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 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.
Roblox already filters out a lot of words, including links (to social media and whatnot especially). They filter so many words they may just shut down the chats entirely.
I have to strongly agree here. Video games are not free from the social media problems that we are trying to free ourselves from. We also have parents and close family that have been caught in outrage nets, and who knows when, if they will ever be free? We know the pipeline for right-wing grifters.
Who doesn't have any taters in the family these days? A literal human trafficker and pimp who has been in prison is giving advice to our youth in droves. More than you will ever know. My family members stopped talking about it, and started complaining about how we can't talk about things anymore once they discovered that outside of their bubble people know what these monsters/grifters actually do.
Here in Austria in fourth grade kids take a little test for their bicycling skill. Not that it matters much in a car-centric country, but people forget that cycling, even in company with a parent, give kids the chance to learn the necessary traffic rules. Why not have something similar for social media or as the problem seems to be general conduct in social media, educate the kids and give them better ways to raise the alarm when things to bad. Just banning kids won't help them much.
> 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.
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!
Yes, this is flawed legislation, and yes kids will find ways to bypass these protections.
But I think this is a step in the right direction. There is clear evidence of the harms caused by social media, especially for adolescents. We have to start trying things - albeit imperfectly - to get to a better place. We can learn a lot from the outcomes of this experiment.
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...
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.
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:
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.
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.
What if the platform is not registered as a business in Australia? You can't fine it if it's not a legal entity there. Simply setup a php Facebook clone and host it in another country.
I can’t get behind a ban because we’re fighting an unstoppable force: the connected future. This is the world we live in and kids will have to “evolve” to their new environment.
I think parents and schools need to change the role they play.
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 was wondering how "social media" was defined. Anyone got a link to the actual bill?
From the article:
> "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.
Almost every "social" apps are basically messaging apps these days. What's the differentiating factor between banned and not banned? Having an algorithmic feed? So YouTube is not banned because its doesn't require users to log in to access the plaform? Can Instagram enable browsing without logging in (and disable some features except DM) to avoid the ban then?
Also, now kids can create YouTube accounts to use shorts as Instagram reels, community posts as Instagram Posts and subscribe to each other. But hey, that's not a "Social media" right?
(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;
The actual law doesn't fully rule it out (there was an amendment to kind-of add that but it's fuzzy so ID could still be part of it).
But it's basically unenforcable without doing ID, it's going to fall in a heap eventually. The Australian Governement talks big game in tech regulation but almost every single thing they do (like the 'eSafety Comissioner' with their truly extradorinary powers) fails because they are very, very incompetent when it comes to technology.
I think former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull accidentally summed it up (talking about encryption) when he literally claimed that "The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia".
Don't worry, this is performative law making. There's going ot be an election in March, probably called in January. So the government will probably return, then fix and alter this when they work out just how impossible it will be to enforce.
OR, everyone in Australia is going to have to prove their age to use social media, and TBH, social media ain't that great. It just may be the cold shower we all need.
Questions about how this is going to be implemented and enforced from a technical and legal perspective are missing the point/benefit: this is about empowering parents and collectively changing behaviours.
"It's against the law so no you can't" isn't going to work with EVERY 14 year old. But it will work for many and hopefully that's enough.
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)
* It is illegal for a platform to provide children with a social media account, not for the child to create an account. Circumvention of this by the child is not illegal.
* No grandfathering - all accounts under 16 once this takes effect (which won't be until this time next year at earliest) must be deactivated.
* Maximum fine (per instance?) is 50 million AUD (about 32 million USD)
* 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).
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.
Could a possible solution there be to use the same language detection platforms used for detecting terrorist activity to also flag possible grooming for human moderator review? Or might that be too subjective for current language models leading to many false positives?
Less good, more fun. To 'prove' that you were over 18 you had answer a series of multiple choice questions [1] about pop culture that most kids almost certainly wouldn't know. Pre internet, finding the answer was surprisingly hard without asking an adult. The main result was that 10 year old me knew a surprisingly large number of obscure facts of about US culture, like who Spiro Agnew was and that Ronald Reagan once starred in a movie with a monkey.
Eventually we found out that you could press some magic key combination to skip the question all together.
> 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.)
That wasn't in the original bill and it was only amended to add that yesterday, because it wouldn't get past the Conservative (Liberal/National Party) whose votes they needed to ram it through Parliament with almost no scrutiny otherwise (the hastily drafted bill only having been introduced the Friday before the final sitting week of the year).
Make absolutely no mistake. The real reason why politicians push through these anti-social media laws is to prevent children from networking and discussing and sharing revolutionary ideas.
These laws are designed to prevent generations from establishing a baseline sociopolitical coherency and unity.
I was subject to a home firewall and computer use surveillance as a child for the exact same reason, because my cult guardians did not want me encountering unapproved ideas or networking with like-minded individuals who might weaken their ability to control and brainwash me.
I was treated as a criminal, and so my response was to educate myself deeply in how to succeed as a criminal. I learned to hack my imposed surveillance systems, and then hack websites on the web. I learned how to lie and manipulate authority in order to survive without compromising my internal compass. I collectivized with other hackers.
Is that the path we want every child subject to these bans to take? I fortunately have a moral and ethical foundation which led to me using my skills for good, but I am certainly capable of quite a lot of things that wouldn't be a net good for society, and I know how to get away with it. Perhaps we shouldn't teach a generation of repressed children these skills, and institutionalize them from a young age in opposition to society.
This is the exact same mechanism used to criminalize cannabis smokers. Smoking cannabis in my late teens and early twenties in a state where it was illegal led me to learning quite a lot about how to navigate the criminal underbelly of the world. The "gateway drug" rhetoric becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, enacted by the very people who lie through their teeth about their intentions.
Oppose these laws. Violently, if necessary. If you are a child, learn how to protect yourself online, familiarize yourself with security culture, and continue to safely and covertly network with other children online.
Form strong bonds. Collectivize. Create art, study politics and science. Make lasting, useful connections. Broadcast and distribute your opinions and demands of your governing bodies.
This is what being a child growing up on the internet is about. I owe everything in my life to my formative years on the internet. It was an escape hatch from my abusive home. I learned a lot, and formed precious memories joining and starting forums and chat rooms in my youth. I would probably be dead today without the web.
Attack the real problem. The techniques which certain social media sites use to manipulate and hook children and others are well-documented. Ban them. Make an example of their practitioners. The web that I grew up on did not have these problems.
Fuck Australia, and fuck every other person who dares to suggest that children should not be allowed to congregate safely online and be allowed to navigate society and culture according to their own compass.
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.
Then we attack the systemic issues, instead of pushing through intentionally vague legislation. Some of the similar legislation being explored by multiple US states is frightening.
I think there was a ton of bullying depending on what part of the internet you spent your time in, but importantly it was very easy to find inclusive, safe spaces.
Today, it is not as easy. This is probably part of why so many have moved to group chats and direct messages for online interaction in recent years.
I personally lived in a very backwater state, surrounded by racist conservatives, and was raised hardcore Catholic by extremely abusive guardians. I owe every single ounce of my rationality to the web and the ideas and people I encountered there.
Facebook, etc are definitely terrible for kids. But the wording of these laws is intentionally vague, in order for these kinds of laws to be used according to the whim of the incumbent, as a tool of oppression.
The entire point is that I got to grow up with a wide variety of opinions and ideas from people across the world.
I have good friends all over the world today thanks to the web. We have influenced and helped each other over the years. We depend on each other. That's not a corner case.
He can’t even advise if some video game developers he represents’ multiplayer games are exempt from the ban
He says the legislation is just an under defined word salad
Note this was several days ago and it may have been amended in the mean time
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