:2, Funny)

    by quantaman ( 517394 )

    I felt a great disturbance in the Internet, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.

  • Turns out spending lots and lots of time with your kids is the best way to avoid them having all these issues.

I'd rather just believe that it's done by little elves running around.

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