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What the government should be doing is mandating that a social media/drugs literacy course is taught in schools. Kids should fundamentally understand that things are not black or white, good or bad; things are grey. They have upsides and downsides; risks and rewards. Kids should be taught that Social media is a great way to connect with your friends, but you are also susceptible to being influenced/manipulated/addicted in X, Y, Z ways.

I don't think there is a technical way to implement this without privacy issues and potential for future misuse and scope creep.

Government doing parenting instead of the parents never works.

Is anyone talking about the fact that it's the predatory, short-term-quarterly-gains oriented behavior of the platforms themselves which is in fact rampaging though democracies, massively affecting and survielling Adult's behaviors on a loop of ragebait-induced dopamine/seratonin manipulation?

Because Kids are going to connect with one another, on whichever the next platform is that's not banned. What's more, the institutions they attend will inevitably ask them to do so as...things like Youtube arent exactly 100% avoidable.

Pretty pathetic to clamp down on Youth Liberty in a society that has basically none, when centrally-hosted platforms owned by corporate behemoths are all-but-physically trampling the landscape like some kind of fucked up gentrification-glorifying-voiceline-repeating Megazord

Now ban parents posting pictures of their children under 16.

I DGAF about your kids.

Now everyone gets to hand over their ids to the tech companies.

The second i have to hand over my id to a tech company is the second i leave and never come back.

Also how they gonna manage the fediverse? Can someone get fined for providing social media to themselves if an under 16 sets up their own federated instance?

Some mastodon instance has it covered already. https://eigenmagic.net/@daedalus/113519360107067092

ah yea that'll work

This is technically feasible, and bussiness don't need to know your id. If anonymous government certificates are issued.

But I'm morally against it. We need to both educate on the dangers of internet and truly control harmful platforms.

But just locking it is bad for ociety. What happens with kids in shitty families that find in social media (not Facebook, think prime time Tumblr) a way to scape and find that there are people out there not as shitty as their family. Now they are just completely locked to their shitty family until it's too late.

the rules are expected to apply to the likes of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok, per the Prime Minister.

Sites used for education, including YouTube, would be exempt, as are messaging apps like WhatsApp. 

The law does not require users to upload government IDs as part of the verification process.

Sounds like a pretty weak law. It will require a birthday when creating an account and accounts under the age of 16 will be restricted/limited. As a result users (people under 16) will lie about their age.

Companies don't like this because it messes with their data collection. If they collect data that proves an account is under 16 they will be required to make them limited/restricted. However they obviously collect this data already.

I wonder if Facebook and other apps will add/push education elements in order to become exempt.

The fact that people even considered this with a straight face, discussed it and passed it is just indicative how tech illiterate we've become.

The ban and age verification requirements apply to pretty much all services which allow communication of information between people, unless an exemption is granted by the minister.

There is no legislated exemption for instant messaging, SMS, email, email lists, chat rooms, forums, blogs, voice calls, etc.

It's a wildly broadly applicable piece of legislation that seems ripe to be abused in the future, just like we've seen with anti-terror and anti-hate-symbol legislation.

From 63C (1) of the legislation:

For the purposes of this Act, age-restricted social media platform means:

• a) an electronic service that satisfies the following conditions:
  • 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;
  • 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 a service mentioned in subsection (6).

Here's all the detail of what the bill is and the concerns raised in parliament.

China Video Game Ban v2.0: Electric Boogaloo

Parents should be parenting, not delegate their responsibilities to a nanny state.

I support this move. Some here are delusionally arguing that this impacts privacy - the sort of data social media firms collect on teenagers is egregiously extensive regardless. This is good support for their mental health and development.

What they consider as "social media"? Is it every site where you can communicate with others?

This seems fucked if its so.

Pssst! Hey kid, wanna buy some memes?

performative nonsense which does nothing for kids or their mental health and harms queer kids who lose one of the first places they can find community.

For a second I thought the headline said Australia banned social media for 16 seconds 🤣

I feel like every law I see coming out of Australia is just telling their citizens they’re not allowed to do something else mundane. All while the government services get worse, and the corrupt become more entrenched.

What a shithole.

This is just abstinence education all over again

Ah fuck. Canada is likely to copycat this, we love copying Australia's homework. NDP and Cons BOTH already favor this idea except it's also all 18+ websites. Gov ID to wack off. Puritans are on every wing and I wish we could shake them off.

I work tech in schools (in Australia) there are definitely tech savvy enough kids that will probably spool up their own fediverse instances

Papers, please!