What Happens When You Kick Millions of Teens Off Social Media? Australia's About to Find Out (cnn.com) 237
27 million people live in Australia. But there's a big change coming if you're under 16, reports CNN:
From December 10, sites that meet the Australian government's definition of an "age-restricted social media platform" will need to show that they're doing enough to eject or block children under 16 or face fines of up to 49.5 million Australian dollars ($32 million). The list includes Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, Kick, Reddit, Threads, TikTok, Twitch, X, and YouTube...
Meta says it'll start deactivating accounts and blocking new Facebook, Instagram and Threads accounts from December 4. Under-16s are being encouraged to download their content. Snap says users can deactivate their accounts for up to three years, or until they turn 16...
There's another sting in the ban, too, coming at the end of the Australian school year before the summer break in the southern hemisphere. For eight weeks, there'll be no school, no teachers — and no scrolling. For millions of children, it could be the first school break they spend in years without the company of time-killing social media algorithms, or an easy way to contact their friends. Even for parents who support the ban, it could be a very long summer.
"There's every chance that bans will spread..." the article argues. "Other countries around the world are taking notes as Australia explores new territory that some say mirrors safety evolutions of years past — the dawning realization that maybe cars need safety belts, and that perhaps cigarettes should come with some kind of health warning." And according to the Associated Press, Malaysia "has also announced plans to ban social media accounts for children under 16 starting in 2026."
But CNN reports few teenagers in Australia knew about its impending ban on social media, judging by a show of hands at one high school auditorium. Teenagers in the audience had two questions.
Meta says it'll start deactivating accounts and blocking new Facebook, Instagram and Threads accounts from December 4. Under-16s are being encouraged to download their content. Snap says users can deactivate their accounts for up to three years, or until they turn 16...
There's another sting in the ban, too, coming at the end of the Australian school year before the summer break in the southern hemisphere. For eight weeks, there'll be no school, no teachers — and no scrolling. For millions of children, it could be the first school break they spend in years without the company of time-killing social media algorithms, or an easy way to contact their friends. Even for parents who support the ban, it could be a very long summer.
"There's every chance that bans will spread..." the article argues. "Other countries around the world are taking notes as Australia explores new territory that some say mirrors safety evolutions of years past — the dawning realization that maybe cars need safety belts, and that perhaps cigarettes should come with some kind of health warning." And according to the Associated Press, Malaysia "has also announced plans to ban social media accounts for children under 16 starting in 2026."
But CNN reports few teenagers in Australia knew about its impending ban on social media, judging by a show of hands at one high school auditorium. Teenagers in the audience had two questions.
- "Can you get your account back when you turn 16?"
- "What if I lie about my age?"
What happens? (Score:4, Insightful)
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They go somewhere else....
Re:What happens? (Score:4, Insightful)
If they have a phone they'll still be able to send text messages.
The creative ones will figure out ways...
And those that gets isolated will get "creative" and start to make a mess.
Re:What happens? (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder if they'll discover bulletin board systems (BBS) like we used to use before the internet was even a thing.
Seems to me there might be a proliferation of such systems appearing in Oz. I wonder if they could even "import" content from other mainstream social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube etc like FidoNet used to do with usenet postings. Now *that* would be interesting.
Hey... come to think of it, let's just revive usenet and be done with it!
Re:What happens? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What happens? (Score:5, Interesting)
I ran my own BBS back in the day as a teenager. Most of the people on BBSes were there because they had an interest in computers, whereas most of the people on modern social media couldn't care less about the technology and are there to discuss something else. It used to be that you had to have some basic knowledge to get online, now phones come preloaded with the Facebook app.
Basically, the normies/"Eternal Septembers" took over.
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I did too, but mostly as a mechanism to collect passwords and then use them to log into other systems. I was a nasty little shit.
People reusing passwords goes back a long way too.
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USENET coming back as a mainstream communications service may not be a bad thing. I'd like to see it a lot more localized with many local/state/regional groups, because in the past, there was always that specter of the sysadmin banning someone who was naughty from the ISP. Now, that's not really an option. It may even be needed to have quiet moderation on the Big Eight.
I wonder how USENET will combat spam, because it took a lot of stuff bolted onto SMTP to at least slow down the spam problem, and if USEN
Re:What happens? (Score:5, Insightful)
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She wouldn't even take a look at me.
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Re:What happens? (Score:5, Informative)
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Also there's free V
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Really doubt it's going to keep most off.
The average early teenager is an order of magnitude more technologically competent than 99% of politicians, who will soon enough cast blame elsewhere for their epic failure, as politicians always do.
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The average early teenager is an order of magnitude more technologically competent than 99% of politicians, who will soon enough cast blame elsewhere for their epic failure, as politicians always do.
That was true of gen X and millennials. Younger gen Z and all of gen alpha was raised on tablets and barely knows how to use a mouse and keyboard, never mind a VPN. Source: I have a 10 and a 14 year old. I've made sure to teach them some basic skills, but that's not true of many of their peers.
It's like with cars: Up through the 70s and into the 80s, most cars barely worked and you basically had to know how to fix one or know someone who did for it to be useful. Now they are like any other appliance. O
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No.
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We can go down that rabbit hole, but it depends on how tyrannical a government is willing to go. North Korea can slam the screws all the way down to the point of installing client software on devices.
However, can other governments go to those extremes and be effective? Some other states ban VPNs, but one can just use things like SSH to get around that prohibition. This is a cat-and-mouse game that some countries can win... but many cannot, unless they remake the entire Internet.
Re:Not for long they don't (Score:5, Informative)
Michigan has a bill [mi.gov] to ban VPNs where SSH is just another "circumvention tool" that must be blocked too. If SSH works, then your ISP is liable for $125,000 per day until they break it.
No more ports 22 or 443 in Michigan if this passes. No more e-commerce. No more banking. No more encrypted internet for anyone, of any age. Telnet and http-no-s are coming back! (Until someone tunnels through them; then ISPs will have to block those too.)
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Sorry, everyone. My mistake. An ISP which tolerates its users using ssh or https would be liable for $250,000 per day, not $125,000 per day. I realize that in the time since I posted, many of you made the determination "oh, it's not so bad" and bought houses in Michigan, now to be blindsided by that fact that I negligently underestimated the cost by a factor of two. I apologize for the error.
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Yeah. China tried that. The UK too. Does not work. And to make things like the TOR browser illegal is not easy and subject to the Streisand-effect.
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or an easy way to contact their friends.
Along those lines, many of us used to use our telephones to call each other or actually talk to our peers at school to make plans.
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Okay Boomer.
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Reading books, playing sports, visiting friends....all the sort of stuff people did before the internet.
In Melbourne, the early adopters seem to have chosen car-jacking, home invasion and machete crime instead
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First of all the blocking has not even started, so the can not be the cause.
Secondly I doubt they were big users of social media anyway.
And Melbourne has always had a crime issue.
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firstly it was comedy
secondly you obviouslyt never met a teen
and finally - stop watching to Sky News
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I have raised 4 teens
Never watched Sky News, nor Fox, etc.
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It was hyperbole for effect.
The 'youth crime wave' in Victoria has been extensively documented. Melbourne has always been one for organised crime, but it's definitely trending lower age than previously. As to not big users of social media, have you even met a current teenager?
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Simple: They will just learn ways around this ban. And then maybe the surveillance fascist assholes behind it will actually have taught them how to not get spied on later in life.
Mummy I'm bored (Score:2)
Go and tidy your room
Yes, I know there are strange teenagers that have tidy rooms...
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My god, kids will be bored! What will we do? They'll have to learn to entertain themselves and god knows what kind of mischief that will lead to.
You speak with the bias of a person who has experienced a life of multiple hobbies and multiple possibilities and dismiss very legitimate concerns. For people who are actually addicted to shit like social media things can get very nasty indeed.
Bonus points for the article being about Australia, yet another car dependent place with cities designed by morons who produce people in servitude to someone who can take them somewhere for their hobbies. The "go out and play in the park" that would easily apply in ma
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Thats who the legislation is for. Break the damn screen addiction.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Delivering IT education (Score:5, Insightful)
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Or download the TOR browser for zero-configuration and free censorship circumvention. Like people in China do. Good thing too.
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"Or download the TOR browser"
Kids don't know what a browser IS!
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When it is the gate to the world? I think you are underestimating kids. Also note that one kid figuring it out means the while school knows a few days later...
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They'll probably just continue to use whatever they're using now. Kids have been lying about their age on social media to avoid account restrictions longer than any kid today has been alive.
Remember that social media companies are just like any other corporation and couldn't care less about anything other than this quarter's profit. They are going to do the absolute minimum to tick the "doing enough" box without a second's thought toward social responsibility. This is absolutely not going to escalate int
Think of the children... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Think of the children... (Score:5, Insightful)
The argument is social media is bad for kids. Hey, it's bad for adults! Being 30 or 40 doesn't make it any less terrible. I know people my age who keep looking at their phones while at a bar or party or restaurant, as well as people way younger than me who know how to be present now with people who are really around you. Everyone should get off of social media, and refuse to use any "big" services that want to tie you to some national ID database.
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Obviously. Kinds that want to have had access to all of the Internet for a long time and that is not going to change. Negative effects? Quite limited and can be compensated with good parenting.
This is exclusively about surveillance fascists getting their wet dreams implemented.
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'Negative effects? Quite limited'
Source please. There's a lot to suggest it's doing long term damage
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Life is doing long-term damage. You need to stop listening to the propaganda.
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>"Is almost universally not about the children. In this case it's about de-anonymizing the Internet to aid in mass surveillance."
Bingo.
Because the kids will just get their fix on one of the 99.99999999999% of the sites that are NOT being blocked to them.
The problem is that kids SHOULD NOT HAVE UNSUPERVISED ACCESS to devices that can go just anywhere on the Internet in the first place. Or call/message/txt/media to/from any stranger. The devices are the problems. Parents should be parents and give their
What next, ban under-16s from installing Firefox? (Score:3)
Second, isn't Mozilla adding some kind of free web-based VPN to Firefox?
Third, I'd bet on many kids knowing more about the internet and getting around the rules than I trust a bunch of politicians to dream up and enforce those rules.
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They'll learn to run their own instances. At least that's my pipe dream...
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This is a authoritarian power grab and once authoritarians start grabbing power they don't stop.
I don't think it's anything that can be stopped because voters are too distracted by the culture war bullshit.
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Relax, we've been having this exact same discussion since 1994. This slope isn't nearly as slippery as you think.
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First off, kids will just find lesser-known social media sites that aren't blocked. Or they'll all install some free multiplayer mobile game that has public chat and use that to communicate.
I work at a university. Even old me is aware that Discord is used quite a bit by our students. Good luck regulating THAT.
hey kids, go old-school! (Score:2)
there thousands of old-school BBS being run by enthusiasts that would be thrilled to have influx of new accounts and activity. almost none have ads and i am willing to bet zero are affected by “the algorithm.”
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When I was a high school technology teacher I would show the students how to telnet into BBS systems around the world. They were not impressed in the least. Maybe now they will give the tech a second look. Time to dust off my Wildcat diskettes.
I'll tell you what will happen (Score:3)
What always happens when you try to block kids from doing anything: they find a way to do it anyway.
We older folks too were "blocked" from doing stuff as kids, pre- and post-internet, and we too did it anyway. And it actually made us smarter, as we had to devise ways around the obstacle.
Kids are smart. This will just make them smarter.
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Indeed. Blocks and other restrictions by authoritarian assholes do not work on things people want to do. And that goes even more for teens.
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What always happens when you try to block kids from doing anything: they find a way to do it anyway.
We older folks too were "blocked" from doing stuff as kids, pre- and post-internet, and we too did it anyway. And it actually made us smarter, as we had to devise ways around the obstacle.
Kids are smart. This will just make them smarter.
Hold that thought on that last comment until you remember what they’re fighting to access. And then remember why we’re more needing to ban them from that content until the frontal cortex actually hardens a bit more with reality instead of delusion.
Status quo sure as shit ain’t making them smarter making the fucking Idiocracy sequel as a wildlife documentary.
Ok but then what? (Score:2)
Any folks in Australia can describe what social activities for bored teens? At least here in America we've been shutting down the stereotypical things; the malls are dead, movie theaters are expensive and dying.
My town tried to open a skate park and it became a neighborhood controversy, yard signs were erected, multiple meetings had, families were torn apart. Ok I made that one up part up but seriously, we've made the world a bit hostile for teenagers and if you're like many here as well they live in the '
Re:Ok but then what? (Score:4, Funny)
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It's Australia, so maybe they'll just all go walkabout.
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I definitely don't disagree with this as an option it's just very humorously American. Guns, that's our first answer for every problem!
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Arcades are gone.
Extra irony on the fact that many places we are in an arcade renaissance of sorts, there's like 4 in my area, but they're just for adults, they serve booze.
Boomerang gangs (Score:2)
...will spring up and brake windows ... twice!
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...will spring up and brake windows ... twice!
Possibly break them, too.
Simple (Score:2)
All these teens find out how to circumvent laws made by adult assholes. Might be a good thing too.
Everyone will just move to Telegram (Score:2)
If teens can't figure it out... (Score:2)
This will backfire. (Score:2)
Unfortunately the very platforms that kids use to "chat" are the ones with the most protection tools in place. They may not be very good but most of the platforms have some tools. Kids will simply find a means around the block or migrate on mass to other chat tools as they sprint up. Leaving kids even more exposed than before. And with even less oversight for protection.
Kids move fast. Far faster than their parents.
All this law will do is push kids into more and more unregulated spacex with more and bi
I support this (Score:4, Insightful)
Social media companies that use "engagement algorithms" are pure evil. They know their products are harmful [techspot.com] but attempt to hide that fact. Banning them for kids under 16 is a start, but I would like to see this entire business model banned for anyone. It's a scourge on humanity.
Social media platforms like Mastodon that don't use "engagement" algorithms, don't have "sponsored posts", don't show you ads, and have an option so you only see content from accounts you actually follow are fine. The Facebooks, Instagrams and TikToks of the world are evil criminal enterprises that, in a just world, would be shut down and charged with criminal conspiracy.
In my day ... (Score:2)
Now get off my lawn!
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they will start loitering on your lawn when they can no longer spend their days in their room on social media :) :)
stop the bans! (Score:2)
Government blanket bans are never a good thing - this is just a push for compulsory ID so that Australians can be more easily monitored online. It also disenfranchises minorities and indigenous kids who otherwise have no access to their community or culture.
Decentralized services (Score:3)
I bet a large enough number of those kids know enough to know about Fediverse-based services like Mastodon to start spreading the word. Instead of a dozen large social media platforms, the government will be faced with thousands of bulletin-board-sized "services" networked together into a platform that has no single place you can go to deactivate accounts. Controlling that would be a logistical nightmare.
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Looked up details on the wording, and it may not be just a logistical nightmare but a legal impossibility. The law appears to only apply to specific platforms, and no Mastodon servers appear on the list. New instances wouldn't either, so there'd be no legal basis for trying to force them to ban teens.
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Good. Mastodon is a lot less harmful to its users than Facebook is, because it doesn't have algorithms that try to maximize "engagement".
Invest in VPNs (Score:2)
Inevitably some smart kids will invent their own networks. Never trust anyone over 30.
IRC is back baby!!! (Score:3)
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Any company that wants to make significant money in Australia has an office there.
And any company that holds an office in Australia can be called into court.
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No. None of these companies have ever *needed* a physical presence to make significant amounts of money in any given country. They don't offer physical products or services. I'm sure the physical presence makes some things easier, but certainly not necessary. They could simply shutter the Australian offices and tell the courts to go fuck themselves. They wouldn't lose any money long, or short, term.
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Physical presence is not need for advertising to, or from, Australia. Does it make it "easier" to work with other Australian companies? Sure. Is it required to do so? No.
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It's illegal most places to do business with criminal organizations. If not, its easy enough to make it so.
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Refusing to comply with this law in Australia is not the same as being a "criminal organization". Criminal organizations are organizations consisting of individuals who are all criminals. A business that "breaks the law" isn't inherently criminal, just as an individual breaking the law isn't necessarily a criminal - it depends on the type of law being broken. If Meta didn't want to pay, packed up their shit and left, the court cannot prevent Australian companies from still working with Meta just because Met
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All shit they can back out of, if they wanted, instead of wasting their time with this nonsense.
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The world will be far better off for it.
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No risks.
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Re: Crazy (Score:2)
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None of those buildings or employees were ever required to run the company or to allow those countries access to the social media. Could just shut them down and let everyone go, court can't stop them. Court's only response could be to try and force local ISPs to block the offenders, but local ISPs don't have to do it and doesn't prevent VPNs from bypassing it.
Not to mention, all the companies you just mentioned are run and controlled by complete retards that know nothing about conducting good business.
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big social media CEOs are more addicted to gobbling authoritarian cock
True. I never said they were smart or that they had a backbone. They could have both, but none do. They don't even know how to run a business successfully.
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If they do business here, they have an office here, servers here and have legal liabilities here. Just like any business.
All the major social media companies dont just have offices here, they have datacenters, or major presences in data centers, here. More than that, they have clients here, and like any company that gets fined, if they dont pay those fines, the courts just *take* the money.
Don't be naive.
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Which doesn't matter because she has even less power to do anything.