Social Media Ban Moves Closer in Australia After Tech Trial (bloomberg.com) 44
Australia's world-first social media ban for under-16s moved closer to implementation after a key trial found that checking a user's age is technologically possible and can be integrated into existing services. From a report: The conclusions are a blow to Facebook-owner Meta Platforms, TikTok and Snap, which opposed the controversial legislation. Some platform operators had questioned whether a user's age could be reliably established using current technology.
The results of the government-backed trial clear the way for the law to come into force by the end of the year. The findings also potentially allow other jurisdictions to follow Australia's lead as countries around the world grapple with ways to protect children from harmful content online. "Age assurance can be done in Australia and can be private, robust and effective," the government-commissioned Age Assurance Technology Trial said in a statement Friday announcing its preliminary findings.
The results of the government-backed trial clear the way for the law to come into force by the end of the year. The findings also potentially allow other jurisdictions to follow Australia's lead as countries around the world grapple with ways to protect children from harmful content online. "Age assurance can be done in Australia and can be private, robust and effective," the government-commissioned Age Assurance Technology Trial said in a statement Friday announcing its preliminary findings.
Ban for under 25 (Score:2)
Why not make the ban for everyone under 25 years old?
Re:Ban for under 25 (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ban for under 25 (Score:4, Insightful)
This achieves nothing. Meta and their evil bullshit isn't the driving force behind the evil of social networks. It's the users who drive the pull here. Block Meta, an equally shitty company will just take their place.
Re: Ban for under 25 (Score:2)
It's been about a decade since I shuttered my Facebook account. It was non stop BS being forced into my feed. I used it to keep in contact with friends and distant relatives but when they started forcing "news" into my feed I no longer saw enough benefit in the platform. Now I constantly warn my mother about the dangers social media.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Why? It is the old farts that use the "soshul networks" without a drop of critical thinking reading and spreading bullshit AND can vote the bullshit into governments that are the real problem.
Facebook's first enshittification came when they got the 35-50 years old crowd in and the endless user-generated spam began, even before the large-scale introduction of the "make me mad as hell" algorithms.
Ban everyone above 35 from the soshul media instead.
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That would also be an option, but since it will reduce the valuation of our great technology outfit and harm the congress-critter shareholders it isn't on the table. Sorry.
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The issue thats worrying legislators isn't so much the disinfo problem (although thats clearly a real problem), its the fact that the kids seem to be spiral eye glued to their little black dystopia phones 24/7 and its showing real psychological harms to socialization and mental health. God knows its been bad for me, and I at least managed to get my social skills in place well before the publically available internet came into being.
I do hope they keep some solid data on effects. If this doesn't work, then I
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If this goes into effect, I wonder if the social media giants will just remove all the servers from Australia.
I don't think their jurisdiction extends to other countries. If they're not operating in Australia, they don't have to follow those rules. If a user connects to the server and requests packets, that's on them. The business itself would be located elsewhere, as too would the servers.
I'm not a lawyer, but I think that's how it'd work. Australia could make a law that said all people under the age of 18
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Brevity is not my strong suit, but thanks for caring.
lame (Score:1)
Social parasitizes the exploratory instinct (Score:3)
You just talked about the effects on your family on vacations. I've experienced a fair bit of that. I understand exactly what you're saying. Um, and it does seem like the world's burning and you better do something about it right now. And it's no wonder it seems that way because it's lots of people and generally in our normative ecosystems. If lots of people appear to be upset with you or around you, you should pay attention. But Twitter isn't the real world. We don't know what the hell it is. You know, it looks more and more like a world of demonic bots, and God only knows what that world is.
But what did you see, especially now that you've been away for a while, what elements of your character do you think were pathized and that were brought to the forefront that Well, yeah.
Sam Harris: So, first of yeah, I was I was I considered myself a fairly careful user of it. I mean, I I I was not at all like Elon. I was not, you know, addicted to it in that way. I was not tweeting hundreds of times a day. I think I averaged something like three tweets a day over the course of my use of it. And that would come in spurts. I mean, so I there would be I would not tweet for 3 days and then send out a dozen tweets, you know, because it was some hot topic. Um, I was always fairly careful so that I I honestly don't think I ever said anything on the platform that I regretted, right? I mean, if I ever made a mistake, I apologize for it.
But I was I never you know I treated it like writing. I treat I I was aware I was publishing in that channel however quickly uh and impulsively I was you know I'm a much I'm enough of a writer and an academic to feel like okay this is yet another occasion where embarrassment is possible and you don't want that. So I never I'm not I don't remember ever really screwing up on the platform. And yet what happened there was I mean I can honestly say that for a decade the worst things in my life and in some sense the only bad things in my life came from Twitter came from my interaction with Twitter. I mean apart from like a fam you know family illnesses you know that's leaving something leaving that aside.
My life was so good and yet I had this you know digital serpent in my pocket that I would consult a dozen times a day. Twenty times a day maybe a hundred times a day. I again I might have only posted once or twice but if something was really you know if the news cycle was really churning I might be looking at this this my consulting of this this news feed effectively um was interrupting my day.
You know not just every hour but maybe every five minutes of many hours right or for ten minutes of that hour and and so it was segmenting my day however good that day or productive that day was or should have been. I was constantly chopping it up by how I was engaging with this scroll.
Again mostly consuming but you know often in response to the one or two things I had put out. Um, yes, there was a dopamineeric component to that. Obviously, you know, I said something that I thought was clever that was perceived as clever by my fans, you know, and perhaps to the detriment of my enemies. And, you know, that all that seemed, you know, exactly what it what I wanted in the moment. But even when it was at its best, right, even when there was just good information coming to me and I was responding it happily with good information back, even the even the non-toxic version of it was a a style of, was intrinsically fragmenting of my life.
You know, it's lik
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tl;dr;ai :
Sam Harris describes his cautious use of Twitter, averaging three tweets daily, treating posts like careful writing to avoid regret. Despite this, Twitter negatively impacted his life, acting as a "digital serpent" that fragmented his day with constant checking, even if only consuming content. This disrupted productive time and family interactions, with the platform's addictive nature providing dopamine hits from positive feedback. Even non-toxic engagement broke his focus, unlike the sustained at
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Bovine shiat (Score:2, Insightful)
can be private, robust and effective
Utter bullsh*t. This is about obliterating privacy and escalated monitoring. This "IT'S FOR THE KIDS" BS fools nobody.
This isn’t a conspiracy anymore. (Score:3)
can be private, robust and effective
Utter bullsh*t. This is about obliterating privacy and escalated monitoring. This "IT'S FOR THE KIDS" BS fools nobody.
I wonder how you would feel after losing a child or other loved one to suicide. After finding out it was the insanity of social media pressure that drove an undeveloped mind to seek that out as the ultimate “answer”. With digital peer pressure.
No. I do not wish that upon my worst enemy. Nor have I had to endure that pain myself. I just wonder what it would take. For you to see the bigger picture. I’m all for fighting for privacy, but to dismiss this as nothing in relation to child ha
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I wonder how you would feel after losing a child or other loved one to suicide.
It would suck - sure - but as an argument in favour of everyone surrendering their privacy "for the kids!" - It's just plain wrong.
People die. Every day. In a milliion different ways. That's life. It's not an argument in support of totalitarian abuse.
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"People die. Every day. In a milliion different ways. That's life."
Yeah, so lets just close all hospitals then and get rid of medicines while we're at it, lets not try and prevent any harm or save lives.
You probably think you sound like some no nonsense shoot from the hip realist, but you actually just come across as an ignorant twat.
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lets not try and prevent any harm or save lives.
False equivalence and very much a puerile response. Feelings aren't facts and conflating the two speaks to a deeper issue.
Go ahead and surrender you personal agency any way you like, for whatever manufactured reason you prefer. Does not make your reasoning sound or rational.
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Re:This isn't a conspiracy anymore. (Score:2)
Oh please. Screeching out a "Won't somebody PLEASE think of the children?" has been the favorite tactic of bullies authoritarians literally for as long as I can remember. "Oh, the nerdy kids are making friends with each other and playing Dungeons and Dragons? Well now, we can't have that. I know, let's tell everyone that D&D turns kids into virgin-sacrificing, blood-drinking satanists so we can ban it!" was followed up only very shortly after by Tipper Gore's crusade against heavy metal (more satanic
Says someone who doesn't have kids (Score:1)
When you've grown up get back to us.
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Being a parent doesn't grant you magical super-powers. Quite the contrary.
Parents making the entire universe responsible for correcting their garbage parenting are not a great argument in favour of totalitarian abuse.
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This ban would mean kids find other, more hidden way to communicate online. It would mean it's harder for a kid to ask for help when something bad is happ
Re: Says someone who doesn't have kids (Score:2)
As a teacher, in my experience, if some of the kids have it, it will create pressure for more to have it. Remove it from everyone cuts down on it for everyone.
Moreover, in my experience, you are exceedingly rare parent. Exceedingly! The big majority of parents I need do not see any problems, and those who do frequently think the solution is too hard (because it requires them modulating their own social media use).
The social media companies are designing their products to undermine responsible use on behalf
Shit excuses, are shit. (Score:2)
Australia's world-first social media ban for under-16s moved closer to implementation after a key trial found that checking a user's age is technologically possible and can be integrated into existing services.
This reads as if Australia as a nation was too stupid to grasp the technology behind user authentication, and only finally started to understand that concept after a legal trial.
Really? You needed a trial to out the corrupt greed of the tech elite lying about protecting revenue streams? Give me a fucking break.
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The trial involved getting kids to take a photo and having an AI calculate their age. Needless to say, I'm skeptical
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Ah, I see. We'll do what we did with alcohol, cigarettes, porn, drugs, guns, and etc... that will show them. /s
Australia has shown that their politicians are just as stupid as the rest of the world. We pass a law pretending that we are doing something about it. We make is someone else's problem.
I'm not saying this because I agree with these companies. I avoid social media. It's just drivel and a fake and lazy method of keeping in touch.
I'm saying this because we are eliminating what works and pretending tha
Uninforcable .... (Score:3)
As always any government that thinks this is in any way enforceable is deluded ...and it will likely exclude people from social media
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It doesn't really matter if it's not 100% enforceable - it needs to catch most kids, and that's already a massive 'win'. Sure, if they could get every single one, then that might be better, but in any policy, there are always outliers, and so a few kids getting social media when they shouldn't is pretty much inevitable. As for excluding people... how socially important is getting onto social media? I don't know, but I don't imagine it ranks terribly highly.
I'd personally like the law in my country to say th
Non paywalled link (Score:2)
Seems pretty weird. You make a peace sign, then a closed fist, and the camera somehow knows how old you are.
They went to the safe space for LGBTQ+ children under 16 place, and the Neurodivergent - Isn't everyone neurodivergent now?
Apparently they aren't worried about the poor children without hands.
All that said, this seems pretty easy to beat.
One thing that is likely an issue is that after protecting children from Facebook, they might just find their way to som
16 is still too young (Score:3)
16 is still too young. In my opinion, Meta products, TikTok and the like should be banned for anyone under 375 years old.
We heard that before (Score:2)
"Age assurance can be done in Australia and can be private, robust and effective,"
Famous last words.
Biometrics on the Barbie: Age-gating Down Under (Score:2)
When I was 16 (full disclosure: that was during the Carter administration), I managed to fake my driver’s license just well enough to pass. All it took was a little patience, a magic marker, some cheap plastic from the hobby shop, and five minutes alone with the Xerox 6500 color copier in the graphic design office where I worked summers.
Sure, the tech landscape has changed—but the ease of identity spoofing has only increased. In the internet age, tech-savvy teens don’t need art supplies; t