Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws (opens in new tab)

How many under 16s read newspapers or watch news anyway?

All you need to do is look up the mental health stats since the iPhone release to see why parents are massively concerned. There has never been a time when an alert parent didn’t have a fair idea of what info a kid was exposed to. This is why going to university is such an awakening.

Now the parents basically need a background in infosec to stop their kids accessing hardcore porn, violence and other mind bending content. That only works in your household. Do you stop play dates? Single your kids out as weird by banning all device use?

Societal norms do not move at the speed of technology, so regulation needs to be applied unless there’s another alternative.

> Every single Australian's ID will have to be verified (in order to confirm their age). > > Depending on the degree of cooperation (/coercion) the Australian government has with social media companies, the Aus Govt will be able to access citizen social media data with relative ease. So no more pseudo anonymous accounts (or, at least, they'll be made more difficult, especially for non-technical folk).

This isn't a given. It is quite possible to build a reasonably anonymous system to verify age at signup.

As a simplified model: the government creates a website where with your government id/login, they will give you an age-verification-valid-for-5-minutes token - basically just "holder is 16+" signed with their signature & the current time. Websites request a new valid token at signup. End result is that government only knows you're _maybe_ doing _something_ 16+, and the website doesn't know who you are, just that you're old enough (this is clearly improveable, it's just a basic example).

Whether anything like this will be implemented is a hard question of course. The current alternatives I've seen seem to be a fully privatised version of this, where a private company has a video call where you hold up your ID - that eliminates the government, but seems like a whole bunch of privacy concerns in itself too (not to mention being wildly inefficient & probably not very reliable).

> My personal hunch is legacy media is largely driving this, due to them seeing the writing on the wall and knowing 'social media' is their biggest threat

For anyone that thinks this is tin foil hat stuff, remember the Australian government passed a law that Facebook and Google MUST pay Rupert Murdoch money everytime someone clicks a link on one of those sites to a Rupert Murdoch owned media company (basically all of them).

Yes, really. It only applies to Google and Facebook, and money must be paid to only Rupert Murdoch.

Utterly lost the plot.

> the Aus Govt will be able to access citizen social media data with relative ease. So no more pseudo anonymous accounts

This isn't necessarily true.

It came as a surprise to me, but many "Government Digital ID" systems use Verifiable Credentials[1][2] and Decentralized Identifiers[3].

I live in BC, Canada. I have installed the BC Wallet app[4] which is open source code[5].

With the BC Wallet app, I can create an account using my BC drivers license.

Then I can interact with any third-party app that uses the BC Wallet as an authentication system. If the only thing this app wants to do is confirm my age, it can ask me to reveal my age. I reveal my age (the only piece of data I am choosing to reveal), and the app now knows and can trust (as long as it trusts the BC Wallet) that this is my age.

And the BC Wallet app servers/government never know when I am using the BC Wallet app.

Turns out the future may not be as dystopian as we once thought it may be.

EDIT:

I see now from the article the following:

> Social media companies also won't be able to force users to provide government identification, including the Digital ID, to assess their age.

What could have been privacy preserving seems like it won't be.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verifiable_credentials [2] https://www.w3.org/TR/vc-overview/ [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_identifier [4] https://digital.gov.bc.ca/digital-trust/digital-credentials/... [5] https://github.com/bcgov/bc-wallet-mobile

> My personal hunch is legacy media is largely driving this, due to them seeing the writing on the wall and knowing 'social media' is their biggest threat. If young people get their information from sites like bluesky, twitter, podcasts and reddit, they may never watch a mainstream news program or read an online newspaper. Bad for business. This measure is a great way of eradicating some competition.

I wonder, I often see legacy media companies complain about how "new age" media (podcasts, social media, etc) is taking over. Social media has been prominent for at least a decade now and so have Podcasts. Why have so few legacy media companies looked at the writing on the wall and invest in the "new age" media instead of complaining about how it's eating at their business.

I would say NYT is one of the only media org's I've seen execute on this.

EDIT: I thought about my question a bit more and my answer for why they haven't is a "new age" media org would look very different from a traditional media org. But that just brings me back to: THEY HAD OVER A DECADE TO ADJUST.

It doesn’t say that?

“Social media companies also won't be able to force users to provide government identification, including the Digital ID, to assess their age.”

Why would you have to jump to the conclusion that identity verification is required to implement this law? The simple existence of this law:

- Requires social media companies to implement rules to prevent <16 to sign up/sign in -- the onus is on them to find the solution, not on the gvt

- Enables parents to tell their <16 kids that social media is illegal

- Will likely drive a number of <16 kids to sign out (not all of them of course, but a bunch)

BigTech has been slapped in the face enough in EU to take this kind of law seriously.

It baffles me that they've gained so much power in the collective consciousness that any law that restricts their usage would have to be implemented by someone else.

I don't think you need to express any hunches when some sleuthing will reveal the interest/lobby groups, organizations, and politicians and their connections etc that pushed or advocated for this legislation.

That said, your legacy media hunch also doesn't make any sense because this writing on the wall and social media being a threat has been a thing for over twenty years now; they have fully embraced and integrated social media, and have filed lawsuits to get money from them: [0] says Rupert Murdoch's News Corp will get paid by Facebook for News Corp content, specifically in australia but this goes / went on everywhere.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/mar/16/rupert-murdoch...

So you think that legacy media is behind this because if they could just get that pesky social media banned, those kids would shell out their allowance money to The Economist or The Washington Post? Do you know what Overwatch is? Minecraft? League of Legends?

Or maybe, just maybe, social media sites will be all too happy to gobble up the sweet sweet DATA available from an ID requirement. In the US, this would give social media access to your full name, DOB, address, height/weight/any medical restrictions, and organ donor status, which social media giants will package with all the other stuff they know about you and sell insights to any advertiser or government that flashes cash.

This has nothing to do with legacy media, that's not a threat for this age group.

This has everything to do with the mental damage inflicted by social media on developing minds, many of which end in suicide.

> Every single Australian's ID will have to be verified

Keep in mind all Australians got those IDs from the government in the first place...

Australia was already fucked more than the U.S. before that regarding Police state status... But all world states are walking toward this

Australians with dual citizenship have an out at least.

I would like to see some evidence before I buy this conspiracy theory. If anything, I feel like legacy media is too lazy and entrenched to even consider this

> My personal hunch is legacy media is largely driving this

The level of conspiracy theory about the “mainstream media” feels out of control at times. Legacy media’s control over the population is already gone (as you stated), with what leverage would they be forcing this?

Occam’s Razor: voters are genuinely concerned about the effect social media is having on kids. As a parent I hear about these concerns a lot. That is what is driving this, no matter how badly thought out the implementation is.

Bad for business, and arguably, the world.

>Much more effective, IMO, would be to legislate the way social networks behave. Stop their most addictive patterns.

We are less likely to change behavioral pattern after that period though, like we probably won’t see someone start to smoke at 45. It doesn’t mean it’s impossible of course, but past that age it looks like brains are already on track to become old reactionaries and generate complaints about how things used to be better before.

> Stop their most addictive patterns.

Which are? While it's easy to say things like "oh, infinite scroll is addictive" or "autoplaying videos are addictive", those are only the most obvious ones; (social) media addiction comes in many forms. Old Reddit didn't have infinite scroll and you had to click to open items, but would you argue it wasn't addictive anyways? IRC style chat, news groups and forums didn't have any of the obvious dark addictive patterns we associate with harmful social media nowadays, but we still whiled away the hours on them regardless.

I don't think it'd be as straightforward as banning certain practices. Besides, it'd be a game of whack-a-mole since for every legislation they'll find a way around it, or make it so that the users clamor to bring it back - take the EU privacy directive, it told companies they needed user permissions first. But they - the companies, not the EU or the laws - implemented it in the most obnoxious and harmful way possible to spite their own users and hopefully annoy them so much that they would either just hit accept, or vote the lawmakers out in favor of more economically liberal people.

Easiest way it to limit Ads.

If you are selling more ads than there are minutes in a day * population some large enough group is getting mind fucked.

I think the execution is bad because I don’t know how it’s going to be enforced. It explicitly says you can’t use government ID.

Much more effective, if it were ever able to actually pass. Which it won’t within reasonable time.

Time for drastic measures.

Governments should not be in the business of telling tech companies how to design software.

Honest observers will look back on the anti-social-media movement as a moral panic. It isn't so much that social media is good, it's that the proper attitude toward new, scary things is to integrate them into your life in a healthy way rather than banning them.

And if we should ban anything it's drugs and gambling, not tiktok

I agree with you that changing the behaviour of the networks would be better, but what actions does a state like Australia really have here?

If they just say, "change", it must be backed up by a threat -- "we will fine you" or "we will ban you" are, I think, the most obvious threats available to a state.

But fines can be tricky to exact across borders, especially with bigger states, and if Australia says "change or we'll ban you later", the networks may play chicken and deal with it later, when the threat is real.

Starting with "you're banned" means it's painful now, and it's on the networks to prove they've changed and win a way back in, if they care. They might suddenly be willing to listen to how they need to change to get back in, and get that work done.

I'm not really in favour of bans on access to information or networks of people communicating, but a(n effective) ban does seem like a potentially effective tool to motivate action, even if it lacks nuance and doesn't solve the real problems.

I say "an effective" ban there because, come on, if it's just an age verifier then teenagers will figure it out and the whole thing is toothless, not ruthless.

i find it unfortunate that just because the ‘masses’ are on the internet now, everyone wants to play nanny and govern exactly how you design your website

Good luck with that, these companies weight more than most countries. Meta &co won't disclose their secret sauce and/or change their algorithms because a small country asked politely.

Social medias are like petrol, we're addicted and they provide way too much power to the people controlling them, we all know what the right moves are but nobody will pull the trigger.

Well when then fuck are social media companies going to take their responsibility seriously?

This is a trend in lawmaking in Australia, and it's seriously damaging. It's basically written so the Government's Minister of Communications gets to decide who to directly target (or not target) with the law.

Basically allows them to arbitarily apply the law to some parties and not others, with no right of appeal. That does lead to potential constitutionality concerns, but it would take years for it to be struck down if so, if a service is affected and eventually gets it before the High Court.

> He says the legislation is just an under defined word salad

This might be on purpose. I've heard many say online that this law is sold as "save the children" but is designed to be used to get everyone to provide ID when they go/public/message online.

> He can’t even advise if some video game developers he represents’ multiplayer games are exempt from the ban

Bad for video game dev's business, and great for lawyers! The interpretation of the law will get clarified by many lawsuits (costing businesses a lot).

What about spirit of the law vs letter of the law?

I haven't read it, but if it follows their previous efforts it will say what they want to happen (which is: get kids off social media), without saying how it will be done. Until the discussion this bill generated the "get kids off social media" meme had fairly broad support. In the currency of the pollies, this translates to "vote winner". Australia has already banned mobile phones at schools, and that looks to be a achieved roughly what everyone though it would. Maybe they expected this to go the same way.

It hasn't. Now the idea has been floated (and the bill passed!) discussion has inevitably turned to "how do we do this". It was the mental heath professionals (of all people) that first voiced objections. Apparently, social media is the main way kids connect with them. Which is kinda obvious if you think about it, because either the family or school seeks help on their behalf, or it's the family / school that's the problem in which case they need to seek help without them knowing.

Next, when it became obvious they were going ahead, where the discussions on how it would be implemented. To give you an idea of how that's panning out, the minister has said kids won't be prosecuted for using social media and just recently said the federal government ID schemes won't be used. Instead the minister said "the platforms will use their existing mechanisms".

If that happens it could end up being a nothing burger. The big platforms already have checkboxes asking "are you over 16" or whatever.

Regardless, they have passed the legalisation now, and the election is coming up soon. It's effects, if any, won't become evident for a year or two. That means they will be able proudly point to it during the election and say "look what we have done for the kids". As one prime minister explained show particularly bad decisions he made at the time "it was just retail politics".

"He can’t even advise if some video game developers he represents’ multiplayer games are exempt from the ban"

There are a lot of issues with this legislation, but I'm not sure this is one of them. Games like Roblox are so exploitative, they're probably worse for children than most social media.

See, for example: https://www.eurogamer.net/roblox-exploiting-young-game-devel...

I’m not sure how I’m going to be able to sleep tonight knowing the child exploitation industry is experiencing an existential crisis.

I have tried to find good scientific evidence that shows that social media is a net negative for kids and or adults. I have been unable to do so.

Reports that I read on conventional media sites often summarize government reports, but they do so incorrectly. And when I go and read the government reports, they present a much more balanced picture than the summaries would suggest. In particular, for marginalized teens, social media represents a unique avenue to connect with teens in similar situations, which provides a significant support network.

I know it's popular now to say that social media is the root of all evil, but I would be very curious to see a scientific justification for banning it for kids under 16. Just a few years ago, this was a concern presented as 'screen time', but I had similar problems there. There's no real evidence to suggest that looking at a screen is the problem...the much more difficult and interesting problem is what you're doing when you're looking at the screen. There's a similar dynamic in play with social media, I think.

For example, Hacker News is the only social media that I use, and I feel that I use it very differently than folks that use Instagram, for example. Can they be effectively conflated?

Parents should be more responsible. That's it. This measure is, potentially, deeply ingraining the (terrible) idea that the State is responsible instead, so when all these young kids have children, they, just as their parents, will lack the ability to take responsibility and make their children more responsible by proxy, and so on, and so forth. It's a never ending cycle that is perpetuated by not tackling the problem at its real source. And let's not forget how measures taken in the name of security are oftentimes actually made to deprive us of our privacy.

The Anxious Generation is poorly researched pop science book that people believe to be true because it feels intuitively right to them.

> Surely the problem of verifying a property of someone (the Boolean of “is over X age”) without sharing further details, is a surmountable problem given all the cryptographic technologies at our disposal.

Only if preserving privacy is the goal and I'm sure we both know it isn't.

The information theory problem is how to do so without creating a government ledger of every platform that every person uses, and a government kill switch to disable any platform the government doesn’t like.

Indeed, the challenge is already resolved in Europe by eID/EIDAS in a privacy respecting way, so the technology exists and it's already proven on a large scale.

My issue with this idealistic and understandable perspective is that it completely ignores all historical precedent in the modern age. That is to say: if you think the government is going to use this as anything other than an opportunity to turn all those little dots on the GPS tracker into fully-authenticated names and profiles they can keep tabs on 24/7, I have a bridge to sell you.

And if you think the third parties they contract out the tracking to won’t sell that info/access for profit, I have some magic beans as well.

I support keeping kids protected. I’m just not naive enough to think the current governments of the world have any interest in achieving that goal while maintaining any semblance of privacy for their citizens.

> is a surmountable problem given all the cryptographic technologies at our disposal

I'm genuinely curious, is it? I don't know enough to be sure one way or the other, how you'd do it with some kind of private/public key thing or whatever. Can anyone here provide a quick example?

And I'm assuming it would involve some kind of code generated on the spot just for you, so somebody couldn't just post a code on the internet for all teens to use.

Frankly I want Australia to go ahead with this law so the rest of us can have a test case for it. If it works well we can copy it with tweaks. If not, then we know to seek other options.

That book is nice example of a case "if you have a hammer you want to push, everything looks like a nail".

i would prefer if we didn’t decide policy based on pop-sci books.

Yeah I don't understand the particular revulsion to showing ID here. The concept of showing your ID to get access to something is very well embedded across alcohol, driving, cigarettes, your myGov account, Medicare, air travel, all sorts.

"Ban social media for everyone because it might be bad for some kids" is as fragile as an argument as "ban guns for everyone because some bad guy might get his hands on one."

Here in Australia we teach kids real bicycling skills like how to socially share bets with their friends on the Sportsbet app for Tour de France 2025.[1][2] Thankfully this bill doesn't restrict Australian kids from learning these important life lessons every few minutes within a 10 hour long loop of Baby Shark.

[1] https://www.sportsbet.com.au/betting/cycling/tour-de-france/...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrTFl1gKEuk

Right. Let's do the same for drugs.

Irony aside, these platforms are addictive and polarizing by design. I doubt a little test will change anything.

It's a bit difficult to tell from your comment what you meant by "Not that it matters much in a car-centric country". Do you mean that Austria is "car-centric"? Or that it isn't?

I grew up in America, Colorado to be more specific, and rode a bicycle all over my neighborhood (where there wasn't that much traffic) as a 7-12 year-old. Later, I biked to work in Chia-yi, Taiwan, where there was a bit more car traffic and then still later I did so from Mountain View to Palo Alto, when there was still more. In all cases, I found it very useful to be familiar with traffic rules!

> as the problem seems to be general conduct in social media

is that the problem? I'd have thought the problem is more about the ill effects of social media on children, not the children's behavior on said social media.

This sounds like a good idea, at least actively educate them about the psychological game they may choose to play

This is a genuinely relevant question given that HN could be easily argued to be social media. For the record, I too am concerned about social media impact and so on ( for good and valid reasons ), but this law does not seem that great at first glance.

I think messaging apps are exempted so hopefully online communities in places like Discord will be perfectly fine

Any and all kids in rural areas.

Experience deprivation is a very real thing. I grew up in a desolate rural area, circa the 1980s and 1990s. The Internet - WebChatBroadcasting, ICQ, IRC, etc - was like a gift from the gods in the early 1990s.

Cutting off young teens from access to the world via 'social media,' is a human rights violation.

>immediately concerned with the leftist recruiting ring that social media had become, being compromised. I've already trawled your internet presence enough to know you're an activist. you're revolting.

> My thoughts immediately go to all the queer kids in rural areas who stand to be cut off from the only support networks they have

I shared those concerns at first - as that was similar to my situation (though less lgbt+ but more just on-the-spectrum stuff), but if the article is correct then I find myself strongly in support (so-far...): my impression is that this is targeting the kinds of vacuous mass-market "engagement"-driven social-media services that us HN denizens aren't exactly fans of: Facebook, Instagram, the like. The article says that sites like YouTube and IM services are exempt.

> Messaging apps, "online gaming services" and "services with the primary purpose of supporting the health and education of end-users" will not fall under the ban, as well as sites like YouTube that do not require users to log in to access the platform.

-----

For an anecdote: when I was middle-school-aged and unsupervised on the net, the "mainstream" platforms of the day (AOL Groups, I guess?) were just as unappealing then as Facebook is today (fortunately I wasn't on AOL anyway) - instead I found my home in places you get to via IRC - or extremely niche phpNuke-then-phpBB sites: these places aren't run by companies, just basement-dwelling sysadmins so they'd be exempt I imagine, so it doesn't look like any harm will come to those kinds of places.

For those youngsters-that-dont-fit-in starting their journey of self-discovery, I think getting banned from Facebook is a good start. Who wants their parents (and let's be honest: it's only our parents on Facebook now anyway) to get notified about your joining a cybergoth meetup group.

...now if only we could ban everyone else off Facebook too.

> You wouldn't allow your child to walk up to random strangers in the street without you there

This applies to under 16 year olds though, not little children but adolescents. I would hope that every parent of teenagers allows them to talk to random people on the street.

This is the most horrifying thing in all of this. People with a prison guard mentality are already thinking how to enforce the rules in an even stricter way. Rules that are violating freedom of information, one of the most basics Western freedoms. Yes, there are no repreciations for the violating them at first, the frog is getting boiled slowly, but give it a few years and people who let their child use social media will be treated as criminals and put in prisons. Everything "for the sake of children."

Back in the 90's we were somewhat supervised when using the internet on the family PC. We were also somewhat supervised while watching the family TV.

The benefit of allowing one nerdy kid unrestricted access to the internet is often larger than literally hundreds of people “harmed” by that very same access.

Trying to kill the pipeline for creating the “hacker” mentality that folks here are supposed to have is supreme level bootlicking. I hope you eventually find it disgusting.

> And even worse is if some actor out there starts catering to kids by publishing "proxy services".

How long until this happens and there's a big paedophilia scare so I can point and laugh at everyone involved?

This is where kids might flock to decentralized options like Mastadon or something.

Some will but at population scale any barrier will decrease usage.

I've recently been teaching kids to code (in Aus) - 7 year olds already know about VPNs, and use them to circumvent various roadblocks to playing roblox!

According to recent studies kids don't know what a file or a folder is and can't even copy/paste anymore, I think we have a good margin.

Until they ban VPNs. Moral panics acknowledge no bounds of sanity.

What we'll learn first is how schools use the new law as a tool for limiting device access in general and kids spend 8 hours a day reliving Gen-X.

Apparently the gov has been setting up their own system for that:

https://www.esafety.gov.au/newsroom/media-releases/statement...

Careful there, you've potentially just thought about this more deeply than any of the politicians in our Parliament has...

The key feedback that was unaniamous from all the experts that managed to reply to the Government's 24-hour consultation period was that they all agreed a blanket ban is the worst way to approach the platform (they were all ignored by all but a few Senators).

An interesting part of the ban is that kids will be banned from Instagram, but sites like 4chan (and ovbiously anything on the dark web, which teens might now be more motivated to access) will be out of the reach of it...

Nice of you to volunteer others as experimental subjects.

We have taken such steps in many areas now, and it simply does not work. We can keep trying this old, tired method, but it does not work. I do not want ID verification for the Internet either, to be honest.

> kids will find ways to bypass these protections.

But this is a change in law. Yes kids will easily be able to access social media if they want to, but it will be illegal and punishable.

The fact that kids are going to circumvent the rules means that it's going to be a wild back and forth between companies and the courts when they do.

could you share the clear causal evidence?

There’s a difference between screen time and social media usage.

    (i) the sole purpose, or a significant purpose, of the service is to enable online social interaction between 2 or more end-users;
    (ii) the service allows end-users to link to, or interact with, some or all of the other end-users;
    (iii) the service allows end-users to post material on the service;

Linked to the legislation in another comment.

Interesting. My kids aren't allowed on social media, and they're happier and less moody than their friends who are addicted to it. They see it, and don't even want social media anymore because their friends spend so much time on their phones rather than being present and having real experiences.

I don't think I would wish social media on any child, though I believe it's a problem that can be solved not by more laws, but by better parenting.

It wasn't that long ago that Americans were calling TikTok a "Chinese weapon of war and mass indoctrination" and wanting it banned.

To say nothing of everyone wanting Section 230 repealed and the government to regulate social media, requiring a court order for moderation, banning "algorithms" or making social media entirely illegal. The attitude behind this is absolutely endemic across the "free world." Australia is simply a bit further ahead of the curve as far as turning the moral panic over pedos and groomers and Chinese mind control into authoritarian action. As soon as the new regime gets settled in the US I'm sure we'll see something similar. Musk has already made vague threats along those lines.

I'm excited to see the outcomes. Hats off to Australia for engaging in this experiment.

One unique aspect of social media, as opposed to, say, porn, is it's reliance on network effects. Sure, maybe 25% of kids will use a VPN and log on, but if most of your friends don't care enough to spend their allowance on a VPN, then what's the point?

The Online Safety Act 2021 (https://www.legislation.gov.au/C2021A00076/latest/text) says:

(1) For the purposes of this Act, social media service means: (a) an electronic service that satisfies the following conditions: (i) the sole or primary purpose of the service is to enable online social interaction between 2 or more end‑users; (ii) the service allows end‑users to link to, or interact with, some or all of the other end‑users; (iii) the service allows end‑users to post material on the service; (iv) such other conditions (if any) as are set out in the legislative rules; or (b) an electronic service specified in the legislative rules; but does not include an exempt service (as defined by subsection (4)). Note: Online social interaction does not include (for example) online business interaction.

Since "business interaction" is mentioned as an example of something that is not "social interaction" one might plausibly claim that "social interaction" should be interpreted quite narrowly, and then one could claim both that the primary purpose of HN is not interaction at all (it's a new aggregator) and that any interaction that does happen to take place in the comments is not "social" interaction but some other kind of interaction.

(It really does say "2 or more" rather than "two or more".)

This was rushed through with a public comment period of 24 hours.

It's going to be a mess, while the spirit is well intentioned it has edge cases up the wazoo, foot guns galore, and stinks of back door government ID for adults.

Pretty much the only media outlet in Australia that stood up with questions and non fawning commentary was Crikey:

eg: https://www.crikey.com.au/2024/11/26/teen-social-media-ban-s...

and: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Acrikey.com.au+social+...

This was deeply rooted in traditional media ( Murdoch News et al ) in AU putting pressure on the Government in AU to take action against Facebook & Co. after the ceasation of payments for linking to news media.

https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/bi... (explanatory memorandum here: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/em...)

And the amendment to the first reading which was agreed to today which has the bits about ID verification being disallowed: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/am... (supplementary explanatory memorandum here: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/em...)

It's vibes based - the definitions could cover almost any online service, but the Minister of Communications gets to decide who will be targeted.

They have zero detail on how to verify anybody's age. But massive fines if the tech companies fail. Basically the only reliable way to do it would be to ID everyone, but then they had to sort of mostly rule that out in a rushed amendment yesterday to get it past the Conservatives (Liberal/National Party) because they neeed their votes in the Senate.

So basically they're asking tech companies to come up with magical technology to perfectly know how old someone is without any identification.

This is not true. We have a technological tool to block all of that connected future if we want to. It's called "government" and it can even choose to destroy all landlines, jam all satellite signals en fire Rockets at satellites that want to fly over their land while connecting to people on the ground. This IS an option. Maybe not the best or simplest...

> I think parents and schools need to change the role they play.

It's not that I directly disagree, but honestly I don't think parents and schools have much of a fighting chance against companies like TikTok, SnapChat YouTube or Facebook. We need to create rules that prevent companies from employing addictive algorithms which locks users in cycles of endless mind numbing doom scrolling. Once the social media companies have changed their "algorithms" and recommendation engines or removed them entirely, then we can start talking about what parents and schools can do.

What changes are you recommending?

Nothing unstoppable about it. It’s about as straightforward and controlling access to tobacco or alcohol.

Facebook does business in Australia. They sell ads.

"Simply" If you're making money from aussie customers, you need to comply to aussie rules

I think it's safe to say that, in under-16s, cyberbullying and susceptibility to intentionally addictive social media algorithms are a bit more of a common problem than revolutionary activities. Any would-be Che Guevaras can put in the time arousing the working class in person until such time as they can grow facial hair.

Rising up violently to protect my child's right to scroll mindless on TikTok for hours? No. Social media today is unrecognisable to the internet that you, or I grew up with.

Children will always network, and share ideas and form community. They don't need to do it on a platform designed to exploit as much of their attention as possible as a way to sell advertisements.

I think children should be able to congregate safely online. If you think a meta-owned platform is a good place to do that, I've got bad news for you.

I think a lot of my generation owes a lot to the internet during our formative years too, but the idea that Meta offers anything other than a curated stream of addictive ragebait nowadays is for the birds. Maybe this ban will encourage teenagers to hang out in less corporately owned spaces online. I can hope.

An outright ban probably won't work, but it sends a signal that perhaps society needs to use the internet better to be a benefit.

Sorry, but it’s rubbish.

Are you saying that all the people who were 16 and grew up without social media had no social connections? Didn’t form strong bonds with their peers?

Social media is absolutely terrible for kids. Social media absolutely destroyed social skills in teens.

You may also be just the right age to have had access to an internet less dominated by doomscrolling and bullying.

Opposing a social media law “violently” is not an appropriate call to action. That said, the web of yesteryear and the way kids use social media today could not be any more different. Kids mindlessly scrolling through oceans of vanity, teen girls with more and more suicidal, being stuck in the high-school bullying social environment 24/7. The laws are a response to a real issue — especially as parents themselves get addicted / stuck in the same ways. They have kids and are rightfully fearful. I grew up in the same awesome web, but it sucks now, commercialized and tapped for every last cent it can produce.

But talking about "social media":

When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you.

The main point here is probably to force ID control and have a constant flux of fully identified users on the networks ?

The gov gets at least full legal check of any SNS account.

jinx

It is not possible aside from getting everyone an internet ID, which most will probably reject for good reason.

Governments should not get this power. This is the basic tenet that separation of powers is based on. The only measure that helps is to just take away the means.

I am uncertain it will go global at all or go very far even in Australia as there are at least some companies that try to benefit their customers. And there still is the private web anyway that isn't affected.

Australia should be made fun off for their attempts, it isn't their first rodeo.

I don't have a horse in this race but in my opinion a more graceful way to deal with this is to freeze the account until the under-16 is over-16 so they don't lose their friend connections, history, etc... The under 16 should have time to add a comment saying how to contact them otherwise. Discord group, etc... There must be a reason to remove the account that I can not see.

Leisure Suit Larry was ahead of its time with its age verification system.

> The legislation is vague on the technical details, although it does specifically mandate that platforms cannot use government-issued ID of any kind (including digital ID).

That's unexpectedly sane from a law like this. Hopefully they can figure out some zero-knowledge proof of age. (But then there's nothing stopping adults from creating and selling proof values to kids.)

How do they plan on verifying age without using a government id?

I actually see this as potentially damaging to society. "It's against the law for you to use any website that lets you look at cat pictures and make any contact with anybody else" is so silly that kids are going to see right through that, and rightly not care about following it. So they're going to have less respect for the rule of law generally...

I'm very big on compentent laws, but also on just not having silly laws. It devalues the whole system...

(I would also wonder how many 14-year olds you know if you think this would work for many, but also I suppose that could be a cultural difference)