A lot of the criticism is based on the concept that it won't be technically watertight. But the key is that it doesn't have to be watertight to work. Social media is all about network effects. Once most kids are on there, everyone has to be on there. If you knock the percentage down far enough, you break the network effect to the point where those who don't want to don't feel pressured to. If that is all it does, it's a benefit.
My concerns about this are that it will lead to
(a) normalising people uploading identification documents and hence lead to people becoming victims of scams. This won't be just kids - scammers will be challenging all kinds of people including vulnerable elderly people saying "this is why we need your id". People are going to lose their entire life savings because of this law.
(b) a small fraction of kids branching off into fringe networks that are off the radar and will take them to very dark places very quickly.
Because it's politically unattractive, I don't think enough attention has been given to the harms that will flow from these laws.
Well, yes but the other problem is this is putting authoritarians in charge of more stuff. I had a comment comparing this to allowing people to eat too much food and that is literally where the logical outcome of this sort of thinking goes - it happens in practice, that isn't some sort of theoretical risk. The more the government decides what people can and can't want to do the worse the potential gets when they make mistakes. And this is further normalising the government making decisions about speech where they have every incentive and tendency to shut down people who tell inconvenient and important truths.
The risks are not worth the rewards of half-heatedly trying to stop kids communicating with other kids. They're still going to bully each other and what have you. They're still going to develop unrealistic expectations. They're probably even still going to use social media in practice.
That is an argument and worth monitoring, but IMO it's not a strong enough argument to stop this.
This sort of ban is the same as existing laws banning the sale and consumption of alcohol or driving until kids are of age they will (on average) have sufficient maturity to handle the responsibility. Something we accept.
Kids are not banned from digital communication. My daughter can still send text messages and make phone calls.
Kids are not banned from the consuming content on those platforms. They simply can't have an account to create their own content as it was too often abused. For example, my 12yo daughter was asked by a friend to message bomb and abuse a 12yo her friend had a crush on. That's mild compared to some of the stories I've heard from platforms like Facebook, and between about 10 - 16 many kids are just nasty.
I believe that the line in the sand over which platforms this applies to is the ones that leverage account history to supercharge the already addictive behaviours caused by UI designs optimised to manipulate your attention and direct your purchasing power towards whoever is paying them. Something kids are particularly vulnerable to. The algorithm doesn't care if it is pushing you towards radical content as long as you are watching it for as many hours in a day as possible.
How long will it take them to ban communications ?
A big reason they are pushing this is Cyberbullying....yet a recent death in the news this week, the kid was literally bullied/sextorted via SMS....not social media.
Without banning SMS and possibly calls as well, it debunks this argument
That's the slippery slope fallacy. You assert that communications will be banned as a consequence of this, but provide no evidence that this will cause the banning of all communications.
The assertion is not that something will inevitably happen because of this other than the further normalization of government authority over individual autonomy. That is an inherent result of this, as well as the prohibition of sale of alcohol and drugs to kids. You can argue on and on whether or not these are good, righteous, moral laws, but you cannot deny the intrinsic fact that widespread acceptance and even support of widening the scope of government control normalizes government control
Government control is the only way to address corporate abuse, because they are the only body that have both enough power (to restrain corporations) and the possibility of being influenced by voters. Too much government control and you have a problem. Too little and you have no safeguard against bad actors.
Not sure who you have spoken to, but I don't know one single parent who wanted this. In fact most of them have said they will assist their kids to bypass it.
> How long will it take them to ban communications ?
Just ban Australia themselves.
> A big reason they are pushing this is Cyberbullying
Oh really now? It has been going on for so many years... A big reason they've been pushing this is it impacts their own pockets i.e. the traditional media companies.
Well I should have worded it "A big reason the say they are banning it is Cyberbullying" , I don't believe that at all, but you are 100% correct, they hate big tech as it always beats our corrupt, biased and inept traditional media.
Bullying is not new and was performed via sms before the internet. Social media however allows for easier targeting especially for bad actors that are not in the kid’s friend/acquaintance group.
I remember when a bully would have to go up to you themselves to mete out whatever harassment, and you could avoid a lot of it by just being aware and avoiding that particular person.
Juxtapose that with today, where any one bully can create dozens of accounts to bully in a swarm, and the bully has constant access to you from your own pocket. Also, a person in Minsk or Timbuktu or whatever couldn't just come up to your house in the middle of the night to harass you out of boredom.
This "we could do X before computers, why are we trying to ban X-with-computers now?" line of arguments is just intellectually lazy. If a bad behavior was well moderated in the past because it was labor or resource intensive, the sudden removal of those constraints is a material change that demands revisiting. Put another way, if a constraint stops working, we should change constraints, not just do the old constraint with a confused expression on our faces.
Kids know how to download or use free texting apps and sites, giving them access to potentially thousands of different numbers from which they can engage in harassment campaigns. In fact, it's an incredibly common tactic.
Similarly, someone from Minsk and Timbuktu can do the same thing, they have access to the same tools.
My point was not "oh, social media bullying is some kind of special case compared to other ways kids today bully their peers". My point was "modern bullying is different from historic bullying, and dismissing modern bullying as the same as historic bullying is intellectually lazy"
That is true and we have certainly seen our fair share of that.
Adults are however also better equipped to deal with that, especially if they have not been subjected to such abuse as children.
It is worth noting that online bullying is however not the most serious matter here, rather (in my mind at least) it is the systematic targeting of kids/teenagers to get inside their head and get them to perform violent acts against themselves or others around them.
This appears to be a slippery slope argument: if they ban specific algorithmic social media platforms that have a verified extremely negative effect on children, soon they'll ban all communications.
It could happen that they ban all communications, but if you think so, it needs its own argument; it can't hang off the social media ban. Otherwise it is like saying that if they ban children from drinking beer, soon they'll ban them from drinking liquids.
I feel like people are either arguing in bad faith, or we’re trying to talk to fish about the water. Its so obvious to me that people are going to get their identities stolen and the internet is going to get so much worse that I can’t understand how someone would think otherwise.
Well, who knows what they will be doing if it is not Tiktok. Hopefully they will pick up a book, but doubtful. They need a way to communicate with their peers.
I'm not seeing how this stops kids from communicating with their peers. That seems like a bad-faith argument as they can send an SMS, make phone calls, send emails, meet in-person, play video games, etc. The things many of us grew up doing with our friends.
Yes, I did those things in 2000. Except when I look at the city I grew up in, it is no longer safe for kids, and kids do not even go outside anymore, and I do not think social media is at fault here.
BTW SMS and phone calls cost money.
Sending e-mails was not a thing even when I was a kid, 25 years ago.
Playing video games, yeah well, that may be the only thing where they may communicate. Except that is going down in the shitters too these days. Say "shit" or "fuck" (especially) and get banned from chat for days.
> Except when I look at the city I grew up in, it is no longer safe for kids, and kids do not even go outside anymore
Which city? I ask because I am raising my kids in Chicago. It is far safer than when I was a child and I was under the impression that most cities are far safer. We also have plenty of kids playing outside in our neighborhood. I'm not saying you are wrong, but my lived experience is significantly different.
> BTW SMS and phone calls cost money.
That depends on where you are and what network you are using. That same would go for using social media sites which require internet connection.
> Sending e-mails was not a thing even when I was a kid, 25 years ago.
I was also a kid 25 years ago and we absolutely sent emails.
I prefer not to disclose it (somewhere in Central Europe), but there have been extensive discussions here on HN about how many modern cities have become increasingly hostile to children because their design prioritizes cars over walkability and accessible public spaces. The concerns I am referring to stem directly from that context.
> That depends on where you are and what network you are using.
In my country, prepaid SIM cards still charge per call and per SMS. The alternative is a monthly plan, which at least for young people without their own income was not really financially practical. Back then, even adults did not use these monthly plans, if it was even available at the time here.
> I was also a kid 25 years ago and we absolutely sent emails.
That is interesting, because email never became a popular medium among kids where I grew up. What was popular, however, were synchronous, real-time forms of communication: in-game chat, ICQ, and especially MSN Messenger (I miss those days), and a local web-based chat platform that many of us used. Email, by contrast, felt slow, so we only used it occasionally, for example, when I used it to check up on someone to finally get on Yahoo Chat.
Do not get me wrong, when I was a kid we were always outside, hanging out in abandoned buildings that are long gone now, for example, and I barely see any kids running outside together in groups like we used to. They are probably inside playing games or something. :P
(There are still many playgrounds where you can see very young children playing with their parents. But they are way too young to use a computer or to be left alone, even, so I am not referring to them.)
May I ask where you are from? The contrast is quite interesting, and I would like to hear more.
> I believe that the line in the sand over which platforms this applies to is the ones that
You know a law is broken when its definition is defined by random people "knowing" where and how it applies.
> This sort of ban is the same as existing laws banning the sale and consumption of alcohol or driving
No it's not. Is every social media platform banned? How is it defined? This is the equivalent of going into a supermarket with a "kids" alcohol section and 1 for everyone else hand-picked by whoever in charge.
These are government regulations regarding kids. Nothing new here, we’ve been regulating what you can market to kids for decades. I’m not buying a slippery slope argument.
As a parent myself, it definitely helps when you can collectively avoid having your kids on these platforms. I can’t express how much easier it is to restrict it and not seem like a kook when authorities are also on board.
> These are government regulations regarding kids.
No, they aren't just that, because they are government regulations requiring everyone wanting access to something that cannot be marketed to children under the rules to prove that they are not a child, which is not inherently essential to a regulation of what can be marketed to children.
There is a difference between regulating what can be marketed to children and mandating that vendors secure proof that every user is not a child.
(Just as there is a difference between prohibiting knowingly supplying terrorists and requiring every seller to conduct a detailed background check of every customer to assure that they are not a terrorist.)
It actually doesn't say they must verify ID. It says "reasonable steps". Actually, it says they must NOT verify ID unless they also have a way to do it without verifying ID. The fine for requiring an ID upload is the same as the fine for letting minors on the platform (30k penalty units, whatever that means).
Of course, nobody is sure what "reasonable steps" actually means, other than a selfie or ID upload.
It's different. You show an ID card to a human if you don't look old enough. They look at it and return it. The ID card doesn't get scanned or tied to all your future recreational drug purchases - you don't have an account or a trail that identifies you.
When uploading ID documents, your account gets tied to your real world identity. That's not a precedent the government should be setting, because private entities having an excuse (the law) to require identification erodes privacy, and because in the future other services could be required to ask for an identification, too. Yes, it's the slippery slope (aka "boiling the frog") argument, but that's how laws that erode privacy evolve - step by step.
Now it's account for social media, then it's porn sites, then it's forums where you might see porn or discussions on suicide, drugs or anything deemed morally hazardous. They might require an ID just to view the site or require the site to not make it public. If (or "when", if we don't oppose such laws) enough countries mandate something like this, most sites will likely require an account for all content, regardless of where the person is located, as otherwise they'll likely have to prove that they've not only geolocated the IP of the visitor, but checked that they weren't using VPNs, Tor or similar services.
As for using zero-knowledge proofs and similar technology to make it less infringing on privacy - I very much doubt the government (any government) to implement this with 100% privacy and security.
> they look at it and return it. The ID card doesn't get scanned
Actually in Australia, IDs usually do get scanned and stored. About the same time I was getting too old for clubs, they were starting to introduce ID scanners. You line up, hand over your driver's licence or passport, they slap it on a wall-mounted scanner, the scan goes into a database and in you go. No scan, no entry. Nowadays I think they just use phone/tablet scanners.
Parent of kids old enough to go clubbing, and have been to a few venues in the city myself recently because of that. Have also worked on this tech in a small capacity in government.
Yes, handheld is now used. If you use the digital licences app on your phone in NSW/QLD the licence details are picked up by a QR code and cross verified via an auth API with Services NSW / TMR QLD. You are also checked against a database of banned patrons, against court ordered exclusions, and police issued exclusions. If you use the physical licence, an extra step of ID —> licence details extracted occurs, then the same process is followed.
I agree that people will lose their identity online if age checks become normalised. That’s not been the case with the club and inner city alcohol venues checks.
Aren't those things organised the same way Apple face id is organised where the app itself can't get the biometric information, they just get a yes or no? That would be stupid as hell.
In Finland the government has allowed banks to offer (2fa) identification services to those that are using their services. If I sign into a government site using my banking ID, the bank gets paid for providing the service. To my understanding none of my actual ID information is transferred to a party wanting to identify me.
The Linkedin 'validate your identity' was the first time i was asked to actually take a picture of my passport/scan the chip. I'll refuse until they'll allow me to identify with my banking ID.
In some bars and clubs in various countries it's common for the door staff to take your ID, hold it up to the security camera, then return it before you can go in. I've seen it in France and the UK. The reason I've been given is so that anyone who causes trouble can be identified for potential prosecution.
> As for using zero-knowledge proofs and similar technology to make it less infringing on privacy - I very much doubt the government (any government) to implement this with 100% privacy and security.
Yes, but those are in the physical world. [1] In digital realm, having to verify your ID has way more consequences. My passport has been leaked and I have a “quick cash loan” in my name as a result of that.
---
[1]: Tangentially, those are trivially circumvented in many countries. When I was a teenager in St. Petersburg, we’ve used a “duty free delivery service”, which (I suppose) just stocked liquor at the duty free shop on the border with Finland, and then sold it. Not sure how legal was the core premise (probably not), but we used it because their couriers didn’t even pretend they need to check our passports (definitely illegal).
In many countries, alcohol is available in grocery delivery services. Couriers happily leave your order at the doorstep even though they are supposed to check your ID. In many other countries, even buying in-store is possible (e.g. Japan, where in any konbini you can just press a button on screen saying “yes, I’m 21”).
I hope it will be! The creditor says something along the lines of “you’ve confirmed your phone number using SMS code so it must be you; no, we won’t tell you which number we’ve sent the code to, that would be privacy violation”. I’ve tried everything I could do online and nah, nobody really cares.
I think I still can dispute it in court, but for that I’ll have to go back to Russia. (I could hire a lawyer, but the amount is like $300.)
No. What is this revisionist nonsense? Where the hell did you think the meme of "On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog" came from? Conventional wisdom was alias up, or maintain a well-known handle. Do not use or share personal info. Ever.
I don't have to scan my face, upload my ID and share my biometric data with multiple 3rd parties, who will then lose and leak my private data, every time I drive a car.
This law isn't letting anyone use social media freely until they're suspected of not being an adult, at which point they have to age verify. It requires everyone to identify themselves whenever they want to view, interact, reply or share content on the internet.
This is not true. Its users suspected to be underage which will be asked.
Additionally, the law makes no judgement on the technology used to identify age, just that social media companies need to make an effort. I suspect that companies will not want to deal with the data security issues (very illegal to share pictures of underage people without consent), and will not be "sharing" with 3rd parties.
To comply with the law, platforms are gatekeeping content they deem controversial/NSFW/inappropriate/inconvenient behind age verification walls.
Everyone who wants to view, interact with or share that content has to verify their age to do so.
> I suspect that companies will not want to deal with the data security issues (very illegal to share pictures of underage people without consent), and will not be "sharing" with 3rd parties.
There are countless instances of exactly this happening, over and over again, not to mention that it's the way age verification's implemented now nearly everywhere lol
Pretty much every company will contract a 3rd party service to perform those checks, making sure they get as much bang for as little buck as possible. Said services are usually the weak link that shares the data with others, often through PNGs in public buckets so that Russian teenagers have an easy job CURLing them.
If the government took security seriously, it’d endorse a solution and then take responsibility for it, given it came up with the law in the first place.
This idea that regulation fails to destroy industries is farcical. Most examples of “failed regulation” like American prohibition were runaway successes as public policy. Whether it is good or desirable is a different question.
The idea that someone is going to make an engaging experience on a “decentralized” network is honestly a bit silly to me. The market potential of this business is low. Decentralized networks with much larger incentives have failed to capture critical mass.
There will be side effects, but social media has been so ridiculously corrosive to the welfare of teenagers that I can’t imagine a ban would be worse.
>Most examples of “failed regulation” like American prohibition were runaway successes as public policy.
You pick one of the worst examples? Prohibition drove a black market for spirits . the 21st amendment repealed it because the government missed out on hundreds of thousands in taxes.
The reason to make the law and repeal it were both awful. The lessons learned were all wrong. It's just awful all around (and I speak as someone that doesn't really drink much).
Yeah, this is absolutely one post hoc interpretation of it. The black market for spirits absolutely pales in comparison to public health and legal data, which conclusively show that second order effects of drinking like liver disease, public intoxication, and domestic violence plummeted.
This prohibition era retcon is a way to justify the fact that people like to drink and there were many people who stood to make money on re-legalization.
Which is why I said the question of it being a good thing is different. I encourage you to look at the data, as someone who also enjoys to drink.
Government bans are surprisingly effective in most developed countries.
"success" can be viewed in different lenses. In your lens of "did it make America healthier", sure. I wouldn't be surprised.
My lens is "did America actually learn anything valuable from this period?". And all I see is "We The Government are fine poisoning our citizens as long as we profit from it". A lesson that passed on to cigarettes, then hard drugs, then fast food (which persists to this day), and now with social media. Then The Government wonders why no one trusts them to do the right thing.
In that lens, I'd say prohibition and its downstream effects on how to regulate in general was absolutely awful and damning.
That’s a fair interpretation! I meant in terms of the stated goals of the Prohibitionist movement. I imagine they would agree with both of us (and be very angry about it)
Human behavior is variable and can be influenced, even against our best interest.
At what point do we acknowledge advertising as a form of psychological attack that causes people to do harmful things they wouldn't otherwise do?
The government's role in this imo shouldn't be to allow corporations to try to convince people to hurt themselves and then to sell them things to hurt themselves with, but then turn around and restrict people's rights to slow down the self harm. Rather I believe the government should seek to annihilate corporations that try to harm the population.
Is not the implicit relationship between corporations, people, and government, such that corporations want to be allowed to exploit a population for profit in return for some nominal good, and the government allows that only so long as the good outweighs the harm?
Oh, nothing like a little radiation fear mongering to convince the public they need government approval for every single drop of drink and byte of food we put into our bodies. It's for our own good, after all!
Meanwhile, years after the actual Radithor radium water [1] scandal, the very same government was merrily blowing up atomic bombs in open air, in the desert [2].
And even today there are crazy people around the world happily consuming radioactive gas in specially designed spas [3]. They should be locked up for their own good, the government always knows better!
Nothing like a snakeoil-monger bemoaning pesky government regulations with misguided exaggerating of the dangers of Big Government.
I'm shocked the same government which supports global warming and mass species extinction, and which threatens to bomb "shithole countries" "back to the Stone age", has a less than perfect attitude about nuclear weapons. Shocked I say!
Next I suppose you'll say that this same government hasn't clamped down hard on coal power plants which, in addition to their CO2 emissions, generates ash which destroys waterways, kills people, and is full of radioactive waste?
I'm so glad our governments always know better than that!
It would be a shame if food and drug laws were in place mostly because even rich people and politicians can't ensure their food and drugs are safe.
It's time to take my protein powder supplements. I'm glad the government inspects every manufacturer so I don't have to worry about doing my own lead tests each time I buy some. Thank you Orrin Hatch for your diligence!
> The idea that someone is going to make an engaging experience on a “decentralized” network is honestly a bit silly to me. The market potential of this business is low. Decentralized networks with much larger incentives have failed to capture critical mass.
When decentralized networks win, they often win so big that they become invisible. AOL is dead, the web isn't. Email, the global telephone network, the internet itself, these are all decentralized networks.
The hardest part of doing this for social media is actually discovery. It's easier to show people an "engaging" feed when your algorithm has access to the full firehose to select from. But that doesn't mean doing it in a decentralized way is impossible, and if you pass a law that drives people away from centralized services, the incentive to do it goes up.
Aaannd then the mask came off, proving you were a moralistic authoritarian. I suppose you support cartels destabilizing entire nation-states with billions of criminal funds too
What social networks are these? If they aren't complying with the law, they can (and should be) blocked.
You're also missing what folks keep saying: the network effect isn't there. It needs to be popular enough that there's social pressure to be there. If it's that large, it's going to be large enough to be on the radar and then be under enforcement.
Slippery-slope arguments, for the most part, exist to fear monger folks away from change, even when the argument itself is non-sensical.
well for one: I find it humorous how this law has an exception for Roblox. That really speaks to how up to date lawmakers are on the situation (or worse: how easy it was for Roblox to pay them off). I don't see how it's a slippery slope when the corruption is before our very eyes.
Each company was required to put a statement to the eSafety commission explaining why they should be exempt from the law, even GitHub. The eSafety commission also have an open monitoring period where they'll repeal the law if it isn't working as intended, and will release research.
I don't think it's just corruption, there are people who are trying to do the right thing, even if flawed.
YouTube didn’t make it through because of how it actively pushes alpha male crap at teenage boys. The Tate brothers and others who push the whole toxic masculinity, man are superior, men must protect women even from themselves, to be a man you must be able to fight, men are owed a position of power and women should be subservient, etc. It was a very strong feature in the early debate, and something educators put in as part of their submission as being an extremely noticeable shift for young men, and those same young men quite consistently stating the same content they viewed.
YouTube’s tendency to push extreme rabbit holes and funnel towards extremism and conservatism in young men is what led to them being included.
"YouTube is targeted for a ban because it shows children conservative viewpoints" seems somehow simultaneously an obvious free speech violation and a proper own-goal for the conservatives pushing these rules.
Anyone can find specific things to dispute about Tate's views, but "traditional gender roles exist for a reason" is obviously not the position associated with the left.
You're putting Tate's views in an overly good light with the way you represent it. "traditional gender roles exist for a reason" is the very lightest possible way you can phrase his viewpoint.
He hates women, to the point of trafficking them. He's a predator and he spreads hate, and it reflects poorly on conservatives if they feel that represents their political views.
There is a generic flaw in humanity that controversy brings popularity. The result is that if you take the core of something popular (e.g. the political beliefs of half the population) and then sprinkle some rage bait on top of it, you'll have an audience. This is the business model for the likes of Tate.
The problem is, it's also an asymmetric weapon when you try to ban that unevenly. If you censor Tate but not the likes of Kendi who use the same tricks, you're saying that it's fine for one side to play dirty but not the other, and that's how you get people mad. Which plays right into the hands of the demagogues.
So all you have to do is achieve perfect balance and censor only the bad things from both sides, right? Except that that's one of the things humans are incapable of actually doing, because of the intensely powerful incentive to censor the things you don't like more than the things you do, if anyone holds that power.
Which is why we have free speech. Because it's better to let every idiot flap their trap than to let anyone else decide who can't. And if you don't like what someone is saying, maybe try refuting it with arguments instead of trying to silence them.
Slippery slope arguments exist because the act of governing has the tendency to converge on ratchet effects. It never bloody loosens, do every damn inch has to be treated with maximal resistance.
Sure, except that for the most part conservatives seem to be happy to watch their rights slide right down a hill when conservatives are in charge. See the entirety of US politics at this point.
Society already puts limits on children's access to media, their access to addictive substances, advertising that's allowed to be shown to them, etc. The internet, and especially social media, is a gap in the existing limits. This isn't a slippery slope, it's adding a missing set of compliance.
Social media is: media, addictive, shows unregulated advertising to them, is psychologically harmful, and their algorithms have been radicalizing them.
Regulation is absolutely needed here. I'd rather see tight regulation, rather than being blocked completely, but social media companies have been highly resistant to that. For example, they shouldn't be allowed to show advertising, they shouldn't be able to do tracking, they shouldn't be allowed to have an algorithm led feed, notifications should be mostly off by default (and any notification that is shown to primarily exist to make you open the app should be disallowed).
The problem with changes like that is that they destroy the network's engagement and remove their profit, and for the most part, it's changes adults would like to see as well. Making those changes for some countries laws would push other countries to introduce similar laws and not limit them to children.
It's a bad point though, because those are fringe and don't have network effects that would pressure most children to join them. You become a social outcast if you don't participate in <popular social media of the day>, but the kids participating on fringe sites are likely already outcasts.
We should be aiming to remove purposely addictive things from our children's lives, and all currently popular social media platforms are addiction machines.
So it “helps” so you don’t have to be the bad guy to your kids and instead now everyone needs to give the government a method to tie your online presence and speech to you.
> As a parent myself, it definitely helps when you can collectively avoid having your kids on these platforms. I can’t express how much easier it is to restrict it and not seem like a kook when authorities are also on board.
This pattern of thought is exactly the issue. Stop offloading parenting of your children to government! That won't end well for neither children nor adults.
You cannot parent in isolation and outside of society. How society is structured has an huge impact on parenting. It is delusional to think of parenting as some kind of thing that exists in isolation separate from and not influenced by the rest of society. Parents often can only have little influence themselves.
This is a value neutral description. Though I do think total parental autonomy in parenting is not a worthwhile goal and also not at all realistic. As parents you have to deal with society.
What does that mean for social media bans? To me mostly: network effects are wicked strong and fighting against them as an individual parent is basically impossible. This can lead to parents only having bad choices available to them (ban social media use and exclude them from their friends, allow social media use and fry their brains). Are bans that right solution? Don’t know. I’m really not sure. But I do know that it‘s not as simple as „parent better“.
In discussions similar to this I often see parents expressing their happiness with a state taking the role of a "bad cop" so that the parents can just wash their hands off telling their children it is state's fault they can no longer use TikTok ("I can’t express how much easier it is to restrict it and not seem like a kook when authorities are also on board." from OP) instead of having a proper conversation about harms of social media with the children. This is literally a cop out for them from a proper parenting.
From my point of view I'm already paying for their brats with higher taxes, now I will also have to gradually give my documents to random web sites more and more just to reduce the "burden" of parenting on lazy parents...
You're missing the collective action problem. When 95% of kids have TikTok, telling your kid "no" doesn't just mean having a conversation about social media harms, it means making them a social outcast. Sure, you can be that parent, but you're choosing between your kid's mental health from algorithmic content versus their mental health from social isolation. Individual parents can't solve network effect problems, that's exactly what policy is for. This isn't laziness, it's recognizing that some problems require coordination beyond the family level.
You said you've seen it happen "often" and provided no examples other than the one you are using to make your point. You implied that you have heard it multiple times in different contexts. I was asking for some of those contexts because as someone who is a parent and interacts with other parents frequently, it is not something I've encountered.
This pattern of thought is exactly the issue. Stop offloading the responsibility for creating a reasonable environment! That won't end well for neither children nor adults.
It's an extremely American religious belief that everything is an individual problem. Luckily, almost no other country has this religion.
Firstly, I'm not from the US. Secondly, I don't agree that forcing bunch of random web sites and apps (i.e. not government or banking sites/apps) to demand ids from their users is a "reasonable environment".
You are being obtuse. The anger is about services I'm used to may be forced to demand my id in the future because modern parents can't be assed to configure parental controls on their brat's phones (or are too afraid to do that).
I agree it would be more privacy-conscious to do the banning in the opposite way, by putting the banning logic on the end device, and mandating websites to send a signal that they are banned for minors. This header already exists (and for some reason it's a really long random-ish string). Someone should propose this to lawmakers.
Since the law doesn't actually say how it should be implemented, it's compatible with existing law. Actually I wonder if simply sending the "I am 18+" header would already be legal in Australia. Probably not, on the basis that it doesn't actually work right now, but maybe they could convince a judge that it's actually the browser's fault it doesn't respect the header.
You are giving authoritarians benefit of a doubt for no good reason. Vagueness in such laws is usually to allow selective enforcement by the people in power and not for you (a regular user) to have an "escape hatch" from negative consequences of the law. The reality of the situation is that there are currently no other ways to enforce age checks besides asking for an id and any kind of theoretical parental-controls-configured browser headers are years away from deployment, best case.
The Australian law isn't vague in saying that it's illegal for websites to require you to upload your ID. The penalty for requiring users to upload their ID is the same as the penalty for deliberately allowing minors.
I did actually read it - section 63DB allows them to ask for and collect ids as long as they also provide "alternative means". Which in reality means that they will first ask for a selfie video, then for id unless you have lots of grey hairs and wrinkles. Which makes it even worse because they will also have your biometrics in addition to bunch of personal information from your id!
This is not "offloading parenting of your child to the government" it is acknowledging that a certain action can be far easier to take (getting a child off social media) if the government puts in laws to support those actions. Social media relies on network effects, this might weaken those effects and make it easier for individual parents to keep kids off those tools. Not sure why it upsets you so much.
Are environmental laws are a way of off-loading all environmental care to the government?
Are laws against violence a way of off-loading physical protection to the government?
> This is not "offloading parenting of your child to the government" it is acknowledging that a certain action can be far easier to take (getting a child off social media) if the government puts in laws to support those actions.
Compromising my privacy in order to allow you to omit having some tough but needed conversations with your child (i.e. _parenting_) regarding harms of social media is not a sacrifice I'm willing to make. Homer Simpson was supposed to be a parody on a bad father, not a role model with his "You're the government's problem now!".
> Are laws against violence a way of off-loading physical protection to the government?
Of course they are! I support government protecting me from violence in some capacity, although I don't support "chat control"-like laws since the cost/benefit doesn't seem to be favorable.
> to allow you to omit having some tough but needed conversations with your child regarding harms of social media
As any parent knows, if you tell your kids that something is harmful, they will stop immediately. No questions asked. I've never met a child who did something their parents told them not to do, have you?
> I support government protecting me from violence in some capacity
So, you do like big government telling people what they can and can't do, as long as you feel it directly helps you. That said, laws against violence don't protect you from violence, the laws kick in after the fact.
> I don't support "chat control"-like laws since the cost/benefit doesn't seem to be favorable.
Possibly because you don't have kids and thus maybe not a full understanding of the cost/benefit? Perhaps, instead of lecturing actual parents about what parenting is like, you could ask questions about the cost/benefit you claim to be interested in.
> As any parent knows, if you tell your kids that something is harmful, they will stop immediately. No questions asked. I've never met a child who did something their parents told them not to do, have you?
You can configure parental controls or take away the phone.
> So, you do like big government telling people what they can and can't do, as long as you feel it directly helps you.
Yes, of course!
> That said, laws against violence don't protect you from violence, the laws kick in after the fact.
They protect me by discouraging other people from committing violence on me, obviously.
> Possibly because you don't have kids and thus maybe not a full understanding of the cost/benefit? Perhaps, instead of lecturing actual parents about what parenting is like, you could ask questions about the cost/benefit you claim to be interested in.
Cost/benefit for me, not for Homer Simpson-esque dads. You already took responsibility on yourself by becoming a parent, now please do the hard part (the parenting).
> You can configure parental controls or take away the phone.
Your first suggestion was silly, so now you have pivoted to telling me another way to parent. All the while have zero experience of your own. Did you know that social media is accessible on devices other than personal phones? Kids use computers and tablets at school (as early as 1st grade) with access to the internet.
> Yes, of course!
Which is my entire point. Parents, on the other hand, have to worry about people other than themselves.
> They protect me by discouraging other people from committing violence on me, obviously.
Now you are outsourcing your personal protection to the government. I have to pay extra because you can't defend yourself. You took on the responsibility of protecting yourself by being born.
> Cost/benefit for me
We get it, you don't care about anyone else. Things that help you are good, things that inconvenience you are a product of other people's errors. Nothing more really needs to be said.
I mean, it does invite the Government to your household, just like marriage (which is a legal contract) invites the Government into your bedroom. I oppose both.
Parents are supposed to be parenting, without the help of the Government. You do not want your kid to spend their time on Facebook or Instagram? Do something about it yourself, as a parent. I understand that tech-illiterate people may be at a disadvantage here, but we are on HN and I am pretty sure we are able to:
Set up a Raspberry Pi (or any other SBC, or even an old x86 box) running Pi-hole with custom blocklists, configure DNS-level filtering with time-based access rules, or implement iptables/nftables rules on your router to enforce schedules. You can use hostapd with separate SSIDs for children with different firewall rules, set up a transparent proxy with squid + SquidGuard for content filtering and time restrictions, or configure your router's DHCP to assign specific DNS servers per MAC address with dnsmasq managing time windows. If you want more granular control, there's pfSense or OPNsense with packages like pfBlockerNG-devel for domain blocking and traffic shaping, or you could write a simple cron job that modifies your firewall rules based on time of day. These are all straightforward solutions that don't require government-mandated age verification systems with their inevitable privacy nightmares and implementation overreach.
The technical capability exists; the question is whether parents are willing to invest a few hours to implement it rather than demanding legislation to do their job for them.
> Parents are supposed to be parenting, without the help of the Government.
Why wouldn't we want the government to support parenting in similar ways the Government support's retirement, personal security, entrepreneurship, education, health, and other societally important activities?
> These are all straightforward solutions that don't require government-mandated age verification systems with their inevitable privacy nightmares and implementation overreach.
Yes, they are. They all also stop being effective as soon as a child is outside of your wifi network, which was my entire point.
> whether parents are willing to invest a few hours to implement it rather than demanding legislation to do their job for them.
Framing it this way doesn't really help your point. It proves that you don't understand what parents are actually dealing with. It is the same response that people on HN have when a non-developer writes a technical article in NYT.
This issue affects the privacy of all individuals, not just a narrow subset of users.
Mandatory identification and age-verification requirements are against privacy, justified under the familiar refrain of "think of the children". The critical question is how far society is willing to go in accepting pervasive surveillance and data collection under this rationale. Not long ago, we expressed concern and even disdain toward such practices when observing them in countries like China. Today, however, the gap between those systems and our own is narrowing to an uncomfortable degree.
FWIW there are technically sound, privacy-preserving solutions to achieve this goal. Zero-knowledge proofs, for example, can verify eligibility or age without disclosing identity or personal data. These solutions are well understood and feasible. Yet they are consistently excluded from policy discussions and implementations. This omission suggests that the underlying objective is not genuine child protection, nor meaningful respect for individual privacy, but rather increased control and data accumulation.
> They all also stop being effective as soon as a child is outside of your wifi network, which was my entire point.
True, these solutions do not work outside your Wi-Fi, but the point is that government-mandated age verification compromises privacy for limited benefit. I believe parental guidance (and the guidance of their teachers, ideally) and household controls are more effective. In any case, the broader point is that there is no technical silver bullet. Parents will always need to combine education, guidance, and trust-building with any tools, rather than relying on government mandates that compromise privacy.
And if the government regulates your children join an after school program where they learn outdoor survival skills, exercise, and learn the popular political parties glee club.
There would be nothing new here?
The argument is that kids being online isn’t the governments business one way or the other.
The slippery slope argument is always secondary, but how often has government regulation not grown in size and scope? Combine that with how norms shift and the type of large scale identity infrastructure put in place to support this, can you honestly say this isn’t going to grow?
All of that also ignores the possibility (read inevitability) that a bad actor/authoritarian would exploit this access further without popular support.
And we already see what India is trying to do - force phone manufacturers to have an always on GPS feature where the government can track you and disable the phone’s feature where it notifies you if something is using your location.
Authoritarians use social networks to undermine democratic principles so not exposing kids to that takes power away from them. Or did I misunderstand something?
My take for a while has been that authoritarian ideas (both hard right and hard left) dominate on social media because of the short form short attention span format. Authoritarianism tends to run on simple slogans, grievances, and identity politics. That stuff is very well suited to 140 characters, memes, and short videos.
Liberal ideas require more explaining and historical context, and they don’t play well when everyone has been triggered and trolled into limbic system mode by rage bait.
Liberal politics speaks to the neocortex. Authoritarianism speaks to the brain stem.
I’m using the word liberal to mean things like liberty, individual rights, democracy, and the rule of law. That’s why I also mentioned hard left authoritarianism.
Also there’s a world of difference between people registering dislike on an online forum and the use of state power. It seems like a lot of people these days draw no distinction between removal from a private space or even people just showing disapproval and actual state force.
This doesn't surprise me much; social networks have worked in tandem with governments, allowing them to call the shots to remove any content that opposed their political agendas, narratives, and opinions, to the extent that facts were flat-out censored to paint certain political opponents in a bad light, or worse, create potential legal issues.
It created a world where: when disapproval inside an echo-chamber fails to a critical mass of people telling the truth, just pretend the content doesn't exist and then gaslight people using official media outlets, including Congress and the White House.
So it gave people the impression there's no difference between the two. Not only were disapproval and state force in agreement, they colluded.
The Arab Spring, the Mahsa Amini protests, the recent resurgence of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, have all been conducted primarily using social media.
This is a very narrow scale when taking the bigger picture, as these are just prominent events in Middle Eastern history since the growth of social media usage, say after 2011.
You are not even considering the travesties avoided due to social media, what regulatory action has been avoided (or taken) to avoid social media backlashes.
You are being extremely disingenuous, and you are directly attacking some peoples' only hope of minimizing repression. I urge you to reconsider your beliefs. This directly and critically affects me.
I’m sorry for you and by all means, keep social media where you live. Maybe the next Arab spring will work out better than the first one and TikTok will enable that.
Where I live, we’re already free from repression and social media threatens to reintroduce it.
I guess the question is, how should citizens communicate with each other? Who should apply the restrictions? If the authoritarian state is applying the restrictions, then it's probably for their own goals.
An authoritarian state might have more legitimacy in applying the restrictions than a for profit company. Think about it.
But really, people should communicate with each other by means not including algorithmic feeds optimized for engagement. Preferably including as little emotion as possible when it comes to discussing policy.
It seems to me that this is much bigger problem for vulnerable or stupid adults. You can be naive when you are young but you can change.
I would say that much bigger problem is possibly the influence of these sites on development of young people.
We know it's addictive, we know it's harmful. Cigarettes and alcohol are banned for the same reason so I'm kinda glad for this Australian experiment. We'll see.
The government has laws saying people under 16 can't drive cars, do you think that's part of the slippery slope that has led to all of those happening-in-practice bad things?
> The government has laws saying people under 16 can't drive cars
We did, though. The chances of getting caught were slim to nil. Will kids (and adults for that matter) have the same easy opportunity to evade enforcement here?
I thought the point of laws was not that enforcement is perfect but rather that the consequence of getting caught created a counter-incentive to doing the thing?
The point of laws is to document what everyone in a community has come to agree on, assuming a democracy. Or, in a dictatorship, what the dear leader has decided upon. Any punishments encoded into those laws may serve as a counter-incentive, I suppose.
But baked into that is the idea that enforcement isn't perfect so you can still disappear into the night when you have that urge to do whatever it is that is technically illegal. This allows acceptance of laws that might be considered too draconian if enforcement was perfect. However, it seems in the case of these digital-centric laws that enforcement will become too close to being perfect as, without the need to hire watchful people, there is strong incentive to make it ever-present.
Or maybe not, but that is why the question was asked.
We wouldn’t have this problem if the tech companies can “self regulate” (lol). But us engineers just can’t help ourselves but find even more effective and efficient ways to harvest eyeballs and stoke hate.
And yes, I mean engineers. Just a few “inventions” off the top of my head that got us here:
The issue is that lower profits are attached to self regulation, as is community backlash. Large tech companies rarely have a moral compass and their decisions are attached to return on investment to their financiers.
It’s Australia, it’s a nanny state and always has been, and much as the locals complain, they also love it, and keep voting for it.
The rest of the Anglo world is much less obsessed with government control than the US is; UK is absolutely fine with cameras everywhere, for example, and has almost no protection against parliament. Law enforcement is much more seen as by the people and for the people in these countries.
> It’s Australia, it’s a nanny state and always has been
Australians think of themselves as carefree but good hearted larrikins who snub their nose at authority, and would always be ready to duff a steer or two from a wealthy cattleman for some hungry orphans. The reality is this type of Australian only remains as fading memories in Henry Lawson stories, the few that ever existed. The real Australian is not only a spineless sticklers for the rules completely subservient to authority, with little sense of adventure, but is also very envious of others driven by their greedy and selfish nature.
During covid "lockdowns", Australians were far more eager to tattle on other commoners for breaking the precious rules than they were concerned with questioning government's hypocritical behavior or unscientific rules and policies. It was fine in their minds that their rulers misbehaved, so long as their neighbor didn't get to take their kid to a park if they weren't allowed to as well.
EDIT: I don't mean this to sound overly harsh to Australians, it's not unique to them. What is funny is just their opinion of themselves. At least the British are admittedly subservient sticklers.
Why not compare it to smoking cigarettes or drinking alcohol? You need to be an adult to decide legally you can do that and that makes sense. Its the same thing here.
Exactly, go tell your physician, that any kind of authority is bad.
Its a two sided bias, on the one, governmemt authority is categorically bad and on the other you cant participate and change it. You could frame social media corporations in the way, but not, when you are a libertarian, i guess.
The attempt is to remove the market do exploiting the attention of children for profit.
This doesn’t have to be perfect to be worth it.
What’s more, the idea that this puts children at the mercy of authoritarians is laughable. The US tech industry has shown us beyond doubt that they are perfectly ok with genuine authoritarians in charge, provided the dollars keep rolling. Fuck them, and good on ya Australia.
What about future governments in Australia? This is ripe for abuse and scope creep. It also ties a uniform ID to an account, simplifying tracking and surveillance by corporations and governments.
Plus, this is asking everyone in the country to give up their biometrics (face scanning is one implementation) or link your government issued ID to your social media account (look at the UK to see how this turned out - people are being arrested for simple tweets against the government). Sacrificing the freedom to be anonymous online to "protect the kids"
> It also ties a uniform ID to an account, simplifying tracking and surveillance by corporations and governments.
That is by no means the only solution. A lot of work is happening in the area of cryptographically verified assertions; for example, a government API could provide the simple assertion "at least 16 years of age" without the social media platform ever seeing your ID, and the government never able to tie you to the service requiring the assertion.
Companies and governments see age verification as an opportunity to hoard data for facial recognition and other ML/AI training sets.
It will always be cheaper to go with a vendor that forces you to scan your face and ID, because they will either be packaging that data for targeted advertising, selling the data to brokers, or making bank off of using it as population-wide training datasets.
Governments will want the data and cost savings, as well.
Both corporations and governments will want to use the platforms to tie online activity to real human beings.
Arguments like these end up like arguments for PGP in email: yes, in a perfect world we'd be using it, and platforms would make it easy, but the incentives aren't aligned for that perfect world to exist.
> a government API could provide the simple assertion
Yes, it could, but we don't have that, do we? They launched the ban without implementing a zero-knowledge proof scheme as you described. In a very short amount of time the providers will have associated millions of people's accounts to their biometric information and/or their government issued IDs.
While this is a good thought.... Do you really trust the Government to implement a cryptographically verified assertion correctly, and not track which website is making the request, for which individual at what time, and then cross reference that with newly created accounts?
I trust the EU for one, yes, because it doesn't really have the capability or agencies to create massive databases on citizens. Aside from that, there's really a lot of research going on around zero knowledge proofs and verified credentials and such; involved researchers have very obviously already thought about most of the knee-jerk concerns voiced in this thread.
Seems foolish to trust them. The EU is fundamentally undemocratic with the unelected Commission proposing laws and decision making hidden within councils. It has been steadily centralizing and concentrating power, creating a dense web of regulations that have been strangling member states' stagnant economies. Right to free speech is notoriously bad in Europe. The EU is trying to increase military power, and ultimately a centralized European army.
It can be achieved with a zero-knowledge proof - there are many schemes, but in essence, they all allow you to prove something (e.g. your birthdate, validated by a government agency), without revealing who you are. You can prove to a third party "the government authenticated that I was born on 1970-01-01" without exposing who "I" is.
Some worthwhile reading on the topic if you're interested:
ZKP is better, but still not foolproof. Depending on the implementation, the government may now know that you have an account, or at least attempted to open an account on that service. You will have a hard time denying it in the future if the government asks to see your posts (as the US is currently doing at their borders).
I disagree. I can't think of an implementation mistake that would allow just the government to see what services you sign up for.
You could of course screw it up so everybody could see. If the government put a keylogger on your device then they could see. However broadly speaking this is not something that can be screwed up in such a way that just the government would be able to see.
The protocol wouldn't even involve any communication with the government.
"This is experimental software. While it has undergone external review, it has not yet received a formal security audit. Please use with caution and at your own risk in production environments."
The anonymity is that the government doesn't know who is asking for the verification, not that the the government doesn't know whose majority it should attest.
You can't link your government ID to your social media account. The legislation doesn't allow social media companies to gather this data. It's specifically not allowed.
In other words: this legislation is useless, and entirely stupid, and kids will bypass it trivially. Teenagers are exceptionally good at bypassing that which they find stupid, or gets in their way of what they consider to be fun, or a right.
"...simplifying tracking and surveillance by corporations and governments."
Decades ago when the Australia Card—an ID system for Australians—was first proposed there was an almighty outcry from the citizenry and the project was seemingly shelved. What's happened since is that our Governments quietly ramped up their computer systems and collected the data anyway, this Law will only enhance that collection further. Moreover, recently Government introduced what at the moment are voluntary digital IDs which it sold under the guise that having a single ID will make it easier to deal with government services, etc. Unfortunately, most will unquestioningly swallow the official line and miss the fine minutiae.
I've never heard any politician or Government official come out and say "We'll never introduce an Australia Card because we're free people" or such and I'd bet that I never will. Fact is, we Australians already have had an 'Australia Card' for years, it's just that we don't carry it around in our wallets as we do with our credit cards.
Our democracy would be vastly improved if those whose governance we're under would actually tell us the truth.
Edit: Despite my comment about this new law, I agree kids need protection—so we're damned either way. I see no easy solution.
I don't know the details of the implementation, but this sounds like an argument for strong data protection laws (and so no data retention) rather than inaction.
Also, I'm really struggling to think of examples where people have been arrested for "tweets against the government". The Linehan case? Most of the ones I can think of are like that — so basically culture war bullshit and overzealous policing of incitement laws.
In actuality websites just have to do something, not use an id. Most of them currently just want you to upload a story then use ai to guess your age, it's as accurate as you might suspect if you're very sceptical
They don’t need age verification for that. If you ever connect to social media even once without a VPN and a number of other protections, they can link an account back to you.
Sorry, you are crazy if you trust American tech companies (that you have zero control over) rather than your own government which in theory you have a lot of control over, but it does depend on your flavour of democracy.
Until these controls on American tech companies Trump (via all the tech CEOs fawning over him) had more control over Australian society than your own government.
The rest of the world needs similar restrictions on American tech and social media unless we all want to have American bonkers (and increasingly authoritarian) politics fully exported to us.
"The rest of the world needs similar restrictions on American tech and social media..."
Yes, it does but don't kid yourself, all of Big Tech will cooperate with governments for mutual benefit. Big Tech collects data that governments would otherwise have difficulty collecting, if Big Tech is refrained from collecting data because of regulation and privacy laws then both lose out.
We should never expect governments to maintain our privacy or protect us from Big Tech leaching our data. In short, we're fighting different enemies on two fronts and that's a difficult and invidious position to be in.
It is not that simple: Authoritarians that want to "protect" their gender-questioning or orientation-questioning children from having online access to trans and gay spaces online are not only enthusiastically backing Australia's social media ban, they are involved in the very creation of this legislation, and are delighted in its negative affects on LGBTQ teens.
There is considerable overlap between those who subscribe to the "trans people are a contagion" moral panic of writer Abigail Schrier, and the "ban social media" advocates in AU who were instrumental in creating this legislation.
> It is not that simple: Authoritarians that want to "protect" their gender-questioning or orientation-questioning children from having online access to trans and gay spaces online are not only enthusiastically backing Australia's social media ban, they are involved in the very creation of this legislation, and are delighted in its negative affects on LGBTQ teens.
Lawmakers in the US have said this explicitly[1] concerning laws like KOSA[2]:
> A co-sponsor of a bipartisan bill intended to protect children from the dangers of social media and other online content appeared to suggest in March that the measure could be used to steer kids away from seeing transgender content online.
> In a video recently published by the conservative group Family Policy Alliance, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., said “protecting minor children from the transgender in this culture” should be among the top priorities of conservative lawmakers.
A bill that implements mass surveillance, chilling of free speech and the hurting of marginalized kids is really killing two birds with one stone for some legislators.
There's not really any plausible explanation as to why referrals to pediatric gender clinics became so skewed towards girls who want to be boys, other than social contagion.
The sticking point is that it's politically controversial to point this out because of progressive beliefs about gender identity as an unquestionable facet of someone's being.
I'm pretty sure this take is incorrect on multiple accounts. Trans demographics tend to skew towards trans women by about a third, not trans men - at least in all the research I've come across.
And regardless, increased acceptance and awareness of different gender identities can very plausibily explain increased numbers, not "social contagion". Calling it a contagion is pretty indicative of your underlying beliefs here.
> "Social contagion" is social science terminology. It's meant as an analogy not a pejorative.
Some social scientists say the analogy is misleading, the term is poorly defined, and contagion has a pejorative connotation irrespective of intent. They are correct.
Well documented should imply multiple papers across multiple countries and across multiple time periods.
If that's the one and only paper you have, then it's a single UK paper that covers seven years of GIDS referrals from numbers that are near zero in 2009 to 1800 referrals in 2016.
Statistically, looking at the last graphic in the paper, it's less a case of "becoming so heavily skewed" and likely more a case of "taking several years to reveal the pattern and weights".
There's scarce numbers to begin with to make a strong claim as to the "natural balance" of referrals being evident at the start and this "being skewed toward" the later clearer pattern.
There are other papers showing the same sort of pattern elsewhere. For example, you can see one cited in that paper within the introductory paragraphs.
As the commenter upthread noted, the adult demographic is more weighted towards men who want to be women. Why would childhood referrals have become shifted in the opposite direction, much more towards girls who want to be boys?
> There's not really any plausible explanation as to [..] other than social contagion.
is a leap.
> Why would childhood referrals have become shifted
\1 Have they really shifted, or have the stats on a relatively new thing in a few countries firmed up from nothing, to bugger all, to enough to see a pattern?
\2 As to the pattern now seen - a few boys question whether they like being boys at an earlier age than a few more girls then question whether they like being girls ..
there are other factors, eg: I heard there's a "big change" in the lives of young girls at an age that coincides with a 'surge' (small numbers in a country the size of the UK) in girls exploring whether they want to be girls after all.
Social patterns, depth of communication about places existing where gender question can be asked, word of mouth, etc are factors that play a role - but they are not the sole factors at play in these very low incident observations.
My suggestion to yourself, looking at the questions you've raised and how you've framed them, is to perhaps study some epidemiology and find a mentor with first hand real world experience with low frequency data that gradually comes to light as social norms about reporting evolve - eg: SIDS data in the 1970s / 1980s.
You seem to be making a great many mistakes based on preconceptions and "feels".
If only the Dutch hadn't destroyed quite so many records in "their" East Indies .. there might be other gender frequency records to draw on <shrug>.
To claim there are not really any other candidates for a skew (in that direction or the other) you would have to (like Shrier herself) go out of your way to not bother to talk to trans people, or their doctors, or their families, or sociologists, or talk to any of the people who spend their lives researching gender, what it means, how it affects us, what assumptions we make, whether those ideas stack up when confronted with empirical research, etc etc. I'm not really interested in discussing further with a 30 minute old account.
Increasing social acceptibility and awareness is not mysterious to people who understand that many perceptions about gender are constructions that occur in social contexts.
Why do I owe you any specific "explanation" when the context here is that you are treating Shrier's pseudoscientific book that literally tells parents in the closing chapters that if their kid has a trans friend they should consider moving cities to get their child away from their trans friend as though we are supposed to take transphobic hate literature at face value.
Maybe a better step than me agreeing to do that is that instead you should take the entire corpus of medical literature on the subject, as well as the voices of trans people on the subject of trans people at face value first.
The statistical evidence for a change in the paper you linked and the other papers in the area is extremely weak.
At one end of the scale is very little data that gives an unreliable picture with a high degree of variability, at the other end of the not very long in time scale is somewhat more data that provides a better picture.
To make such a fuss about " this demographic change " indicates a lack of exposure to such statistics.
Why are you attempting to make such a big deal of bad data here?
Maybe just think critically, without conspiracy about it for two seconds. With anything else, I'm sure you'd see the classic survivorship bias error you are making here.
It’s about the social safety of transitioning. The paper you referenced is from the UK, which is famously a TERF island (trans-exclusionary radical feminists). In the TERF island, it’s much less safe to be a trans woman than a trans man. Adolescents can sense the risk of being a trans woman is much higher, so many trans women stay in the closet and don’t come out.
Because a decade ago marks when the American right decided to scapegoat transwomen after losing their previous scapegoat, gay people and marriage, to SCOTUS in 2015.
2015-2016 is when rhetoric online and globally shifted towards villainizing trans women that weren't on the public's radar before. This was exported to UK politics and has been an incredible political success.
If that is the cause, how does it explain both the sex ratio shift and the rapid increase in referrals starting from around 2011-2012 onwards? There were gender clinics across Europe reporting similar demographic changes in pediatric referrals. This precedes the political developments in the US that you mentioned.
Please stop. HN is not a place for political/ideological battle, including about this topic. What HN is for is curious conversation, including about difficult topics, but the guidelines apply, particularly these ones:
Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer...
Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.
Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
There's not really any plausible explanation as to why so many left-handed students tend to skew towards boys, rather than girls, other than social contagion.
When my parents were kids, there were no left-handed kids. Social contagion is the only explanation for as to why there are suddenly so many left-handed kids today, especially since many of them are boys and not girls.
But the adult demographic of left-handers doesn't have, and didn't have, a sex ratio skewed in the opposite direction to the youth demographic. So how is this a relevant comparison?
People assigned male at birth come out later than people assigned female at birth on average. Trans men and trans women receive different stigma. Many AFAB children and adolescents referred to gender clinics identify as non binary. AMAB non binary people reported less acceptance in LGBT circles even. And biology could be a factor.
You are correct. And when they try to undermine you they prove your point. There are more mtf people than ftm people because until recently, the it was not a trend among teen girls.
A wall street journal opinion columnist - Shrier- with zero medical training wrote a book to create a moral panic in the public about trans teens, based on the discredited ideas from Lisa Littman's ROGD "research", where in this case the word "research" actually means: reports from parents recruited from well-known anti-trans websites.
Their comment did not attribute to Shrier any view of sexual orientation. People who consider gender identity illegitimate and people who consider sexual orientation illegitimate overlap.
> So are we banning all advertising to children? Or only banning them from communicating and posting with each other?
Kids are not banned from communicating and posting with each other; the ban exempts a number of direct messing apps, as well as community apps like Discord:
If I had to over-simplify it, then the ban appears to mostly target doom-scrolling apps. I say mostly, since I'm not sure why Twitch and Kick are included
> The data on social media harms is mixed at best. We know for a fact fast food, cosmetic ads for girls, are strictly more harmful.
True, but let me remind you that we didn't have conclusive data on smoke harm until the 50s, but this doesn't mean that smoking was not harmful before, nor that we were lacking any clue before coming to a conclusive study.
At the moment we don't have any conclusive study about e-cigarettes, but I'm sure you would never give kids e-cigarettes just because we don't have 30/40 years worth of data.
> This is nothing more than speech control under the guise of "won't someone please think of the children"
This is a bit more complex than this. Kids and adolescents online are targeted with all sort of techniques to leverage their attention in order to make money. I understand the speech control worry, and I agree up to a certain point, but I don't see how ignoring the problem makes it any better. What are the alternatives we have? I'm genuinely asking, not advocating for TINA. I have two kids and I see the effects of social media on them and on their friends.
Keep in mind that this cannot be offloaded to families, for multiple reasons:
- many family just don't have enough data or knowledge to make informed decisions
- until the network effect is in place, banning your kid from social media while all of their friend are online can be impractical and cruel
- parent decisions can affect kids health and overall society outcome; allowing a wrong decision by the parents (because the society doesn't want to handle the problem) would be unfair for the kids and no wise for the society.
As in many aspects of life the best solution is neither white nor black, but a shade of grey, and is far from being perfect. Looking for a perfect solution is a waste of time, resources and unfair for those that are affected in the meanwhile.
I understand the concerns, and probably Australia approach is not the best, but it's also the first. We probably will need a period of adjustments to reach a sound solution.
If you read the rhetoric it is not about removing commercial exploitation of children. It is about removing child bullying, grooming and algorithms that lead to things like misogynist content and eating disorders.
I generally agree with parent commenter - some of this will be helped by the ban but theres a serious risk a small number will go through fringe social media even less policed or normalised than the big American ones and have much higher risk on some of these issues than before.
and the other other problem is that this does nothing to disincentivize toxic advertisement and predatory behaviors they will just follow where the target are.
> I had a comment comparing this to allowing people to eat too much food
We do that for drugs already. Of course, the correct way to do it is not to try to ban a substance or control supply but simply to ban advertising for addictive stuff. I don't think that works for social media, though, due to the viral nature of it.
Come on dude, you are on HN. You probably know that social media is no longer about free speech. It’s a targeted advertising machine that is extremely effective on kids and teenagers. It preys on them so, so efficiently. It’s a technical work of art. A young mind is extremely susceptible to the algorithms on those platforms. Much more than adults are, and adults are already really susceptible. This is what this ban is trying to shield kids from. Not from them talking to each other.
The Social media platforms of today are very clearly harmful to our youth. Just like alcohol and cigarettes are to a developing brain. Why can we ban those and not this?
> It’s a targeted advertising machine that is extremely effective on kids and teenagers. It preys on them so, so efficiently. It’s a technical work of art. A young mind is extremely susceptible to the algorithms on those platforms. Much more than adults are, and adults are already really susceptible.
Sure, but the Australian government's definition of an age-restricted social media platform doesn't mention advertising or algorithms at all. Technically, their definition also covers algorithm-free social media like Mastodon, which I'd argue isn't nearly as harmful.
The framing of social media as something that's inherently bad no matter how you do it is a framing that helps social media giants like YouTube, Instagram and Facebook to continue to "do it" in a way that harms people. I'm sure they love the idea that the ills of social media can be solved by banning their least profitable users while doing nothing to regulate what they do with the others. They're probably thrilled that their healthier algorithm-free competitors haven't even entered the conversation. They want to be the tobacco companies of the future, because making addictive things for adults is incredibly profitable.
Biggest problem of social media is the addictive effects. It’s a dopamine creation machine. Hopefully people will see it like alcohol and cigarettes in the future.
How many degrees of separation is this from adult regulation? Want to provide age information to a site so you can look at porn without any guarantee that information won't be used for additional profit? That's a real thing in the US.
Government assumes zero expected trust reciprocation because they don't have to provide trust reciprocation and can do what they want, and government is comprised of co-opted humans.
Err on the side of sovereign freedom. Arguing about banning this or regulating that is all second principle stuff, and nanny states all strike me as the tail-end of civilization.
I value my kid not being exposed to porn as a child well above your right to privacy while watching it.
The ubiquity of the internet and children’s access to it is something we haven’t reckoned with yet. The differences between pre social media and mobile vs now is immense. The people seeking to capitalize on getting children addicted to something are numerous and well motivated by LTV.
Their incentives and the wellbeing of children are directly at odds. We already regulate things that are addictive for children.
People might give their kids a drink extralegally. Nobody is saying “hey kid, why don’t we watch porn together so you can develop healthier habits.” Nobody is creating a “starter Instagram” with their teenage daughter.
These forms of media are NOT SAFE FOR KIDS. They have observably negative population wide outcomes and are as reasonably banned as lead in pipes.
Oh, I don’t let my children have electronic devices at all.
But schools do. Their friends all have Internet enabled devices in their pockets. The library he goes to has poorly secured devices. The school library does too.
This is what I mean by the ubiquity of the internet. It is functionally impossible to control access to the internet as a parent and allow your children to develop independence.
I do what I can, and have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars at this point to opt in to like minded environments. My oldest at ten is observably different than children at his age and doing great.
His friends that come from poorer families, like the ones that I grew up in, might as well have Roblox as a third parent and suffer from ridiculous behavioral problems. The school curriculum in SFUSD is years behind my curriculum was in Georgia when it was a bottom quintile outcome program.
It does not take much looking to see something is thoroughly wrong. I think a lot of it has to do with the mass experiment of Internet access we’ve run on children.
Funny enough I lived in the Atlanta metro area from 1996 to 2022. I had a house built in Decatur in 2003.
I started dating my now wife in 2011. She lived in Alpharetta. As soon as I met my now step sons who were 9 and 14, my first thought was in going to have to sell my house and move. There is no way in hell they are going to survive Decatur public schools.
We moved to Johns Creek at first and then had a house built in Forsyth County. Yeah this Forsyth County
The attitudes in the burbs of Forsyth changed since then as people came from other places and it grew. But we very much stuck out. My son loved it there and still lives in that area and rents a house nearby where you use to live.
Strangely enough I live in the same general area - right in the middle of Gwinnett. What an odd coincidence that the three of us happened to come across eachother in an HN thread before knowing this.
"It does not take much looking to see something is thoroughly wrong."
Agreed, but observation suggests that it takes much more effort to do something about it—effort that the majority cannot muster or are unwilling to commit to.
"Want to provide age information to a site so you can look at porn without any guarantee that information won't be used for additional profit?"
That's the Orwellian payoff: people self-censoring and frightened to act for rear of retribution or their reputation. It's the authoritarian's ideal approach to control.
Right, it sucks for all. What truly pisses me off is that early on very smart people in Big Tech realized that to make a financial killing they'd have to get in quickly and lock in populations before governments et al realized the negative implications and introduced policy/regulations.
As with addiction or clicking a ratchet forward, they knew that reversing direction would then be nigh on impossible. Society seems to have little or no defense against such threats and I'd bet London to a brick that it'll be repeated with AI.
I was all for this legislation, thinking the positives outweighed the cost, but after reading the list of affected services, I now disagree.
Why didn't they just legislate that all social media apps content must be like Facebook in 2005. No recommendations, chronological timeline only, and you only see posts from users you explicitly added. That would have benefited everyone forever, and not enabled some small subset of apps to collect your govt id or the law to be irrelevant when the next popular social network comes along.
They effectively banned only the popular cigarette brands, instead of regulating nicotine.
If services would argue this would make them all the same, then add a clause where the user can opt in to have an algorithm shove content at them like now if they are over 18.
This way everyone can use the basic service for true socializing, but the harmful stuff is actually regulated out by default.
Too much money etc for this to ever happen, but geez they could have done a lot better.
First they came for Facebook, and I didn't protest, I was not on facebook.
Here's what's going to happen next: Whatsapp/signal/telegram groups will become wildly popular. Which gives the wannabe-fascists the excuse to ban those as well 'for the children'.
We've seen this salami tactic often enough to know the pattern.
You are too modest! You should start your poem denouncing those pesky spam filters than hinders the honest viagra pill salesmen!
Then you could regret your inaction when google downweighted zit-popping videos, and maybe you have reached the point where it becomes reasonable to regret losing Facebook the genocide facilitator.
There is a qualitative distinction between 'I filter for myself what I don't want to see' and 'The State decides what everyone is allowed to see.'
Not too sure about those zit-popping videos. But in my time, we had rotten.com - so I might be immunized to that kind of stuff. Personally, I find a honest zit-popping video no worse than yet another AI voice going on and on about some non-topic, clearly written by AI as well. I don't seek out either, but the zit-popping at least is over after 10 seconds.
But that's Google curating content. State censorship is something else entirely. Once justified "for the children" or "for security", it never stops at the first target. It grows, layer by layer. We’ve watched that pattern repeat for centuries across every medium humans have ever invented.
Facebook, the genocide facilitator? If we are honest, so has the printing press. Let's ban letters, they have facilitated genocide.
The printing press spread enlightenment, propaganda, revolutions, and atrocities. The State tried to control that too. It failed every time. It will fail with the net, for young people and for old ones.
Repression never works long-term, it always creates pressure that eventually breaks the system that produced it. Historically, societies tend to get worse before they correct themselves, because authoritarian overreach generates exactly the instability it claims to prevent.
Jefferson’s warning about the recurring need to renew freedom wasn’t a call for violence - it was an observation about the cyclical nature of power, repression, and reform. Every attempt to restrict communication has eventually collapsed under its own contradictions, and the internet will be no exception.
It's not networked communication that's a problem, it's a company pumping algorithmicly prioritized feeds of content while being run by unscrupulous profit driven people.
Well that’s kind of my point. If we regulated against that kind of content pipeline, we wouldn’t have an excuse for big brother to be demanding we prove our age to access websites.
we didn't ban cigarettes, we disincentivized them. Why can't we do the same here? regulate the algorithms, not the platform (the platform ultimately being "the internet").
This is just a cat and mouse game where every few years the government will ban whatever the kids like. That's not how you create a high trust society.
In Australia, not that much and we (Australia) passed the point of diminishing returns and moved into the zone of incentivising a criminal black market.
The state of play today is that foreign nationals, Syrians and others, are chasing billions in illicit tobacco revenue, denying that to the Government as income, firebombing and shooting up cars, shops, and families of rivals.
The brutality levels have risen to the point where old school leg breaking Chopper Read era crims are speaking out about going too far, involving families and "breaking code".
It’s not that I have an opinion either way. Having anything that messes with my lungs is something I don’t touch. Not that I’m a health nut. But I have been a gym addict for over 30 years.
I mean, your source there is telling us that cannabis and hallucinogen use are up, vaping (weed and nicotine) is up and smoking is in decline.
Hallucinogens are generally considered not very addictive, they are drugs that people use infrequently and their direct health effects are usually pretty minimal - LSD for instance is a mild stimulant and vasoconstrictor, but that's no real health worry for younger users. There are mental side effects in a minority of users (HPPD etc).
Compare this to tobacco which is well known to be one of the world's most addictive substances and kills fully half of lifetime users, I'd say a society in which people 9% of people used hallucinogens in the last year is preferable to one in which (like the US was in 1965) 42% of people smoke daily.
Cannabis consumption doesn't have to involve your lungs, people consume all sorts of edibles and drinks these days. Vaping cannabis is definitely worse for your health than abstaining from both vaping and smoking, but it doesn't contain the combustion products from burning plant material. Smoking cannabis; well I honestly don't know how that compares to smoking tobacco in terms of health risk, but it is less addictive and users are less likely to be "pack a day" types than they are with cigarettes AFAICT.
Vaping nicotine, similarly, is widely considered worse than not vaping nicotine and users may be more prone to respiratory infections, plus there is often poor quality control on ingredients. But again, tobacco kills half of lifetime users.
So yeah, if I had to choose whether to have higher smoking rates or higher hallucinogen and weed use rates in society, based on expected health outcomes, I'd go with the hallucinogens and weed.
If you want to read about the comparative risks of drug use (including tobacco and alcohol, but written prior to the explosion of vapes) I highly recommend "Drugs without the hot air", a book by Prof. David Nutt, one of the UK's foremost experts on the topic. The general takeaway is that heroin, cocaine, tobacco and alcohol are the worst, and that most other drugs slot in below there somewhere.
>"You probably know that social media is no longer about free speech, It’s a targeted advertising machine"
Youtube for one is an advertising machine. On the other hand it is one of the few places where one can find some amazing educational and entertainment content. Prohibiting it I think is a crime.
Besides, lately Politicians stick their noses everywhere. It is just way too much.
Which means they also do no longer benefit from family-grouped Youtube Premium, which means MORE ADS ... which is exactly what we tried to prevent, right?
They already have that. Youtube Kids. And it works horribly because apparently Family Guy counts as "for kids". And that's not even the tip of the iceberg on the problems presented.
Tech is trying to push all these wonderful LLM's on us, telling us how it works like magic. Meanwhile, it can't even follow basic public TV labeling.
Youtube kids is designed for toddlers, and should probably be shut down entirely. What I'm talking about is something designed for 14 year olds where they can still subscribe to channels, have paid ad free, parental controls, etc. But not upload videos or use it in a social media way.
Youtube (regular one) is already designed to be kids-friendly. There are no war images since recent AI moderation rollout. There are a lot of very forbidden words which can lead to ban account. There are a lot of mildly forbidden words which just do not appear in subtitle. You can not say anything bully on comments - it will be removed instantly. I don't consider anything bad in YT except of the whole top of popular bloggers - because they are clearly aimed at low-IQ people. Just don't be a stupid, and your kids will not watch the bloggers. Buy more instruments of all kinds for your kids and they will watch a lot of educational videos explaining different know-hows.
The main target of these bans algorithmic content curation and the addictive nature of such algorithms and the possible harmful content that could be presented. So no?
Interesting. I don't know if you intended it, but algorithm free means no recommendations to me - even no recommended videos alongside existing videos. You want a video? You have to search for something.
I think that is a surprisingly good solution. You can still access educational information, or really whatever videos you want, but you have to actively seek them out rather than ingest whatever is spit out at you.
Search results are pretty much the same thing though. It's a ranked list of recommended videos. It's just based on your text instead of the video you're watching.
I've used plugins like unhook in the past which do exactly this and it's nice. Now I just follow channels via rss and block everything else on the page. Same deal.
Yeah but content curation ( e.g. building your own Alrogrithm TM ) is the only way you get out of the advertisement hell of Youtube. Browsing Youtube on Incognito and your feeds filled with Mr Beast and Tryphobia AI Generated contents.
Don't use recommendations unless showing to YT that your request are always great and just don't click lowball content even once on your first hours of using YT new profile.
It is a targeted advertising machine, that is one of its functions. I also don't think there is anything wrong with that. I don't think the government has any businesses banning speech either. I also don't believe they want to "save the children".
The question here is, is social media addictive and is it harmful. If we have enough evidentiary proof, then yes, it should be banned just like we do for alcohol or cigarettes.
We also ban porn for kids. And we don't need any ID proofs in implementing the ban. So we have a precedent. It's not perfect, but society knows it's bad, government, family, schools come together and implement the ban. No need for IDs etc and give more control to government.
Some of us don’t mind government regulation as much as your parents told you not to like it. I just say this because it’s usually those types of parents that instill this kind of stuff and their children not to trust the government but some of us actually do. We are pretty happy with the way things are. It’s not naïve either. It’s seriously a problem when people talk like the government is meant to be not trusted.
I typically think regulation is ineffective and poorly structured. Banning social media for teenagers is such an obvious social good that I can’t see a downside. The kids are not alright.
No, not really. Any sufficiently motivated state actor already can. I would be unsurprised to be able to dox you as a mildly interested individual. It is usually not very hard.
People usually reference things that they are ashamed about as a reason to justify this fear of ID based services. I don’t find this compelling whatsoever. Every platform I’m on that is even mildly associated with identity is more enjoyable and interesting. The idea that the marketplace of ideas is slowed by identity is not something I’ve seen in practice. In authoritarian regimes we already see ways to circumvent internet anonymity. So no, I don’t see the downside.
Open to being persuaded here though, about 5 years ago I would have agreed with you.
You realize right now today the US is forcing people to have public social media profiles to enter the country and they just started firing people for saying mean things about an irrelevant racist podcaster?
>Some of us don’t mind government regulation as much as your parents told you not to like it
I wasn't told to hate government regulations. 30 years of horrible, ineffective regulation taught me to hate these poorly thought out regulatoins. I grew up under No Child Left Behind. I saw the TSA form before my very eyes. I'm right now seeing ICE roam free, regulations be damned.
I don't hate the idea of regulation. I don't trust the people who are trying to regulate.
I don't put much stock in slippery-slope style arguments. If you're going to make an argument like that, you need to support it with other instances where the same group/government has actually fallen down that slippery slope, to great detriment, in a similar enough situation for it to be likely to happen here.
Without that, it just comes off as hand-wavy anti-government fear-mongering. It's telling that you used the term "authoritarians", as if any law that's passed that can restrict what someone can do is necessarily authoritarian... which, well, as I said, it's telling.
I'm more concerned with the fact that these sorts of laws don't just affect kids: they require adults to supply government-issued identification in order to use these services, which I think is crap.
Authoritarians were already in charge of social media. At least these new “authoritarians” are elected and have some duty to people and society rather than just a few rich shareholders.
Still, even the most libertarian among us generally won't oppose restricting youth access to tobacco, or restricting recreational access to hard drugs.
That's the thing. We don't really ban "youth smoking". We ban sellers selling to youth. Who's accountable is everything in law.
Targeting platforms is like only banning one brand of cigarette. People will just find another. We should instead attack the "seller" here, being the algorithms optimized for selling and not for the enrichment of society.
So, considering there is a clear health issue with fast food and television, shall we ban them from having anything other than fruit and books (but not too complicated ones, we don't want them to get potentially suicidal ideas)?
You’re framing this as an all-or-nothing choice. The logical inverse of your argument would be: "should we unban hard drugs for everyone, and allow alcohol, tobacco, or porn for kids?"
That kind of binary framing doesn’t really move the discussion forward.
A more constructive approach is case-by-case. Different things sit at different levels of harm, and "ban everything" vs. "ban nothing" isn’t a workable model for society.
You know, I am in a country that allows alcohol for children (in different intensities, e.g. beer at age 14 with parents present, age 16 in the supermarket, age 18 for the hard stuff). As it turns out, our kids are alright.
Tobacco and porn have been more strongly regulated lately. In my teenage years, they were easily available to anyone with coins in their hands. Turns out: that didn't destroy us either.
The first beer, the first pack of strong tobacco (Rothändle, the dirtiest, hardest stuff), the first tiddie magazine from the railway station kiosk, those were rites of passages. It was a way for teenagers to push the envelope, realise alcohol makes you wobbly, tobacco causes diarrea (believe me, that Rothändle stuff was more chemical weapon than 'smooth'), and ultimately, all women look about the same undressed, so it is pointless to keep buying. They were small, recoverable mistakes that taught teenagers where their limits were.
Now we have banned all that away - but the teenage urge to self-realization and rebellion found a new way to social media. And: social media is safer: no-one got lung cancer from TikTok. No-one woke up in a hospital for facebook poisoning.
Ultimately, it is the rebellion the fascists dislike, not the fact that people earn money with it. So we ban that, driving teenagers to ever-more-destructive behaviour.
Teenagers need an outlet to be teenagers without living in a state sanctioned panopticum. If society pathologizes every form of adolescent experimentation, if you let control freaks raise your children, do not be surprised if they turn out to be either actual rebels, or something much, much darker.
"In 2015, 9.3% of high school students reported smoking cigarettes in the last 30 days, down 74% from 36.4% in 1997 when rates peaked after increasing throughout the first half of the 1990s"
It’s already a solved problem-
load a digital ID into a wallet app, the operating system can then perform a zero knowledge proof for each website that the user is over 16. The government issuing the ID doesn’t know which websites it’s being used for and the website only gets a binary yes/no for the age and no other personal info:
How does this solve the problem of both governments and corporations wanting to implement this in ways that allow them to hoard datasets?
As it stands, the government in the US uses an identity verification vendor that forces you to upload videos of multiple angles of your face, enough data for facial recognition and to build 3D models, along with pictures of your ID.
I use Tor, so I get to see how age verification is implemented all over the world. By large, the process almost always includes using your government issued ID and live pictures/videos of your face.
There are zero incentives to implement zero knowledge proofs like this, and billions of dollars of incentives to use age verification as an opportunity to collect population-wide datasets of people's faces in high resolution and 3D. That data is valuable, especially for governments and companies that want to implement accurate facial recognition and who have AI models to train.
Nothing "solves" the problem of governments wanting to collect data on you. Governments will likely always want this, until we start caring about the issue enough to elect ones that don't.
The important point is that such invasive approaches are not required; clearly, however people already authenticate with government agencies for getting a driver's licence or passport would suffice. I think it's the responsibility of knowledgeable tech people to advocate for this.
Most being the operative word. In human-centric bureaucracies, people who don't have ID (for whatever reason: religious conviction, a feud with the relevant government agency, a legal status the computer system was never designed to represent) can still access services in many cases. Naïvely computerising everything will effectively remove rights from those whose paperwork doesn't check out.
ID verification is a universal hammer, to which all problems look like nails, but we shouldn't be so quick to reach for it. Not all of its downsides can be solved with cryptography.
The "stuff" is already in the hands of authoritarians. When huge swathes of the world's "social estate" lies in the hands of a very small number of individuals with overwhelming incentives to tweak the "stuff" for their own benefit (exerting their authority over the estate if you will), then you're already in that territory. At least with elected authoritarians you have some theoretical influence. Good luck getting a Facebook/X policy changed.
>And this is further normalising the government making decisions about speech where they have every incentive and tendency to shut down people who tell inconvenient and important truths.
You really should think about how idiotic this libertarian talking point is
It would be valid if you had a populace that was educated (implying that when people heard the inconvenient truths, they would be able to parse fact from fiction and not be ideologically driven), combined with a tyrannical government that would be in power and afraid of the general populace knowing that information and starting a revolt.
This situation is pretty much impossible. How can an educated populace elect that government in the first place? If the population was dumb and elected a fascist government (i.e USA), they would just ignore anyone speaking inconvenient truths (i.e how MAGA is blind to all the stuff that is going on).
Secondly, information dissemination is pretty much impossible to stop these days with everyone being on the internet all the time.
The only people who complain about government silencing them these days are racists who wanna push some racist or "anti-woke" narrative, or the brainrotted people like anti-vaxxers. Because in their mind, they live in this false reality where they believe that everyone is brainwashed by the evil government and they are the actually "woke" ones.
I'd even go one step further: it does not have to be enforceable at all. This has to do with teen's psychology. For whatever reason, kids just fight their parents but listen to their schools and government a lot more. Of course, there are exceptions, but I'm talking about trend. The kids in my school district were generally angry towards their parents when they couldn't get a smartphone when their peers did. However, when my school district introduced the strict ban of electronic devices in school, the kids quieted down and even bought the same reasons that their parents were saying: attention is the most precious assets one should cherish. Kids complained that the problem sets by RSM (Russian School of Mathematics) are too hard and unnecessary (they are not by the standard of any Asian or East European country), yet they stopped complaining when the school teacher ramped up the difficulty of the homework.
So, when the government issues this ban, the kids would listen to their parents a lot more easily.
Absolutely this. We have limits in place for usage of a bunch of this sort of stuff, from not at all to up to an hour, and we'd be constantly tested and pushed on these limits. Constantly. "But my friends are..." is the usual start to it.
Government says you can't chat with just anyone in Roblox, and suddenly it's accepted that this is just what it is. Not only that, but limits and rules on how much and when you can watch YouTube and the like are also suddenly more acceptable.
So far what my kids are saying is that this is broadly true across their peer groups. The exceptions are just that, exceptions. The peer pressure to be in on it all is lessened. And in turn, that means less push-back on boundaries set by us, because it's less of a big deal.
(And I face less of a dilemma of how much to allow to balance out the harm of not being part of the zeitgeist vs. the harm of short form, mega-corporation curated content).
So many people are looking at this from a technical stand point and how water tight or perfect its going to be.
But there is a large psychological part of this that helps parents and I know that part of it is what a number of parents I've spoken to like about it.
Its not just about the current generation, but the next wave of kids who have grown up under these laws, the psychology of it will have changed.
This also works with other things such as alcohol and (old school) smoking (neither of which has watertight control, but the control is still very effective).
> a small fraction of kids branching off into fringe networks that are off the radar and will take them to very dark places very quickly.
I don't think this is much of an issue at all. The path of least resistance, by an overwhelmingly wide margin, is just using a proxy, TOR, or whatever else to bypass the filtering. Sites will be doing the bare minimum for legal compliance, and so it won't be particularly difficult.
Beyond that I'd also add that for those of us that were children during the early days of the internet, "we" were always one click away from just about anything you could imagine in newsgroups, IRC, and so on. It never really seems to have had much of any negative effect, let alone when contrasted against the overwhelmingly negative effect of social media.
I don't really know why that is, and I half suspect nobody really does. You can come up with lots of clever hypotheses that are all probably at least partially true, but on a fundamental level it's quite surprising how destructive 'everybody' communicating online turned out to be. And that obviously doesn't end just because somebody turns 18.
The real problem is social media. Their machine learning algorithms are optimised to boost toxic content, as they result in more engagement (time spent). This is a fundamental trait of humans. Even babies look at angry faces longer than happy faces.More time spent means more advertising revenue.
It means the current generation gets exposed to a lot of toxic content all in the name of driving advertising revenue. In the olden days you could get everything, but it wasn't forced down your throat, or rather your reels.
I agree with you 100%, but I would add the bubble effect.
You watch something, you like it, then you get all the time similar things.
Simple example: you click on a post about vegetarian meals. Then the next you see is cows ending up in a slaughterhouse. And then etc.. In less than a week, your posts are all about "why become a vegan".
The end effect is that they shape our children culturally, and it's very hard to explain what is true vs what is fake. Or why something is right vs wrong. They are just not there yet.
> a small fraction of kids branching off into fringe networks that are off the radar and will take them to very dark places very quickly.
‘Fringe networks’, and ‘off the radar’ feel like a very negative framing for a kind of smaller, more intimate, and often pleasantly communal feeling internet that I quite like!
Old fashioned online forums—maybe even Hackernews itself?—would likely fit into this ‘fringe’, ‘off the radar’ internet, and yet, it still feels much less toxic here than it does on twitter.
> The real problem is social media. Their machine learning algorithms are optimised to boost toxic content
…and you need a massive network to enable this, right? You can’t do it without the money, and the volume of content, that the giants in this space have.
If this just pushes kids onto the small web—sure, it’s not _all_ wholesome—but at least it’s not as carefully, as deliberately manipulative.
> a small fraction of kids branching off into fringe networks that are off the radar and will take them to very dark places very quickly.
I've been grappling with this all afternoon and I still cannot determine what my stance on this.
I grew up when the internet was a bit of a wildwest, and I've definitely seen things online that I wish I never had without my consent.
But there's also a bizarre thought that mayb exposure to this isn't such a bad thing because it keeps us human, and aware of privilidge and our safety - and why that is such an important thing to think about
I'd equate it at some level to seeing the inside of the production of food and being put of eating meat, or eating anything non-organic again.
I'm not sure I would like my own children to see it, but I'm hyper aware of what conflict and crime looks like as a result.
Comparatively to social media at least I was making a choice to click on something risky or that I would not like to see rather than having a algorithm choose for me. Not sure if I am just becoming a middle-aged tech dinosaur though.,
Your comment made one word immediately pop to mind - rotten? But I'm increasingly of the opinion that the 'dark stuff' on the internet isn't really the problem, so much as the seemingly innocuous stuff like people posting extremely 'select', if not outright fabricated, sections of their lives on social media. It gives people a mistaken perception of what their own life is like or what it could/should be like. Even more when this is taken to the next level with insecure kids consuming and interacting with one another in this context.
And then there's the issue with ourselves even. We pretty much all do, say, and believe dumb things when we're younger. It's just a part of growing up. But I can't imagine what life must be like if you mix this reality with social media. Not only does this then stay attached to you forever, but pretty much anything can be artificially reinforced. With both factors probably working to impair general maturation.
These are all just consequences of 'normal' things that you'd have even if we censored 100% of vice on the internet, and it's still quite awful.
When we were growing up, internet was for smart people. Chat rooms and video games were for "nerds", the "cool" people all hung out in person.
When someone wanted to do something counter-culture (i.e the *chan websites), there was actually a shared interest behind it. People would spend time making content and actually doing things on the web.
These days, internet is so ubiqutious that the majority of the users are simply consumers. There is no drive to build anything. Modern day kids aren't going to be spending time trying to figure out how to get around social media bans with technology, because most internet users simply just don't care enough to organize and build something.
And here lies the actual fix unless you just want to sit back and wait for regulators to pick it up - phones should be the means of communication, not consumption.
Remove those apps that make you do so, and the world becomes a little bit brighter over time. I did it years ago with FB apps (which was draining battery while unused, typical fb crappy engineering when they can't even snoop on you in more subtle ways) and have 0 need to put anything there. I can check FB on desktop if I need to, and do so rarely due to lack of any actually interesting stuff there.
Same can go for any other social cancer out there.
In the EU you don’t need to upload your ID anywhere, the service can use the government’s portal for ID verification. In the case of age verification they can get a yes/no response if the age is above some threshold. This is opaque to the service so they wouldn’t get any additional ID details.
> In the EU you don’t need to upload your ID anywhere, the service can use the government’s portal for ID verification. In the case of age verification they can get a yes/no response
The issue is that now the government knows what you are doing online, and that should never be allowed to happen.
I grew up when the Internet was truly free, before Facebook even existed. People shared source code, videos, MP3s, games, regardless of "copyright" or "intellectual property." To some extent, it is still possible to do all of this, but these freedoms are being eroded every day by making the Internet less anonymous. The endgame is obviously to force people to pay for things whose "marginal cost" is zero in the language of economists. "Protecting the children" is just a convenient excuse.
> The issue is that now the government knows what you are doing online
There's zero technical necessity for this. You could do zero knowledge proofs with crypto key pairs issued together with the eID.
The Swiss proposal for eID includes stuff like that. If a service needs proof of age, you use an app on your phone to generate the response, which is anonymized towards the requester and doesn't need to contact a government server at all.
I don’t really get your point. Your government is generally able to compel your ISP to give them logs of all of your traffic, if they don’t already vacuum it up, so it’s honestly a bit naive to think it shouldn’t be allowed to happen, because in practice it absolutely can.
There is a distinction between getting data from an ISP and getting it via your use of their portal, but I’d argue it’s without much of a difference in reality.
There's an enormous difference in the government having channels allowing for the disclosing of private material to them and just giving them all of it from the get go, and it is not unlike the difference of allowing the government to jail people and allowing it to arbitrarily jail people for life.
The difference is legislation, in both cases. Permissible data exchange between government services is legislatively encoded. Permissible sentences are legislatively encoded.
Since we don't see a whole lot of moderately healthy democracies arbitrarily jailing people for life, one might reasonably assume these sorts of controls work.
The "service" is irrelevant. I think most people would trust Porno Hub to be discreet about their visits. That's in their business interest. But now they have to tell your government about all the times you're visiting Porno Hub.
And nobody should trust their government.
Also, keep in mind that western governments share with each other. There will come a time when Australians will try to enter USA but they'll get flagged at the border because the AUS government shared that this particular individual visited Porno Hub and a few other age-restricted websites 7,000 times in the last 30 days. Red Flag!
Nobody should trust a billion dollar corporation, that's why we have democratically elected governments. All these power hungry fucks counter balance each-other, to some extend at least.
You're equating democracy to presidential elections, that's not the full extent of it. Free press, transparency, independent justice, referendums, etc. are all part of a democratic system. Norway / Denmark / Switzerland do it better than US / UK / France for instance.
To be entirely fair, a government that would abuse your vague "am I allowed to access porn" history seems well into the territory of a government that would just make it up. A nefarious, powerful entity has no real requirement to be honest in their maliciousness.
They also have more direct means of accessing more specific data via ISPs, audits, banks, etc.
I think the government making stuff up is worth considering, but isn't it a kind of different threat model?
The hypothetical government isn't going to make stuff up about me, some nobody, on a flight to the US to be a tourist or something. They statistically don't care about me. However, the US morality police might decide to statistically care about everyone who watches porn.
But if I'm a somebody, say a former or potential whistleblower, or a local politician, etc. then a government might have a specific motive to do me dirty and not care about being honest.
I guess there's a wide and blurry line between being a "nobody" the government has no motivation to lie about and being a "somebody" that deserves special malicious treatment.
The moral outrage crowd in the US have no power. The people who can and will act against you will only use morality as an excuse, not a cause. Being some nobody, the government has no interest in you anyway. You can watch porn, they can know it, and nothing changes, because you're still a nobody.
(If you watch porn online, you can be pretty sure they already "know" it, because you're not doing it in the privacy of your own home, you're doing it on a public network with next to no secrecy about who you are or what you're doing).
That is an assumption. The games the powerful play leverage truth and provable things. I think there is a lot of need for privacy and abuse of dragnet information before you get to the government framing people.
Like January 6th and vaccines causing autism and climate change denial and election rigging and Haitians eating dogs and Venezuela drug boats?
Are you and I living in the same reality? They're constantly just making things up out of nowhere from nothing and refusing to back down. Now to the point of arresting US citizens with a secret police and committing international war crimes in open waters.
> Like January 6th and vaccines causing autism and climate change denial and election rigging and Haitians eating dogs and Venezuela drug boats?
That you categorize all of those things in the same boat is very partisan. And it is exactly why a government controlling access to information is a very bad idea. Some of those things aren't real phenomena, others are just over hyped and some are real and very much proven. The news sources you got those opinions from are highly partisan but you trust them implicitly even though you have access to the Internet and can cross check many of them. That you can make such blind mistakes is exactly why elected officials should never control the flow of information. And to give you an example of an opinion that very much matters, consider is nuclear power green or not? The wrong answer about that is doing more damage than your most hated official could ever do.
- January 6th was an attempted coup of the government coordinated by Republican interest groups and antagonized by Trump.
- Vaccines do not cause autism.
- Climate change is real and anthropological in origin.
- The 2020 election was not rigged for Biden and there exists no evidence of impropriety of any kind.
- Haitians did not eat people's pet dogs in the USA. This was just plain, out-in-the-open racism.
- The US military is using the WMD, sorry, I mean the "drug boat" excuse on vessels 1,200 miles away from US waters to execute a dozen people at a time. They are providing no evidence and performing no seizures or investigations. Then they are violating international law and their own documents on war crimes and service member's duty to refuse by having them execute shipwreck survivors.
Everything above is a fact. Not an opinion. Not partisan. A fact.
You mean like Epstein? We've got a bunch of truths about rich people and nothing happens.
The fear of an evil government misusing something, more often than not, is a thought terminating cliche. It means we cannot regulate, or create any laws about anything, because evil people could abuse those laws. In reality, evil people do evil shit, irrespective of the laws available for abuse.
That's a very good technical solution, but socially it can be foiled by an official-looking alert saying "failed to scan card, please do X instead".
And that's assuming the technical solution is deployed everywhere. I'm in the EU with one of those IDs, and I still had to upload photos of my passport and scan my face to open a bank account. The identification process even had its own app that I had to install.
But then again, should the EU follow up with a similar policy, it could mandate the use of these checks and prevent/penalize ID photos. I’m very optimistic here.
Exactly. I'd concede this point if I'd seen a giant public awareness campaign informing people which official sites to use and general safety awareness about it. I can tell you, literally nothing like that has happened. Not an insufficient effort at it - no effort, nothing. It's clear the people in charge are just head in the sand about this aspect of it.
I’d say you made a good risk-benefit analysis, recognizing the potential upside of the ban (breaking the network effect, reducing social pressure) while raising important concerns about security, privacy, and a possible migration to more dangerous online spaces. That kind of debate is essential.
But I also think some of the consequences you fear (widespread scams, a mass shift to “dark” networks, extreme social isolation) are not guaranteed. They will depend heavily on how the law is implemented, how platforms handle age verification, and what healthy social alternatives (offline or moderated) are offered. I do believe it’s possible to design a safe system.
Personally, having seen many dire predictions fail to materialize in the past, I don’t view this as either a “clear net benefit” or an “inevitable disaster,” but rather as a social experiment with real potential for success as well as serious unintended consequences.
I support the Australian law and would like to see something similar in my own country. We can’t simply assume an invisible hand will resolve this issue for the better. Still, it’s worth watching closely and following the empirical data over the coming months.
Like anything it's a matter of magnitudes. My best guess is that any negative side effects are going to be of a trivial magnitude, cancelling out a small amount of the upside on net. At the very least it's an experiment worth running, and if successful, worth extending to further regulations for adults too, especially around mechanics (not the content itself) such as the algorithmic feed.
a) is solvable by a system that instead of collecting IDs reveals only the single bit of information required
b) parents still need to do their job
Arguably parental control should have been enough to avoid all of this but the regulation still helps parents.
It’s way more difficult to ask kids not to have social media when all of their friends have it.
I would have preferred stricter social media platform regulation for everyone forcing tech companies to take responsibility for what happens on their platforms. It’s not that they are dangerously only for kids
In other words it solved the multi-agent coordination problem amongst parents, which otherwise would require the majority of them to be rational and good (a tall order).
Australia already has a government digital ID verification service, so this social media ban is just a first step towards legislators realising they can force people to just integrate and use that, then there is no user data changing hands.
Edit: > or use an Australian Government accredited digital ID service to prove their age
Here you go. If you’re concerned about your personal data, only use platforms that integrate and use this.
There has only been one accredited Digital ID that sort of isn't government and that's Australia Post's Digital ID which they're now winding down in favour of the government's. While the Digital ID act does allow for these third-party accredited providers, I think we can realistically expect that the only one that will be in use will be the federal government's.
My concern is very much those two concerns plus the fact that I value being able to be anonymous. We're increasingly losing that in the real world with CCTV and AI that would eventually allow people to be tracked (like in China), I do want to have one last bastion of privacy.
That said, I fully support laws that ban phones at school, I chose my kid's school because they do not allow any electronic devices on campus outside the computer lab where kids can go to to do research. Every day when I bring my kid to the school bus, I see that children say hello to each other and start chatting. There's another very well ranked school that picks up kids in front of my apartment and they allow phones. The kids all stare fixedly on their phones as soon as they sit on the bus. Having a country wide ban of mobile devices in all schools would I think serve most of the same purpose as the social media ban while having a lot less externalities.
These are exactly my thoughts as well, both the positives (it doesn't need to be air-tight) and the negatives (providing documentation). I don't know that there is a great system here. The best I can think of is having independent third parties that people can register with and that can provide a 'proof of eligibility' token tied to an e-mail address or something similar with the explicit, backed by law, understanding that sharing more than that proof of eligibility with a third party is a criminal offense. The money side of things would be that FB and the like would pay the proof company a service fee so they make money and FB gets the proof without getting access to your documents. Just a thought.
The criticism is not that it wont be watertight, its that it will be ineffective in achieving what they say the reasoning is.
1. Kids are already moving to platforms that are not included in the ban, groups of friends will choose their own apps to make their group home, including Russian and Chinese apps ( already happening now)
2. Some kids have found ways around the included platforms...not surprising
3. One of the reasons they are spruiking is to stop Cyberbullying. Its ironic then that a big problem in schools across the country is physical bullying in the school grounds, with the educational authorities doing nothing about it. I know this one to be fact and have multiple instances that I personally know of where it happens and no action is taken. Our Government doesnt want to know about this at all
4. The platforms that have been banned are mostly "Big Tech" something that our Government hates with a passion, while many others go untouched. Discord is not included nor Telegram (how are these not social media, they literally allow people to socialise). I feel this is more of a weakening jab at Big Tech by our government to "stick it to them"
5. Day 3 and its pretty ineffective so far. There are many under 16's still have accounts on the blocked socials, and within the Family circle the only one that has been banned is actually 17, having her Instagram blocked ??? so not an awesome start at all.
But you have not addressed the problem that governments control the flow of information in this case here.
The antisocial media may be irrelevant, but I still fail to see why a government should be able to proxy-control the flow of information. So I am totally against this. I am also against antisocial media, but I don't see why a government actor should filter and censor information here.
"the Social Media Minimum Age legislation specifically prohibits platforms from compelling Australians to provide a government-issued ID or use an Australian Government accredited digital ID service to prove their age.
Platforms may offer it as an option but must also offer a reasonable alternative, so no one who is 16 or older is prevented from having a social media account because they choose not to provide government ID. This includes situations where other age check methods return a result the user does not accept."
Digital ID is optional by default. Service providers that integrate with the Digital ID can apply for an exemption to make it mandatory. Given the mandatory nature of age verification checks for social media, the fact that social media is typically free to use and ad-supported and the cost of age verification would be prohibitive for smaller apps without significant VC backing, an argument for exemption could be made on the basis that their legal obligation can't otherwise be fulfilled without a prohibitive upfront cost.
Consistency at school means more and more parents and families are practicing their internet exposure the same way as well.
How this is being done might not be the greatest, and it might change how social media is used, or invite the next thing after social media. Most platforms have dreamt of being a users core identity service as well and that might be it.
The multiple independent studies that show the effect on children developing brains from scrolling and screens alone, let alone the content (be it social media etc) is something worth offering an approach to as well, parents can't be expected to be DIY and self-educate against the types of software that are so optimized to achieve their independent objective of the software - keep us using them.
> A lot of the criticism is based on the concept that it won't be technically watertight
Those who do that, are not interested in this ban working, they are the individualists assaulting the community.
> a) normalising people uploading identification documents...
we have technical measures for which there is no need for the end user to upload anything. With oath you can basically have a simple age check; nothing more.
> (b) a small fraction of kids branching off into fringe networks that are off the radar and will take them to very dark places very quickly.
You can always minimize the fraction, but you can never make it go away.
> Because it's politically unattractive, I don't think enough attention has been given to the harms that will flow from these laws.
This was a politically bold move and there will be no harms that will come out of it; especially when compared to the status quo.
Those who feign concern about this usually have vested interests into stopping this bill; their "interest" is just another attempt in stopping it albeit with a more "nuanced" approach.
> normalising people uploading identification documents and hence lead to people becoming victims of scams.
This law in Australia explicitly prohibits companies from using ID document verification for their age gating specifically because of concerns like this
> If you knock the percentage down far enough, you break the network effect to the point where those who don't want to don't feel pressured to.
I've seen this argument a lot, and I don't think it really matches reality - I very much expect that the problem users of social media who are teens will tend to be the ones that will want to get around the ban (and will easily be able to).
Kids who just have an account because they are "pressured" to probably aren't actually really using it much or problematically?
And the other problem is that everyone knows it's a silly law so I don't think there will be any less pressure to have accounts because enough kids will be evading it. The ban will only motivate many kids (if you know much about how teenagers think)
> a) normalising people uploading identification documents and hence lead to people becoming victims of scams
The reasonable approach to solve this problem is verification protocol that mandates integration with the apps chosen by users. You have your wallet with digital ID and you use only it on any website, sharing the bare minimum of details. No uploads of anything anywhere. Independent wallet providers ensure privacy and prevent state overreach.
> (b) a small fraction of kids branching off into fringe networks that are off the radar and will take them to very dark places very quickly.
Unfortunately dark places existed in mainstream social media too. It’s something that should receive sufficient attention from law enforcement, nothing has changed here.
> sharing the bare minimum of details
The reasonable approach, yes, but the approach most in the interest of the governments and corporate players driving these laws...?
I think people are overindexing on how much of this is "get more data on users".
I don't get why people believe there's a conspiracy here. There's perhaps a large tent, but "social media bad" is not a controversial opinion! "The gov't should do something about it" is more controversial, though I think the controversiality is less heavy in spaces with parents, teachers, places where people have to deal with kids.
Not that this is how things should be determined, but... I think reading this as a "get more data and track people" play feels like giving everyone involved too much credit. It really just feels like what it says on the tin here.
> normalising people uploading identification documents and hence lead to people becoming victims of scams
We've long lost this war.
I'm in Italy, staying at my 3rd Airbnb. I was surprised when the first asked me, casually, to drop a photograph of my passport in the chat. I checked with Claude: yep, that's the law.
(I'll remind you that Italy is in the EU.)
On checking into this place last week, the guy just took a photo of our passports on his phone. At this point I'm too weak to argue. And what's the point? That is no longer private data and if I pretend that it is, I'm the fool.
I'm pretty sure in most places in the world if you are travelling from abroad you are asked to share your passport, and have been for a very very very very long time.
The difference between sending it over a chat and handing it over to a clerk (who then photocopies it or types in the data into the computer) feels almost academic. Though at least "Typing it into the computer" doesn't leave them with a picture, just most of the data.
> The difference between sending it over a chat and handing it over to a clerk (who then photocopies it [...]
The difference is that the paper copy is local and only accessible to the hotel (and any government employee that might come knocking).
The digital version is accessible to anyone who has access to the system, which as we know well on HN includes bureaucrats (or police) with a vendetta against you and any hacker that can manage to breach the feeble defenses of the computer storing the data. That computer isn't locked down because the information is not valuable to the person who holds it; they're paid to satisfy a record-keeping law, not maintain system security.
> at least "Typing it into the computer" doesn't leave them with a picture, just most of the data.
Agreed, except now uploading a scan is the easiest way to file the data.
I do agree that "not without a warrant" is a pretty load-bearing thing and it _should_ be tedious to get information. When a lot of info is just so easy to churn through that can activate new forms of abuse, even if from an information-theoretical point of view the information was always there.
And it's not even just about public officials. All those stories of people at Google reading their exes emails or whatever (maybe it was FB? Still) sticks to me.
> normalising people uploading identification documents
It's also important uploading to where. To Facebook. And the bulk of advertisements Facebook runs are literal (with literal meaning of the word literal) scams. And they are powerless[1] to stop it.
> normalising people uploading identification documents
This is dependent on implementation.
From what I have heard (from ConnectID), some sites are using services like ConnectID as a way to have your bank verify you are of age without releasing any ID or specific details.
But I don't think it's all of them, and I agree it's a risk.
There's internet culture precedent for this. 4chan itself has an early history of picking up leftovers from communities that were banned on other sites/forums/platforms.
4chan's origin itself fits that archetype, as well. It was created when a hentai subforum got banned on a larger forum, and the community moved over to the new imageboard.
On your second point, that might be a little less of a concern. Granted there can be dark places anywhere, they're _so much easier_ to find online, and have to potential to be so much more reinforcing for problematic behavior.
b) This was always the case in past too, but I think this is handleable.
But most importantly, there's no expectation of kid to be on social media anymore, which is much more important than whether they are actually there or not.
Normalizing ID and ID uploading (instead of banning it) is really what makes this bad.
A good law would just have completely banned these platforms from the country. (Even the Canadian Kik, because freeware, therefore closed source, therefore a platform.
EDIT : Looks like it's instead the Australian Kick, The Register had it wrong ? Same deal. (Especially with its owners having a gambling background.))
I wish the EU would be bold enough to do this, especially with Trump's bullying, but I have already been disappointed in the past, despite the situation clearly calling for strong actions like these...
> Because it's politically unattractive, I don't think enough attention has been given to the harms that will flow from these laws.
I ask if those harms are worse than what social media has done to a generation of young people?
I fully support this ban and even restricting online time marginally, tbh, until they're adults. The internet is not the place it once was. The primary focus of the internet today is to entrap you and monetize you at any cost. Social media is absolutely vile and ruinous for the development of young people (it's not helping adults either, mind you).
Social networks aren't that social anymore. Around 65% of the facebook content is not shared/generated by your friends in your social graph. So they're all just a Tik-Tok clones basically. Short dopamine addiction info-snacks with more and more AI generated slop. (and some of the slop is interesting like Cold War military tech stories from books read and visualized by AI).
The network effects doesn't matter that much for the Tiktok's of the world.
it’s a difficult balancing act, and I tend to agree as blocks are put in place, there are very likely two groups of outcomes: the kid gives up and finds other alternatives which can be healthy or unhealthy, the kid perseveres and bypasses the block
both provide good learnings and shape development, but blocking isn’t the answer, communication, understanding, and moderation is
the alternative that one could flood the kid with unfettered access till the kid becomes nauseated and desensitised doesn’t really work either because it can be too risky
the best solution may be something in between, make it a hinderance more than an inconvenience, like the parent post, and go for the greatest impact on network effects, the evil genie in me would make all these platforms super unreliable, spotty at best
but hey, it’s a developmental milestone for the average generation member to rebel against the member’s previous generations
Curious about your thoughts on (a). I understand privacy concerns but not your point about scams. How are people going to lose their life savings? A photo ID is useful because you can compare the photo on it to someone human. Passports contain mirochips. If losing your ID was so dangerous people would be in trouble all the time, because people lose them all the time.
I guess it comes back to again not whether things are technically watertight, but how socially normalised something is. People are used to giving their ID out for significant transactions. This law says now that pretty much any random website has a good reason to ask you for ID documents. So when someone seeking to steal your identity already has two forms and is just trying to fill in that 3rd document to get over the line to where they can call up the bank to reset your password - the bar just got lowered. They no longer have to trick you into thinking it's a message from your bank or anything else significant. It can literally be "oh my cousin sent me pictures of their grand kids, let me just get my passport to upload so I can see them".
> (b) a small fraction of kids branching off into fringe networks that are off the radar and will take them to very dark places very quickly.
Congratulations, Australia, you just drove a ton of kids into the arms of psychopaths like 764.
If you think Instagram and even 4chan are bad, that's nothing compared to the groups that sadly, are usually kids that were groomed themselves, who goad other kids into self-harm, violence and suicide through extortion, love bombing and literal cult shit.
Instagram might make you feel sad, but it doesn't threaten to kill your family if you don't strangle your pet cat and carve CVLT into your chest for a bunch of organized pedophiles online.
My understanding is that 764 are mostly active on mainstream social media platforms, where most "fringe networks that are off the radar and will take them to very dark places very quickly" tend to operate, contrary to GP's concern.
> (a) normalising people uploading identification documents
You might not know it or think too often about it, but most "real life" services we use require online identification, at least in Europe. Even on a simple rental agency portal in Germany it's recommended to "verify" your online identity to get more chances. Which means: just do it. Sure, you're free not to do it, as landlords are free not to care about your application at all.
Do you want to renew your car papers? E-ID is there (or whatever existing alternative).
Bank? The same.
In Germany the government[s] are pushing for Digitalization since years, which many laugh at as "ahah, what a joke, it's just filling an online module and sending a fax". It was true 5 years ago. Now I was super surprised because I recently had to do some bureaucratic BS and it's like any "normal" internet service that would require an identification (which is not just via a credit card or so). It's still not 100% accurate or "frictionless" but they're seriously getting there, which is super hard in a country where govt office A won't share data with govt office B. Compared to standing 1 hour in line to get just a stamp on a paper this is light years ahead.
The same will happen to these platforms, because that's the only solution we can think of, as of today. We all stand and watch Facebook making profits off our kids, making them depressed, etc. If you fine them, you're a communist, if you block them, you're a Nazi.
This is the most balanced alternative: you can still run your business here, people can still use social media, but let's not fuck up anymore our new generations, children, teenagers. They are the grownups of tomorrow.
Also, as some other comments mentioned elsewhere on HN: assume your data is already stolen or "publicly" available (maybe hidden somewhere).
Father of five here, and founder of a social media marketing company (exited). Our kids are up against problems we didn't have during the great expansion of social. The three big things:
1. State level actors and well funded not for profits are fighting an information war to influence our kids. And they are very good at it. Down to having troll farms to talk one on one. Every time something new happens in the world, my younger kids ask me about what they saw on Tik-Tok and their initial understanding is shaped by a well funded actor, and is often completely a false narrative. The solution is be open and talk about it with your kids.
2. Criminals are even better at social than state level actors. They are smooth. And they are on platforms you wouldn't expect - like games. And criminals aren't all about fraud. They sell drugs, they try to physically steal in real life from your kids,they'll try to get your kids to do something embarrasing and blackmail them with it, and even can be human traffickers. Again, the solution is be open and talk about it with your kids - and make sure they know it's ok to ask, and it's especially ok if you think I shouldn't share this with Dad or they person is saying not to show your parents.
3. Sexual predators are even better at social than the criminals. The difference is that the predators can't hide behind national borders so they are very careful. Same solution as $#2, but this one is really tough because when your kids come to you about it, they may have shared something with the predator that the predator is using to extort them into hooking up. Don't attack or blame your kid, focus on making sure the predator never gets to them
I do not believe for a minute that social media was good for my kids as they grew up, but I'm not sure that you can even begin to fix it the way AU is trying to - regulating speech, association using prohibition is dipping a colander in the river to filter the silt.
I'm not sure why a person would want to let their kids hang out any place where that stuff you report is common, if it's at all possible to avoid it. I'm gonna continue to run with "no social media", which has worked so far. They can message people they actually know IRL, somewhere without a feed full of crap from people they don't know. That's plenty.
Like I can't think of any analogous place in physical space I'd let my kids hang out unsupervised, and the amount of time I intend to spend watching (supervising) them scrolling Insta or TikTok on anything like a regular basis is zero, and the likelihood of their choosing that as a thing they want to do if I'm otherwise available to do something fun with them is also probably somewhere around zero, which means... no social, since it ain't happening supervised.
Like I also wouldn't take them to a bad part of town and leave them there for hours. Why would I do the digital equivalent? Even if we talk about it afterward... why? Maybe occasionally as a "here's how to spot shit" lesson but not enough that they'd need an account or anything.
> I'm not sure why a person would want to let their kids hang out any place where that stuff you report is common,
A great percentage of serious crimes (from rape to fraud) are committed by family and friends of the victims. Should we not leave our children with our family alone?
The best move is to teach your children how to not be victimized. It is part of "being responsible for yourself". My parents taught me how to be safe in a bad neighborhood because sometimes you have to go there. They taught me how to pick good friends who wouldn't do bad things to me. They taught me how to spot the precursors to bad things.
They let me hang out unsupervised. Because they taught me how to be responsible for myself. Why not teach your kids how to navigate the internet safely.
> A great percentage of serious crimes (from rape to fraud) are committed by family and friends of the victims. Should we not leave our children with our family alone?
But I'm pretty sure that like 50+% of interactions with family aren't crime.
> Why not teach your kids how to navigate the internet safely.
No reason to involve any serious amount of time browsing feeds of shit in that. I don't make them roll around in poison ivy, either. Absofuckinglutely not more than once. Exactly how much exposure to something of approaching-zero value and significant harm do they need? I'm going with "just enough to notice it's one of those so they can run the other way".
[EDIT] To put all my cards on the table, I think an extremely reasonable middle ground for Internet targeted ad networks and content-promoting algo-feed social networks would be to saddle them with an appropriate amount of liability for content they promote, which amount would surely be enough to put them all out of business. I see their feeds as the Internet equivalents of a crack house. I'm not gonna send my kids there—I'd rather see them gone, period. I will tell my kids what they are, and how and why such places might hurt them, in hopes they stay away. But I don't think some kind of "exposure therapy" or something is appropriate. The correct, moderate use of social media feeds is to avoid them entirely.
90% of all childhood sexual assaults are perpetrated by close family and friends[1].
If stranger danger is a motivating factor here, statistically, you should side-eye your close friends and family much, much more often and never leave them alone with your kids.
> But I'm pretty sure that like 50+% of interactions with family aren't crime.
You can say the same thing about social media interactions.
You've misunderstood this conversation and/or are applying statistics extremely poorly. This is not serving whatever point you're trying to make, and is a distraction from productive discourse.
I think you established too broad of a scope for discourse to be within the parameters you were hoping.
Immediately upon reading your comment, I thought about the general overprotection and over-supervision of kids which leads parents to drive their kids everywhere, prevent them from learning to use the subway on their own, or even live in cities. But what I think you were getting at is more about smaller hypothetical physically analogous places, but it's hard to think about what those places are in real life without relying on assumptions that may be more likely to occur online than in any significant concentration in the real world.
Imo, the most threatening place for kids to be in real life in terms of external factors, day to day, is around cars, bullies, bad actors within the family, and then maybe church/sports teams, but all of those are usually safe unless they're not, you can't realistically do anything productive about that without sacrificing their development as a human, except prepare them and guide them.
Online, it's just a whole different beast, and I'd think it would be games and social media, anywhere a gaurd would be let down, but imo the greater threat isn't criminality as much as it is nearly every other aspect except basic chats.
Not really. You asserted that unknown people are dangerous, while most of the replies to you are is pointing out that there are serious classes of crimes where people your child knows well are the most likely to commit them. I think sometimes perception is not reality, and the greatest danger to your child isn't society as a whole. It's a lot closer to home than anyone wants to think.
> I don't make them roll around in poison ivy, either.
My parents taught me what poison ivy looks like so I did not roll in it.
Likewise teaching your kids what a skinner loop is and how scrolling a feed is putting yourself in a skinner loop is really surprisingly effective. Kids like having agency, when you show them that tiktok does things to take your control away they listen.
Again, you being right doesn’t change anything. This is the world we live in, and that means we need to work with what we have. Which includes inattentive parents.
So... what's the point. Outlawing being an inattentive parent doesn't fix that problem. I'm not sure human beings have found a fix for that that has optimal outcomes for the kids.
This is wildly unpopular, for good reasons, but if I want to get a third dog I need to apply for and get a license from the council - they’ll come round, inspect my property and ensure that it’s adequate for a number of dogs, that it’s secure and my current pets are well treated before issuing it.
The disconnect between this and children seems wild to me. Why don’t we display the same amount of concern for children?
>"The best move is to teach your children how to not be victimized."
Your GP advocated world-building a child's physical environment to avoid digital - which is simply unrealistic for their later years as it is, and coddling them so nothing that could even potentially victimize them in the digital world would be able to reach them. So, genuinely: What's it gonna be?
Are you going to teach a child the real-world application and use cases for being responsible for themselves, not becoming victimized and carrying themselves well, and learning to act appropriate in an increasingly-digital world; or not?
Otherwise; saying you'll teach your kids real-world application for being responsible for themselves and not being victimized, and then not giving them a space to see the importance of those practices out of fear that they'll succumb to it, is having your cake and eating it, too.
FYI “cope” is closer to “delusion used to help you cope with reality” rather than “superficial fix”
Also, I think that some strategies, such as “comfort asking a parent for help navigating a situation” are timeless defenses against strategies like blackmail. There are probably some street smarts that change and some that stay the same.
What I’m seeing in Australia is most parents know it’s bad, and want their kids off social media. But it’s a Herculean task when the social media companies have such a grip on their kids and when all the other kids have it.
It’s the same story with banning phones in schools. Everyone knows it’s the right thing to do but individual parents or teachers don’t have the power to do it alone.
Here is the thing: It seems there are many people out there, who are so much influenced, that they worry about something like: "But how will I reach my child via phone, when they are at school! My kids need their phones!" Not realizing, that not too long ago, no parent had to reach their kid at school via phone, and if they did, they would call the school itself and have a message delivered or get the kid on the phone. This happened so rarely, that it was not common over the whole amount of students.
This assumes there is no added benefit to being able to reach your kids/be reached by your kids easier than it was historically. While I agree it's probably not as critical as many parents might make it seem, there are tangible benefits. Off the top of my head:
- Before cell phones, we were also in an age of far less mass violence in American schools. I completely empathize with parents wanting their kids to have an emergency contact device, given the relative increase in violence at schools.
- There is a long history of kids being abused, sexually or otherwise, by authority figures in their school. Having a lifeline like a quick text to a parent can easily be the escape hatch from a predator convincing a kid to do something unsafe.
Having a cell phone isn't going to help even a little bit if there's an active shooter at a school. The only thing a kid should be doing in that situation is hiding, or escaping if it's safe to do so. Likely it'll make things worse... some kid will get a loud notification on their phone, which will give away their location to the shooter.
The predator example sounds pretty flimsy and unlikely to me as well.
Honestly, your reaction to this just seems to follow the fear-based rationales that people put forth for a lot of things, when the fears are overblown or the risks are low.
In the United States specifically, deaths from violent crime have mostly been trending down over the past few decades, with the exception of a year or so.
> - Before cell phones, we were also in an age of far less mass violence in American schools. I completely empathize with parents wanting their kids to have an emergency contact device, given the relative increase in violence at schools.
A very US-centric problem that requires a very US-centric solution. No need to drag rest of the world into that sh*thole.
Anxieties of parents who can't manage their insecurities and other issues shouldn't propagate into how kids are raised in general, especially on families which can handle their emotions better. Some freedom, some unknown and yes some form of risk is part of it. I love my kids just like the next person but this emotional need to helicopter parent them is pretty toxic to their personality further down the line.
The stuff about abuse is so typical about any such topic - a slippery slope when there is no end on how many additional restriction on society should be applied just to prevent some potential next situation. If you live in properly dangerous place, then move and don't just follow money at all costs life is too short for that, much smarter and easy to solve than enveloping your kids in ever-increasing surveillance and security.
You have to realize that this approach really harms them in subtle but powerful ways. Then ask yourself - is the extra safety I am gaining not actually outweighed by extra damage I am making on them? I don't claim I know the objective answer, but gut feeling tells me they may be +-equal at best and at the end everybody loses.
> the social media companies have such a grip on their kids
We are talking about US companies in particular. Everything that was being done to try to mitigate the vileness and toxicity has been forcefully rescinded in the name of US profiteering.
There is only one viable option, and that it for countries that reject poisonous US social media to choose/identify/build a better platform that is safe for children, safe for news and information, and safe for society and for Democracy itself.
I know few countries that reject poisonous US social media in favor of better platform that is safe for children, safe for news and information, and safe for society and for Democracy itself: the peoples democracy of North Korea, the democratic republic of Iran, the not authoritarian society of Russia, etc
I see tremendous correlation between restriction of access to some websites and straight up dictatorship that pretend to protect it's population from the evils of foreign influences.
I know HN users often fantasize about being the hardass parent who puts their foot down, but this obviously isn't something that scales to solve a population wide issue. Coordination between the government, tech companies, and parents is going to solve this a million times better than just telling individual parents to deal with it.
It hasn't worked because basically every kid today is on social media despite a decade of information about it's harms. Getting over a million kids off tiktok is going to take coordination between the government, tech companies, and parents. Not just berating parents for not winning the war against big tech.
Interesting mental gymnastics here - under no circumstances should kids have no phones, and of course we talk about full smart phones. Everybody should do their best to make it as child-friendly as possible (which goes against primary incentives of every involved corporation giving you that free software to use) because... it would be nice? It would be appropriate?
In ideal world those are all good expectations. In actual ugly world out there, seemingly getting uglier each day, its dangerously naive. We talk about children dammit, its first and foremost responsibility of parents to keep them safe from all serious harm. You want to have contact? Give them dumb Nokia and they can never use an excuse it ran out of battery, and if lost it will be cheap to replace.
Or whatever else, but don't give them full access to whole internet and then be surprised when they go straight to its ugliest and most addiction-forming parts. They face peer-pressure? Tough one, but having some mental resiliency already during teens is great for rest of life, and maybe the shallowest and most pathetic of peers aren't the best crowd to hang with anyway. And its not like any actual popularity is gained, just blending in a faceless crowd.
> let their kids hang out any place where that stuff you report is common, if it's at all possible to avoid it.
You're talking about cutting kids from all online services, including multiplayer games and community wikis.
It also means your kid has no experience of online interactions with strangers, basically no SNS literacy, which also sounds like a disaster waiting to happen to me.
Nah. My kids play plenty of multiplayer games. Local’s fine, online with people they know is fine, online in games with no or extremely limited communication is fine (Nintendo consoles are good for those)
> community wikis
Are community game wikis hotbeds of scams, predation, and astroturf rage-bait influence campaigns? I’ve read them much of my life (if we also count Gamefaqs) and never noticed this.
Then Splatoon communities are pretty active, with third party tournaments, discord channels especially during fest flourish. Private matches are a pretty core component of getting good at the game in team events, and Nintendo rightfully limits how much it wants to deal with that side of things.
As a result, if your kid gets into the game, they'll be looking at that from the sideline while other kids get a lot more support.
> game wikis
In general any wikis that allows for limited scope communication, like a discussion between two users in some obscure thread where only the two will be notified of updates, is ripe for abuse. Then game wikis are where kids will be found.
While moderation teams are usually doing a stellar job, it's a cat and mouse game with utterly motivated attackers and highly valuable targets. So stuff will happen.
That kind of stuff won't surface outside of very egregious incidents, but working in an adjacent field to gaming communities, it's definitely a thing.
> While moderation teams are usually doing a stellar job,
This is an assumption, that I would argue, is more muddled in practice.
T&S teams largely want to do a good job, but they are a cost center, and currently they are being defunded or shifted into simple compliance.
The biggest weakness, and the current shift, is for the conversation to move towards talking about the benefits of moderation to community, rather than only reduction of harms.
That process has largely started since last year, and the defunding of teams is also underway.
All of that aside, we do not have any publicly available data, or independent third part assessment that gives us some estimated prevalence rate. (Not that prevalence is truly calculable)
"This is good for this" doesn't mean it's the only thing we use?
People are real eager to tear down a point that was simply "maybe don't let kids use algo-feed social media, because it's an actual garbage fire". The vast majority of the Internet does not have the same problems, to the same degree, as places like Instagram and TikTok. Some of it may have other problems and may be worth looking out for! But most of those other places also have, like, some redeeming features.
Am I also to let my kids wander in toxic waste dumps? I'm pretty surprised at the kind of push-back this is getting. I don't got time to supervise my kids on TikTok or whatever, so... no TikTok. I also don't have time to supervise them playing with boxes of rusty razor blades, so I try not to give them access to boxes of rusty razor blades, either [edit: I can predict the disingenuous replies to this part, so further suppose the blades are bubble-gum flavored and literal hundreds of billions of dollars were spent on packaging and presenting the box and blades to encourage kids to put them in their mouths; there, that's closer to algo feed social media, pretty much no reason to engage nor allow your kids near it, loooots of reason to keep it way the hell away].
This seems really straightforward and reasonable to me.
This comes down to how people raise their kids, so I don't expect we'll all agree.
> Am I also to let my kids wander in toxic waste dumps? [...] I don't got time to supervise my kids on TikTok or whatever, so... no TikTok.
Ideally I don't want to supervise my kid, in the sense that trying to watch over everything they do, every service they use and every possible interaction is a lost cause.
They can IRL go to toxic waste dumps, buy razor blades at the store and let them rust, there will be no way to foolproof even at that level, and I don't to have to watch over them every single time they go to the store in case they buy razor blades. Teaching them to not buy sharp stuff, avoid rusty things, and not listen to people advising them to do so has better time/effort ROI to me. Kids not allowed to go to the store without parental supervision also has to me a lot more negative impacts.
Arguably teaching kids what to avoid on Tiktok or Youtube is a lot trickier, and there will be craftful attempts at bypassing most parent advices, but I hope we have enough of a safety margin and communication occasions to detect when something's going wrong. And if it happens, I'd prefer it happens now when there's many eyes on the kid to detect the issue, than 5 or 10 years from now when they're alone in the ir dorm, can sign contracts, buy a lot of delicate stuff, get access to drugs, drive, get people pregnant etc.
> It also means your kid has no experience of online interactions with strangers, basically no SNS literacy, which also sounds like a disaster waiting to happen to me.
I think it would be better to allow them to be exposed to all this in a later phase, once, for example, they have plenty of experience with offline interactions with strangers. Learn how to walk, then learn how to run.
I really don't think the opposite order would work.
You would get them used to the more intimate and private interactions first ?
While doing small talk at the bus stop, telling someone you go to the middle school over there is small talk. Doing the same online is asking for problems.
Online interaction require a completely different mindset for a kid, it's a big enough gap IMHO to be treated as a separate thing that can be learned in parallel of offline interactions.
> They can message people they actually know IRL, somewhere without a feed full of crap from people they don't know.
Just how do you think they get introduced to TikTok? What do you think gets posted in the school class WhatsApp group chat?
My kids' WhatsApp group chats are mostly a torrent of sharing idiotic TikToks, YouTube Shorts, and celebrity Instagrams.
Which my kids can't watch… until they're savvy enough to bypass my restrictions. Until then, they'll watch it in school, on their friends' phones - little consolation there.
And when that pauses, they just have stupid sticker wars, and the kind of impolite banter (often misogynist/homophobic in nature, definitely not age appropriate) that may well have been par for the course when I was their age, but that I would never have committed to in writing, in essentially a public space. Not to mention the almost bullying.
The mere suggestion by my kid (on my advice) that a separate space was created to discuss actually important stuff, like forgotten homework assignments, test dates, etc, was met with incredulity and laughter by peers (the almost bullying).
Kids teach their peers how to act. Peers have way more influence than their parents. We need a majority of kids to understand TikTok/etc are bad for them.
Ah, the inevitable "meh, give up, it's hopeless" post, to go along with the "why don't parents do their fucking job and leave us alone?" posts. No thread on HN related to parenting and technology is complete without a healthy dose of both sorts of post.
Sorry, I'm trying to do my fucking job, as others demand.
To look past the "give up" post, it did have a good point about how children will get into contact with such feed monsters.
I think it will be a good idea to try and get other parents on board. Other parents of the kid's classmates. Maybe they are struggling with this too, but don't see the way forward. And you can show them the content of feeds and shit that kids consume. You can come up with some minimum age or other idea, which you suggest for children to have, before you as a group of parents allow them to access things. Or you can come up with a once a month special lesson or something, where you show what can go wrong to the kids, and cooperate with the school.
My kid has a smartphone but no data plan; no social media; can't take it to school.
When I did that, I was the annoying one, who they fought every inch of the way.
When the school banned phones in the playground, I was suddenly one of the first to get it right, in their eyes.
I'm trying to do my job too. But we need certain rules to be consistent throughout our society. Even if they will be broken, it matters that the rules are there and we can agree to them.
The issue is, that many people think social media like TikTok and FB and so on are good and that they are letting their children "participate in modern life" or something like that. They are utterly uninformed about these things, or so media brainwashed themselves, that they will fight you to the teeth standing up for things like FB.
I had that happening. I explained to someone, that FB is a criminal company, that's spying on everyone and everything they do, and just had that 5 billion sum to pay for mishandling personal data. But do you think that that person would come to their senses? Nope, ofc not. They argued on and on about how it is a force of good and whatnot.
Am I wrong in feeling like the solution you outline is only applicable to an individual's kids? But at the societal level, it clearly seems we can't depend on enough parents to do what you talk about. Something else is needed.
I don't have answers to give. Certainly not a fan of the government approach of "everyone must prove their age online now", which I believe is how the AU law is done. (casual listening to Security Now podcast about this for a long while now)
"Everyone must prove their age online now" creates a trail of identity that kills anonymous speech dead. Anonymous speech is very important to maintaining freedoms... such as freedom of speech and freedom of association.
> "Everyone must prove their age online now" creates a trail of identity that kills anonymous speech dead.
That depends on the implementation. Do it the wrong way, like many countries or US states, and that is a problem.
Do it right, like the EU is doing in their Digital Identity Wallet project, which is currently undergoing large scale field trials, and the site you prove age to gets no information other than that you are old enough, and your government gets no information about what sites you have proved age to or when you have done so.
Not really. Either you have freedom of speech or you have restricted speech. The more restriction, the less freedom you have.
> the site you prove age to gets no information other than that you are old enough, and your government gets no information about what sites you have proved age to or when you have done so.
As long as the broker in the middle can be trusted, cannot be extorted by government power or private wealth... in other words: unpossible.
In the system the EU is using you are the broker in the middle.
Briefly, your government issues you a digital copy of your identity documents cryptographically bound to a hardware security module that you provide. For the first iteration this will be the security module in your smartphone. Later iterations will support standalone smart cards and plug in security modules like YubiKeys.
If you wish to prove your age to a site a cryptographic protocol takes place between you and the site which demonstrates to the site that you have a government issued identity document that is bound to a hardware security module, and that you have that module, and that the module is unlocked, and that the identity document says that your age is above the site's minimum age requirement.
No information is transmitted to the site from the identity document other than the age is above the threshold. There is also nothing transmitted that identities the particular hardware security module.
Doing it right like the EU? You mean like the EU, scan everything that is sent through anybody's phone in the name of protecting the children?
> the site you prove age to gets no information other than that you are old enough, and your government gets no information about what sites
That is the case for now. What happens when the lobbies get in there and decide that this info is actually very valuable and that they should have the right to know who is visiting their client's websites and apps, will the anonymity remain? I think not.
And what about the defense industry who in the name of fighting terrorism will demand that users that identify themselves on "suspicious" sites now need to have their data recorded?
The issue is that once everyone is using this system, then it's very easy for any government to come and start expanding the scope of the data recorded and as always under the cover of good intentions.
This is how it goes:
- In 2025, they record nothing
- In 2026, they start logging IP addresses and passing along suspicious log ins to the cops
- In 2030 they start recording more and more data until all anonymity is gone
I wouldn't touch the EU's identity wallet with a 10 foot pole and I certainly wouldn't use anything that the EU is doing now as a benchmark considering what happened with the Chat control law recently.
The EU is very double edged though. It has great projects, undoubtedly. For example GDPR was a gigantic step forward, even if many people here, who are US-centric mostly, don't want to hear that. But on the other hand the EU also has loads of shit that members and lobbies try to push, like for example chat control.
Let's hope that this project you mention works out, if indeed it works like you describe.
It is frustrating, to have this argument, when the current state of the art to mould speech, has already found ways around this defensive line.
Currently speech is shaped by producing a glut of speech, and then having the most useful narratives platformed by trusted personalities. Simultaneously, any counter views which do not support the goals of the media-party, do not get aired. Education, science, evidence and journalistic standards are eschewed and authoritarian techniques of loyalty and trust are used to take advantage of whatever story is currently most engaging.
The churn in anonymous forums is used to identify narratives that are the best evolved to spread and gain engagement.
Don’t mistake me for saying anonymity must be given up. Do recognize that worrying about anonymity today, is very much like people talking about the way things were back in their time.
If it helps - from a utilitarian perspective, free speech enables the free exchange of ideas in the service of debates to understand reality. The marketplace of ideas.
Currently the marketplace is captured, and it is not a fair fight between state actors, media teams, troll farms, A/B tested algorithms, and regular folk on the other side.
The invisible hand of the market IS working, ensuring the optimum outcome given the current constraints, or lack thereof.
If we want to defend speech for individuals, if we want a fair fight, we need to address the asymmetry of powers, and lack of recourse.
Hard disagree on anonymous speech. Individual humans should have free speech but that is divorced from anonymous speech.
With anonymous speech you don’t even know if you’re talking to a person or a program.
If you want to say something, then say it with your identity. You don’t get to be anonymous when saying something to my face so why should it be allowed across a screen?
> If you want to say something, then say it with your identity. You don’t get to be anonymous when saying something to my face so why should it be allowed across a screen?
My face is not my identity. Do I have to tell you my full name and address when I talk to you? I sure hope not!
Beyond that, what about the threat of violence for saying something? As another commenter points out, this is a real issue for marginalized groups, but also could easily become an issue for your average citizen sharing their political opinion.
While I agree it would be nice having some level of assurance that you're talking to a human, particularly going forward, the only way I could support such a system is if no party involved would be able to track what I visit or pin an actual identity to me as a user - but, perhaps more importantly, it also needs to not be easily broken by those actors who it's trying to stop. Otherwise it's useless and just hurts your actual citizens.
Nah, it’s infinitely more identity than a screen name. If you speak in person I know which human being had those thoughts. In the medium we’re communicating over right now neither I nor you could tell if the counterparty was just a computer program.
> Beyond that, what about the threat of violence for saying something? As another commenter points out, this is a real issue for marginalized groups, but also could easily become an issue for your average citizen sharing their political opinion.
If you’re in that situation then you already don’t have free speech, so honestly that tradeoff seems like it doesn’t matter
> While I agree it would be nice having some level of assurance that you're talking to a human, particularly going forward, the only way I could support such a system is if no party involved would be able to track what I visit or pin an actual identity to me as a user…
That’s a lot of words to say you don’t agree with the idea. Pinning an actual identity to you is what makes it non anonymous
> If you’re in that situation then you already don’t have free speech, so honestly that tradeoff seems like it doesn’t matter
What? Are you saying that if you face the threat of violence for saying something, you don't actually have free speech? By this logic, literally nobody anywhere has free speech.
> By this logic, literally nobody anywhere has free speech.
Nobody anywhere has freedom of speech. And a majority of people don't really think about what it means and don't want it in the purest form despite what they say.
Two examples of "free speech" that are protected in the U.S. under the first amendment:
1. Overt racism (less threat of imminent violence).
2. Nazi apparel.
Say the wrong word or show the wrong symbol in certain settings and you'll quickly understand what I mean. Furthermore I'm confident > 50% of U.S. citizens would find you in the wrong and would support whatever happens to you without much consideration of legality.
Freedom of speech is an ideal with no successful implementation and I don't think that's a bad thing. I prefer to live in the real world where saying stupid shit has consequences and people think just a little bit more carefully about what they say.
Yea, if you don’t say what you think because of fear of violence, you don’t have free speech.
I’m actually surprised at your surprise. Is there a definition of free speech that includes not speaking because of violence?
To be clear I’m speaking of “free speech” as a right in the absolute sense. I am aware that various situations and events degrade that in every attempt to implement it. Having anonymous speech lets your circumvent that somewhat, but comes with the tradeoff of disinformation and societal manipulation we’re currently dealing with.
Also for clarification are you describing violence from other citizens or violence from the government? I need the clarification as I wasn’t specific enough myself in that I don’t think there is currently any anonymous speech if the government wants to identify you, only anonymity from the average Joe.
> but comes with the tradeoff of disinformation and societal manipulation we’re currently dealing with.
I'd rather solve those issues in ways that don't eliminate anonymity and privacy on the Internet. Furthermore, as I noted in a previous comment, any such system must be immune to being circumvented by those actors doing those things. Otherwise, they will quickly adapt and we go back to business as usual but with less privacy.
> I'd rather solve those issues in ways that don't eliminate anonymity and privacy on the Internet.
Then we will have to disagree. I think the anonymity is the source of the problem and there is no workaround for it. I would prefer this problem solved instead of waiting around for someone to possibly figure out an alternative while we suffer under the weight of all discourse being flooded by disinformation so that no one can agree on reality.
If your ideology leads to its own destruction than it’s a failed set of values, and that’s what I believe is happening to people who value free speech without divorcing that from anonymous speech
You continue to ignore the very glaring issue with trying to address these issues by de-anonymizing speech - that is, any such system will be easily circumvented.
Furthermore, the idea that we can't address this in any other way is wrong. We can work to combat and ban misinformation and propaganda campaigns. We can outlaw it for domestic politics. We can work with other countries where such efforts come from to stop them. We can put warnings and other labels on misinformation. To say nothing of the education angle.
When you say “…any such system will be easily circumvented.” What do you mean by “circumvented”?
If I’m proposing that your statements are tied to your identity what’s the circumvention there? Just fake IDs?
> Furthermore, the idea that we can't address this in any other way is wrong. We can work to combat and ban misinformation and propaganda campaigns. We can outlaw it for domestic politics. We can work with other countries where such efforts come from to stop them. We can put warnings and other labels on misinformation. To say nothing of the education angle.
I don’t see how you can have a problem with making statements tied to identities as an attack on free speech but then suggest that the government decides what correct speech is. That seems like a direct attack on the “free” part of speech separate from the less important “anonymous” part
Edit: also sorry for the delay, HN’s automatic blocker kicked in
> When you say “…any such system will be easily circumvented.” What do you mean by “circumvented”?
I mean... bypassed. Ignored. Fooled. This might be with fake IDs, it might be by compromising the system itself, it might be something else.
> I don’t see how you can have a problem with making statements tied to identities as an attack on free speech but then suggest that the government decides what correct speech is. That seems like a direct attack on the “free” part of speech separate from the less important “anonymous” part
Interestingly, I really haven't said anything about "free speech", nor have I taken the position that the government is unable to already tie your identity to your online activity. Anyway, those responsibilities I outlined could be put on the platforms, if you somehow trust them more, or perhaps a third party service.
Out of curiosity, supposing identity verification doesn't work out, what ideas might you propose for tackling the issues of misinformation and propaganda?
>Out of curiosity, supposing identity verification doesn't work out, what ideas might you propose for tackling the issues of misinformation and propaganda?
No idea, would have to see the anonymity go away and see how society restructures
Just thought I'd share the EFF's take[1] on the importance of anonymity and its long history with free speech:
> Anonymous communications have an important place in our political and social discourse. The Supreme Court has ruled repeatedly that the right to anonymous free speech is protected by the First Amendment. A frequently cited 1995 Supreme Court ruling in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission reads:
> > Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. . . . It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation . . . at the hand of an intolerant society.
> The tradition of anonymous speech is older than the United States. Founders Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay wrote the Federalist Papers under the pseudonym "Publius " and "the Federal Farmer" spoke up in rebuttal. The US Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized rights to speak anonymously derived from the First Amendment.
> The right to anonymous speech is also protected well beyond the printed page. Thus in 2002 the Supreme Court struck down a law requiring proselytizers to register their true names with the Mayor's office before going door-to-door.
To build on that, the Fourth Amendment protections against general warrants stems from the fact that general warrants were used to identify and persecute anonymous authors, many of which were founders and framers.
Probably only works for as long as you are not living in a dictatorship, authoritarian state, utterly corrupt country, or similar. Then suddenly we would want our anonymity back.
While anonymity comes with its own issues for society, I am not convinced it would be worth it getting rid of it.
While what you're saying sounds like a reasonable enough stance on the face of it, keep in mind that this would deeply fuck over closeted queer folks among other marginalized groups.
It would. Currently they and everyone else are getting deeply fucked because the signal to noise ratio on the internet has been obliterated and everyone is being manipulated all the time by misinformation from humans lying to bots.
I think the trade off for a lack of anonymity is worth it. This is crass and old but the penny arcade guys identified this decades ago
Yes, this is one of those game theory traps like the prisoners dilemma, because it requires coordinated action across a large group of people. Unfortunately the lowest common denominator parenting is not able to handle the problem, because the parents don't understand the situation, are addicted to platforms themselves, and just generally don't have the necessary skills.
Government regulation is a ham fisted approach that risks unintended consequences / secondary effects, but it is generally good at breaking the game theory traps because it changes the playing field for everyone. That is fundamentally why we have government at all - to solve coordination problems.
>not a fan of the government approach of "everyone must prove their age online now", which I believe is how the AU law is done
This is not how the law is implemented. The vast majority of verification is being done by 'age inference', ie analysis of the content the user consumes or posts to infer likely age. Only accounts suspected to be children by the inference process are being required to verify or have the account disabled. In practice, the inference process means very few accounts are required to provide any proof of age. Personally, I haven't been asked to verify by even a single website.
> Every time something new happens in the world, my younger kids ask me about what they saw on Tik-Tok and their initial understanding is shaped by a well funded actor, and is often completely a false narrative.
As someone who remembers the near lack of anti-war voices on network/cable news in the lead-up to the Iraq War (Donahue on MSNBC being the lone example), I'd like to get more details on your strongest example here.
There wasn’t much but the mostly fabricated WMD narrative was questioned a lot. Now the current administration makes an endless stream of fantasies and lies which go almost entirely unchallenged.
> There wasn’t much but the mostly fabricated WMD narrative was questioned a lot.
Cable and network news did not question that narrative, aside from the exception I mentioned. Read David Barstow's Pulitzer-winning stories in NYT-- cable news shows even had retired generals pushing for war without disclosing all kinds of conflicts of interest.
Edit: I should add that in reality there were protests with record numbers of people during the buildup to the Iraq War, and there were many articulate arguments against the war by all kinds of people. However, that was not the narrative presented in Network/Cable News.
Seriously, the biggest and most prevalent danger to kids online, is unregulated marketing directed towards them building unhealthy habits and potential loss of self worth due to unreachable ideals potrayed in advertising.
Not any of the three points you bring up there.
Those superpredator bogeymans you make up here, have to actively seek you out and have a limited budget in comparison.
State actors are after everyone, not kids primarily.
In the current state of thing I would have no qualms just shutting down X, Facebook, YouTube Shorts and TikTok live for starters for all.
>> Our kids are up against problems we didn't have during the great expansion of social.
I'm not sure I agree with this. Our societies globally have become hugely polarised and are manipulated daily because of social media. The damage done by social media is 100x greater than any good that came from it and the lives of adults have been affected by on it a societal level at least as much as the danger to kids.
It isn't possible, but if social media was suddenly completely unavailable I think the world would get a lot better in a very short period of time.
> Our societies globally have become hugely polarised and are manipulated daily because of social media.
Watching 18 year old kids getting drone striked every other day has done more for the anti-war movement than a hundred years of post-WW1 globalist utopianism. The only demographic of war hawks you find online anymore are psychotics and boomers, both being unfit for military service.
This is the fundamental reason why western countries are turning on social. The TikTok ban had less to do with Chinese influence campaigns and more to do with it being a platform where Israeli war crimes were openly discussed without being hindered by shadow algorithms.
You’re seeing Zionists like Larry Ellison make plays in the media space for the same reason; military-aged white men are going off the plantation, and Zionists feel threatened by it. That is literally all these bans are intended to remedy.
I am from Ukraine. Tell me anything you know about drone striked humans. For you it is just pictures from Internets happening far far away, you never know why do they find themself being drone striked.
What anti-war actions have you done to prevent the end your life by drone striking? Post some dislikes, duh?
> For you it is just pictures from Internets happening far far away, you never know why do they find themself being drone striked.
I’ve seen more than one begging for his life getting blown up by a grenade dropped out of the sky. The killers then post videos glorifying these executions complete with music and motion graphics.
> What anti-war actions have you done to prevent the end your life by drone striking?
I haven’t done anything, and that’s the point; there is nothing that will compel me to treat my fellow man in the way I have seen men treated in this footage.
It is OK if your kids "and their initial understanding is shaped by a well funded actor, and is often completely a false narrative."
I bet that if I would meet you, I would unleash multiple similar cases to you personally for less than 1 hour. I am almost sure I can ask such kind of questions that would reveal your kids giving better (less brainwashed) result than you do.
I really really hate the term "troll farm" it completely minimizes nation state level propaganda machines down to something that sounds like its just one big internet joke for gags.
The cutesy 'fun' language of 'troll farm' itself deflects accountability from what are coordinated psychological operations. It makes it sound like some rambunctious kids in basements having a little weekend fun.
It was very illuminating though obvious when recently Twitter started showing account country of origin and all of the MAGA political accounts pretending to be American get revealed as run out of Nigeria and Russia.
Is this really an attempt to regulate children's speech or association any more than denying kids entry to a pub?.
I don't think the framers of this law are even worried about what kids are saying or who they associate with, as long as it isn't the criminals, sexual predators and state actors you mention.
Frankly if kids were visiting a physical hang-out where they could expect to be attacked by such people, any and every responsible guardian would order them to never go there.
I feel like everyone in this thread is assuming this is a good faith move by Australia to help kids in school and with socialization.
I think phones and social media are harmful, but I get the sense there's a political motive behind this. We've been hearing politicians complain for years that they're losing the youth when it comes to long-standing foreign policy positions, etc... And suddenly they ban social media. Rahm Emanuel is campaigning for the same thing in America.
I don't believe they're overly concerned with "helping the kids" unfortunately
I don't think we should normalise children on platforms where the content contains political agitation, sexual and violent content, crypto and fintech scams, etc. Especially when this content is packaged up to them and commodified.
These platforms make more money than the ATO (Australian Tax Office) brings in a year. I think they have the moral obligation and means to create safer spaces- either inside or seperate from their adult platforms; they can reduce or prevent the types of harms when children are exposed to this type of content.
Whether this approach is the best one, or even worth it as it is written in law is definitely something you can argue, but the idea that there isn't a legitimate goal here (keeping children safe), just isn't true. I know not everyone that says this always has good intentions, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be preventing harm upon them.
If you look back at vox pops from when drink-driving laws were introduced, or when seatbelts became mandatory, or when ID requirements were tightened, the arguments for and against were eerily similar. We haven’t changed much in that regard, but now people wear seatbelts, children can’t buy cigarettes as easily as they used to, and drink-driving rates have fallen. I think these are noble goals.
The platform operators have a responsibility to remove garbage from their site. I don’t see how it’s better if adults are the recipients of these alleged harms. And I definitely don’t see how the platform operators are going to clean up their act if — rather than being penalized — they can pretend that the problem has vanished into thin air because a specific category of vulnerable users is now de jure disappeared.
The problem is, currently doing any kind of content filtering, as in making illegal stuff hard to find, and having a moderated semi walled garden, plays right into the noisy fuckers brigade.
If I were to design a TV programme which is aimed at 11-16 year olds, where I just play soft porn every 15 seconds, offer guides on how to do financial scams, and encourage the children to hide away from their parents as they watch. it would be banned instantly, regardless of how much "good" content I put in there.
People would say it's irresponsible to expose kids of that age to such things.
Yet, here we have social media doing just the same.
The reason why we make it illegal to beat kids, sell them smokes, drugs, booze and generally treat them like shit, is because we want well rounded functioning kids who are able to live a long an illustrious life as part of society.
Giving them a device that feeds them war, porn, rage bait, and huge lies, all for the profit of a few hundred people in america seems somewhat misguided.
I'm glad when I was a teenager the adults in my life were less concerned with protecting me from wrongthought. Are modern teenagers more or less credulous consumers of information than adults, I wonder.
Things used to be more scrutinized. e.g. look at the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Hot Coffee controversy and legal fallout over sexual content that existed in the game data files but could only be accessed by modding the game, at which point you could just mod the content in. Porn websites also used to generally put anything explicit behind a credit card barrier, and there was an attempt to require that that the supreme court struck down.
Pretty sure the US has had things such as age ratings for movies, which are enforced when possible, and laws around advertising to children and false advertising for quite some time.
I miss the good ol' days when you could see some cut off breasts alongside the snake oil ads in the papers. People are so stupid these days.
It's not remotely the same thing. Social media apps are highly engineered addiction serotonin-drips.
You had wrongthought because back then there was at least a chance that the material was objective. Today you have Fox News et.al. and scores of highly propagandized feeds spewing nothing but agenda-pushing propaganda.
> when I was a teenager the adults in my life were less concerned with protecting me from wrongthought
V-chip, movie ratings, music ratings, top shelf magazines, raising the age for smokes, the water shed, censorship of tv networks, chat rooms, computer in the living room, primitive walled gardens (AOL et al)
All of the "it was freer in my youth bollocks" is just that. Bollocks. But, I see that you like the idea of a person's social/sexual education being shaped by misanthropes looking to grift a new lifestlye for themselves regardless of the harm it causes others. All for profit and power. Not for betterment of the world.
> Are modern teenagers more or less credulous consumers of information than adults, I wonder.
The first example of something that you see is normally a big opinion former. If you see the local big city constantly portrayed at a lawless hell hole, its going to stick with you. As will the the race baiting, as will the utter bollocks herbal-remedy-cures-cancer 100% of the time shtick. Espeically if you've not got far enough through school to develop research skills, or critical thinking skills.
> All of the "it was freer in my youth bollocks" is just that. Bollocks. But, I see that you like the idea of a person's social/sexual education being shaped by misanthropes looking to grift a new lifestlye for themselves regardless of the harm it causes others. All for profit and power. Not for betterment of the world.
Uh, yeah - I never had to show an ID to use the internet and I could use the internet however I damn well pleased. "All for profit and power" -> No, I learned a lot from the internet, it changed my life in a positive way.
None of the things you mentioned are even remotely the same scope as requiring ID to use parts of the internet. I could still watch mature movies, v-chip was irrelevant in my life, smoking is completely different, etc. etc.
The answer to my question is that teenagers today are obviously less credulous than the adults in their lives and you can see this every time you interact with older adults.
The parts of the internet that are now banned for Australian teenagers are unlikely to change their lives in a positive way and much more likely to lead them into mental illness.
I taught myself programming, drawing, and 3d modeling on the internet. But it was on platforms like SiteDuZero and various forums. Even today, if you go on something like https://bbs.archlinux.org , it's very hard to land on something like the cesspool the homepage of YouTube and X can be.
well i’m sorry some kids (and adults) are idiots who enjoy brain rot, but i would have been pissed as a kid if the adults came for my intellectual communities because some kids are morons
>All of the "it was freer in my youth bollocks" is just that. Bollocks. But, I see that you like the idea of a person's social/sexual education being shaped by misanthropes looking to grift a new lifestlye for themselves regardless of the harm it causes others. All for profit and power. Not for betterment of the world.
I remember logging on to Microsoft Networks, clicking "Adult Chatroom" and saying "Hi adults, my name is <blah> and I am 12" and getting a bunch of very positive, thoughtful replies.
>Espeically if you've not got far enough through school to develop research skills, or critical thinking skills.
Some of the people being banned include these nice kids.
Their founder is now 18, but most of their research and social media people are 14 - 16.
I feel like these kids A, have developed the necessary skills to operate the internet, and B, have a human right to access and report on the information contained within.
>a person's social/sexual education being shaped by misanthropes looking to grift
The grifting misanthropes are in my honest opinion the people trying to prevent kids from accessing information. The "grift" is that kids have political interests and rights to access information and community, especially vulnerable kids, and the grifters want to "return" to a state where parents were the only method via which kids can access information. The internet is there for among other things, censorship resistant access to other people. The cost of this bill, assuming kids don't just keep stepping over the barricade, is going to be tremendous in terms of suicide in LGBT and disabled areas.
It's not so much teenage credulity, or coddling parents. Teen suicide is the easily quantifiable tip of the iceberg when it comes to mental health outcomes. Conspicuously it started trended up after 2008, around the nascence of Facebook and smartphones:
> Following a downward trend until 2007, suicide rates significantly increased 8.2% annually from 2008 to 2022, corresponding to a significant increase in the overall rates between 2001 to 2007 and 2008 to 2022 (3.34 to 5.71 per 1 million; IRR, 1.71)
That's also when the Great Recession happened, giving young people bleak outlooks for their future, outlooks which never really recovered. Nothing was fixed, and things have only gotten worse since then.
Dead end jobs with little to no benefits, no pensions, time off, low pay and few hours count as "employment".
Their parents and grandparents had pensions and could work at one employer for the entirety of their careers with growth opportunities, and could afford homes and healthcare while doing so.
Your hypothesis might be right, but I've provided data, and you're providing opinions. I'm fine with being wrong in my claim, but I didn't earn the downvote when no-one seems to have a clearer hypothesis with better evidence. First, show me that this shift is peculiar to 2008. And then show me that this is what teenagers are killing themselves over.
In the same way it's better that adults are the recipients of the harms of smoking, drinking or gambling. It's still not desirable, but societies have settled upon thresholds for when people have some capacity to take responsibility for their choices.
Not saying those thresholds are always right and should definitely apply in this case, but it surely isn't an alien or non-obvious concept.
There is also the problem that making platforms responsible for policing user-generated content 1) gives them unwanted political power and 2) creates immense barriers to entry in the field, which is also very undesireable.
I have no idea how to define it. I also don’t know if I’m personally convinced one way or another about the harms. Just think the platforms would probably have to be made to make more substantial changes were it the case.
I don't want Mark Zuckerberg, or the government, deciding what's garbage. If they can empower the user to filter this stuff out on their own accord, that's great.
The second problem is that the medium itself is garbage. Algorithmic feeds strongly encourage clickbait and sensationalism. Removing content does nothing to change the dynamic.
Sometimes doing absolutely nothing is the right thing to do. Not everything can be improved through top-down intervention, and many things can only be made worse.
The comment you’re replying to raised the idea of empowering the users. That’s probably the way to look, but the danger is always if we do that using top down enforcement in a way that promulgates more harm, including stifling vibrant and necessary speech.
My very radical opinion is that section 230 of the CDA was our original sin. The Internet was better when it wasn’t divided into a few centrally managed private social media silos. It’s better to have a vibrant, messy, competitive, and very grass roots public square.
Ah yes, the genocides, fascists and blackmail are just delightful parts of that awesome internet that any kind of cooperative governance would simply _ruin_
The genocides would have happened with age verification or not, don't conflate the two.
Ironically, the solution to both the proliferation of genocide and social media causing harm to kids is the same, and it's a solution that helps everyone: legislate the source of the problem, the product itself and what we colloquially call "the algorithm".
Algorithmic optimization and manipulation that causes harm needs to be banned wholesale, across the board, from advertising to social media.
Instead, we get legislation that not only makes it easier to identify everyone as verifiably monetizable users to platforms, it also makes it easier to keep the proles in their place.
> I don't think we should normalise children on platforms where the content contains political agitation, sexual and violent content, crypto and fintech scams, etc. Especially when this content is packaged up to them and commodified.
I hope we can agree that allowing every social media site to devolve into the above is the bigger problem. There can be some places that are adults-only; just like reality though, the world is better when open-by-default, with some places gated to adults-only.
Shifting focus to "Why are we letting some of the most profitable companies the world has ever seen get away with being a cesspit?" lets us keep kids safe by default, doesn't attack E2EE, and doesn't default to the internet becoming a surveillance state.
If we start by getting Facebook and Twitter (et al.) to clean up their acts, we can all work, yell, and vote together, instead of some yelling about their kids being shown unexpected pornography, and others yelling about the internet becoming a surveillance state.
Because both can be real concerns - but a starter solution can get the vast majority of voters on-board, and garner real progress, instead of giving Facebook more data and control, or governments a turn-key dictatorship.
I don't think we've shown that that cleanup is possible.
Whenever platforms have taken even the smallest steps in that direction, the right-wing authoritarian political parties freak out and blackmail them into stopping, or in the case of Musk simply buy them out outright.
If cleaning it isn't possible, getting kids to know it and navigate the filth is required. Same way we teach kids how to interact with people on the street and get a sense of who to trust when they're in trouble and how to avoid trouble in the first place.
I wonder if the next generation will be facing this same sentiment.
For instance TV was basically a drug for the last generation, there was people watching near 8 to 10h of TV a day. It might have been replaced by something else, but I don't think our current generation has this specific issue.
From that POV, currently people in their 30~60s are the more stuck to social networks and raging against fake news all day, while younger generations tend to be on different services with potentially a lot more reduced circle of users.
Do we really know how the generation that is 5~6yo right now will react to our social media landscape ? (put another way, are we fighting the last war ?)
>I don't think we should normalise children on platforms where the content contains political agitation, sexual and violent content, crypto and fintech scams, etc. Especially when this content is packaged up to them and commodified.
The law could instead prohibit scams and violence?
>These platforms make more money than the ATO (Australian Tax Office) brings in a year.
Irrelevant.
>but the idea that there isn't a legitimate goal here (keeping children safe)
Almost every other avenue, including doing nothing, has more merit than that which has been implemented.
>If you look back at vox pops from when drink-driving laws were introduced, or when seatbelts became mandatory, or when ID requirements were tightened, the arguments for and against were eerily similar.
Theres some basic negative freedom implications from those, but they dont intend to ban a class of person from accessing a mundane element of human society.
> I don't think we should normalise children on platforms where the content contains political agitation
Why not? Why won't you give political agency to young adults? I'm saying this as a kid who grew up in Romania, just after Ceausescu had been executed, so throughout the '90s, I do very well remember all the political news and commentary coming my way (I was a teen), but I can't say that it bothered, not at all, it made me more connected to the adult world and hence more prepared to tackle real life just a little bit later on.
I won't comment on the other stuff, because that would make me bring back memories of watching TV1000 (a Swedish TV satellite channel) late at night on Saturdays, also in the early '90s, I won't say for what but suffice is to say that I turned out ok.
There's hardly any parallel between the type of political content (or corn) that was available on TV in the 90s, and what's found in today's social media. It's not political commentary, it's a constant stream of pure, unfiltered manipulation, lies, brainwashing, prejudice and antisocial behaviour.
Rush Limbaugh started broadcasting in the 80's. Fox News in the 90's. Prior to that you had decades of propaganda against "communists" and anti-war protesters. Prior to that you had blatant lies about what would happen if black people got civil rights. Before that you had blatant lies about women's suffrage. The bullshit has always existed in very large quantities. The common uniting thread for the vast majority of the bullshit is conservative beliefs. They are always doing their most to make the world a worse place for some group or another.
> It's not political commentary, it's a constant stream of pure, unfiltered manipulation, lies, brainwashing, prejudice and antisocial behaviour.
This is exactly what conservative talk radio was like, and it radicalized a bunch of boomers – especially the ones with long car commutes who had limited counter examples. There’s a direct line between the guys joking about eating spotted owls or how feminists were too ugly to worry about rape to the modern environment, or saying that the government was discriminating against white men, but the difference now is scale and variety: now it reaches more people and there are more flavors available so the young woman who would’ve been turned off by Rush instead gets some wellness influencer talking about how birth control causes cancer.
- It's not young adults, it's 15 and under. Personally I would classify 17-20something as young adult (it's a bit subjective isn't it).
- The younger children don't really care about politics honestly. Curious if you have an age that you're ok with only ensuring irl politics for children? I think age to vote is a much bigger concern for me here in terms of civil liberties.
- Parents can still make that choice for their child (unclear how this will work to me yet, to be fair).
- I've become convinced no one really practises 'politics' online. People barely even debate anymore. They argue, they perform activism, they aggitate, its what gets attention (thanks to social media). I'm worried people think this is normal, it's not- political discourse used to be much more productive. I remember when fallacies were actually brought up logically on the internet and people actually cared about the accusation.
- I did explicit rp with adults as 7 year old on MSN chatrooms back in the day :')
Social media is full of extremist and untrue content of all types. Antivax or free birth content are just two small examples of viral content that is untrue and kills people. It has a very negative effect on adults, and adults at least have brains that are fully-developed.
Exposing kids to the firehose of misinformation on social media just poisons their brains. Political agitation is mostly political misinformation. Even among the causes online that I agree with, most of the content online is deeply biased, one-sided or inaccurate.
I don't think we should allow the government to ban political agitation, but I do think its fine to allow the government to ban children using social media
The most dangerous, untrue, and extremist content I've ever seen has come from governments.
Lies upon lies about WMDs and going to war for our freedoms and how we need to "liberate" Libya and fund and arm rebels and insurgents. Millions of people killed, trillions of dollars wasted and stolen.
Someone who is not completely trusting of politicians or pharmaceutical corporations, or who wants to give birth like 99.999% of humanity has, really are so far down the list of "dangerous misinformation" they don't even register.
> I don't think we should normalise children on platforms where the content contains political agitation, sexual and violent content, crypto and fintech scams, etc.
You mean like the outside world?
What happens when these hot house flowers of yours reach whatever magic age and get dumped into all of that, still with no clue, but with more responsibilities and more to lose?
I haven't noticed a whole lot of governments, or even very many parents, worrying about doing much to actually prepare anybody for adulthood. It's always about protection, never about helping them become competent, independent human beings. Probably because protection is set-and-forget, or at least they think it is... whereas preparation requires actually spending time, and paying attention, and thinking, and communicating. Maybe even having to answer hard questions about your own ideas.
... and since when are kids supposed to be protected from politics? We used to call that "civics class".
If your children are being exposed to sexual and violent content in the real world, that is called an "Adverse Childhood Experience" and it is predictive of everything from poor adult earnings to heart disease: https://www.cdc.gov/aces/about/index.html
On the one hand, you have violence and pornography, and also other crude content. There is nothing good about exposing children to these. It does not contribute to their growth or to their maturity as human beings and it is ridiculous to think it could. On the contrary, this content will cause psychological harm, causing distortions in their emotions, in their habituated appetites, in their self-understanding, and their understanding of normal relations. When deviance like that is tolerated, it shifts the Overton window. Children observe this tolerance and roll it into their sense of normality. Individuals suffer. The quality of society degrades substantially.
On the other hand, we have political agitation. This one is more difficult to define and handle, especially in a liberal democratic society. There are examples of obvious political agitation, of course, but children should generally not be exposed to political agitation at all, except as a subject matter at an age appropriate level and in an appropriate pedagogic setting. Children don't have the intellectual or emotional maturity to examine such material in the wild on their own where they would be at the mercy of unscrupulous adult manipulators who couldn't care less about the well-being of children. (Ask yourself what kind of person would want to involve children in their political agitation to begin with.)
So, there's a big difference between common sense things like these and coddling children. We want to prepare children for life, not teach them adaptation to depravity. You throw them into the filth of social and psychological pathology. Neither violence nor pornography should be normalized even in the adult world - it is harmful to the adults who consume it as well - so the idea that we should prepare children for life in some violent and twisted pornland is preposterous. Nobody has to put up with that garbage, and the law should be making sure they don't.
> and since when are kids supposed to be protected from politics? We used to call that "civics class".
The whole "don't talk about politics" is so toxic IMHO.
Sure you might not want to ruin your dinner with the family members you see a single day every year. But otherwise, making it sound like a taboo could be widening the tribalization and anchor the feeling deeper into people's identity. Let the people talk about what they care about, including when that affects who the next president is.
yeah social media is proving itself to be a bad actor like big alcohol, big tobacco. No incentive to do the right thing or improve anything. ripping audiences away from them is the only way they'll understand.
>If you look back at vox pops from when drink-driving laws were introduced, or when seatbelts became mandatory, or when ID requirements were tightened, the arguments for and against were eerily similar.
If you think the arguments are eerily similar, I feel like you haven't really been listening to the arguments against these types of age-verification-for-websites laws.
I mean, there's some similarities, of course. But I think there are some very stark differences.
>I feel like you haven't really been listening to the arguments against these types of age-verification-for-websites laws.
Or maybe I just have a different conclusion to you? Because I do care, I do try to listen to the arguments. I'm no stranger to advocacy for civil liberties, they are important to me. I think all else being equal, freedom should be valued more over harm prevention. So if I'm for these laws, consider that a sign of how bad these sites have become, not how uninformed I am.
> I mean, there's some similarities, of course. But I think there are some very stark differences.
Yep of course it's not a 1:1, I agree. I don't mean to imply that people saying the same arguments today are wrong simply because people in the past were, but it does make me think more about it when I spot the same rhetoric.
Often both sides have very reasonable concerns, as an example, the question isn't "should we have all or no freedom" Either extreme creates issues, yet both sides have valid arguments worth our time considering. We settle somewhere in the middle.
>"Or maybe I just have a different conclusion to you?"
Whatever your conclusion is, it’s sort of beside the point I was making, which is that the many of the arguments about mandated seatbelts (or smoking, alcohol) are meaningfully different than the arguments being made today about age verification for websites.
>“So if I'm for these laws, consider that a sign of how bad these sites have become, not how uninformed I am.”
This is kind of reinforcing what I said in my first comment. Most, if not all, of the arguments against these types of laws aren’t based on the premise that these sites aren’t bad. I haven’t seen anyone saying that TikTok is a societal good. Almost everyone agrees there.
I’m saying that the main arguments are different. I am suggesting that there are more differences between the seatbelt debate and the age-verification-for-websites debate than there are similarities. Which is why I thought your comment of “eerily similar” was off-base.
They are different laws with different contexts but the type of rhetoric and logic used to justify them are very similar, right? I already agreed they are not 1:1 nore was it meant to be. I agree with you there. If there's a more specific point you want to make, I'm keen to hear it!
> the arguments against these types of laws aren’t based on the premise that these sites aren’t bad. I haven’t seen anyone saying that TikTok is a societal good. Almost everyone agrees there.
There's people in this thread talking about jews being behind this ban to ensure zionism continues, using only a social media agitprop post to justify it. We are in the mud at the moment, so I'm sorry but I'm not taking that for granted, people have diverse views.
> I’m saying that the main arguments are different. I am suggesting that there are more differences between the seatbelt debate and the age-verification-for-websites debate than there are similarities.
Let me try explain this figuratively:
A doctor might give free care to someone in a medical emergency on a plane after all they have an ethical responsiblity to do so if they can, but that doesn't mean they're obliged to care about your canker sore.
Now imagine a doctor not treating one or the other because "It's not that serious". It's the extent of the harm or risk that actually indicates how insane or sane that doctor's response is, just as much as the doctors actually response to it is.
We can sit here and say "yeah it's not that serious" but one patient is dying and another basically fine. Just like those people that thought drink driving wasn't that big of a deal, people think social media "oh yeah that's bad but what you going to do", it's the same shrug and 'oh well' attitude. That's what I think is eerlie similar. Now whether or not that's appropiate or not depends on whether you think the patient is having a heart attack, or just has a sore lip.
I do agree people aren't generally saying TikTok is good, but people are saying TikTok isn't so bad as to regulate age verification. Do you see how these things play into each other?
My takeaway is that jfindper is saying that seatbelt laws had a justification that does not have a parallel with this action regarding social media.
IDK if this is how they would say it, but I think argument for seatbelts is that there is minimum disruption to usage, there is limited revocation of other rights, and the societal benefit is large and pretty unambiguous.
The idea that I have to give up privacy, expose myself to additional risk (by having my identity logged), increase the chances that mentally susceptible people will have more exposure to fraud in order to get a solution that is not clear on how effective it will be makes the parallel a bit academic, if not an out right straw man.
> I think argument for seatbelts is that there is minimum disruption to usage, there is limited revocation of other rights, and the societal benefit is large and pretty unambiguous.
Said like this, it looks to me that it has a parallel with social media.
> The idea that I have to give up privacy
You don't have to, though.
> expose myself to additional risk (by having my identity logged)
It doesn't have to be, we can have privacy-preserving age verification. Now we could discuss the specific implementation, but in general that's feasible.
> increase the chances that mentally susceptible people will have more exposure to fraud
It's not enough to say it: is it actually the case? You can already get phished by trying to access a social network, how does that make it worse? I don't think it's obvious. While the problem with kids and social media is, at this point, very well documented.
> if not an out right straw man.
I, for one, think it's an interesting experiment. All the arguments above could be used against making cigarettes illegal for children. Yet I am very convinced that making cigarettes illegal for children is the right choice.
If we are so concerned about the materials make the platforms moderate them like they used to do. Banning them reeks of favoring the murdoch outlets which are free to spread misinformation
The ban is being enacted by the Australian Labor Party, which the Murdoch media is certainly not friendly with. If it ends up favouring Murdoch, it won’t have been deliberate.
I bet you Sky news gets more views through social media than TV broadcast these days! Many of their hosts are all over X, spreading misinformation. They are downstream from social media now, not seperate from it I suspect.
Murdoch benefits from the political agitation that the landscape of social media provides.
I do agree on making platforms moderate themselves. This legsliation helps do this by creating a discussion about the harms, enforcing a culture of harm (this is not for all ages, not default for everyone). Saying to the companies: "Hey, if you don't want to be regulated, clean up your platform so it's safer". Will that happen? no idea, but if it doesn't, no children is still a good goal (it's how you get there that has the contention).
> I don't think we should normalise children on platforms where the content contains political agitation, sexual and violent content, crypto and fintech scams, etc. Especially when this content is packaged up to them and commodified.
This may be true but it has nothing to do with what the person you are replying to said.
The original comment suggests that the policy is politically motivated. The commenter replied with other reasons for the policy other than political agitation. I think its a valid response.
I also don't buy the implied claim from the original commenter that age-limits are paternalistic/suppressive with regard to political thought/speech. Large tech platforms control political thought/speech on a regular basis, a lot of which is executed by state actors. Even in the absence of devious actors, algorithms are editorial by nature; they are not neutral infrastructure by any means.
No, sorry, it's orthogonal to the poster's comment, which states that, regardless of merit, the purpose of the ban is political. Arguing for or against it is beside the point.
Perhaps the original comment should have been more direct in and just said that Zionists are the ones pushing for these bans. The head of the ADL has made comments about this. A video by Sarah Hurwitz, Obama's speechwriter, went viral recently about how social media needs to be banned for young people because it's hurting the zionist movement.
The head of the ADL is a firehose of stupidity; that does not mean he controls policy. I also reject the pretense that public opinion of Israel would be higher among teens without social media, given their actions over the past few years.
No sorry it wasn't a dig at you: the video was posted by someone who appears on Alex Jones' Infowars, talks jewish conspiracies. I just don't take that stuff seriously, doesn't make it wrong and if there's an argument you want to make I'll listen.
That video was literally posted by hundreds of accounts. I just picked the first one I found in search. And exactly how is "Jennine K" anything like Infowars? Did you even bother to look? Do you want me to find the exact same video from a "reputable" account? Can you address the contents of the video? It's direct and unedited, her exact words.
I assume you are a Zionist, based on your rhetorical techniques.
Zionism is when healthy information choices? I don’t trust infowars, sorry but that’s served me quite well over the years.
I did look, you’re being obtuse again, after all how else would I know it’s from an infowars adjacent account.
You strike me as the type
of person who thinks e-safety commissioner is CIA, they also call me a zionist for doubting that- it’s the goto ad hominem for people embroiled with I/P conflict.
This sort of social media bs and the way it affects political discourse is why social media is so damaging, much of it is just political propaganda.
You are completely untrustworthy. You clearly have an agenda. Nothing I posted has anything to do with Infowars, so you multiple attempts to slander me expose that you are purely agenda driven. This thread is over.
I don't really have an agenda but I have opinions I'm wanting to share & discuss– some of which I'm certainly wrong about. It doesn't feel to me as if you could honestly say the same.
You don't want to believe what I say, you don't think of me as trustworthy. Well I'm not, and you don't have to. You are welcome to your own opinion. That should put me above the likes of many, including infowars and those on sharing that video who believe they know and have a right to say everything. I'm not the one invoking political agitprop here, I would have rather discussed the topic of the submission.
> 1: "I get the feeling this has nothing to do with preventing harms"
> 2: "heres the harms and why I think we should prevent them"
Not trying to be rude here colordrops but I think you're being a too obtuse here, especially when the original person's comment was basically just "I don't trust them" (which is totally fair), I would rather engage in a good faith discussion of our opinions.
The ingredients for this legislation trace back to an organisation called "Collective Shout"[1], by Melinda Tankard Reist, who readers may be aware of from their previous efforts to pressure Steam to restrict games with adult content
I happen to think there are plenty of valid points regarding harmful content on steam and valid arguments about the harms of social media, but I do not believe Collective Shout is a benevolent actor in combatting those harms or steering the solutions, as their proposals nearly always deliver harmful effects on LGBTQ people - and this fits with Reist's previous work[2], eg under Sen. Harradine
My favourite micro pressure-group in Australia is the Pedestrian Council of Australia.
Whenever there's talk about car safety measures, e-scooters or anything else, the press goes to the official-sounding "Pedestrian Council of Australia" for comment. And obligingly, Harold Scruby who is the CEO, Chairman and entire membership of said council will hold forth.
He's been spectacularly successful at getting himself listened to, as if he represented something.
I thought you were making this up, as it sounds too ridiculous to be true. But no, it's a real thing.
The key to his success seems, at a glance, to be raising his media profile by taking controversial positions (which I suspect he may not sincerely hold) that guarantee news coverage. Similar to how populist politicians in the UK game the BBC's "balance" policy by always taking a contrarian position to any given topic to secure an interview or place on a discussion panel.
That is just a thought-stopping reference. Why does this literal nobody who nobody has to listen to have the total backing of both major political parties? That is the real question and it obviously goes back to narrative control and the move from democracy to an authoritarian managerial state.
moral panics are useful for creating authoritarian states. If a moral panic is not presently available, in 2025 it may be easier it's ever been before to cultivate one.
I actually do think people directly see the negative public health impact, its so visceral in so many parents lives, and that that is the driving force behind all of this.
I love being cynical, but I actually do buy these efforts as being purely "for the kids", kind of thing. Sure, there are knock-on effects, but I do buy the good faith-ness of phone bans in school and of these social media bans for kids.
I think this might be true at the parent level, but less and less true as you climb up the government ladder.
The shitty part is that when the parents really do believe something is "for the kids", it becomes that much easier to push through laws that have awful side effects (intentional ones or not). Which is why "for the kids" is so common, of course.
It's very unfortunate. As a parent, I feel like it requires regulation at the national level because I can't win against Meta (FB, Insta), Google (Youtube), Snapchat and TikTok.
My son is 15. My talk to him went something like this: There's a lot of porn and nasty things that you can't unsee, so be careful what you look at. Also, those extortion gangs target teenage boys, so if some girl is suddenly hot for you online, come see me immediately so we can troll the ever loving fuck out of them. I think it went pretty well. We like doing things as a family, but more like the Addams family...
Education and believably honest offers of support are needed to navigate the world, which is ugly and evil in some parts. Restrictions are really just counterproductive because curious young people are drawn to restricted stuff, and age restrictions build a sense of 'us (the young) against them (the adults)', so it's hard to convince that you actually offer honest support. Restrictions also focus on the bad parts, while we should instead focus on the good parts, the advantages of a global network of anything, which is totally amazing. Restrictions are counter productive.
Humans need to learn to live here, and it starts when we're young and curious.
Ok, now we have no restrictions. Timmy just got his driver’s license at 13 and is on his way to 7-11 to pick up a 24 pack because he’s young and curious.
Remarkably, Youtube's logged out experience will still be completely available to all age groups. And an a Australian HN user mentioned that one 14-year old had another (presumably older looking) 14-year old do the "video selfie" for her to verify her account on one the sites. So I'm not sure the fight will go away, but it may be slightly more tractable.
It will normalize people thinking that uploading their state-issued ID to whatever contractor is validating accounts is safe and normal.
Most people probably agree something needs to be done at scale. Banning kids sounds neither effective nor long term beneficial though, and at the core of it seems to deflect from solving deeper issues.
It looks like they're "doing something" while nothing really changes or potentially gets worse. Trying to regulate Meta/YouTube from there has IMHO become harder, as kids are on paper supposed to be out of the picture.
I'd view that as more of a works for me argument than necessarily actionable. Social dynamics are complex and personality, status, etc, plays into which relationships end up mattering, being convincing, etc. I.e. some children bond closer to a grandparent not because parents have failed in any way at honest conversations.
3 kids, same honest conversations, 2 where it worked and works very well, 1 where it is a constant battle.
So sorry but no, the platforms are addictive and not all the kids can resist against an armada of statisticians ensuring the systems stay addictive only through honest conversations.
By the way, this would mean you could solve all the addiction issues if it would be working...
> It's very unfortunate. As a parent, I feel like it requires regulation at the national level because I can't win against Meta (FB, Insta), Google (Youtube), Snapchat and TikTok.
Sorry, but this just isn't the case. I have children very much in the target age here, and they only have a passing understand of what social media even is due to us explaining how unhealthy it is to them.
It's unfortunate you feel incapable of achieving the same, but abdicating your responsibility as a parent to the state isn't the answer.
I remember there being an experiment where parents were placed in a room with some toys their children were allowed to play with and some toys their children weren't allowed to.
They measured the parents perceived level of control against their actual level of control by seeing if they stopped their children from playing with the researchers laptop that had been left in the corner of the room.
Part of me wonders if it was apocryphal, I'm not sure if a test like that would get past an ethics committee (at least since laptops existed)
Likewise, the state abdicating its responsibility and placing the burden solely on parents isn't fair either, and that is exactly the environment we currently find ourselves in.
Yes, let's allow cigarette manufacturers to target children, and let's the capable parents teach them. Same for porn, alcohol, drugs. If your kids have issues, it's your fault, not society's. /s
It's not that the people don't genuinely believe what they're saying. It's that they've deluded themselves into thinking their ideological right is "for the kids".
There's always been Reefer Madness sorts of people. Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll, Video Games, DnD, Rap Music, Homosexuality, and on and on. Today it's half woke mind virus and half DEI (for lack of a better term). Most of the people that spout this stuff genuinely believe they're fighting for the kids.
Its not good faith because its already broken by vpn. And its forcing kids with no credit cards to download free and malware ridden ones. How would you measure any level of success from this initiative? Doing something isnt a solution if it has tons of bad sideeffects
It very much is. Free VPNs almost always have some sort of catch. E.g. HolaVPN users agree in the ToS to become an exit node for other VPN users: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hola_(VPN)
If social media is so compelling, then teens almost certainly will take whatever steps are necessary to access it.
> Its not good faith because its already broken by vpn.
One does not follow from the other.
We make speeding illegal even though even the most affordable cars can trivially bypass all speed restrictions. It doesn't mean that the efforts to curb speeding are in bad faith just because it is still possible to bypass speed reduction rules.
Thank you. I thought it was a pretty good analogy, too.
>Wonder why banning homelessness works so well[?] Oh we don[']t ban it? Must be because we don[']t care enough[.]
I do not understand what point you are trying to make about homelessness, and how that would be at all relevant to keeping teenagers from having accounts on social media.
That's not a great comparison.
I was just pointing out that the existence of ways to violate a law, does not in any way, mean that passing the law or enforcing it is a bad faith effort.
Of course they aren't. If they were actually helping kids, they would be going after algorithmic feeds in general and the most predatory platforms like Roblox (especially given its recent scandals), doing something about kids being exposed to gambling advertising, etc.
The bill was put up for public comment for less than one business day before being rammed through Parliament. Australia is just sending out one of the horsemen of the infocalypse so that other countries have an excuse to follow suit. Like how our "Assistance And Access" Act was a test run of the UK's "snooper's charter".
This law will just lead to:
1. kids pretending to be adults so they sneak through these filters
2. platforms winding back their (meagre) child safety efforts since "children are banned anyway"
3. everyone being forced to prove their age via e.g. uploading ID (which will inevitably get leaked)
This is such an older person take. Users really like Algorithmic feeds and see the removal of such a feature to be platform destroying. Cronological feeds are still easy to game and abuse.
>predatory platforms like Roblox
What makes roblox a predatory platform and what would you change to make it not a predatory platform? To me Roblox is a predatory platform because of the age group of people not because of the platform design.
> kids pretending to be adults so they sneak through these filters
The real question is: how hard does it make it for them to pretend to be adults? We just need it to be hard enough that most kids won't do it.
> platforms winding back their (meagre) child safety efforts since "children are banned anyway"
If the law forces the platforms to properly ban children, I don't see how they can do that. If you're thinking that the platforms will just say "it's illegal for children to join, so we don't have to do anything because they shouldn't come in the first place", then I don't think the law is made like this.
> everyone being forced to prove their age via e.g. uploading ID (which will inevitably get leaked)
Some countries have been working on privacy-preserving age verification. I find it's a lot better than uploading an ID.
> We just need it to be hard enough that most kids won't do it.
Silly though that sounds, it might work. Because it's social pressure from other kids to be online that drives many kids into being constantly on Instagram and Snapchat. If you're not online, you don't know what's going on.
The big social networks monetize FOMO.
If a sizable fraction of kids aren't on social media, that's not where it's happening any more. The pressure goes away. Or goes elsewhere.
Kids pretending to be adults know they are doing something wrong. They are likely to practice acting like adults, don't pressure each other to join, and are harder for predators to find.
>We've been hearing politicians complain for years that they're losing the youth when it comes to long-standing foreign policy positions,
When Twitter added its location feature and it turned out that political accounts with millions of followers are run out of Pakistan or India you have to be crazy to still deny the scope of foreign influence that is exerted over social media.
You see it with the rise in anti-semitism or Russia's explicit promotion of influencers targeting Western youth. Why on earth would we let our kids be brainwashed by foreign intelligence agencies? There is no reason to assume this is some "hidden agenda", this is as big of a public issue as the mental health of teenagers. The United States used to have media rules that limited foreign ownership in companies with a broadcasting license, and now 14 year olds get their political lessons straight from Moscow, it's ridiculous.
To be fair, "anti-semitism" claims have been 90% bad faith. Gaza was the internet's Vietnam.
We got just as mad at the internet letting our citizens at home see the brutality as we did with Jane Fonda and calling her "Hanoi Jane" after she traveled to Vietnam to bring light to the conflict(not a war).
I don't think there's any merit in being upset at dead children being reported because it messes with our national security goals. If the goals don't have public support with truthful reporting, they're basically illegitimate.
I would reject the notion that shifting public sentiment is a result of foreign influence campaigns, which is not to say it doesn't exist to an extent.
I've seen plenty of real information, from non-anonymous American journalists that I'm certain are the largest factor in any sea-change amongst Americans.
And despite the claim, I've yet to see solid evidence of large, pakistan-based accounts wielding massive influence on twitter. Most anonymous accounts that focus on current events tend to be located in America, Europe, or Canada from what I've seen.
Agreed. I'm no fan of social media, and especially not a fan of TikTok and Instagram. But I really doubt this is about the kids more than it is about getting another foothold along the path of controlling internet access wholesale.
The Australian government didn’t do this because of any concern about children; it’s to punish (mainly) Meta for backing out of the Australian Social Media Bargaining Agreement [1]. Other social media companies are collateral damage.
News Corp wanted Meta et al to pay for the privilege of sharing links to News Corp articles (imo, ridiculous). Meta played along for a short period, but has now refused to engage, which has clearly upset News Corp (and their shrinking top line). It’s slowly changing, but it’s an unfortunate truth that News Corp still has incredible influence over Australian politicians, hence this had bipartisan support.
Just in case anyone is sceptical, is quite literally paying for sharing links - the legslation [1] says in part 52B that
For the purposes of this Part, a service makes content available if:
(a) the content is reproduced on the service, or is otherwise placed on the service; or
(b) a link to the content is provided on the service; or
(c) an extract of the content is provided on the service.
(2) Subsection (1) does not limit, for the purposes of this Part, the ways in which a service makes content available.
Part 52B (1) means that the code explicitly defines that a social media site publishing a user post containing a link to a news site as being considered exactly the same as the social media site ripping off and publishing a copy of a whole article!
The supporters of the bill then went around pretending that social media sites were ripping off whole articles and showing them on their sites with their own ads, when they are actually just linking and showing the title, thumbnail and sentence summary that the news site provides in its meta info!
In the end, the news media bargaining code is effectively just a shakedown to extract money for nothing from tech companies. Part 52B makes the whole thing indefensible.
> I feel like everyone in this thread is assuming this is a good faith move by Australia to help kids in school and with socialization.
Most Australian schools banned phones a while ago. Attempts were made to measure the outcome. For example, South Australia saw a 72% drop in phone-related issues and 80.5% fall in social media problems in early 2025 compared to 2023 [0]. Other states reported similar results. These early figures are a little rubbery, but overall look very good. The social media ban is in part a response to that success.
The only major concern I have is de-anonymization of the web. It's worse than just de-anonymization. They've opened the gate for organisations like Facebook to demand government ID, like say a photo of a drivers licence. It contains a whole pile of info these data vultures would like to get their hands on, like your actual date of birth and residential address.
The sad bit is I doubt de-anonymization was goal, in fact I doubt they put much thought into that aspect of all. If it was the goal there far more effective ways of going about given the corporations permission to "collect whatever data you need to make it work". They could have implemented a zero knowledge proof of age service. But given the track record of their other computer projects, a realistic assessment is it had near zero chance of being implemented at all, let alone on time and on budget.
But if they had of insisted the providers implemented some sort of ZKP themselves, I would have found it hard to argue against given the past experience in schools.
Is that the same report that failed to mention they changed the testing methodology for the year after the phone ban, and that an improvement was expected in SA test scores regardless?
> School behaviour improving after mobile phone ban and vaping reforms
Vaping !?
If we're discussing effect of phone bans at school, I think looking at a period where nicotine addiction was also strongly reduced makes the numbers pretty hard to interpret.
Maybe. I think it's overall a rightward shift, only in urban cores is it accelerating a leftward shift. To the extent that it is motivating marginal voters to vote (which I think it is), it is also benefitting the right. It's also breaking down ethnic voting patterns in a way that benefits the right, I think.
It is not motivating marginal voters to vote. The choice is between two nearly identical establishment candidates from two private clubs. The electorate is going the same way it's going in Europe, except in Europe other parties are legal (although marginalized through parliamentary methods.)
In the UK, for example, Reform has been consistently polling the same as the Conservatives and Labour added together., and all three of those added together only represent 2/3 of the electorate. In the US, that translates to 2/3 of people becoming non-voters.
Why that might look like a rightward shift in the US is because the Republicans don't fix their primaries (since the 90s), and their voters actually have an effect on who gets picked to run. Why it won't actually be a rightward shift is because Republicans ignore their platforms after being elected, and don't mind getting thrown out at the end of a term or two to work at the businesses they helped while in office.
Democrats simply don't believe in any sort of democracy anymore. They invest all their effort into yelling at black people and Hispanics, and raising as much money as they can from the worst people in the world. The rest of the time they spend attacking anybody running to the left of them as racist or Russian, while their media outlets simply ignore those people other than when they're helping promote the slander. That's whats pushing away "ethnic voting."
As a black person, I know when the voting season is here because I see a bunch of paid Democrats running around calling black people who criticize their party ethnic slurs and using the word "massa" a lot. Republicans don't do that. They don't rely on black people so just ignore us. Democrats rely on us, but will never do anything for us, so they use terror.
People in power just want total control of the narrative and they don't want you to find out the truth about anything. Look at Walz in MN--he's like the ultimate Jedi "nothing to see here" mind trick with his wholesome grandfatherly persona, which is furthest from the actual reality of who and what he is. They all just want to force you into their reality and they hate it when you don't go there.
The two party system exists because even in a multi party system (eg. those that exist in proportional representation governments) still end up as "In government" vs "In opposition"
Secondly, we employ "adversarial" systems for two branches of government (legislative and judicial) because it's a hell of a lot easier to spot flaws in ideas of people you are opposed to (as opposed to some European Judiciaries that have "inquisitorial" systems, where a judge investigates activity)
Very often in the proportional systems people opine that "grand coalitions" should form, with the two largest parties, although that loses a lot of the advantages of the adversarial system, and has a tendency to steam roll smaller interests in the country.
> Secondly, we employ "adversarial" systems for two branches of government (legislative and judicial) because it's a hell of a lot easier to spot flaws in ideas of people you are opposed to (as opposed to some European Judiciaries that have "inquisitorial" systems, where a judge investigates activity).
if that would be the case, why is the adversarial system not working in its current practice?
Also, i think the difference between the judicial systems of parlementary/european and the american system have more to do with the difference between civil and common law.
European goverments are really the legacy of the revolutionary french idea's of a civic state, in which citizens have duties to the state, and have rights being garantueed by the state. The state itself is being granted the authority to do this by its citizens through some process.
And there were a number of State supreme court elections that were alleged to have heavy monetary investment from a couple of billionaires that did not end up working in their favour.[1]
For that matter there is an Australian billionaire whose "investment" also does not appear to have worked in his favour [2]
I read somewhere that Rupert Murdoch was able to swing some elections a while ago in Australia and the UK. That was through his media ownership though.
There are other ways for money to impact politics beyond individual general elections. As well as funding community organizing and creating long-term propaganda, it's much easier to impact ballot initiatives (paid signature gathering works, for example, where paid canvassers don't.)
Public politics, and private company politics are very similar, although private company politics are less open to scrutiny.
The issue with the lottery is the need to ensure that the candidates both want the role, and are capable of doing it.
The latter, who is the right person to say "X is unqualified because.. " (and the Peter Principle suggests that just because someone was good at a lower job, eventually they're going to be put into a job they are unqualified for)
The theory with the current style that the person who puts themselves forward most definitely desires to win the job, and, as they rise up through their party system, have some level of competence, as adjudged by the people they have convinced to put them forward as a candidate.
Further, the adversarial nature is supposed to then mean that that person's opponents can call out the reasons that that person isn't suitable for the job.
Unfortunately, this ends up being a muck raking exercise, and the complaints might not amount to anything more than innuendo, further, there's no guarantee that they will even be heard (the supporters will provide evidence that the opponents themselves are not qualified to make any criticism)
Unfortunately a lot of elections these days, US or otherwise, tend not to end up being "This candidate is awesome, let's vote them in", but, instead "the incumbent is terrible, get someone, anyone, to replace them" - in the US Biden was voted in because Trump 1.0 was deemed a failure, and then Trump 2.0 was voted in because Biden was deemed a failure. Right now the Democrats appear to be on the rise again because Trump 2.0 and the Republicans are being deemed a failure. This isn't to diminish the wins by some actually good candidates though (although how good they are remains to be seen, and is a matter of... opinion).
Which is why parliamentary systems are so much more stable than first-past-the-post.
They let voters express their preferences, and leave building the coalitions up to the politicians. Instead of expecting voters to understand that their preferences are expressed during the primaries, and the general election is just to pick which coalition wins.
It is crazy that no one in America is promoting a Constitutional amendment to fix the basic governance.
You can't have first-past-the-post in a parliamentary system. But yeah, that's the one dependency they have, otherwise, those are independent. You can even have weird districtal systems that look parliamentary and use first-past-the-post.
Either way, majoritarian elections are a plague and must be avoided as much as possible.
Every political party ON THE PLANET has always had to manage internal factions, it doesn't matter if you're talking the Soviet Communist Party, the Democrats, the Republicans, The Tea party faction.
There's absolutely nothing new about parties having internal divisions. Even the fact that at the moment everything is so partisan is nothing new, history has shown that several times over the past century that politics has followed a penudulum that swings from partisan extremes, back to centrist moderates, and then back to the extremes.
Youtube really wants to send me down the alt-right pipeline. I watch a few WW2 history videos and suddenly I must identify with "Mr Mustache" as the kids say. TikTok wants to radicalize me the other way, and shows me every video of a cop abusing their power that they can find. It cuts both ways.
I think what's killing Dems is that they don't understand the medium. Mamdani did really well by making good social media posts. Him and Trump had a grand old time at the whitehouse because they have a competent grasp on social media in common. Newsom has been trolling lately and his approval ratings are only going up.
Dems being a million years old is killing the dems.
> I think what's killing Dems is that they don't understand the medium.
Generally agree, but
> Him and Trump had a grand old time at the whitehouse
Yeah, but that wasn't entirely positively received, despite his earlier social media success. Him buddying up with Trump was a huuuuge turn off for me.
> Newsom has been trolling lately and his approval ratings are only going up.
Newsom's content is also a huge turn off for me, and I am not convinced that his supposed approval ratings are not simply more CTR type machinations from the DNC. Maybe there's some segment of the population that genuinely wants whatever the hell Newsom is pushing content-wise, I certainly don't have #s on my side. Mamdani's efforts - Trump buddying aside - were much better.
> Dems being a million years old is killing the dems.
Yes, but I think age is simply a proxy for a number of other highly correlated behaviors and positions. Most progressives can name a couple of >70yo dems for whom these complaints do not apply.
Mandani did really well in NYC which is entirely consistent with the social media helping the left in urban cores but hurting elsewhere.
I think it is structural about the medium because it elevates the profile of relatively rare things like crime or ‘wokeness gone amok’ that dems are losing on. Similarly, with regards to ICE, it is helping dems by also raising the profile of rare incidents. But on net I think this sort of coverage hurts dems more than it helps.
It isn't like the left was doing well in rural America before social media: people in the urban cores just didn't know what was going on there, and they didn't know what was going on the urban cores. But when I was growing up, people thought Bill Clinton was a communist in league with Castro.
Meta == Phillip Morris - This is a public health issue and will likely need to be treated like tobacco. Kids can't vote so I don't see the political motivation.
The solution, however, isn't prohibition or age restrictions; it's either regulating the algorithms or holding these companies responsible for the adverse outcomes their platforms contribute to. Safe harbor laws made sense when tech wasn't filtering/promoting content, now that they are influencing the material we see, these laws must no longer apply.
This may mean adopting a modern equivalent to libel laws. Something akin to: if an algorithm pushes false information, the company behind the algorithm can be sued for harm. Disallow terms of service that force arbitration or cap liability limits.
Social media is not good for adults either. Being able to choose your vices is one of the privileges we give to adults.
When I was 18 the legal drinking age had just been reduced to 18. That only lasted a couple of years. I don't think I'd vote for lowering it to that age again actually.
Isn't treating it as a health issue the opposite of "puritanical moralizing"? No one suggested placing a Scarlet S around their necks.
It really isn't a bad thing for kids to be told they can't do something occasionally. It kind of helps prepare them for being an adult where it happens all the time.
Social media has caused at least two genocides so far, and their data centers and AI slop are helping drive us towards an earth incapable of supporting human life.
“Kids” are no longer old enough to use social media as they are “kids”. At the same time Australia states are updating laws believing “kids” are old enough to be treated as and tried as adults in a court of law.
Its not uncommon for laws that allow for teenagers (14 or above) to be tried as adults for more serious crimes.
Should we prevent kids from doing things we think will harm them? Yes, should we give harsher penalties for kids who commit more serious crimes? Potentially.
There's no motive other than "easy politicial win". The kids aren't gonna vote against you (they don't vote), parents will vote for you, you get to show people you protected children and passed legislation. Politicians support anything that keeps them in votes and campaign contributions.
Kids dont vote, but when they do they tend to come in radicalised and swinging. Voter intention in Australia has shifted heavily towards minor parties over the last decade. While this is currently being captured by our preferential voting system, the tipping point is 1 - 2 elections away.
Isolating kids from current events and society can easily be seen as a potential extra bullwark against changing voter intentions, because Minor partiers tend to favour social media engagement against paying for expensive ads.
Is it still publicly viewable without age verification in Australia? It's a little unclear from TFA whether the ban is purely on account creation, or also applies to viewing.
It takes the completely ridiculous idea that harm is caused by having an account. Youtube even pointed out that, the lack of account means it cant work its algo magic to try and push age appropriate videos to users. Government doesnt care. No Account. No Problem.
Ironically, youtube is now more likely to send kids andrew tate or russian propaganda to kids.
I'm in Australia on a phone without VPN and do not have a Tiktok account: googling "Tiktok" just now direct linked me to Tiktok's Web app and started auto playing.
All the ban does is stop kids from having accounts, if the service allows anonymous usage then they can still find somewhere to doom scroll. My teen son has been blocked from Snapchat, and was this evening doom scrolling on Tik Tok until I blocked it on our home network.
I'm curious to understand why your approach to TikTok is banning it. Why do you think this is the right solution? Are you concerned at all about your son's ability to cope independently from oversight and control?
No, it’s that he will spend hours doom scrolling whatever they feed to him.. I’ve tried to lead him down a path of watching more educational stuff on YouTube but he will just end up doom scrolling shorts.. I’m trying to figure out ways to enable him access but not have him waste hours with shorts.. I know there must be short form content that’s good but I’ve not seen any evidence watching over his shoulder.. I block shorts on YouTube for myself even.. at this point the best I can think of is allowing access in short windows of time with longer chunks of blocked access.. if anyone has ideas I’d love to hear them.
Short-form content (if you can call it that) is a weapon of mass attention span destruction. IMHO the doom-scrolling loop it creates should be illegal, regardless of the audience.
You assume that banning usage was the first step instead of the last step.
I'm not OP, but I'm guessing they started with talking to the kid, or more intermediate steps.
> Are you concerned at all about your son's ability to cope independently from oversight and control?
Kids aren't fully independent for good reason, and a very hard part of parenting is deciding how much independence to give them vs. sheltering them from the parts of the world that will hurt them. If a kid comes home with drugs or hardcore porn it is completely reasonable to confiscate them with no regard for independence and control. Is TikTok the same as heroin? No. But it is provably harmful in any number of ways that young brains do not have the tools to handle, and the benefits are arguably non-existent for most. With other things like sports, we know that there is the possibility of getting hurt, but that can be mitigated and the benefits far outweigh the risks.
I'd rather have my heroin addicted son do it at home, where I can be there to take him to the hospital, talk to him about it, etc., rather than make him go out into the streets alone. Banning it doesn't seem like a productive approach
We aren't concerned only about existing addicts, but potential future addicts. Especially for something like social media with strong network effects, where decreasing use is non-linear.
The question is always:
A. What do people use instead? (banning pot, for example, increases use of heroin and alcohol, which is good for alcohol companies but bad for public health. If banning social media sent kids to 24/7 news channels, it might not help, but I haven't seen evidence of that.)
B. How much is organized crime funded by the increased black market? (In this case, kids are a limited population that doesn't have a lot of money, so the answer is probably "not much".)
Banning substances naturally decreases use, that's obvious, but prohibition criminalizes use, which will always persist. You cannot stop drug use. Drug legalization so far has resulted in declining use of dangerous substances like tobacco and alcohol. Far more young people today choose smoking pot over smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol. Many people choose not to drink because they've observed the widespread dangerous effects of it since it's been legal. If heroin was made legal all over the world today, you'd 100% see increased use. But maybe humanity needs to see the consequences in order to respect them? Just like alcohol and cigarettes?
> I can be there to take him to the hospital, talk to him about it, etc.
Nanny state! Let him take himself to medical facilities, and deal with the consequences himself instead of interfering
HELL Let's ban hospitals, they're just interfering in the natural order of life.
Real talk: I know that those are strawmen and you most definitely think that where you draw the line is right for you and your family (assuming that you have one), but the reality is that the line gets moved a LOT as children grow - your line might be great if you have developed a good relationship with your son, and he's received a good social education from his friends/network and he's over a certain age.
It fails very quickly if he's, say, 5 years old and/or he's had no friends that model good/bad behaviour and/or you and he are human meaning that communication, interpretation, and any hint of resentment lies underneath (keep in mind that teenagers are geared to fight/be angry/dislike their parents, for the specific reason that it motivates them to leave home and begin their own lives)
I like your libertarian approach. You're right the line can move a lot. Of course, my support/interference would (hypothetically speaking) be different on a situation to situation basis, my reasoning is simply love. If I love someone, like my son, I want them to be free to make mistakes and hurt themselves, and certainly if they start hurting others I would seek to stop that. I think it's important, though, to be there for people, nut the line does change like you pointed out. So I'm really not sure- my decisions would be situationally dependent. I'm still inclined to say that prohibition is ineffective and potentially more dangerous for some people
Without wishing to completely sidetrack the discussion...
> I like your libertarian approach.
Their idea is to prohibit government...
What we are seeing in Australia is a community that has decided that the best course of action is to say that children under the age of 16 are generally too young to have the skills to deal with some social media.
You yourself are comfortable with the idea that a 5 year old is far too young for social media (and kids that age /can/ work devices to access social media if they want)
The question really is, at what age should we draw the line.
16 is arbitrary, but the ones most able to manage the interactions are the ones that will have the skills for circumventing the blanket ban, and the ones that aren't that savvy, won't.
It's also a massive propaganda channel. We can argue about whether any one particular state is involved in that or not but gut reaction is that if this were the real concern, their solution would be to regulate and censor what is posted online rather than kicking them off the platform and thus detaching them from the teat of (alleged) indoctrination. (that push for censorship also exists).
Maybe Australia and the US are not involved in any social media propaganda campaigns but, at least in the case of the US, there is most certainly an abundance of precedence.
I don't know the sincere feelings of these types wrt the safety and well-being of children but I don't think the goal is "getting them back" wrt policy or whatever.
The problem is that school curriculum is as well. I remember going to school in Texas and hearing the phrase "Northern War of Aggression" to describe the Civil War.
Censorship is never about cutting off information, it's only ever about cutting off information that the censors don't like. Given how openly hostile both AU and the US's governments are to progressive politics and worldviews, I am dubious that this isn't about controlling kids' access to a more open view of the world than their schools will give them.
The Australian government isn’t banning books. It’s banning access to harmful content for people under 16.
One morning I logged into Reddit and saw a video of Charlie Kirk get his head blown off. I didn’t want to see that, but for some reason it wasn’t taken down yet. I’m really glad my 12 year old daughter didn’t have to see that…
> It’s banning access to harmful content for people under 16.
Even the most comically overt authoritarians will use justifications like this to ban content.
> One morning I logged into Reddit and saw a video of Charlie Kirk get his head blown off.
Then I think you may have seen a fake video. No such thing happened to him. If we're discussing serious subjects such as censorship and deaths, avoiding hyperbole to falsely bolster an argument is probably best.
> I’m really glad my 12 year old daughter didn’t have to see that…
Why would you give your 12yo daughter unrestricted access to Reddit, as a parent? Why must the government stop her, for you?
Also, since that already happened, and government restrictions weren't in place, and she didn't see it, clearly you've just disproved the need for those restrictions to avoid that outcome; your daughter didn't see the harmful content, despite there being no government-mandated restriction.
I had the uncommon privilege of attending a year of high school in Japan, and rest assured there is no lack of propaganda in other countries' schools, even if often by omission of truths.
I am not Australian, but I suspect high school textbooks are likely less than entirely forthright about sensitive subjects like Residential Schools and their role in settler-colonialism.
This worldwide push for online ID verification is absolutely not in good faith, and I'm shocked at how few people on "Hacker" News are seeing it for what it is. Imagine going on 1990's or 2000's Usenet and telling those folks they'd have to upload government ID to prove they weren't children and keep using the system. Virtually everyone would have shouted this Big Brother shit down until it was their dying breath.
Parts of Usenet actually mandated real names. The idea was to make discussions more civilised. It didn't. And on top of that people were now subject to stalking and doxxing. I remember a poster who had a link to a defamation site in his signature. The site was targeted at another frequent poster in that newsgroup, detailing his address and his alleged intellectual failings.
America had all the access to free information and voted in an authoritarian anyway so what’s it matter ?
I don’t care anymore about this emotive argument that you’re putting forward. The government knows everything about you because you pay for internet. Maybe you pretend to yourself you’re someone anonymous because you use a VPN but if they want to know who you are, they know.
At least maybe this ban will stop some of the idiocy bleeding into the next generation.
America has been subject to a thirty-year propaganda war by foreign actors.
Information in America is free as in speech, not free as in beer: money talks louder than truth. That has let billionaires unravel the stabilizing features adopted after the Great Depression that kept capitalism limping along for an extra century.
Why does the motivation matter so much? It’s not a global ban, it’s not a permanent ban, nobody is going to jail. It’s like seeing if moving the smoking age to 18 will improve health outcomes.
It’s ruining their lives as far as we can tell, and at the end of the day it’s just one country testing it out. It’ll be stastically significant, culturally close enough of a sample set for us to learn from.
I’m curious to see what the 1-2-3 year effects are. We need to let some real life experimentation happen, somewhere, instead of accepting what every conglomerate wants.
I get that “it’s easy to say” for me as someone completely unaffected by this law.
The study that was posted last week regarding at school banning of phones was enlightening. It improved scores within two years after a bit of resistance. Boom!
I want them to have a chance at being healthy and well-educated; we can’t stop teens from smoking altogether but we can sure limit their access by default.
> Rahm Emanuel is campaigning for the same thing in America.
I get the sense this is supposed to signify something; don't know the name, but looking at their profile, great career, Obama's chief of staff. What's the implication?
He is a pro-authoritian-control Democrat, so it is unsurprising that he is more worried about control of information than he is the Constitution. His background is in finance and his political goal is generally management of the country by a monied elite without particular oversight.
He was paid by Goldman Sachs to help Clinton get elected by raising massive amounts of money. During Obama's term he structured the DNC to be about his personal power rather than supporting Democrats across the country, costing Democrats the midterms. As mayor of Chicago he covered up a murder committed by a police officer and refused to comply with transparency laws.
On the other hand, this particular position is probably just part of the Israeli campaign against TikTok: Emanuel volunteered for the IDF and has long been an anti-Palestinian activist.
Both can be true. The question is, do the benefits outweigh the consequences? I'm of the opinion that parents need to help regulate teen exposure, not the government. It does feel a bit like censorship.
Just my anecdote addled opinion but i seems like most of the people being mentally "cooked" by social media are in their 30's ,my generation, and up to maybe late 60's.
Current social media is terrible for children (and everyone, but we let adults drink and smoke) - this is known. They've been told many times they need to change or they'll get banned. They have not. This is known. It reminds me a little of when Australia banned Amazon because Amazon refused to charge GST (their version of VAT or sales tax).
The surveillance part is about adults having to upload their identity. This concern is entirely separate from the part where children are banned.
In most legal jurisdictions that I know of, kids aren't legally allowed to be able to access to pornography either. How is that working out?
The only way to even attempt to enforce these things is with government mandated age verification. Few people want that as it represents a massive violation of privacy and effectively makes anonymity on the Internet impossible.
The insistence on perfect age verification requires ending anonymity. Age verification to the level of buying cigarettes or booze does not.
Flash a driver's license at a liquor store to buy a single-use token, good for one year, and access your favorite social media trash. Anonymity is maintained, and most kids are locked out.
In the same way that kids occasionally obtain cigs or beer despite safeguards, sometimes they may get their hands on a code. Prosecute anyone who knowingly sells or gives one to a minor.
> Flash a driver's license at a liquor store to buy a single-use token, good for one year, and access your favorite social media trash. Anonymity is maintained...
Ask a woman in a liquor store whether her anonymity is maintained by this scenario...?
The current liquor store approach for buying liquor is hazardous for a good chunk of people and we need to acknowledge that - even if acquiring a token somewhat ameliorates the compounded risk from presenting ID multiple times
So many of these internet ban proposals feel like someone creates a single cartoon scenario that captures ~2% of the use cases, and happily charges ahead to a proposed solution as though they've sufficiently thought about the people affected and the harms involved.
I've seen many women buying alcohol and cigarettes. After a certain age you aren't even carded. It isn't obvious to me that it's a big worry for women in general.
However, I accept it may be a concern for some due to a history of stalkers. They have alternatives.
They can ask a friend to buy a token on their behalf. It's always legal to give alcohol to a friend you know is of legal drinking age. Same thing.
They could find liquor or tobacco stores with women cashiers. And rotate between stores to avoid showing their ID to the same person multiple times.
> So many of these internet ban proposals feel like someone creates a single cartoon scenario that captures ~2% of the use cases
I think the "problem" with my proposal you're harping on is the "~2% of use cases" you're talking about. My proposal isn't foolproof but it is anonymous. Just like alcohol and tobacco sales today.
If we're saying social media is the new tobacco and must be kept away from kids (I agree on both counts) then we must not intrude on the privacy of adults any more than we would when they buy actual tobacco.
It makes no sense to want to control access to certain websites more strictly than access to actual poisons that cause disease, violent behavior, and death. Otherwise it's clear it was never about "the kids". It was about control, speech policing, and ending anonymity online.
Forcing everyone to upload IDs makes all women vulnerable to stalking and harassment. It's strictly worse.
> Ask a woman in a liquor store whether her anonymity is maintained by this scenario...?
Is she not going to say "pretty well compared to a surveillance database, one or two people that are probably going to forget immediately"?
> The current liquor store approach for buying liquor is hazardous for a good chunk of people
What chunk of people?
Are you trying to imply that this chunk includes women in general? It's really easy to find random women without looking at an ID. If this is about addresses, anyone taking actions based on "a woman probably lives here" has about the same effect as picking houses at random.
> Is she not going to say "pretty well compared to a surveillance database"
No, instead she is likely to avoid talking in abstractions and instead talk about personal experiences of getting stalked online by multiple people she has had to show her details to in the past, who may include storekeeps, police, university staff, etc, etc. Eva Galperin is an excellent source on the way many of our procedures are designed in ways that do not at all account for the potential of stalking and harassment, though her focus is on how this continues to unfold in the technology space.
I can't really follow how a woman showing an ID to a lecherous cashier allows said cashier to stalk her online. Where she is, presumably, speaking about personal experiences anonymously.
Generally you can't get through life with no one knowing your name; even women at risk of stalking. As you already pointed out they may have to show ID to police, university staff, employers, landlords, medical staff, banks, social workers or other government employees. Buying a single-use token annually to get on social media doesn't meaningfully increase that risk profile. And as I already said, if they're that worried, they can ask a friend to buy it for them.
Very big citation needed for saying it's "likely" she has been stalked by multiple people because they got a glance at her name. Especially because someone that just wants info on an attractive woman can find a hundred times as many candidates by scrolling facebook.
I'll believe it if you have proof, but you need proof.
I don't see the danger of pornography, tbh. Oh, much of it is sick, sure, but violent video games are far more harmful. Would it be better to depict loving, caring relationships? Hell, yes! But there are so few of those these days.
My teenage son struggles to have any meaningful dialog with any of the girls his age. It's like he doesn't exist. The few kids who are "dating" is basically the exact scenario that MGTOW depicts--girls only go for the elite jocks and ignore everyone else like they don't even exist. Everyone is miserable. Many will eventually grow out of it, but I don't think the females will ever view themselves as doing anything but "settling" because of the nonsense programmed into their heads. And yes, social media is largely responsible for how extreme the situation has become. In the 90s, girls were picky, but nothing like now. So all that young men have left is like AI chatbots and porn and it's better to not take that away from them, too.
Government runs authentication service that has your personal details.
User creates account on platform Y, platform Y asks government service if your age is >18, service says y/n. Platform never finds out your personal details.
The government still knows your identity in this scenario, so it's a pretty limited form of anonymity (i.e. only suitable for activities the government isn't hostile to)
I know Americans don't want to hear this, but once the government turns hostile, internet anonymity won't save you, just like how guns won't save you (hello propaganda and a large and very active brainwashed minority that also has guns).
The only thing saving you from a hostile government is a well educated populace that really wants democracy and is willing to fight for it (through constant activism, peaceful & other types of protests). This is where many democracies are failing now. No amount of technology or rules can replace large amounts of constantly vigilant eyes that understand how democracy is subverted.
I would rather optimize for not giving companies too much power and end up with a Kafkaesque patchwork of corporate abuses and regulatory captures.
Can't you just put a middle man on there then? Get a non-profit organisation like Mozilla to ask the govt. on behalf of the user.
The organisation asks the govt, and gives back a signed token.
The the only thing the government knows is that an age verification was requested. Once verification has been done once for one site, it can be used for future verifications.
The middle man in this scenario can mask the URL that is requesting age verification, but what's to stop the government compelling traffic logs from the middle man?
Nothing more than what prevents them from getting logs from your ISP about the sites you visit after verification. In ideal countries they need a court order for that, in less ideal ones they just scoop up the logs preemptively.
The government then knows all the services you use. No bueno.
There are better ways to do this including zk proofs, but you gotta work against people mass reselling them. Could do some rate limited tokens minted from a proof maybe.
To an extent I agree, except consider that governments of smaller countries probably don’t currently have the means to know, but they with such a system it would be served on a silver platter. Additionally, it could be leveraged as a means of censorship system restricting access to undesirable content
Some concerns:
- government gets a list of every website that requests your age
- every website has to register with the government to initiate age verification checks
Which pretty much puts an end to any notion of an open internet. But maybe a system I prefer to one where a bunch of random startups have my age verification biometrics .
Yes, but that would then require more infrastructure. For example, Australia does not have a national ID card - or a national proof of age card (each state, however, does implement a Proof of Age card, eg https://www.nsw.gov.au/driving-boating-and-transport/driver-...).
So, what is your zero knowledge based on? Who is the signer?
Under the Identity Verification Services Act 2023 we have IDMatch (https://www.idmatch.gov.au/). This whole setup can simply be extended to have third parties act as an intermediary between the government and the party attempting to get proof of age. Similar to AusPost's DigitaliD (https://www.digitalid.com/personal). But let's not have that company owned by the Government :)
It's pretty cooked that we are asking the social media companies to go ahead and prove to the eSaftey commissioner that they have measures in place to stop kids from getting access to social websites, yet they have to use unreliable measures like selfies to do it. The companies can't win here. This won't be the last you hear of this. https://youtu.be/YTwBStZIawY?t=306
> I feel like everyone in this thread is assuming this is a good faith move by Australia to help kids in school and with socialization.
I mean... you can say that about most of things in life. Behind every social movement or policy, it's always a mix of good faith, cynical fearmongering, and opportunism by people or organizations who stand to gain something from it. Does it matter?
If you think that social media and smartphones are harmful to the youth, you (a) should probably be glad that someone is doing something decisive about it; and (b) you get a large-scale experiment that will hopefully prove or disprove that.
Asking "cui bono?" is always a sound question to ask in a political or commercial context, but it should not be the only one. Don't fall prey to appeal to motive. Even if the motivation is self-serving, it need not be bad per se.
It's four horsemen of the infocalypse 101. Look at the platforms they allowed to continue - discord and roblox, the specific worst of all socials with the most predators, least effective countermeasures.
The purpose of a thing is what it does. Australia's policies do not protect children. They quite brazenly and blatantly leave children vulnerable and exploited. The question of what those actions accomplish has a simple answer - narrative control, censorship, and weaponization of public discourse against dissent.
The real solution to these problems are cultural. If you want the best outcomes for kids, then reinforce stable loving family environments, empower a culture of resilience and competence and capability, impose accountability for wrongdoing, negligence, and careless operation. If teachers and families are leaving kids vulnerable, the solution is better education and more information.
None of the policy Australia crafted does anything good. It's just another power grab using "won't you think of the children?!" as the excuse. Next year it will be terrorism or drugs or money laundering, and they'll keep constricting around civil liberties until they have absolute control.
They'll also put various racial and ethnic officials in prominent positions, so that you may not criticize anything lest you be deemed a racist or bigot (super effective social engineering.)
> The real solution to these problems are cultural. If you want the best outcomes for kids, then reinforce stable loving family environments, empower a culture of resilience and competence and capability, impose accountability for wrongdoing, negligence, and careless operation. If teachers and families are leaving kids vulnerable, the solution is better education and more information.
This is just complete bullshit. Ah yes, my solution to this problem is just to require every single family to be infinitely better in every way imaginable. What is the proposal if that can't happen? We just execute people who don't meet the "stable loving family environment"
No doubt in my mind you are from the generation of a stiff upper lip
You fix it with better culture. You don't throw away your principles and liberties because "bad things are happening to children, quick, burn the system down!"
As far as Australia is concerned, this isn't as much of a throwing away of principles and liberties as it might look. It's classic Australia to have a heavier hand in these types of ways. Admittedly though, less social media use generally sounds like a better culture to me.
Maybe. Do you forget that people use to not have phones or social media and they still had independent thought? Just because kids aren’t introduced to videos and comments about politics at a young age, doesn’t mean they’re going to be brainwashed by the ruling government. Societies operated just the same before social media.
Edit: Dont get me wrong, there could be ulterior motives, but kids will have other ways to educate themselves on the happenings of the world beside social media
As someone with kids, I’m really surprised to hear this. I viciously keep my kids off social media. There’s no political connection. It’s a safety and mental health concern.
70-74% of voters in Australia and the UK want this. It's also a bipartisan legislation. It has nothing to do with a conspiracy among politicians.
It's not just about the kids either. People know those kids are going to grown up and impact them one day. An avalanche of broken people is not conducive to what I want on a purely selfish level as a non-parent.
Clearly this comment is propaganda. This bill had bipartisan support and the Labor government has a significant share of the young voters who are over 18.
I think adults are barely able to take reasoned political positions in today’s online environment, but at least an adult has the experience to make the attempt. Exposing kids to the type of online political persuasion we have today means that we are exposing them to something they have not got the tools to navigate. They just get swept up into whatever the popular idea of the day happens to be. To me, the argument that separating kids from social media separates them from today’s political onslaught is one of the best arguments in favor of it.
Congrats for arguing for... enabling child exploitation?
The esafety report stated it was not allowed for sites to screen all users ages, and that all services had to provide a non id method of age verification.
Yes, specifically Australian Labor hate social media because while they are to the left of the overton window here, in reality they are a centre-right party pretending to be progressive. But social media is where the actual progressive people congregate.
This social media campaign though I believe actually came from a campaign by the newspaper The Daily Telegraph, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. Labor are always trying to placate News Corp media, and News Corp media still blatantly tell their readers not to vote for Labor. It hasn't worked for decades, but Labor seem to believe that one of these days it will be different (it won't).
So politically it ticks some boxes for them, helps them suck up to the newspapers that will always hate them, helps diminish social media spaces where their opponents (actual progressives) congregate, and generally demonising "big tech" does just play well politically here.
"What are they really doing?" is a stupid conspiracy brained question: trying to win the next election obviously and whatever you may think, representing the electorate.
Whether intentional or not, one consequence of a success in this area would be to isolate older people from the views of young people and to stifle the younger generations influence on these communication media in the future.
Personally I suspect these elderly people in powerful political positions to be quite afraid of kids, it wouldn't be the first time in history, but it's likely the first time they're this old and as alienated from younger generations as they are.
Perhaps we're seeing patriarchal class societies mutate into primarily gerontocratical societies.
I chuckled when I read that, when over-16 is considered elderly.
What will we do when we no longer have the views of 14 year olds at our fingertips? Well, hopefully they will write their views down on notepaper, and in two years we'll hear all about it.
I don’t think the US will ever enact a similar ban. The power to shape young minds is too great, even if these service also increase suicides in children to some degree.
The same algorithms that showed IDF war crimes compilations and turned a generation against Israel can be reshaped to push a different, right-wing narrative. The David Ellison’s of the world have too much power to allow regulation getting in the way of this.
What "they" want is secondary - it's a pretty popular move here in Australia, it's what people largely want.
Labor have been failing at giving people what they want recently, and are generally considered rather lacklustre and weak. But like the vaping ban (which was predicted to be and has now been confirmed to be a backward step), this is something parents are generally happy about.
> We've been hearing politicians complain for years that they're losing the youth when it comes to long-standing foreign policy positions, etc...
What's the alternative? Going back to TV lying that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and that in Libya there's a genuine rebellion against Gaddafi?
I'd rather have multiple actors fighting to push their views on social to be honest.
I also don't like how quick is social media to jump on labelling anybody with a different opinion as a troll or a bot. This is especially common on Reddit where basically every single subreddit is heavily biased in some direction, heavily moderated to push some views and some views only.
Instead, what we should teach in school is how to treat news (any news really, even your friend telling you he's got a Playstation 7 but he can't show it to you): questioning it, verifying the sources, questioning the possible motives and biases of the source.
I'll be frank: I didn't mind Russia pushing their own news through channels like Russia Today globally. I always thought it was very important to get the views of the other side.
But my view also requires my (normal to me) attitude: question, question, question, verify.
Problem is: it's hard, it's exhausting. Claiming something false takes 5 seconds, debunking it can take hours. Most people already got their problems, and just don't do any of it.
unfortunately there is nothing we can do in any society without seeing comments like this… whatever “move” is done comments like this will be there with endless “analysis” about “motivation” for the move… it is what it is…
The nature of democracy and open dialogue I suppose.
But really, when banning a large portion of the population from social media, political motives should absolutely be entertained. Politics is inextricably related to social media in 2025
"I think drugs are harmful, but I get the sense there's a political motive behind this."
Social medial is a drug, it has serious effects on the brain function and mental health of children and adolescents. On top of this social media allows predators to freely interact with children.
If people are going to do drugs, which they probably will, they should be able to balance the pro's and cons.
I fully support this legislation, and government regulation around this topic. Given the current (2025) state of the social media landscape, I believe that the positives of restricting access to them for teenagers well outweighs any potential harms.
As the parent of a teenager affected by this ban (plus one who has aged past it): I wish that it had been in place 8-10 years ago, before either of my kids got smartphones. We tried to be reasonably conservative in their introduction to devices and social media, on the rationale that it would do them no harm to delay using those for a couple of years through their early brain development. The real difficulty turned out to be the network effect of their peers having access to social media, which increased the social pressure (and corresponding social exclusion) to be online. Not having access to Snapchat/Discord/etc. at that point meant that they were effectively out-group, which is a Big Deal for a teenager.
We ended up allowing them onto social media platforms earlier than we'd have liked but imposed other controls (time and space restrictions, an expectation of parental audits, etc.) These controls were imperfect, and the usual issues occurred. My assessment is that it was a net negative for the mental health of one child and neutral for the other.
I realise that HN is primarily a US forum and skews small-government and free-speech-absolutist. I'm not interested in getting in a debate with anyone about this - my view is that most social media is a net negative with a disproportionate harm to the mental health of non-fully-developed teenage brains. This represents a powerful collective-action failure that is unrealistic to expect individuals to manage, so it's up to government to step in. All boundaries are arbitrary, so the age of 16 (plus this set of apps) seems like a reasonable set of restrictions to me. I am unmoved by the various "slippery slope" arguments I've read here: all rules are mutable, and if we see a problem/overreach later - we'll deal with it in the same way, by consensus and change.
I strongly disagree with this legislation and have found it hard to 'steelman' the other side, which your comment/opinion does well. I found it very informative so just wanted to share my appreciation for you posting it here.
Did you also find the intro negative for your own mental health in the sense that you had to bother thinking at all about it?
Feels like a huge component to me as a parent. What do I now need to know and do and react to, and how does my behavior affect the mental health of my kids.
I get why people from certain countries instinctively see any government involvement as bad, but I don’t think that’s a universal truth? Yes, bad government can do enormous harm, but I think good government can also raise society above what would happen if everyone were simply left to their own devices.
As others have noted, we already accept a long list of age-based rules: alcohol, driving, tobacco, gambling, movies and games, compulsory schooling, consent, marriage, tattoos, credit cards, pornography, firearms, etc.
Seen in that context, restricting social media for children isn’t some unprecedented intrusion - it’s another attempt to limit access to something that appears harmful for younger people. Will it work? I can only hope. But it seems reasonable to at least try.
I’m not claiming this opinion fits every country - it may be due to biases of where I live. Where I am (and in my opinion), social media seems like a clear and massive net negative, especially for kids. Perhaps in some places social media is a genuinely positive part of daily life, and from that perspective the same law might look like needless government overreach.
Broadly, I agree with your sentiment. As soon as some people rule over others, given enough time, things creep towards total enslavement and disenfranchisement of the others. This has been proven over and over.
The question then becomes, how do we organise society instead?
YOUR government might be a bigger threat than anything YOU might find online, but this statement is just not generally true whatsoever. Given how broad this argument is, if anything, it’s an argument for improving government, not getting rid of it. Every freedom has two sides, the more positive freedoms you get, the less negative freedoms you get, and vice versa. There is no possibility of “infinite freedom”, it’s always zero sum, and so always a balance on a per topic basis, which hyperreductive arguments like this (“state level infringements of freedom”) totally ignore.
Right now the government in question is Australian, and I personally wouldn't trust the government which would force citizens to compulsory wear of masks outdoors and alone in cars.
No one in my government has ever done as much harm to me as the people who share your opinion about taking reasonable measures to stop the spread of a deadly disease.
The slippery slope claims by the anti-mask people have entirely failed to materialise, yet millions died needlessly. Far more people (including myself) were permanently damaged by getting covid before the vaccine.
Decisions made under the context of a global pandemic, which needed to be consistent, easy to understand, and easily enforceable. I'm comfortable with the way that was handled in these circumstances. A mask is hardly an inconvenience.
Anyway, to get back on topic, which country do you think is the best example of the level of government you think is optimal?
So, you haven't identified any actual problems with them being on social media though. For example, were this lament that parenting is hard written 50 years ago:
> As the parent of a teenager affected by this ban (plus one who has aged past it): I wish that it had been in place 8-10 years ago, before either of my kids got introduced to Rock n' Roll. We tried to be reasonably conservative in their introduction to music and lyrics, on the rationale that it would do them no harm to delay using those for a couple of years through their early brain development. The real difficulty turned out to be the network effect of their peers having access to Rock n' Roll, which increased the social pressure (and corresponding social exclusion) to be dealing with vinyl. Not having access to The Stones, AC/DC, etc. at that point meant that they were effectively out-group, which is a Big Deal for a teenager.
> We ended up allowing them a radio earlier than we'd have liked but imposed other controls (time and space restrictions, an expectation of parental audits, etc.) These controls were imperfect, and the usual issues occurred. My assessment is that it was a net negative for the mental health of one child and neutral for the other.
I'm being a bit facetious here but my point is that everyone who is in support of this kind of Parenting-as-a-Service is not identifying any real issue the government should concern itself with. Just that kids are doing something new and sometimes scary and gosh it's just hard being a parent when they don't listen.
Maybe just don't do that? It's never helpful in good-faith discussions and just indicates a lack of empathy and maybe a lack of understanding of the actual issue being discussed.
> So, you haven't identified any actual problems with them being on social media though.
The problems GP raised seem pretty clear to me. Could gives us some examples of what you would consider to be "actual problems" in this context?
> Just that kids are doing something new and sometimes scary...
Any sane parent wouldn't send their kids to learn to ride a bicycle on the open road and without any supervision. You'd find a park or an empty lot somewhere, let them test it out, assess their ability to deal with potential dangers and avoid harming others at the same time, and let them be on their own once they are able to give you enough confidence that they can handle themselves most of the time without your help.
The problem with today's social media for children is that that there is no direct supervision or moderation of any kind. Like many have pointed out, social media extends to things like online games as well, and the chance that you will see content that are implicitly or explicitly unsuitable for children is extremely high. Just try joining the Discord channels of guilds of any online game to see for yourself.
Not all things new and scary come with a moderate to high risk of irreparable harm.
Its not parenting as a service. Its not even in the same world as rock in roll. Do you think its ok to have smoking, gambling and sex ads shown on tv during the afterschool 3pm-5pm timeslot? Social media is effectively that x100 because TV ads followed advertising restrictions.
On social media kids will be subjected to undisclosed advertising for all kinds of products legal and illegal. They will be directly targeted and manipulated into real world harm situations and mental manipulation into harmful mindsets.
Most of this cannot be prevented by "being a watchful parent". If your kid watches andrew tate and you see and put a restriction youtube will recommend them a tate adjacent channel or one of the 1million alts that posts clips. Same for tiktok, X and Instagram.The only control you have is to ban them from using the platform which is a roundabout way of achieving the same thing.
Being a watchful parent is neither required nor enough. Being a witful parent is another thing. Try not to ban some digital goolags but to show the real beauty of the world which makes these disservices looking miserable in teen's eyes.
Sigh, I'll bite (even though I know I shouldn't, and it's pointless).
> So, you haven't identified any actual problems with them being on social media
Anonymous cyber bullying (multiple times), performative social exclusion (multiple times), anonymous death threats (twice), deepfake porn with their faces spliced in (twice).
Your straw-man example is absurd and TBH it comes across as patronising. I'm trying to avoid assumptions, but it reads like someone who hasn't needed to grapple with this issue personally as a primary carer. Apologies if that isn't the case; everyone has their own view for what parenting should be.
Somehow we've seen fit (as a society) to regulate the minimum age for sex & marriage, obtaining alcohol, acquiring a vehicle licence, etc. We (as a society) recognise that there are good & bad tradeoffs to these activities and have regulated freedoms around these (primarily via age). Somehow, our society hasn't spontaneously regressed into North Korea.
A lot of the arguments I see in this thread are about whether modern mainstream social media are bad for young people. When the debate becomes about that, it's very easy to defend these types of Orwellian laws. It becomes "This is a problem, therefore the solution is good", without questioning the solution itself. I think this type of thinking is demonstrated, or perhaps exploited, very well by this article (I'm not implying the WEF is secretly behind everything, I'm just using this as an example):
The first part of that article is an absolutely scathing, on-point criticism of mainstream social media. I find myself agreeing with everything said, and then, suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, the article pivots to "therefore we need completely 24/7 mass surveillance of everyone at all times and we need to eradicate freedom of speech". That article is like a perfect microcosm of this entire international shift in internet privacy.
People and their governments seem to agree that modern social media is a problem. The difference is why. The people think it's a problem because it harms people; governments think it's a problem because they don't control it.
I think that the root cause of this shift to mass surveillance is that people in democratic countries still have a 20th-century concept of what authoritarianism looks like. Mass surveillance is like a novel disease that democracies don't yet have any immunity to; that's why you see all these "it's just like buying alcohol" style false equivalences, because an alarming number of people genuinely don't understand the difference between normal surveillance and mass surveillance.
Australia is a Five Eyes country, with carte blanche access to data that the incumbent social media companies freely share with all the acronym deep-state authorities.
Could you elaborate further on how preventing a sizeable proportion of its citizens from communicating through these established spy-nets, causing them to disperse out to unpredictable alternatives they might not be able to control, increases mass surveillance?
That's definitely an interesting argument I haven't seen before.
I suppose it depends on how effective these types of measures actually are, and also on how many adults refuse to identify themselves. I would assume governments are more interested in spying on adults than under-16s, so the adults are probably more relevant here.
I hope you're right, though. Maybe there'll be a renaissance of smaller platforms. Probably not, but I can hope.
This legislation left it entirely up to the service providers to determine implementation, and so far they don't seem particularly motivated to disrupt my usage by asking me to prove my age.
My suspicion is that fairly simple heuristics of age estimation, combined with social graph inspection, are probably enough to completely disrupt the network effects of "social media" for kids, and achieve the stated objectives well enough that I never have to.
Maybe it turns out that I'm wrong, but why even risk it? If the true policy goal is extending mass-surveillance, why waste so much political capital on such a round-about approach which might yield nothing, or even set back your existing capabilities.
MyID (myid.gov.au) already exists, and could easily have been mandated, or "recommended", or even offered as a means of age verification now. But it wasn't.
Well, no one is suggesting 24/7 surveillance, we’re suggesting banning children from using social media, as it has demonstrably very harmful effects on their education and wellbeing.
It’s not Orwellian. If it were, then not allowing kids to vote or drink before they become adults would be Orwellian.
We are simply banning kids from a harmful activity until they are old enough to decide for themselves. The ban has to be at a social level decided by the democratic process, because there’s a coordination problem here: it’s not a harm that can be remedied at the level of the individual.
The real villains here are the social media companies that have profited from the misery and manipulation of children, to their ultimate harm.
I find it hard to believe anyone would argue in good faith against this ban. In tech circles there are a lot of vested interests that don’t want other governments to protect the children in their countries from harmful products. Shame on them.
You've basically just confirmed what I said at the end, that democracies have no immunity to mass surveillance. 24/7 surveillance may have been an exaggeration but not by much, really. Age verification, as it exists now, inevitably means mass surveillance, in particular tying real life identities to political beliefs and porn preferences on a mass, computerised scale. If you're too young to remember the Snowden leaks I can maybe understand why you'd think mass surveillance is not an inevitable consequence of age verification, but I'm old enough to remember them, so I think it is. The existence and impact of mass surveillance seem to be invisible to you.
> It’s not Orwellian. If it were, then not allowing kids to vote or drink before they become adults would be Orwellian.
To be clear: What do you think you're refuting? I don't think children should be on modern social media. I don't think anyone should be, but especially not children. There are plenty of ways of going about this. This is why I said:
> A lot of the arguments I see in this thread are about whether modern mainstream social media are bad for young people. When the debate becomes about that, it's very easy to defend these types of Orwellian laws. It becomes "This is a problem, therefore the solution is good", without questioning the solution itself.
You then claim that the tech industry, and by extension "tech circles", don't like this because it means they make less money. I'm not sure how forcing companies whose business model is based on surveillance capitalism to do even more surveillance would hurt them, but if it does, it's still not my concern anyway. And conflating random hackers like me with "big tech" seems to have become increasingly common recently.
> It becomes "This is a problem, therefore the solution is good", without questioning the solution itself.
This is a very simplified view. The topic has been disputed for years, and societies has tried to find alternative solutions. But turns out, there is no other well enough working solution at the moment, hence the nuclear option. And sometimes that is the only working option anyway.
Should be noted, this is not a first. Social Media has already been restricted to various degree for kids of certain ages in several countries. Australia is just raising the age from the usual 12, 13 up to 16.
> I find myself agreeing with everything said, and then, suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, the article pivots to "therefore we need completely 24/7 mass surveillance of everyone at all times and we need to eradicate freedom of speech".
So it's a poor article, so what? These attempts are not new. There are regularly political attempts pushing towards stricter regulations and more surveillance. Some work, some not.
> That article is like a perfect microcosm of this entire international shift in internet privacy.
There is no shift. Those views have always been there, even before the internet. This is a normal part of societies, including democratic. There is a constant power-struggle between control and liberty in any society, and the balance is always shifting depending on how good or bad certain problems are at that moment.
But a certain thing which is missing here BTW is a complete ban of all open media, for everyone in all ages and groups. For Government, kids on social media are not a big problem, that will only bite them in the decades to come. But people now, today, who are getting radicalized against the standing order, those are a problem. And nobody demanding for a ban is good sign for a healthy enough democracy. Because think about in which countries this is not the case..
I believe their point was to illustrate the disconnect between the problem and the solution.
They agree with the problem, and experienced "whiplash" when the solution was described.
> For Government, kids on social media are not a big problem, that will only bite them in the decades to come.
In Australia the kids on social media are a problem for the government, today.
A 16 year old is less than two years away from voting.
Successive governments have laughed at the idea of lowering the voting age to 16 or 17.
The government has very little influence on social media -- this is different to older forms of media / communication.
Why ban social media when ad-supported media is the culprit? Remove the incentive (to get users to doom scroll, to polarize, to impulse buy…) and you change the behavior.
I remember when social media was sane 15+ years ago. The problem is the business model, not socializing. It's crazy to ban it when being a teen is the beginning of socializing!
That's true. I'll say this though: my social life skyrocketed thanks to Facebook when I was ~18. Not sure what kind of impact it would have had earlier, I was def. more of a kid and social medias were not a thing anyway. Makes sense to me to have an age limit considering cyber bullying and teen suicides and all.
Facebook then wasn't what facebook is today. The social media of the early internet was largely a digital expansion of otherwise healthy social norms. Then the internet blew up. Now it's more akin to the drug dealers DARE warned us about. Still waiting on _those_ free drugs, tbh.
Social media is no longer social - it's just media. At least for most people anyway. The average user, and probably kids even more so, are just scrolling through.
If you're posting as well, or at least commenting on stuff and having discussions with people you know (even if you just know them online), I think that's fine. Like forums, or being in group chats with friends on Facebook, or sharing photos you take with a specific community.
It's when you're only consuming (like scrolling TikTok or Instagram), or when your comments are written for the algorithm rather than for actual discussion (like on Reddit, or even Hackernews to an extent), that social media is an issue.
What year was it when you were 18? Facebook was enormous for me when I was 18, in 2008, for similar reasons. However, these days facebook is mostly just ads and generic modern feed garbage content in general.
I think 70-80% of it is the business model, but the other 20-30% might just be baked into how it is.
Jonathan Haidt talks about how once social media usage became ubiquitous among teenagers around 2015 mental health problems began to skyrocket. And a big part of this was the algorithm serving up content designed to make people feel bad, but another part around feelings of being bullied turned out to largely be kids seeing their friends hanging out with each other without inviting them and this provoking feelings of alienation. That’s inevitable, I felt bad when I found out about parties or hang-outs I didn’t get invited to at that age as well. But I didn’t even know about 90% of them, and those I did I heard about through passing references rather than a stream of pictures and albums about how much fun everyone was having without me.
I think some level of a sense of isolation is inevitable under those circumstances, though I’m not sure that by itself would rise to the level of banning it outright. At least not before trying other interventions like addressing Meta’s “19 strikes before banning you for CSAM” rule. Kids are just the canaries in the coal mine here. Whatever these services are doing that is cooking developing brains is still turning up the heat on adult brains too, we can’t try to pretend we can be psychologically healthy engaging with something that we know is spiking depression and anxiety in our kids.
The culture of interacting just changed as more people got online and more tools became available to expand access to things. You used to just be able to have an unsecured comment section where anyone could come to your website and directly modify the page’s HTML and most of the time nothing would happen. You ought to have sanitized your inputs but there just wasn’t this background miasma that was going to flood your comment section full of spam, scans, and injecting malware into the page if you left an open text-entry box on the internet. Once it hit a certain scale and there was a certain amount of money in it then a lot of mess came with them.
Jonathan Haidt is someone who nobody should take seriously. Pretty much all of the data he cites is cherry-picked and the vast majority of people in trust and safety and similar will tell you that he is probably one of the least reliable authorities on this subject. He's aiming to sell fear, not to actually solve the problem.
The only data point I referred to is the dramatic rise starting in 2015, and the divergence by gender. I don’t think anyone seriously disputes that, just the presumed usage patterns he thinks go along with those. The criticisms of him are basically orthogonal to the point I’m making.
I don't think it's just the ads, I mean we had magazines, TV, and the web, they all had advertising, and no population-level impact on child & teen mental health impact was observed as these were adopted.
Then we got the one-two punch of social media apps on phones, and everywhere we saw these get adopted, we saw depression and anxiety increase en masse.
My own theory is that if you have to pick one thing it's the phone, because screen time/attention skyrockets when you get one of those, and they can have you freaking out about whatever clickbait they're feeding you pretty much 24/7. When I grew up there was just a computer in the den and when I wasn't in the den, whatever I'd viewed on it was out of sight, mostly out of mind.
It's the combination of ads, analytics, personalization, and scale.
Ads mean that you want to keep the user on your platform as long as possible. They are incentivized to make it addictive at the most fundamental level. A company selling movies doesn't care how often you watch the movies you buy, they just want to convince you to buy them. A company that makes money for each minute you spend watching a movie would put out very different products.
Analytics mean they can precisely see the effect of any given change to figure out what makes the product more addictive.
Personalization means they can tailor your experience to be addictive to you, personally, rather than just generally addictive to people.
And scale means they can afford to pay enormous amounts of money to a lot of smart people and have them work full time on the problem of making the product more addictive.
> we had magazines, TV, and the web, they all had advertising, and no population-level impact on child & teen mental health impact was observed as these were adopted
That is not true. Distorted body perception, anorexia etc. due to omnipresent photoshopped models in magazines and poster ads where a thing decades ago.
Things escalated with social media, but there were issues long before that.
The previous static ads of the past are completely different beast compared to targeted advertising and attention driven design(leading to doomscrolling etc).
My own theory is that kids are rightfully anxious and depressed as they can now easily see the state of the world and the direction it's going. This is the world they have to enter soon, and they can do almost nothing to change it, so of course they're more anxious/depressed.
The ad supported is just the reason to make it addictive. Get rid of all likes/thumbs/follower(counts)/notifications and it loses the endorphins and stops being the problem it is today.
You might not have opened any social media app lately. You need 10 seconds before you're sucked into the feed. Likes are a thing of the past, they just gather your interests by your reaction time on any content they show you.
Hey you spent 500ms looking at this pretty girl dancing, how about some ass now?
I get straight up PORN ads on Facebook too. Twitter at some point showed me porn as well, even if I had specifically curated it to show JavaScript content.
I'm not sure social media was ever sane. I distinctly remember thinking it wasn't back in my highschool days, so around 2007-2009, which was pretty much when Facebook completely took over the market in Sweden where I lived.
Before then I used to use lunarstorm. Was that the sane period of social media? Maybe, my memory is fuzzy: it's been a while.
At least with early Facebook one was mostly interacting with one's pretty close peers. Back when I joined, you still needed a .edu email address to signup, and there was no real discovery mechanism, so you mostly only friended people who you had met IRL.
Yeah it wasn't ever sane. It was just harder to onboard and you were still interacting mostly with people you knew. Now it's worse because you'll hardly ever interact with people you know.
>How come ad supported TV existed for decades without destroying children's mental health?
Well, there's at least a few reasons this is different than the current situation.
1) It's expensive to make a TV show, it's free to do a fortnite dance or eat a tide pod and post it to several websites. The amount of low-effort, low-quality, probably-harmful content on TikTok or whatever is exponentially more than low-effort, low-quality, probably-harmful TV shows/ads.
2) The availability is on completely different scales. TVs are (basically) fixed in a specific place. Phones are, for most people, within arms reach 24/7.
3) What can be shown on TV is significantly more regulated in most parts of the world, and control mechanisms by governments are more robust (pull a broadcast license, etc.). It's harder to take a website (or TikTok, whatever) offline than it is to pull a harmful show/advert off of HGTV or whatever your favorite channel is.
4) TV is not specifically tailored to the viewer to produce the most amount of happy chemical.
It's worth noting that this was a pretty active debate as TVs were going from one in the household to one in every room. "We don't want to put a TV in our kids' room, it'll rot their brains." And there was research to back up that it had a negative effect to some degree.
So why are we surprised that when we put a TV in the kids' hands things got even worse? Meta testified on the stand recently that they're not a social media company anymore, they're now all about video. Tiktok is the new TV. Every app wants to Tiktokify. The money from TV, just pushing an endless stream of video to someone, is very good.
We were able to go back to one TV in the house (at least I was), and even avoid a big chunk of the ads when watching TV (by paying for Netflix/etc) and even radio (Spotify/etc).
Except we now we put a garbage TV in every hand.
It's a terrible idea because it's a tiny screen; because it's not a shared experience, but an isolating one; because it's been proven that it's bad for eyesight/myopia. But most of all, it's terrible because the content is crap.
Spending hours watching a never ending sequence of low effort 2min videos that need to deliver on the first 30s (or they're skipped) is not the way to make anyone smarter/saner.
> How come ad supported TV existed for decades without destroying children's mental health?
I would argue that it did, we just did a poor job of measuring it.
Anecdotally, during my childhood I moved from a place that had very little TV advertising to a place with a normal amount and it had a noticeable impact.
TV programming has to broadly appeal to society generally... you can't really go down a niche algorithm that progressively feeds you more specific content until you're radicalized any certain way (it can sorta, see conservative media, but there are some guardrails). Social media can with much less restriction.
I remember when Facebook required a university address. That made it..unique to me. Perhaps there are ways to have a permitting process for kids through their parents and guardians that only access sites with that permit. Idk. South Korea has those internet license which I chaff at but.. It's a hard problem.
I do agree that banning advertising would be good (though not the only problem). However, you don't need social media to socialize online (text messaging, messaging groups, etc. all still exist).
Yeah, ad-driven feeds definitely pushed platforms into the doom-scrolling feedback loop. But for better or worse, governments don't really know how to regulate "the business model" without blowing up the whole internet economy
I long thought this way, but I’ve realized ad-supported social media/internet is an objectively egalitarian funding path that has allowed the open web to thrive and flourish. If you have a way of funding the internet that doesn’t shut out literally Billions because they cant afford it, I’m all ears.
Complaining about ads is kinda like complaining about homeless people. You are just servicing your own annoyance without actually engaging in critical thought. It is selfish behavior.
Decades ago, there was less competition for eyeballs, much more high-quality content (vs. slop), and investors were a bit willing to just build an audience without seeking immediate returns. Early social media was aspirin: a useful drug, but not addictive. Now it's super-cocaine and hyper-meth trying to keep the user high.
Also, what's an 'ad' is an extreme spectrum nowadays with free stuff given out in exchange for a post, people trying to act like paid influencers to fake it until they make it, paid influencers, and listicle affiliate link slop.
I despise ads. I take any chance I can to pay for my content rather than support ad-based revenue.
But you can’t solve that issue with policy. It’s a cultural issue. People are not willing to pay for the content they consume (with money).
Not to mention you would collapse the US economy (I’m not sure if you’re US based, just speaking from my perspective), and likely others, if you applied a blanket ban on ad-supported media.
Florida passed a similar law, and a bunch of other states are attempting to but are blocked by federal courts. Will be interesting to see if the tech industry allows it, or decides to break up the federal government before it becomes too powerful.
In the US, children's right to free speech has only very narrow exceptions compared to an adult.
The Supreme Court has even struck down state bans on selling violent video games to children because it violates a child's first amendment rights.
A full ban on social media full of protected speech? That passing Constitutional muster would require some legal gymnastics and overwhelming scientific evidence of harm - evidence that is sorely lacking despite what people believe.
> That passing Constitutional muster would require some legal gymnastics
In the previous era of principles, sure. In The Year of Our Dear Leader, 2025? The Republican Supreme Court just needs the order from above, and the Constitution will say what the ruler says it says.
Not going to help the tech industry given their largest audience bases are in blue states, who will happily just regulate them to death if the federal government doesn't.
We're already on the fast track to becoming an authoritarian state. It's not too much of a stretch to imagine the next step is dissolving congress and installing a new constitution. Or just throwing it out entirely and defining the law of the land on the whims of a senile man
There's no need to dissolve congress. You instead make sure that (1) a single party stays in power (through gerrymandering, voter suppression and more), (2) the courts are stacked with loyalists and (3) the legislature and courts rubber stamp all decisions of the executive regardless of legality or anything else.
Yeah this is usually how it happens. Whether its ancient Rome, modern Russia, Venezuela, etc all the dressings of the old Republic stay but become subverted by an autocrat.
atleast the people's republic of china never claims to be a democracy in the liberal western, sense of the word. Politically (on paper atleast) the chinese goverment is very much a marxist state, and it is very clear about that.
it is also a very easy pathway to create controlled opposition.
When you are a totalitarian dictator without elections, opposition of any kind is hard to control. With faux elections you give people a "choice" which seems reasonable compared the usual extremes in an totalitarian state.
the Weimar Republic (a democracy) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimar_Republic] certainly never directly voted to make Hitler a dictator - they voted him in, and he used the mechanisms of the state against itself (and crisises, both real and imagined) to seize power completely and become the official Dictator (Fuhrer means ‘leader’ in German). Here is a write up [https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/go-in-depth/germany-...].
When the USSR collapsed, there was a temporary fledging democracy that started to form - that was then hijacked by Putin and twisted to support his now obvious Dictatorship.
In the US, while one can certainly argue ‘they knew what they were voting for’, the Trump voters I knew vehemently denied what is now the obvious plan re: economic policies, starting new wars/crises, etc. that are now the norm.
The current actual behavior of the US gov’t seems to align quite well with historical norms on this front, and continue to escalate. If ‘the people give them the power’ means ‘it’s legal’ (aka it is within a law the people’s agents have voted on and made official), or was voted on by the people, it’s clear the vast majority of high profile behavior of the gov’t lately doesn’t care about it.
If anything, Democracies seem to be inherently ‘dumb’ when it comes to these types of situations.
The idea that democracy either created hitler or wasn't able to stop his rise via democratic action at all is often spruiked in anarchist communist circles, while it's true hitler wasn't voted in the literal sense, neither is Australia's Prime Minister. That doesn't make the PM undemocratic, it's just its own democractic institution inside the party. There's actually nothing in the Australian consitution about PMs.
It doesn't mean you couldn't unelect the party democratically and thus the leader. The public can unelect them from power by voting out the Nazi party of which Hitler was leader (through again, a vote). So this is a case of what I'm saying actually being relevent – if people voted against the nazi party, hitler would not have risen to power. He only gained that power because the democratic institutions, the people let him. This is a case for more and better democracy, of valuing that institution. I've encountered Trump voters who were actually bernie bros and accelerationists - they voted for trump as a fu to the establishment. I think the have a moral responsibility to not vote on those urges and whims. I think this that's bad, even if I can feel the sentiment sometimes, and I think that sort of "democracy bad" is actually a harmful to discourse and simply not true.
We need to bolster democracy for the people, not call it toothless while invoking communism and fascism. I don't ultimately blame Trump for his rise to power, I blame the people for being fickle and perfectionists. Democracy is precarious and precious, not a perfect ultimate catch all. The people need to foster it otherwise the rising tide of populism and fascism will drown it.
It would be a lot clearer to everyone if you said what you think.
I don't think it's extreme to believe that democracy is the best tool to fight authoritarianism. That's why people like Trump deride democratic institutions and those important to it's function.
You asked for examples where democracies degraded to authoritarianism. I provided 3 recent ones, and yes the US is clearly currently in an authoritarian gov’t.
Your response is to… assert they didn’t happen, and to do nothing different? While being completely unsure of what I’m saying when it sure seems pretty clear?
You've not understood what I said at all. I didn't ask for examples, I asked what you thought I was missing. Turns out I wasn't missing these things at all, we just disagree on the lessons learned there within. Fair enough, we can disagree, but to say I am denying it happened and not to do any different when my entire point was that we need to be MORE democratic, not less – by valuing democracy and not allowing people to tear it down, exactly what I am trying to do now.
Democratic institutions only have as much power as they're given.
I return to you "Have you not been paying attention?"
Trump didn't rise to power because of democracy, it was in spite of it, Trump literally tried to overturn the election results and still subverts the people's choice by continuing to spread that lie. He talks of jailing his opponents, plays dirty, doesn't respect the rules or democratic institutions. He is the antithesis of democracy and the people (using democracy) voted him in. The people failed themselves and their own people but they did so not as first order goals.
Spartacist uprising, mensheviks vs bolsheviks, etc- people didn't turn away from democracy because democracy itself failed them, they turned away from democracy because they had some idealist world they wanted to get to– by force (i.e not democratic). This is what motivated communist uprises and hitler's brownshirts to subvert the election. Note that this says nothing as to whether they are correct or not in their worldview. Hitler shares this type of thinking and he took advantage of it – just like Trump destroys the media "fake news" or makes voting harder, if we, the people, didn't allow it, we would prevent it one way or another. The problem with Trump or Hitler isn't that they're "too democratic", it's that they subverted the process debasing it in turn.
There is power in the collectve. Unions got this via bloodshed so that they need not bleed more. If we devalue unions because some unions are bad we just live in a world in which capital get to rule and bloodshed returns. It's a regression. It's not the right strategy, we need to work together despite our differences in solidarity despite the fact democracy sometimes leads to imperfect outcomes, all in order to prevent dictators, ensuring they govern with mandate and consent, not authoritarian force.
It's not one single institution like "Congress". Democracy isn't just voting it requires free and fair elections which require free and fair political discourse which requires transparency, and mass media that informs doesn't distorts, etc. If we don't value these the next step isn't voting on it democratically, it's violence to enforce totalitarianism. In some ways, we're already there. Lets not inadvertently enable it.
You seem profoundly confused about cause and effect, and even the meaning of your own prior words.
These things are all happening because enough people are turning into greedy short sighted idiots and overwhelmed/disengaged folks with no balls.
None of this is about ‘power in democratic institutions’ - they have plenty, which is why they are being turned into powering the authoritarianism. Same as in those prior examples.
‘Why doesn’t anyone do anything?!?’ they say, as they refuse to do anything, or allow anyone sane to do anything either.
Because the obvious thing - stand up and use the existing tools to do what needs to be done - requires effort and risk.
And the only ones willing to do that are the greedy or insane.
It's possible we just see things different, I'm not sure why you're so keen to say I'm "profoundly confused"- entirely possible we just have different perceptions no? Lets be more charitable.
I agree things have deteriorated, I agree the state is centralising it's power and becoming more authoritarian that's true. I agree that through democracy authoritarianism can rise, and does.
What I don't agree is that this by it's nature is because people value democracy, it's the opposite. Upholding democratic institutions might include a citizen doing their part to understand the policy, it might be the ICE agent or brownshirt, it might be judges refusing subverting traditions and spirit of law simply because it's not currently being enforced (much of democratic power is procedural and traditional, not by actual force). If people don't value it, it erodes and disappears.
> None of this is about ‘power in democratic institutions’ - they have plenty, which is why they are being turned into powering the authoritarianism
I think we might just both have a superficial disagreement with each other, when I say 'democratic institutions only have the power given to them' I mean to say the power of democracy is derived from the people, therefor if the state decides for the people (authoritarianism) and the people reject this but the state retains that power, well- that is treason not democracy. This is what made Hitler a dictator, he wasn't really into democracy, even though he subverted it, and he also used it to get into power. I'm not sure we actually disagree we might just have different framing. I consider this a failing of the people, yet you consider it a failing of the system (I assume). Both are valid I think.
To me, if people decide through democracy to elect a dictator that shows a reluctance of the population to care about democracy or institutional norms. That's why this stuff happens during broader social & economic downturns. If people want to elect a person who wants to spend the entire GDP on producing paperclips, well I can't really fault them- that is democracy, the only other choice is authoritarianism isn't it?
> ‘Why doesn’t anyone do anything?!?’ they say, as they refuse to do anything, or allow anyone sane to do anything either.
Yep, I agree with this. We do need to be smarter and work together. We do have freedom, including the freedom to harm ourselves. People need to respect that and be more responsible, be more virtuous. If not, we get the government we deserve but not the one we might need.
If your answer is ‘people need to be better’ while they are actively being manipulated and controlled by a bad actor in a position of authority over them (one that was manipulating them to get elected in the first place!), while said actor clearly is getting no negative consequences, my answer is ‘that clearly doesn’t seem to usually happen’ and ‘how do you expect that to occur once they are in power’?
Notably, Brazil seems to have dealt with Bolsanaro - but that was because the gov’t in power actually recognized the danger and put him in jail in a timely fashion, and stopped him from continuing to do what he was doing.
Something, notably, that none of the other examples I gave were able to do (despite some attempts).
The only other way out, based on historical precedent, is blood. A lot of it. But hey, I’d love to be wrong!
Maybe if we keep ragebaiting on social media about every fault of the opposition while refusing/unable to actually do anything about it - or even rally together for any meaningful course of action - victory will be ours! (/s)
There's no voter suppression in US, and it won't stand in courts even if somebody pushes it. Supreme court keeps using partisan decision in favour of Dems and GOP, so it remains balanced. What's left is everything you mentioned.
There's no need to do any of things you mention considering that both parties are owned by the same people and are essentially two faces of the same party in practice. Also - almost all the powers that be - including courts and Congress are already for sale/at the service of big tech.
Putting on my tin-foil, devils-advocate hat... AKA I don't necessarily believe this but I also have no counter-argument:
Mostly performative. When it's decided that something actually needs to pass, then you'll get some sacrificial lambs that vote across the aisle. Typically they'll be close to retirement or from a state where they won't be heavily punished for that specific vote.
It's not performative when people are losing health insurance and other people are at risk of starving. I agree with holding out on the government shutdown to try to prevent Americans losing healthcare. But when Republicans are absolutely fine with poor people starving so that they can take away people's healthcare, with a bonus that they get to shut down the government and say "see, government doesn't work", it becomes clear that letting the government shut down (especially food program shutdowns) continue is going to hurt more people than the government shutdown is going to help. So, when you say "performative" it sounds like you support the "both sides are the same" meme, but the ideologies are vastly different - one side is fine with people starving indefinitely, and the other actually doesn't want that.
I would think at least some of this should be obvious, but I guess not?
I mean at some point arguments like this become more akin to Russell's Teapot. If you're making an almost unfalsifiable claim, then the burden of proof is on you to prove it and not others to disprove it.
From a political standpoint, the statement "from a state where they won't be heavily punished for that specific vote" is a weird way to put it, since if you framed it in a positive light it would sound more similar to "the state population falls on both sides of the issue and thus either vote could make sense from their legislator depending on exigent circumstances and other factors" or any number of other explanations depending on the vote and populations.
That's funny, because the president (Republican) just signed an executive order forbidding states from enacting their own AI regulations. Meanwhile, California's governor (Democrat) is trying to regulate AI.
I will bet you up to $1000 at 2:1 odds that in 5 years we will still have the same constitution and congress will not have been dissolved at any point.
perhaps we ought to consider banning social media for adults or maybe just dystopian movies.
Russia still has a constitution, a parliament, separation of powers, and an independent judiciary. It even has opposition political parties and elections.
Right, because there's no need to change the Constitution when you have a captured Supreme Court to help you ignore it, and no need to dissolve Congress when they've steadily made themselves less and less relevant over the past few decades.
I do wonder about the normalization of dystopian ideas. Take even a show like Scandal. The fact that one of the big reveals is that billionaires stole the election by targeted hacking of election machines is kinda messed up.
Everybody seems to have missed the memo that all power was concentrated in the Executive branch since the Bush Doctrine, and that since 2016 people have started insisting that the Executive doesn't even have any obligation to the President, the only important vote left (although limited to choosing between two private clubs funded by the same donors.).
If Congress steps away from doing anything but serving donors (helped by the filibuster), and the captured regulators don't have to obey the President, there's actually no democracy left. We're in the impossible situation where Trump not being in control is scarier than Trump being in control.
Even scarier is that the people saying that we're on the way to becoming an authoritarian state are saying that because they think that the voters get too much say. Authoritarianism is when we don't beatify Dr. Fauci, or agree that it's fine for pregnant women to take Tylenol. The upper middle class, in its complete narcissism and fall into self-indulgent fantasy, is entirely focused on aesthetics.
edit: when replies that say that there's already a problem, but seem to be heretical about the covid response get flagkilled, there's a blessed opinion. I have no idea how elite echochambers are supposed to avoid an authoritarian state. Your bosses are kissing Trump's ass, and you're working hard doing things that advance their agenda. They couldn't do it without you.
> In an effort to curtail the organization’s outsized influence, Facebook announced Monday that it would be implementing new steps to ensure the breakup of the U.S. government before it becomes too powerful. [1]
I'm old enough to remember when The Onion didn't just report the news.
Is the assumption that non "tech industry" communities (e.g: voat, parler, ovaries, gab, truth, lemmy, mastodon, 4chan, 8chan, etc) are less likely to be a problem or to negatively impact teens than the mainstream "big tech" ones (e.g: facebook, twitter, youtube, tiktok, reddit, etc)?
I think if you run a website as a main source of your business profitable or not you’re in the tech industry. It’s a question of scale not industry classification or purpose classification.
The thing with those alternative communities is that they sort of orbit around the larger tech platforms. Their agenda is set by the news-of-the-day within certain X/FB/YouTube subcommunities. Its sort of analogous to wire services in traditional media.
Additionally, people that post on those platforms originally gained notoriety on the bigger tech platforms, and took their audience with them.
Not my point. The original comment said the tech industry can decide to break up the federal government because they don't want to be forced to clean up their act. Societies should be stronger than any industry and fight to maintain freedom, health, peace, and prosperity. If the tech industry is against that, then they should be the ones broken up.
> Societies should be stronger than any industry and fight to maintain freedom, health, peace, and prosperity.
I think (I hope!) we all agree with this sentiment.
But societies also need to be stronger than states, especially in an age of connection and sharing.
States are the main source of uncertainty and violence in the world right now, and I think it's reasonable to hope that the internet will bring the age of peace we pray for.
Obviously the social media giants are not it. They are closer to states than they are to algorithms.
But I'm wary of siding with states over web apps. What we need are healthier (meaning, chiefly, more decentralized and less rent-seeking) web apps.
Exactly, societies need to be stronger than states too and really need to act early. States can become one person or party and it's game over for a long time. Actually, the American Constitution is pretty great at preventing this exact outcome and I still have a lot of faith in it.
but the constitution is just a piece of paper with some words written on it.
Without an active civic society protection what is enshrined in the document, it is all but powerless.
> They are closer to states than they are to algorithms
This seems like nonsense. All the tech industry does is convince people. It doesn't force anyone to do anything. States have a monopoly on violence. No one holds a gun to anyone's head forcing them to consume <insert content you disagree with>. In a country of equals, everyone's opinion, including <position you disagree with>, should hold equal sway, and be resolved via democratic due process.
Just because many people hold <position you disagree with> and vote for <politician you find repugnant> doesn't give you any sort of reasonable justification to limit the freedom of others to advocate (including on social media) for it.
I agree with everything you've said with regard to the justice of the matter, but I don't think that there is a free market at work in social media.
* So-called "intellectual property" laws dramatically skew what can and cannot be shared
* Censorship at the behest of world governments is rampant, and completely overran anything representing a nonviolent scientific dialogue during the recent COVID19 pandemic
* States, with their monopoly on the legitimate initiation of force, pick winners and losers at every level of the experience, from chip makers to the duopolistic mobile OS vendors to their app stores to the social media offerings. Sure, network effect may describe the reason people join and stay, but the availability of places to join and stay is in no sense a market phenomenon
Consider: the major social media barons meet with POTUS all the freakin' time. Do you suppose that's just because they enjoy his company?
> So-called "intellectual property" laws dramatically skew what can and cannot be shared
Agree! let's get rid of these :)
> Censorship at the behest of world governments is rampant
Agree! States have always pursued censorship to maintain power. That doesn't contradict the point that social media companies themselves are not state actors, and are not the problem.
> States ... pick winners and losers
I'm not sure I'm 100% on board here. States may thumb the scales, but the fact of the existence of FAANG/MANGO seems much more like a market phenomenon than an interventionist project.
> social media barons meet with POTUS all the freakin' time
There is almost no clearer display of corporate self-preservation than social media vendors kowtowing to the president.
Much of what you're outlining is standard run of the mill corruption. The US Government (and others) is acting in contradiction to its stated principles. This is not a new phenomenon, and seems in the category of core human governance challenges.
I think you may have misunderstood my comment - or perhaps misunderstood the consequences of the censorship regime.
If anything, it seemed like the denialism was amplified by the censorship. What fell by the wayside were the serious, rigorous dialogue that had previously been the best thinking on epidemiology and public health.
I was a moderator and frequent contributor to /r/ebola during the 2014 outbreak; during that time I reached out and began to form relationships with (and respect spectrums for) various epidemiologists and academic departments. And it was really hard during the COVID19 pandemic to watch people like John Ioannidis, David Katz, Sunetra Gupta, Michael Levitt, etc. be totally cut out of the conversation while a group of second-stringers who were willing to toe the corporate line took their place.
Was it your experience that the censorship worked to _stem_ denialism? It seemed to me that it made it much louder and much worse, muddying the water of genuine discussion and research.
The idea that real, serious scientific debate was stymied by social media platform policies doesn't pass the smell test for me. Facebook/twitter/et al were making good faith efforts to stop the flood of downright harmful misinformation, and government didn't force them to do it. None of even the most questionable scientists were ever silenced. Those folks had the right wing press broadcasting their worst ideas to the world, the didn't even need social media when they could get on Fox News every day of the week.
It was the final attempt of social media even trying to be something more than a cancer. Now? Every social media platform (especially Facebook and twitter) would have zero problems being the driver of modern day pogroms, complete with running betting markets on the outcomes, if it would keep their share prices up.
> None of even the most questionable scientists were ever silenced.
...a literal nobel laureate, a literal Einstein scholar, and literally the author of the most cited paper in the history of open publishing were all censored.
Multiple scholars of the Hoover Institution. The director of Oxford Center for EBM. An author of the most widely-assigned textbook in preventative epidemiology. Two editors-in-chief of BMJ publications. Literally the BMJ itself had articles removed from Facebook! The British Journal of Medicine was censored from Facebook dude!
Tenured professors form Yale, Johns Hopkins, Oxford, Harvard, and Standard (several from Stanford in particular) had their work either totally removed or subject to shadowban-style censorship.
What can you possibly be talking about? I'm broadly anti-credentialist, but I can't fathom not noticing what happened: The world's foremost experts were silenced; we all watched it happen.
Let's not mince words here: there was a _thunderous_ chorus of the world's top experts opining against lockdowns. And social media depicted something entirely different, and entirely false. It wasn't like... close. Lockdowns never gained anything resembling mainstream support in the actual real world of epidemiology.
David Katz, Michael Levitt, Carl Henegan, Monica Ghandi, Scott Atlas, Vinay Prasad, Eran Bendavid, Sunetra Gupta, John fucking Ioannidis (my personal favorite author of medical science for over a decade prior to COVID19, and arguably the most accomplished medical scientist of our generation)... I can go on and on and on. How on earth are you conducting your "smell test"?!
All the most impressive minds of our age were cast aside so some second-stringers from suburban Virginia, who had been collecting a paycheck from NIH and CDC but not doing anything resembling continuing education at their alma maters, could babble nonsense about interdiction and hold aloft the Imperial study which they obviously didn't understand (and which all of us who read it knew it was destined to retracted from the word go).
There were a tiny few serious academics who endorsed lockdowns. And some were genuine experts who simply got it wrong. I respect Carl Bergstrom and Marc Lipsitch enormously, and I give them credit for sticking their head above the parapet - I think they genuinely believed in horizontal interdiction and, although they were absolutely wrong, I don't think they were intentional being propagandistic.
And I don't think they went out intending to be amplified as they were. I only wish their other work were amplified as much as when it was convenient for the lockdown narrative.
...but it's simply, totally false that accomplished academics and experts weren't censored. I can't even approach that with a straight face.
A lot of people with credentials join the grift train, yes. Apparently it's quite profitable. Listing many of them isn't really an argument that the grift is true.
What a bizarre and reckless take. I thought this 'no true scotsman' nonsense was put to bed in 2022.
By this metric, who is _not_ a grifter? You have to be Scott Gottleib or Peter Daszak - shilling pseudoscience while sitting on the boards of corporations making billions from the pandemic - to _not_ be a grifter? Is that it?
> Literally the BMJ itself had articles removed from Facebook!
These people got their stuff published in the British Medical Journal, so nobody in the scientific community had the slightest problem seeing it.
Facebook posted a fact check where the story was shared pointing out some problems with it. They didn’t “censor” anything. It was frankly entirely reasonable and the BMJ should have done better in the first place. Facebook did “combat bad speech with more speech”, the thing you’re supposed to do, and the cranks absolutely lost their minds.
In any case, the danger is over now and we can rest easy knowing that Facebook won’t lift a finger to prevent millions from being misled about vaccines causing autism. They’ll sell ads alongside the posts! phew
...let's get our facts straight here. I hope we can agree on this nutshell:
* During phase III of the Pfizer trial, there was an unblinding event which was not initially disclosed. At first, it appeared that it might only have been a few dozen participants, but later disclosures showed that it was more serious.
* The BMJ learned of this - again, only knowing about a few dozen patients - from the regional director of the contractor carrying out one of the arms of the trial, who was fired the same day she reported the unblinding to the FDA (as required by law). This disclosure included photographs of documents, in the study area, with unblinding information on them.
* The BMJ published what was, in retrospect, an extremely cautious report, even though by that time it was becoming clear that the problem went even beyond mass unblinding and into falsified data, so much so that the contractor's quality control check team were overwhelmed trying to catch up in the days between Jackson's termination and the publication of the report.
* In response, Facebook added an inane "fact check", calling the BMJ a "news blog", and which got several of the above facts wrong. In fact, the "fact check" didn't actually make any coherent assertions about the actual content of the article at all. It seemed its primary function was to add an insinuation of doubt, via scary red boxes, about the BMJ report, without any critique of the substance or merits.
* Three days later, Facebook went further - preventing the story from being shared at all, and adding warnings to users commenting on the article (in places where it had already been shared) that they risked having their accounts degraded or terminated for spreading misinformation.
* All the while, board members of Pfizer (one of who was a former FDA commissioner) were permitted to deny these assertions and smear the whistleblowers (in what, in retrospect, turns out to have been actual misinformation) with no "fact checks" or prohibitions on sharing.
* Months later, Facebook acknowledged that they took these actions at the urging of the White House.
...I don't think it's the least bit far-fetched to call this "censorship".
Facebook 'reduced distribution,' they didn't block. And again, your original claim was that social media somehow blocked scientific debate, which is categorically false. All these claims are hand-waving away the fact that this was published in the BMJ from the outset.
Facebook could throw all their servers in a wood chipper today and it would have zero effect on scientific debate in the world.
All that a state does is convince people. States don't really exist. They're fictional constructs that sometimes convince a police officer to break into a murderer's home and kidnap him. And most of us agree that's a good thing. However sometimes they convince a police officer to break into a protestor's home and kidnap him. And some of us agree that's a bad thing. Other times they convince bomb makers to make bombs and convince aircraft mechanics to attach them to airplanes and convince pilots to fly over hospitals and press the release button. That's bad too - sadly not everyone agrees on that.
You've written this with a certain sardonic tone, seemingly in efforts to show the person to whom you're responding that their view necessarily leads to the particular brand of anarchism you're espousing.
And I must say, I find your argument and phraseology very convincing. I agree with everything you've said here; states are not imbued with any particular magic. They simply convince people to do things that, if people weren't filled with the mindset of exceptions that seem to come when engaging in public services, they'd never ever do.
I have a degree in political science, and I wish that the reading material required to get that degree displayed more of the technique you've used here.
I mean, it's good prose but it's just sort of hand-waving away all the history of how we ended up with modern states. States solve a lot of problems, they're not perfect but I'm pretty passionate about not living in walled cities because there are hordes of raiders who go around enslaving everyone.
I think you both may have misunderstood my comment. It's not about history. It's simply a rebuttal to the idea that something which "only convinces" is less influential than a state. States themselves also fall into that category, and therefore we can see that things in that category can be so influential they need forceful restraint.
This could be amended to "States have a monopoly legitimate on violence". Your comment seems to deny the existence of "legitimacy" as a concept. How do you distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate use of force?
No, states can't do violence because they don't have hands, so they can't hold guns or bats. The violence is done on behalf of the state by some of the people it convinces, mostly police officers and soldiers.
I agree. It’s just there has not been a pro-EU vote in any form or capacity by any EU population. So the stopped doing referendums but the EU grew only even more unpopular- and lately with VDL and KK, its as if its a cruel joke we all expect for it to end soon.
EU is holding, but the fact that every authoritarian (US, China, Russia) is trying to break it apart should tell you something. It's like the only one remaining, and they don't like it.
You may not agree, but VDL and KK have more balls than most men who have run the EU in recent history.
Just to make myself clear: I don’t think the UK made the right move. But if you ask most countries in referendums they will choose to leave.
Ps. I know HN likes the EU very much because they see it as an opposing power to their home issues but it’s not that. The EU, in its current form, has many structural problems. That doesn’t mean that Europeans like Musk, Trump or Biden.
Can you name a referendum of a country within the EU that has to do with the EU in some form or capacity and received a positive vote? Netherlands, France, Italy and Greece all voted at a certain point in time. The result was always a “no”.
The EU is not popular, within Europe, at all. Maybe the idea is great, but the implementation is certainly not.
what are you on about?
this idea of a referendum is a straw man. Member states joined the EU through mechanisms of their state. (Acts of parlements, referendum or something else).
Also, the votes you are described are all about the implementation of certain ideas/legislation inside the context of the EU, not about the organisation itself?
I'm a European citizen, stating the obvious. Happens to be the contrary of what most ppl in here think it is.
> Member states joined the EU through mechanisms of their state. (Acts of parlements, referendum or something else).
They did. That was a long time ago. When the EU was created the expectation was to align salaries, social welfare networks through access to cheap lending through the common currency, even though politicians like Margaret Thatcher understood the role of the ECB the moment it was proposed. Indeed her last speech as a PM in the house of commons is legendary[^1].
> Also, the votes you are described are all about the implementation of certain ideas/legislation inside the context of the EU, not about the organisation itself?
Most voters don't make that distinction. The fact that every time a government wants to implement an unpopular idea uses the EU as an excuse doesn't help ofc.
To recap: given the opportunity, the majority of countries in Europe would choose to live the EU today, if you ask them. It was much easier for the UK to do so, because they were not part of the monetary union.
[^1]: "[...] the point of that kind of Europe with a central bank is no democracy, taking powers away from every single Parliament, and having a single currency, a monetary policy and interest rates which take all political power away from us.", M. Thatcher, Excerpt from her last speeh as UK's PM (1990).
As an Australian experiencing this first hand and considerably older than 16, absolutely nothing has changed. It seems like all the social networks are doing age estimation of accounts and only taking action on those that fail and are detected as underage. The change is otherwise completely invisible if you're an adult user. Obviously I'm only a sample size of 1, but I've not heard of any other adults being adversely affected by this, so it seems the estimation is accurate.
Pretty well executed - I'm impressed. Given how seamlessly this occurred, it will undoubtedly be rolled out in Europe next year, as the EU has expressed an interest in doing so, but was waiting to see how the implementation went in Australia.
Apropos social media and age, I have some relatives with the last name of Aam. (Åm or Aam is an old farm in the Volda area of Sunnmøre, Norway).
If you try searching them in Facebook, you get a message telling you your search has been stopped and you should seek help you sicko, searching for... "Age abuse material" maybe? I don't know why it freaks out on those three letters, but it does.
This was in the news a year ago, and they still haven't changed it. Go and try if you want.
So allow me to doubt that the implementation is going to be smooth. For you maybe. If you instead end up in some algorithmic Kafka nightmare, don't count on your social media friends to notice.
You have to see if it's in a corporation's interest for false positives or false negatives. For you and AAM, it costs Facebook almost nothing for a false positive on "age abuse material" so I would expect them to continue to flag your family name as a false positive.
With snap and others, I would expect them to focus on reducing false negatives and give the benefit of the doubt to the kid who is under 16. Worst case, you say "Mea Culpa" and update your algorithm accordingly to any cases that you missed but the state has found.
I'm an adult, not living in Australia, and yet my backup Roblox account has been barred from using any form of in-app chat unless I send my face and ID to some third party service.
All of my (adult) friends living in AU had to perform various forms of age checks on almost all platforms they used, which seems to be very far from invisible.
I'd much prefer anonymous, safe, reliable age checks (that can be done!) that don't require me to spray my personal data at the dozens of companies either in the weird jurisdictions or with dubious privacy commitments records (like Bluesky using Epic Games services, famously fined over half of billion dollars for violating children's privacy laws and deceptive practices). Yeah, that's doable. No, won't happen because it's a out the control.
As an Australian the only platforms I have that asked for an age check were Discord and Bluesky. Which is funny as neither came under this legislation, they're implementing this because they chose to.
Nothing from Reddit or any of the Meta platforms which have to comply with this legislation.
Can you give examples of what your friends had to do for each platform? No one I know has been affected, so it does seem “invisible” to me. However I’ve also been an adult for quite some time now. If you don’t mind me asking, are your friends young adults?
One is young adult (20-ish), graduate, another is 40-ish "professional".
They live in the opposite parts of the continent, have completely "normal" /mundane interests (we bonded over a specific book series and share one more hobby).
It did not affect them too much, but they had to use either their government issued id or consent to biometric scan (age estimate via camera).
Nothing particularly problematic, but nevertheless irritating and may become a deal breaker.
Nothing has changed for my 15 year old either. It’s business as usual today for her.
She says only one of her friends has been challenged by a platform so far, and that was by Snapchat. That friend got another 14 year old friend to pass the facial age detection check on her behalf.
Are you kidding me? So the answer is let's let some random vendors used by said corporation scan her face? This feels like using DNA sequencing to confirm you're tall enough to ride the rollercoaster.
It’s just as reliable as you’d expect from a system that relies on shitty cellphone camera pics.
They’re trying to guess the age of someone who could pass for 11 or for 22, and who with careful use of makeup could push that figure in either direction.
For some reason (and this is one reason people think there's a conspiracy), that is the "preferred" form of age verification. It certainly saves the government from having to do IT.
> but I've not heard of any other adults being adversely affected by this
I’m a 40 year old man and I’ve been impacted. A huge circle of people I know have been impacted. A number of companies now want to scan my license or my face, which will be fantastic when they keep it (despite saying they don’t) and then get breached in 6 months.
It seems like a handful of sites havent even switched over. Most are just estimating. Theres no clear indication that the execution has been anything but botched, unless convenience for older people was the only metric.
The execution didn't finish; it started. Big policy changes typically take time to solidify, and it'll probably take a bit to get a reliable read on its trajectory. But there is international momentum on this, so making predictions based on whatever percentage of people that were supposed to have their accounts deactivated actually did the day of (if we even have that data, and I doubt that we do), is probably not going to be useful.
The government have previously stated they won’t pursue breaches unless they’re particularly egregious anyway so this is basically shameless political theatre.
ABC polled a cohort that's going through the most rebellious period in their lives and asked them whether they think authority figures can effectively prevent them from doing something they want to do. Had I been asked the same question as a teenager, I would've answered no every single time, regardless of the actual circumstances.
There's a long way still to go on this. It's one of those changes where positive effects are experienced early but many if not most of the negative effects will surface over weeks, months or years.
A lot of debate here is debating a social media ban. But what actually being banned is accounts, not access.
Australian teens can still scroll TikTok, Instagram, and watch Twitch streams from logged out accounts. They just can't comment, like, or upload their own content.
One might argue that this removes the algorithmic feeds. But I would wager that social media companies will just use browser fingerprinting to continue to serve algorithmic content to logged out users, if they aren't doing this already.
My take. This ruling seems to impact the content creators (from Australia specifically) more than the content viewers. Which I'm not sure is the intent of the legislation.
I don't use social media but from occasionally trying to look at a link someone has sent me, the experience of viewing these sites without being logged in is very limited. If you can see anything, it's maybe one post and then you get a popup demanding that you log in to see more or view the whole thread.
> But what actually being banned is accounts, not access.
Is this implied, or is this detailed in the law? I can see why this would make sense. So many businesses just have a link to their facebook page as their business website, which you should still be able to view. And presuming platforms like YouTube fit the definition, banning kids from watching anything on there would be pretty rough.
> One might argue that this removes the algorithmic feeds. But I would wager that social media companies will just use browser fingerprinting to continue to serve algorithmic content to logged out users, if they aren't doing this already.
On the subject of YouTube, I wonder if they would allow for the creation of teen accounts, which restrict all social media functions but allow subscriptions. But would that then also remove algorithmic recommendations? What about data harvesting off those accounts? If so, I might have to look up how to get a teenage fake ID.
> browser fingerprinting to continue to serve algorithmic content to logged out users, if they aren't doing this already
This is going to be a poor substitute. New browser, updated browser, lost cookies, new phone, different device... Those all will reset your algorithm and the companies will have a hard time tracking down data they can associate with you.
Quite a decisive move by the Australian government. I don't know if it's a move in the right direction or not but the research clearly shows that around the time social media became mainstream, teens' and preteens' mental health took a nosedive (Especially girls).
maybe it's a step in the right direction but you can't regulate away ALL parenting. I know kids in the 5th grade getting brand new Iphone 17s! i've even seen one kid at the age of 7, getting their own Ipad. some parents even force their kids to use play on their iphone, just so they don't have to keep an eye on their kid anymore. My jaw really dropped to the floor on that one.
at some point, you just have to say that parents need to start parenting again. i'm a parent, and i can tell you it's not that bad.
How are you going to prevent kids and teens from joining everything that's bad for them online??? I think regulation is just band-aid.
the ideal solution would be to have parents say "No screens" until a certain age, unless it's supervised, or on a managed device that just lets them get their homework done.
The challenge is that once they are teens, there's a pressure from others and an inclusion aspect, or access through friends and all that.
If you're the only parent putting so many rules on your kids it exclude them from what all their friends are doing and so on. That too can have a negative impact.
The balancing act becomes tricky. If they all can't use social media, it doesn't create that impact of being excluded, they all need to adapt to socialize without.
The way I see it, it's a combination, society shouldn't create a difficult environment for kids and parents to navigate as that increases the burden on parents which will likely fail. And parents need to also make sure they appropriately regulate their kids as otherwise that increases the burden on society which will also likely fail.
If both play their part though, we can raise better kids to grow into more apt adults later in life to the benefit of everyone.
I don’t have kids, but I can see how one parent banning their kid from social media could create issues when the others are on it. I was a quirky kid that already struggled to make friends and any additional imposed quirkiness would have been devastating.
That said, and I don’t mean to oversimplify this, but what about really teaching your kid how to handle whatever bad stuff you feel is on Facebook and such? Not just one sentence as they walk past, I mean making it such a routine part of your teachings as a parent that you get to the point where you have shared moments laughing at the absurdity of it all.
I’m a few multiples of the age in question and I haven’t used Facebook in a long time, but last I heard one of the main issues is people only showing the doctored up highlight reel of their life. If that’s still the issue then I get that it can cause anxiety, but that’s also part of real life and a teachable moment. Granted I wasn’t bombarded with “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous - GenAI Edition”, but the concept of someone being ‘fake’ isn’t new, and neither is the need to be able to see through it and mentally deal with it. That is the world they’re going into, whether it’s a rented Ferrari, the fake Rolex, or just a photo filter and picking one image out of 700.
i'm geniunely curious about how you made the jump from "here's a single regulation" all the way down the slippery slope to "can't regulate away ALL parenting". does this one regulation cross that threshold? how'd you get there?
in an ideal world, parents would also prevent their kids from smoking, but the fact that in many places minors aren't allowed to purchase tobacco sends a social signal and actually does seem to put a speed bump in place deterring casual use.
is it not _also_ ideal to have some of these regulations in place? does it not help parents make the case to their kids?
it does help. i think this is a good step in the right direction.
but there's still a lot of stuff that only parents can do. for example, screentime in the home. you can't really create a law that says no screens for anyone under the age of X because there will exceptions (movie night, homework, etc).
Screentime helps, but it doesn't really solve the problem. They still see the exact same content shared by friends at school, and 15 minutes a day is enough to do damage.
We have had 10+ years of asking parents to solve the problem and the situation has only gotten worse. "Just parent better" is good advice at an individual level but it doesn't solve problems at a society level.
This is absolutely true. However, when you do away with the kind of regulation a healthy society needs, you can't then blame everything on parents.
Regulation has been presented as a bad thing for a long time now, even though it's what cleaned up our rivers that used to catch on fire. Just like taxes have been presented as a bad thing, even though they paid for all the public infrastructure we use every day.
As a society, we've lost a vision for the middle ground. It sure feels like we need to find it again, and the sooner the better.
* The ban applies only to actually logging into the service - everything can still be viewed when logged out. Users are still being tracked while logged out.
* Reddit (and possibly other services) are complying simply by using heuristics to detect under-16 users - they're not even employing any reliable verification measures.
This is considered a startup phase AFAICT, with others being looked at as necessary.
> The ban applies only to actually logging into the service - everything can still be viewed when logged out. Users are still being tracked while logged out.
Sure, but it stops kids bullying each other, and a service you can't fully interact with is not very interesting, stops kids putting their pics/videos/whatever online.
> Reddit (and possibly other services) are complying simply by using heuristics to detect under-16 users - they're not even employing any reliable verification measures.
They are using heuristics and then an external verification service if the heuristics set off an alarm. It's not perfect at present, sure, but I don't think it has to be.
Hugely decisive! Feels more like a policy for idyllic hypotheticals. "Suppose we could ban social media..." well, hey, they actually did it.
I'm very interested to see how their socializing evolves in response to such a shock. Do the social behaviors of pre-internet times re-emerge? "Third spaces" reappear overnight? We shall see!
I think one must also re-evaluate how in modern times a parent can be charged (by a perfect stranger) for the crime of neglecting their child when allowing them to rove unrestricted outside (within reason). I've heard of this happening in both the US and Australia, the HOA mindset really needs to die.
I live in Philadelphia in Mt Airy. I see kids of all races around all the time. Sometimes my kids. The only place I read about parents being jailed for their kids being outside is HN.
Where are you from? Sweden? Denmark? Fun fact for Europe: America is quite a dangerous country. At the very least, this is why parents fear the outdoors. And much of our nature is polluted. There are cases of this. I agree it's wrong, but it's good to understand the background.
And as far as the internet: I am part of the younger generation and I welcome this change. I see how it affects my generation every day.
I am also from a younger generation and from a state that has experienced quite a bit of pollution, but before the popularity of the smartphone ~2012 or so, there was still much more play outside. As for crime, it has been on a downtrend for decades, and many areas are the most peaceful they've been in years¹. I admit this may still be higher than in Europe, but this is exactly the fearmongering message platforms like X try to spread to garner support for authoritarian policy
1. I am not saying people are playing outside at the same levels.
2. I live in the rust belt and don't need to be told what I see is fearmongering. I have been personally affected by it.
America isn't universally dangerous, but it is very diverse. Where I am (Western Pennsylvania) there are kids outside running around all the time (maybe less now that it's very cold out). It just depends where in the country you are.
I read this book in school and it's about this difference between Europe / Scandinavia and a rural part of Indiana
I'm not saying kids don't play outside, just that the violence is why some parents fear it. I agree the internet makes this fear worse but frankly, EVEN ONE CRIME is scary enough if you ask me
A 26 year old girl was set on fire in Chicago public transportation. It's really unforgiveable to me when people then say I'm "fearmongering"
I think a huge part of that is context. Age, location, time of day, etc. I’d be curious to see numbers on this, usually it’s just asserted as “back in my day we played outside and got dirty all day!” but then I hear those same (usually now grand-) parents talk about all the tv shows/movies they watched as they espouse their views on modern media!
My assumption is a lot of those people who proudly proclaim that lifestyle were raised in (segregated) suburbs and have rose tinted glasses. But I’m also making assumptions like them, so again I’m curious to find info on this.
You've never tried to free-range raise your kids then. Some friends in our neighborhood had the police called on them for riding their bikes around the block, and the cops followed the kids back to their front door and then talked with the parents.
The success so far is really just political, which has largely been shutting down debate and dismissing calls for some kind of cost analysis of what we risk losing in enforcing this.
Whenever someone brings up this stuff, the politicians take the tone that "we won't let anyone get in the way of protecting children", and this is in response to people who in good faith think this can be done better. Media oligopolist love it because it regulates big tech, so they've been happy to platform supporters of the policy as well.
Third spaces won't reappear because the planning system in most cities shuts anything down the moment someone files a compliant. They get regulated out of existence the moment police express concern young people might gather there. The planning system (which in NSW/Sydney is the worse) has only gotten worse since the 80s after the green bans. It was largely put in place to allow for community say in how cities are shape, which sounds nice but it's mostly old people with free time participating who don't value 3rd spaces, even if they might end up liking them. They just want to keep things the same and avoid parking from getting overly complicated (and this is a stone throw away from train stations and the CBD).
Third places can be fixed by reforming planning which is slowly gaining momentum via YIMBY movements, but this social media ban is just not a serious contribution to changing that. If anything Social media phenomenon like Pokemon GO contributed more to these third places lighting up.
Governance in Australia is very paternalistic, it's a more high functioning version of the UK in that sense. I think it might be in part due to the voting system being a winner takes all single seat electorate preferential voting system which has a median voter bias for least controversial candidates.
As a kid I always felt being in Australia you missed out on a lot of things people got to do in America, that has slowly changed as media and technology has become less bound by borders but looks like that being undone.
They actually did the experiment. While we're over here thinking social media is probably bad for kids and wondering what would happen if they weren't allowed to use it., Australia actually did that. Soon we'll actually know what happens when kids aren't allowed to use social media.
Given that “social media” is in fact not banned and all this does is impact a select (and frankly logically inconsistent) list of services, this seems very unlikely. Children are still free to be groomed and gamble on Roblox and join servers belonging to The Com on Discord. To be clear I don’t think those services should be regulated by this obscene law either but this isn’t going to bring back any kind of halcyon era for kids. It will expand the surveillance of and shame around young people’s internet use, however.
How so? It has been implemented so that age verification is a token only, a yes/no authorisation. The age verification service doesnt get browsing details, and the site providing content doesnt get any additional user details beyond what they would likely already have, including those subject to PII legislation.
This is false. Like all the age restricting laws being passed around the world, the implementation is not being specified and is being left to the individual platforms, which are using some combination of photo ID and video selfie in order to validate people's ages. Each platform is implementing it differently, and on different timelines. For example, X has failed to even respond for a while, but it's finally said they'll comply.
> Companies have told Canberra they will deploy a mix of age inference - estimating a user's age from their behaviour - and age estimation based on a selfie, alongside checks that could include uploaded identification documents.
> It has been implemented so that age verification is a token only, a yes/no authorisation.
This is misinformation. The legislation does not specify a single particular implementation for age-based verification and there's absolutely no single "age verification service" that platforms are legislated to use. Instead they're required to verify users' ages based on several recommended methods, including age inference. https://digitalrightswatch.org.au/2025/12/03/what-you-need-t...
Further, the Communications Minister herself regarding whether she's concerned about people bypassing authentication-based age verification checks: "If you’re an adult - you probably won’t need to do anything extra to prove your age, because like I said before, these platforms have plenty of data to infer your age." https://minister.infrastructure.gov.au/wells/speech/address-...
It will also massively expand the surveillance of adults: if a platform introduces face scanning or checking government IDs for "age verification", then they don't just scan the underage users.
What you’re implicitly saying here is that we should wait until there is empirical evidence. That could take multiple decades, and even then will be tenuous at best because you’re dealing with a soft science. At that point the damage will have been done and much harder to address.
If you don’t think attention spans are on the downtrend & that social media has something to do with that, I don’t know what to tell you. I think it’s pretty clear.
Thinking about this this will of course fail. Because teens will do what they did before online: make their own social networks. But by necessity these will be small.
I hope that's what will happen. That this is only really a problem for FANG, for the tech industry and doesn't actually prevent social media.
Funny, but I (and I believe many who support this law) would say that's a good thing. The problem is not (and never was) social interaction online, it is large corporations designing their algorithms to be as addictive as possible to tie kids as early as possible to their services.
I have had to recently get back to using Facebook (after creating the account ~15 years ago and leaving it dormant for >10 years), due to several sports clubs using it as their only means of communication. It's scary how good these algorithms have become, I often only want to look up something related to the club and end up being roped into 1h of doomscrolling. And I'm an adult with significant better impulse control than most teenagers.
While FAANG undoubtedly have chosen profit over safety I'm not yet convinced non-FAANG social media is significantly safer, in terms of mental health, antisocial behaviour or predation.
At the very least, I appreciate that this test should help us determine the causal impact of social media. I don't know if rolling out to the whole country is justified just for the test data, but I feel it will give a pretty conclusive result one way or the other.
Teens will learn to bypass all this within the week. Then, whatever the new way of doing social media will be, it could easily reach consensus within the year.
Even if it achieves only a small reduction in usage (say 10%), i would expect that should have a measurable effect on happiness if the hypothesis of [social media causes unhappiness] is true. If no increase in happiness is observed, i think we could say that social media does not cause unhappiness.
Not so sure. The government has placed a A$50M incentive per violation discovered, I heard. That sounds like a powerful incentive on the companies to outsmart the kids.
If a kid uses a pseudonymous account and fraudulently bypasses an age verification system, I have a hard time believing that the company would be fined $50M.
I would guess that this massive fine is more for situations like if a company can be shown to have wilfully allowed a violation or else has been grossly negligent. (But I have not read the law!)
The next step is to outlaw social media in general, and maybe the world will become a bit better.
Edit: in case someone decides to disagree with me, here is a non-exhaustive list of issues that social media has created: isolation from the real world, unrealistic expectations in terms of looks/status/success, dehumanization by turning people into likes-dislikes, dehumanizations by creating influencers whose sole purpose it to pump cheap crap to their "followers", a vessel for state actors to spread the current flavor of propaganda/racism supported by "the algorithm" that creates echo chambers rather than promoting diversity of opinions, dopamine producing machines that glue us to the screens.
There is nothing social in social media, in-fact, it should be called the "anti-social media".
I would start by outlawing the algorithmic feed. Force them to show a chronological timeline of who you follow with no influence from likes, no For You feed, basically no algorithmic recommendation engine.
You probably solve most of the problems with 10% of the legal/social/implementation difficulty.
I truly don't understand how people can make such comparisons, and in general defend social media. Is this some sort of Stockholm syndrome?
Social media has ruined my mental health, when I fell into a deep hole of propaganda. It took me a year to recover, and I'm still not fully recovered, and I'm still trying to separate between what I truly think, and what social media "made" me think. People underestimate the power of echo chambers created by the algorithm.
I saw how friends and family got radicalized thanks to social media. Social media is currently fueling at least one war and multiple regional conflicts, where people who know nothing about the events, get "educated" by social media. Social media is fueling hatred and bigotry, further diving already fragile societies. Social media disinformation campaigns were behind Brexit. And social media is used as a tool by government to spread misinformation or influence social opinions. All these in addition to everyone being an influencer and showing their phone into the faces of people in public places, while selling crap from AliExpress for 500% markup, as if you drink electrolytes, put a nose tape, and clean your face every day -- your life will become ten folds better.
I can't name one good thing that came out of social media. None. And even if there are things, and I'm sure someone will name them out, they are minor comparing to the negative sides, or could be achieved in a more sustainable way.
Hacker News is almost indistinguishable in spirit from a well-run subreddit. Reddit is not centered on user profiles and followers and yet, Reddit is included in the Australia's social media ban.
It is clear from the ruling that by including YouTube, Reddit and Facebook, they take a broad definition of what social media is, essentially anything with user interaction and Hacker News definitely fits the bill.
And if your criteria includes "social aspects like user profiles and followers", then GitHub would fit too: it has user profiles, followers / stars, and allows for discussion. It is even included in the "social media" list for ESTA and visa applications for the US. We could even include StackOverflow, I mean, it used to be common practice to build a profile, chasing a reputation score so that you could show off to recruiters.
Originally it wasn't. It was more similar to hackernews, just more general. Lately it's going all in on wanting to be a social media platform full of dark design patterns to keep people hooked. Hackernews has barely changed from its beginning. I don't feel overwhelmed browsing it. Five minutes of reddit and I fall into a dopamine hole that can be hard to get out of. It's no longer part of my daily routine for that reason.
You can't follow people or have followers. There's no notification system when someone "likes" your comment. It doesn't lend itself towards pulling you back with the latest comment or post. There is the front page algorithm, but you can always just go to /latest or /active. It's about the content, not the users.
Critically, there's no ads or monetization (which is where all that garbage comes in).
HN is an anti-social media. It is not inclusive. If you are not a tech geek or cannot articulate well you are not welcome here, and will be ignored.
You cannot follow or be followed. There is no attention drawn to your username or profile. Everything about HN is designed for you to just read a comment and move on, not caring much about the human behind it.
It's quite dystopian. Seeing people in your family, and friends, just mindlessly consume that shit, for hours upon hours - and many of them are completely oblivious to the fact that these reels and shorts are engineered to keep them engaged.
Using ML/Data to keep people hooked on content - I'd be embarrassed to be an engineer at any of these companies actively destroying our society.
TV had the same effect before the internet. It just had to use less effective Nielsen instead of AI/ML. People make this complaint about all new media when it appears, including books even (well, that kids and adults would spend their time reading trashy novels rather than study the Bible), and later serial articles (which were designed to keep readers hooked with literary cliff hangers so they would buy the next issue).
HN literally has an algorithmic feed and the karma system is the most addictive system used on forums. It's why Reddit is so addictive.
Either HN is part of the evil social media club or the rule for what separates the good ones from the bad ones needs updated. HN and TikTok are different and I think being able to articulate what actually makes them meaningfully different is the first step toward useful legislation.
It’s worth calling this by its other name: the taking away of anonymity and pseudonymity.
To date, proving you are old enough is almost always (over-)implemented by having to reveal your legal identity and the exact date you were born.
If the whole world goes down the route of AV / age-bans then I hope we at least get some kind of escrow service where you visit an official office, prove your age to a disinterested public official, and then pick a random proof-of-age token out of a big bucket. The bucket’s randomness is itself generated when it was filled up with tokens at the Department of Tokens, and maintained by a chain of custody.
You could do it on polling day: ballot boxes get sent out to polling stations filled with tokens and get sent back filled with ballot papers, with the whole process watched by election monitors. Now everyone has (a) voted (b) picked up a proof of age/citizenship token. It would improve turnout, though I believe that’s already mandatory in Australia.
We already have digital IDs in Australia, and it seems like a natural fit for this. The digital ID doesn't need to share much information with social media companies, it just needs to confirm your age. And then we don't need new 3rd-parties holding our personal information.
Also yes, voting is mandatory in Australia. You get a small fine if you don't vote.
It's a very good system. $20 is the right number to get you off the couch, but not so much as to cripple you. There are exceptions if you have a valid reason for not voting. The maximum fine is ~$180 so you can't simply ignore the Elections Commission and hope it goes away.
A paragraph from an email Reddit sent me presumably because I created my account in Australia:
> Users confirmed to be under 16 will have their accounts suspended under the new Australian minimum age law. While we disagree with the Government's assessment of Reddit as being within the scope of the law, we need to take steps to comply. This means anyone in Australia with a Reddit account confirmed to be under 16 will be blocked from accessing their account or creating a new one. Note that as an open platform, Reddit is still available to browse without an account.
“Confirmed to be under 16” sounds like they’re not trying very hard to identify them. But maybe I’m just spared any attempt at checking since my account is 12 years old.
I wonder if allowing browsing without an account is compliant with the letter or the spirit of the law—an account is not required for at least some forms of damage. But I’ve paid no attention to this law since I live in India now.
> I wonder if allowing browsing without an account is compliant with the letter or the spirit of the law
Haven't read the law, but I don't think they considered this, since the most popular social media sites make it very hard or impossible to browse without an account. I guess with adult content bans they do consider this, since people don't tend to make an account there.
And a very similar fun fact: You can't browse facebook marketplace if you're logged into an under 18 account, but can without an account (at least here in Hungary).
Somehow, things are going to work better when you're not logged in...
To be honest, I wouldn't mind they'd ban it for adults too, would help me from wasting time on them.
In all seriousness though, I'm curious what counts as social media, can they not play MMORPGs anymore for example? Are niche forums included ? What about chat apps like Whatsapp? Phone texting? Email?
I'm also curious if say TikTok and YouTubed simply deactivated their social features? No comments, DMs, and so on for example? Would they be allowed again?
Had the same thought. Growing up in a small town (couple of hundred inhabitants), internet access early 2000's was a gift for teenage me. I joined web forums and discovered new interests (=web development which lead to my career), chatted with friends on msn, later played runescape and wow and met friends I later traveled countries to meet.
Of course, these things were different than the beasts today. Everything was more personal, smaller. No algorithms.
So not sure what I feel. Social media as we know it today is obviously bad (not just for teenagers). But maybe I'm just nostalgic for how it was.
HN and Reddit are both social media. Both sites are largely populated by lurkers.
I'm not sure there's a good example of a social network site left.
Even sites and services that can be used for social networking are designed to make that difficult. For example, on Instagram you can choose to follow and interact with only people you actually know and keep your profile private. That would be social networking IMHO because it's mostly one-to-one or at least one-to-not very many. But Instagram insists on showing suggested posts. You can turn that off, but after 30 days they turn it back on.
> YouTubed simply deactivated their social features? No comments
Youtube already decides to mark some videos as "for kids" which disables a quite a few features such as comments (I guess that makes sense), the ability to add the video to a playlist (what???), notifications (why???)
I don't know about Australia, but there's a page here detailing some of the sites that got shut down because of the OSA in the UK: https://onlinesafetyact.co.uk/in_memoriam/
> I'm also curious if say TikTok and YouTubed simply deactivated their social features? No comments, DMs, and so on for example? Would they be allowed again?
The YouTube Kids apps and services are not included in the ban for this very reason, only the "adult" YouTube app and service. I imagine Google absolutely could create a YouTube "aussie edition" that could avoid the ban for the main service.
Communication over a distance between people who don't know each other or one that doesn't have pre-approved format for it, like customer service... is a disaster in general.
Kids being banned from social media is just one side of the coin. _Everyone_ else being forced to KYC with random websites is the other. I can’t help but wonder, which of the two outcomes is the actual goal here.
Aside from YouTube I don't particularly engage with any of these often, but my Google, Facebook, Discord, Twitter, Bluesky, (current) Reddit, Slack, Telegram accounts all seem to be BAU without new requirements.
If the 80% of us currently holding unambiguously-over-16 accounts are exempt, and it only affects future over-16 users as they're onboarded, then it is a very blunt and very slow form of data harvesting which won't yield useful results until years/decades after all of the relevant decision-makers have moved on, retired and/or died. So this seems unlikely?
I enjoy participating in wildly diverse online communities and I hate censorship.
I have seen the way heavy social media use changes some peoples personalities. it's scary. these platforms don't just home communities: they're engines, with tendencies. including numerous ways in which these platforms are implicated in youth suicide.
I am absolutely convinced that children should be discouraged from these engines just as they should be discouraged from alcohol.
I totally recognise that if that means these platforms demand proof of ID, that changes their privacy profile and some people will choose to stop participating.
perhaps this can offer some stimulus for other ways of online community forming. Thanks everyone here: I've participated in a few online conversations about the topic this week, and this is the only interesting one :)
I grew up without television. We had a TV until I was 7, but it was never left on, and I was rarely allowed to watch it.
When I was 9 we had a cheap TV for about 3 months and it broke. Family decided we didn't need one.
At 36 I got a TV for a couple years. My kids watched Blue's Clues, etc.
At 38, I again got a TV for a couple years. Then decided dumb late night shows were not helping the insomnia, so cancelled cable, but started streaming HBO.
Since then, I have enjoyed high quality streaming series on occasion. But no live TV, no TV "news", and strictly avoid anything with ads.
When I see a live TV on, with the strange voices and non-logic of ads, and the bizarre posturing they call "news", I get a little sick. Even "nature" and "history" shows have strange pacing and repetition. The transparent sucking sound of ads needing tamed attention-providers warps everything.
I think being sheltered from regular TV, TV ads, and TV news, has been tremendously positive for my mind and life.
Not being exposed to "social" media sites, which are often not actually social, and often unhealthy when they are, is a great win. Quality can sometimes survive in rare small social-conversation sites, not driven by ads or agenda.
> I think being sheltered from regular TV, TV ads, and TV news, has been tremendously positive for my mind and life. Not being exposed to "social" media sites, which are often not actually social, and often unhealthy when they are, is a great win.
Incredibly, you were able to do that without the government's help! I suppose people just aren't built the same these days, so we need laws instead of letting people decide on their own.
Without commenting specifically on Australia's approach, I think it does make sense to have some laws for children.
But I would prefer that surveillance-manipulation based practices be made illegal first. That would remove a lot of the means, and a lot of profits, from manipulating people via feeds, warped searches, and a host of other ways and uses for digging into, and leveraging, people's idiosyncrasies and vulnerabilities against them.
Dossier's on children, resulting in manipulative feeds for them are bad. But it is a bad practice for everyone. One of those deceptive business practices, that gets claimed to be not deceptive, because the deception is "out in the open".
Fraud doesn't have an "everyone is doing it" defense. Neither should surveillance-manipulation practices.
It isn't just a case of individuals, who need to be "saved from themselves". Our society, as permeated with surveillance and manipulation, has become permeated with "personalized" media driven dysfunction. We all have to put up with the bullshit it creates, and divisiveness it magnifies. Dystopian.
AI slop would be less effective, and less promoted, if there wasn't a surveillance dossier to customize who saw what. People don't like it now. Getting non-"personalized" slop? That would create exactly the intense pushback that is needed.
--
My ad free life, and ad-funded media free life, has left me utterly disgusted with manipulative social media. When people mount a defense of keeping it legal, it makes me very sad for their quite visibly slowly boiling brains. The practices are clearly both highly unethical and toxic.
(I am all for social media as a service/resource. I don't even mind ads (too much), when they are placed to match content, not the consumer. Just not when both are irreversibly compromised by massive tech scaled conflicts of interest.)
To ostracise means literally to be outed from society.
Most people I know want to keep their kids off social media, but do not want them to be ostracised.
Given that law, it might now be possible to keep your kids off the networks.
In my experience, at least for younger teens, it’s a small subset of kids enabled by their parents that push everybody else into the mouth of the kraken.
Example from my life:
Kid A has an Instagram account curated by her mum, who is more than happy to set up all kinds of communities, etc., for the kids in the class to cite: “finally be able to better communicate and stay in touch”.
Sure, you can keep your kid out, but social isolation is not easy for teens. Given that law, you could get Insta-mom banned.
The topic is very nuanced. Social media is bad but so are the authoritarian actors wanting more and more control over everything. The government control aspect is a huge concern of mine too but it's already well covered here so I want to go over the reasons it might be a good idea.
Yes this is true parents are responsible for their kids but it's also true that the village a kid lives in actually influences the kid more than their parents. So it's up to the parents to choose a good village. If every village has the same global social media apps then obviously that's more difficult and not a pit of success. Keep in mind most parents also have a shitload of other stuff to do especially with inflation requiring two incomes to operate a household.
Individualist types don't seem to get the whole village thing at all. It's hyper-individualism with no acknowledgement that we DO affect other people with our actions. Pollute as much as you like, fly noisy planes, drive oversized killer-SUVs. Let every company do what it wants because free market competition and better technology, or something. We're actually social animals and our happiness has a lot to do with how we stack up socially. Hence if just one kid has a device the other kids get jealous and want to keep up; The obvious answer is to enforce a culture of no-phones. But that would take a some agreement so a individualists don't like it.
I disagree. It’s easy to say this from your armchair, but when your kid is the one kid not on social media because you’re such an righteous parent, and that kid is getting bullied by all the other kids for not knowing what’s going on in TikTok or Insta, you start seeing this as a problem that requires the coordination of large numbers of people who you may or may not know, many of whom are kids who lack executive function.
If you just disdain children in general, you can go ahead and say that instead.
In fact the majority of the electorate in Australia supports this, so that is exactly where you’d go to be in a community that shares your values. Social media has an addictive and infectious nature, even people who hate it end up using it because of the crippling network effects.
>the majority of the electorate in Australia supports this
because they don't know the consequences and the question that was asked was literally "should kids be banned from social media?". You can bet the opinion will shift when more and more sites demand age verification and sending government IDs to random websites. It will also be widened to more than just the big social media sites, let's not kid ourselves.
Agreed. Individualists don't understand how people actually don't have much free will and decisions are mostly influenced by culture. Having an anything goes culture is a massive head wind.
And by prisoner's dilemma / double bind type phenomenon, such as being forced to choose between being a social outcast, or to be on social media. That double bind would not exist if you nuke the whole thing. The libertarian theory of the world does not have such phenomenon within its descriptive aperture.
This completely negates the nuance and social pressures and sounds like you just want to be edgy. The network affects are huge and others like teachers and clubs are pushing these services as a means of communication instead of using, other, safer services. There is no choice if one wants to be a part of society currently.
> To all the parents defending this: you are responsible for your children and what they do.
Stop delegating action to the individual.
Me and missus are full time employees, I do not have oversight to what my kid is doom-scrolling on his lunch break.
> Passing laws that affect all of us because you are too lazy and ineffectual to raise your children properly is unacceptable.
How does it affect you? Unless you are a corporate mouthpiece this does not affect you at all.
I do not want my kid to watch any degenerate pornography on his formative years just because some lobbyist wants to shove freemarketeering ideologies down our throats.
I'm all for keeping kids away from social media. My main concern is how we verify that they are under 16 [0].
> showing my ID [in person] was a simple, controlled transaction: one person looked at it for three seconds, handed it back, and forgot about it. The information never left that moment. But online, that same verification process transforms into something far more risky. A digital journey through countless servers, databases, and third-party services, each one a potential point of failure.
> What appears to be the same simple request "please verify your identity", becomes fundamentally different when mediated by technology. The question isn't whether these digital systems will be compromised, but when. And unlike that movie theater clerk who can't perfectly recall my birthdate minutes after seeing it, computers have perfect memory. They store, copy, backup, and transmit our most sensitive information through networks we don't control, to companies we've never heard of, under policies we'll never read.
Exactly, this policy is from a government that taxed tobacco products so much that cigarettes are now cheaper than they have ever been in ~15 years because the black market stepped in and have nearly completely taken over the market.
There is a pattern of government using moral panics to exert greater control. Australia and New Zealand seem to be used as a testbed for projects which are introduced elsewhere.
The UK government wishes to police social media more heavily, and has been using internet porn and illegal immigration (two unrelated issues) to push through digital ID. The exact same mentality - controversy, panic, dubious solution...
In this case, we have a genuine issue and a dubious solution.
The answer: meet in person. Talk to people offline.
The offline-socializing point is good, but it's also a cultural shift that won't magically happen because a law is passed. If anything, the hard part is rebuilding the offline spaces and social norms that used to make that easy.
Kids are in these spaces because there is no place for them to be. People call the police on unaccompanied kids outside. Teens are banned from malls. Where are teens supposed to be where they won't be harassed. When I was a kid we used to just wander around and chat. There used to be a whole event on Friday evenings where high schoolers would decent on this mall across the street from two movie theaters. We went to the skating ring. There were teen clubs. More. Right now, I can't think of a single place a teen could just hang out besides at each other houses which is mostly what I watch them do. It makes sense why they end up in virtual spaces. They can socialize privately that way.
I agree. I had to coax people out after lockdown and it took years.
We do need offline spaces. I've been out for a Christmas lunch today. Much more meaningful than meeting on Zoom or whatever. I don't hate technology but I think we have to use it widely.
Australias eSafety office only occurred because of the Christchurch shooting. The Australian government wanted a sniff of that moral panic, and said it needed the right to remove videos of the shooting from the internet. Thats the office that has been pushing for this law. You can draw a direct line from Christchurch to this event.
The Kiwis tightened their gun laws after the incident, despite having done pretty well with what they had until that year.
In both events, both governments paraded around saying shit like "Leading the world" such as Australia is once again doing here. Its much like Godwins favourite dictator going abroad to spruik his fantastic free holiday / political retraining resort. "World Leading" is the absence of any other quality terminology.
For Australias case, during the 00s and early 10s we actually had a really huge internet freedom movement. Previous attacks on the internet had bee repelled quite gracefully. It took such a moral panic to finally put Australia in its place, and now we are looking at a further consequence of that moral failure.
I'm not sure what you think is happening in New Zealand still. Your one example is a tightening of gun laws following a mass shooting. Something that virtually all Kiwis are in favour of.
The real news is that age verification will be required to use a search engine from the 27th. This has flown completely under the radar because of the social media ban.
Initially, it will only be required if you're logged in. Obviously that won't be effective, so the next logical step would be to require that everyone logs in to use a search engine.
I support this greatly. But I think instead of debating whether this makes sense or not, or speculating, let's consider that it is already in effect and consider it an experiment. Let's see how Australia is doing in 10 or 15 years, will those kids be resentful or regret the ban when they're 30?
Extremes are bad on either end. unrestricted internet access, even to those who can't defend themselves against harmful content is an extreme, some balance is long due. Since most other western countries chose to risk their kids in the name of liberty, let's wait and see whose trade off works out for the best instead of speculating what will or won't happen.
I wish more countries would experiment like this, and even more countries would learn.
You can't argue for UBI or drug decriminalization because some country experimented and succeeded and then oppose this sort of stuff. In the US, states are supposed to experiment with laws like this, but they don't have enough power to regulate interstate communication or commerce.
These platforms are heavy censored with a direct line to governments. This will push kids to other platforms with less censorship. That's a major benefit.
As we go down this road platforms will need to be banned for everyone. For example VK wasn't on the list and they won't implement age checks. They and many other sites will need to be banned until you are left with a white list of acceptance sites. Add in age verification on those sites for everyone.
Kids will learn how to overcome the ban. VPNs will become the standard.
> This gives governments an excuse to ban VPNs in the name of 'thinking of the children'. That might be the point though.
...then the rest of the world will see what the people of China and Russia already know: bans on VPNs cause them to explode in popularity and development pace.
There's a reason that the most sophisticated VPNs and tunneling tech are built to evade the GFW.
I recently visited a remote part of Siberia, and I was amazed at the ubiquity of VPNs. Grandmothers who grew up in shamanic traditions knew how to get around apparent traffic shaping (even on youtube!) to listen to their traditional music. It was quite inspiring.
I'm not saying bans are a good idea - I'd much rather the adults in the room read the writing on the wall and bring about peaceful dismantling of legacy states in favor of a censorship-resistant internet.
They already started moving to different platforms. No VPNs needed. At some point they'll stray off the Internet (because gov.au of course barks at every platform except discord, mysteriously).
And, of course, as usual, this law, like all it's others in the rest of the world, will do absolutely nothing in protecting kids. It will instead only create a huge national security hacker paradise because everyone will use these so-called "age verification" services, which aren't exactly known for their security.
When I was a kid, online games with chat were a no-no. Most of the ones designed for kids specifically avoided having a chat feature aside from preset phrases, like Toon Town.
Then of course by teens, most boys were in the notorious MW2 lobbies.
Despite how little they pay their game devs, offering like 20% I think, Roblox itself continues to make a loss so there case that they are scamming their devlopers isn't the strongest
Most their users are don’t pay, their services are all hosted by themselves, development of tooling for games and the platform itself is costly, legal issues, etc.
"A chapter 7 bankruptcy terminates the company's operations and takes the company completely out of business."
It is essentially a judges forced death-sentence for a corporation.
An appropriate solution given Roblox manipulative behavior targeting kids, and a pattern of administrative negligence on the platform. Spend 5 minutes searching, and the history of the platform "problems" is trivially exposed.
Kids <16 should not be on there unsupervised, and there are lots of other better-quality games around people can play that offer far less "problems". =3
Correct, in fact I strongly assert the benefit of being able to communicate with a global audience and participate early in the information economy far outweighs any alleged and poorly-articulated harm from the same.
A bunch of people in local LGBT community Discord servers that marked themselves as NSFW have been locked out of those servers and now need to prove their age to get back in.
These communities already had active mods that would remove anyone underage that they found, so it doesn't really make sense in this case that Discord is now requiring them to prove their ages.
Meanwhile kids are finding ways around the ban. Kids are asking their older looking friends to pass facial scans for them.
The infovacuuming phase of social networks is complete. Training datasets grabbed, social graphs built, biometry compiled.
Now it's very logical to spin that expensive infrastructure down, removing free communication channels which can dangerously synchronize people against the state, and leaving only channels of control: digital ID, CDBC and a white list of governmental "services", all else outlawed.
People of 2010s uploaded their personal data into the cloud because they thought that was cool, people of 2030s will do because their telescreens demand them so.
Everyone who thinks this will stop at "think about the children" is beyond all repair.
Your sci-fi distopia flash fiction is compelling, but not actually on topic in this discussion.
"Think of the children" is weaponized for censorious purposes, but also the harms of social media are well documented (unlike many of the other moral panics fuelled by this phrase). Communication channels are becoming managed spaces, but by private companies not accountable to the electorate, not by the state.
I'm not sure a blanket under-16s ban on all social media is the right answer, but there are really good reasons why people support this that you need to engage with to have a useful discussion here.
I am so glad a country finally took action. Can't wait to see data on its effects. At this point in time I lost interest in nuanced discussions about the details here. We are in one big experiment and it might end in catastrophy. We need counter experiments and hard data fast.
We really need the age verification standards to catch up. I think there was stuff in the works, but something like OAuth that doesn't require the two third parties to know about each other and the browser/client is in the middle.
Yes and no, it depends. But that the standards/services don't exist is more an issue as it prevents doing it correctly and safely. Most websites that will/already need to verify someones age are not capable of doing so safely.
Yes and yes, look at the rollout, within weeks it's got through in multiple countries across continents. There is nothing organic about this, it's being pushed and bribed into existence.
Not really, it gives them justification to more thoroughly remove privacy and anonymity in order to make sure the age and identity of the user are more confidently known.
I'm Australian and just had to age verify on X/Twitter. They used some app called "selfie" and took a pic and said I was verified. That was it.
This social media ban is not so much about banning kids from social media.
It's more about banning social media apps/companies from accessing kids.
The SM apps are entirely about exploitation of their audiences via algorithms to push advertising and political positions. That needs to be stopped.
This is a start.
It's a bit like the bans on under 18 (Australia) drinking without supervision. We know that the bans aren't "perfect", but they work for the majority of the time for the majority of the kids.
>>> Companies have told Canberra they will deploy a mix of age inference - estimating a user's age from their behaviour - and age estimation based on a selfie, alongside checks that could include uploaded identification documents.
An algorithmic bouncer guesses your age and if he isn't happy you have to feed him proof until he is happy.
My belief is that late stage capitalism pushes democracies to fascism and the overton window requires politicians to break-up unpopular changes into a smaller changes. I am prognosticating why politicians would pretend to care about the mental health of children.
"Late stage capitalism" is a term used by socialists to describe the period immediately before N̵o̵s̵t̵r̵a̵d̵.. er Marx's glorious socialist revolution.
Predicting it will lead to fascism instead is... humorous.
Its crazy how the AusGov has just tried to turn this into some kind of nationalistic celebration. Passing laws isolating children isnt to be celebrated by lighting up national monuments.
Do you have kids ? Do you see kids in your day to day life ? I do, every day, and even <10 years old already have permanent neck damage from scrolling as soon as they haves 5 seconds of free time. I see groups of friends walking back from schools, they're side by side, scrolling on their phone, not talking, not even looking in front of them. I walk by 3 schools multiple times every single day and that's all I see as soon as they're outside of the playground (because they're not allowed while inside). Locking up kids inside social media echo chambers is much more isolation than kicking them out of them imho
I do have a son. I plan to tell my kiddo not to engage with those platforms and set boundaries. I dont plan to force every kid in every scenario into the same pattern.
>Locking up kids inside social media echo chambers is much more isolation than kicking them out of them imho
"Locking" Why not instead ban the social graph, or certain engagement techniques. Theres a whole other arm here, where the AusGov has pulled back entirely from promised gambling restrictions. Its easy to see a path where dark patterns in both industries are outlawed instead of banning half.
Not to mention that 4chan and youtube are unaffected, so I doubt those kids with the broken backs or whatever are going to be "free".
Absolutely second this, and I am part of the younger generation. Technology is isolating. Social media feeds superficial relationships. The anxiety it creates is so worrying.
Yes. What I'm saying is that people can choose to leave online spaces that are abusive, as opposed to abuse at school or home, which are much harder (usually impossible) for children to escape.
Ah yes brilliant. Instead of trying to address these issues at their source let’s just let kids form immaterial connections online and guarantee they never learn how to form any sort of in person communication skills!
I'm sorry what does a gay kid do about parents that think they are fundamentally immoral? What does any kind of abused kid do? Because my parents were abusive, but not in the way that left marks and the internet was the only thing keeping me sane. I lived in a neighborhood with no kids my age and across town from my school, so even the friends I made there lived nowhere near me. The internet was not a place I made immaterial connections. It's where I maintained what I had until the rare occasions I could see them outside of school. It was where I got to interact with people who gave me the motivation to keep going until I could escape. What does a kid like me do without the internet? No one was going to step in because my parents isolated me and where a bit mean (from their POV, not mine). Not when I was clean, had food and clothing, and was a straight A student, be real.
You are framing this as if you had no in person social connections due to your circumstances. By your OWN admission elsewhere in this thread, this is untrue:
> Kids are in these spaces because there is no place for them to be. People call the police on unaccompanied kids outside. Teens are banned from malls. Where are teens supposed to be where they won't be harassed. When I was a kid we used to just wander around and chat. There used to be a whole event on Friday evenings where high schoolers would decent on this mall across the street from two movie theaters. We went to the skating ring. There were teen clubs. More. Right now, I can't think of a single place a teen could just hang out besides at each other houses which is mostly what I watch them do. It makes sense why they end up in virtual spaces. They can socialize privately that way.
What I am saying is that we should work toward bringing those ^ spaces BACK, rather than allowing kids to wallow in digital space. The more we are online, the more difficult that becomes. The more time we spend in digital space, the more we lose control over our physical spaces.
Ah yes brilliant. Let's keep trying to solve these issues that we've been trying to solve for centuries. That's clearly going well. Instead, let's put a bandaid on it so we don't have to look at the issue for a little bit.
Alternatively, letting some kids who struggle to form connections IRL learn to form them online might give some the confidence and self-assuredness to form connections IRL when they want to.
Anyway I'm not sure why you think that I'm suggesting we don't try to address bullying and family abuse. Did I say we should only do one or the other?
We very clearly are making progress on these century long issues, unless you somehow think kids now are growing up in more hostile physical environments than they were 100 years ago.
This ban does not prevent kids from using IM platforms like WhatsApp, Messenger, Discord so your argument that this somehow restricts the ability for online communication is false.
What you are arguing against is the restriction of access to apps like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X, Snapchat —- all of which are filled with predatory algorithms that have shown to have negative affect on the mental health of teens, young adults, AND adults.
> What you are arguing against is the restriction of access to apps like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X, Snapchat —- all of which are filled with predatory algorithms that have shown to have negative affect on the mental health of teens, young adults, AND adults.
Actually, what I'm arguing against is the restriction of whatever apps a government chooses to apply their very loose definition to. What happens when the kids congregate on another platform? Presumably they'll just add that to the list too, right? Does a cat and mouse game seem productive? To say nothing of the precedent set being used for political ends.
What I'm arguing for is stuff that may actually solve the underlying issues - like, for example, addressing those predatory algorithms you refer to.
We already have reports about disabled kids experiencing suicidal ideation due to losing their only non family social connections.
Not to mention that Australias youth are quite politically engaged, we have a news network entirely run by teenagers that just had their service gutted.
I think a better approach might be to require that any algorithm used to suggest content to users must be made open source so that people whose world views are being shaped by the content you're feeding them can analyse how you're deciding what to show them.
I feel like there's definitely a problem here with social media and its effect on society, but our first approach should be to increase transparency and accountability, rather than to start banning things by force of law.
The real danger isn't the ban itself... it's the precedent that could be built on top of it if governments decide they like controlling digital participation
Texas SB2420 requires age verification to download apps. Now, both the government and corporations have a new lever to identify exactly who you are, where you are, what you're doing, and can selectively cut you off from everything. Government-endorsed technofeudalism with inverted totalitarian features normalizing deviancy to become shameless, traditional totalitarianism.
-> Scenario
Want to use cash for lunch or parking? Sorry, no, you must be banked, and have an app.
Want to use a bank? You must use an app.
How do you get an app? You must have a phone and an ID.
Want to buy a phone? Whoops, conundrum encountered.
(And don't even think of wanting to get an ID.)
-> In summary
This further disenfranchises the extremely poor, and takes power and freedom away from everyone who isn't a billionaire.
Just online, which has been a bad idea from day one due to the evertrending centralization of the Internet, the primary catalyst thereof being people's laziness. Offline, it still exists.
I’m not against teens communicating with each other online, but I’m very much against the algorithm-driven dopamine addiction factories that are social media today.
Imagine a whole generation of teens with attention spans longer than 15 seconds…they might actually realize their incredible potential!
If you ever worked with people who fully grew up with modern social media and just entered the workforce you know we're already doomed, there is no recovery from this, that's why governments are starting to act
> younger generation is earning more in the workforce than past generations
Inflation adjusted wages and purchasing power is flat for, at least, the past 50 years... and even if it wasn't it wouldn't mean anything regarding new workers capabilities/attention span/&c.
the “propaganda is so good” and yet anyone on the internet has seen the charts you’re linking dozens of times. fwiw, your chart makes a lot of assumptions by subsetting to hourly, excluding benefits, and using a different inflation adjustment for income vs. productivity (the last one is 100% a chart crime). every time they make the choice that will make the gap most striking, https://www.piie.com/sites/default/files/realtime/files/2015...
Please explain me anybody, why not to ban any software which is not FOSS? It will lead to the world I want to live in. Banning just social media just for kids makes the Government to do too much for us - D E C I D I N G who is a kid and what is a social media.
It is similar to the tax approach - it is not bad that we are paying taxes, what is bad that the Government implies how to count the taxes.
My wife did a lot of conversations with kids in Australia. They all said they hate social media and regularly get harassed by Asian criminal gangs trying to blackmail them. They support the law cause they were only there cause they felt they had to be. We freed these children . The Australian internet is far more dangerous than the USA
How are they going to verify it's not some kid telling he's 18 with a fake picture? Demand a photo of driver's license? Got one here, right out borrowed from dad's pocket. The article also mentions inferring age from the usage which sounds as vague as it is.
The counter point is that doesn't this basically mean everyone, including adults, now has to identify in order to use social media? Without a national electronic ID where personal data never leaves government's systems (they've already got it) and the social network just receives a yes/no bit when they ask "is this person old enough?" this would mean a huge amounts of identification data would be willingly and voluntarily "leaked" to foreign private services. Scan your passport and send it to China in order to use TikTok?
This mass identification process could either make also large groups of adult people leave social media sites or condition people to upload their ID data to whatever site happens to ask for it.
I am not protecting non-FOSS practices but you can not register on crypto cx by just showing some papers with not showing your fare. That answers the fake picture case.
How does a country effectively enforce this? Below is how they propose doing this. If you don't have any form of verification of your actual age, it's seems like they are just going on what the user says ( self reports). How can a company be found liable if a used lies about their age?
>the days leading to the ban, some teenagers said that they were prompted to verify their ages using a facial analysis feature, but that it gave inaccurate estimates. The law also states that companies cannot ask users to provide government-issued identification as the only way to prove their age because of privacy concerns.
> How can a company be found liable if a used lies about their age?
You make them bleed money when you find they are in violation. They either figure it out or they go under as a company. There isn't a natural law saying companies have a right to exist.
Go and read the actual report of what the eSafety commissioner is requiring.
The company can't be found liable if they have put in reasonable age verification technology, particularly if the user lied about their age or found a way to circumvent the restrictions.
They clearly aren't going by just what the user says as the companies have implemented age verification tools that try to do that detection.
How can seatbelts be enforced? This is preposterous and imbecilic- if there isn't a policeman inside every car checking every minute how will we make sure that people are wearing them. Clearly there is no point in trying!
They are everywhere, they can also be mobile and placed almost anywhere.
These camera are mounted high so they can view down in through the windscreen.
They automatically issue a $1,251 for not wearing one to the license holder.
So far from my experience this has been kind of low impact for adult users with existing accounts. Social media companies obviously have extremely good demographic data on their existing users as targeted marketing and influence is their core business.
Unfortunately this legislation hasn't addressed any of my real concerns with social media (it's the algorithms and engagement farming) and it is creating new problems.
I was in college when this really cool idea came out: a social network database which only college students could join, regulating access to students@*.edu emails, only [obviously: TheFaceBook]. When distant relatives began sending `friend request`s, just a few years later, I left that platform forever.
Seems like local school districts could reintroduce such a platform (perhaps one already exists) for class discussions to continue outside of the classroom... but without the temptations of the outside world [which these u16 bans rightfully seek to limit]. Hyper-walled gardens, actual community-based social spaces, sans predation.
As always, I imagine with the unlimited timelessness of childhood multiple clever work-arounds will persist, regardless of any law. May the cat-and-mouse be merry.
I've used an outbound-only landline, for going on two years; the previous two decades I always carried a work cell phone. It's incredible that even years later, if I happen to hear my former ringtone (used by other people), or hear that familiar `buzzing` sound: I still get anxious feeling like I must respond to these ficticious nobodies...
The portability of the cell phone is IMHO what made it so addictive / disruptive. Back when most computers didn't fit into our pockets society had clearly delineated spaces between online/offline — now everything is connect so nothing is...
I kind of get it, except youtube... which has much more educational, news, and long form content. Also also forcing face/age verification sounds ripe with issues.
It has some educational content, most of it is brain rot like everywhere else though. Open a brand new youtube account and check out what's being pushed by default, you either get room temperature IQ political analysts or "shorts" with softcore porn thumbnails to bait people for a click
Open a new YT account then feed it with [1] for few hours at least then you will unleash the full power of Youtube... unless you missclick even once into some popular blog typically they very clearly aimed at low-IQ people which accidentably might be your kid or somebody else like you know who I mean. But to prevent that slippery slope at least partly, just increase the feeding time of your YT account with the best requests possible which are carefully stacked at [1].
Sure, but then again that's not how most people use youtube in real life. You can trick it into temporarily not being a slop provider but it's a constant battle, and not one a 10-15 years old will engage in, which is to be expected, kids are kids and can't fight multi billion dollar companies hiring the top behavioural scientist of our era to create the most addictive ad delivery mechanism possible
It feels like there is more bot activity then ever before. Reddit is now filled with fresh accounts, suspended accounts and bunch of content that suddenly gets deleted. It doesn't even feel like you are interacting with people anymore.
It goes through numbers, potential ways it's gonna be implemented, and also which other platforms are affected.
For example:
> Dating websites are excluded along with gaming platforms, as are AI chatbots, which have recently made headlines for allegedly encouraging children to kill themselves and for having "sensual" conversations with minors.
It wasn't enough the online pedo or weirdos trying to get your kids through chats or games.
It wasn't enough the instagram meat grinder that leads to depression, social anxiety, etc.
Now we even have to worry about chatbots leading kids to suicide.
What a hell of a world are we building - no wonder people don't want to make kids anymore.
Excessive social media is detrimental (to everyone). Age restrictions are not a good solution, it effectively categorises it as an adult activity, and glorifies it further.
Kids are very good at identifying hypocritical behaviour and scare tactics. It'll end up counterproductive like the D.A.R.E. program.
If the kids are forced out, the adults should be too.
It's a relatively uncontroversial ban, with public support in Aus because of mental health concerns, and key social media sites complying.
VPN's come with their own minimum age 18 T&C's. As do the credit and debit that are usually required somewhere along the line to pay for the services.
Historically, if it's awkward to circumvent most people tend to comply; which means in turn that minority that can figure out a way around it are unlikely to find many of their friends present. While for majority there's unlikely to be much of a draw or peer group pressure to circumvent.
I'm sure Aus gov will monitor, media will highlight problems etc, but would be surprised if it was not actually quit effective.
It doesn't have to be that effective. The point was to get the law passed. Now that it's in effect, there will be iterative steps to make it effective. I think it will eventually lead to all social media users in Australia having to authenticate with their Digital ID, which will be made available to private sector integrators in the 2nd half of 2026.
Although I think that social media causes issues with underdeveloped brains, If this is about confirming age at the point of login, then this is really about identifying everyone and not protecting children. If this is the case, you know they are going to use this data to target people for speech related things.
Absolute joke, most Australian parents will just ID for the kids, if the kids don't figure out how to get around it themselves, especially the typical ipad-kids and their parents.
The average Australian punter is getting absolutely screwed by our current government and all involved parties.
It's funny because Facebook and these social networks are always testing in Australia and New Zealand because it's a whole English-speaking society but it's a bit isolated and far away.
Here is an overview of related restrictions in other countries [1]. Actually, in many European countries, Google does not grant access to Gemini for people under 16yo [2,3].
Look. As gen z person who basically grew up with tech and social media and had it since I was ~12, there is no way that any ban that is not direct id verification will work, this will instead make the forbidden fruit more tasty and teens more tech literate since they will look for ways around the ban. It feels like a lot of older people are more detached to the times when they first got access to Internet and social media and assume that its all dopamine hits and brain rot, while in reality its curiosity for a bigger world beyond school and limited things that you can do while being underage, cheap entertainment, knowledge.
I actually feel that teens shouldn't be on social media at all. But I also don't think I should be able to lord that opinion over other people via fiat.
Sugar is pretty bad for teens as well but I don't think banning that will solve health issues anymore than this will help teens.
Personal decisions > a government trying to be mom
Governments always end up doing the most damage when their control is "for the good of their constituents."
This might seem like a good thing while they're parenting for you on things you agree with, however, there will likely come a time when they do something you don't and by then it will be too late.
I agree with you when I believe a choice can be freely made. But peer pressure as a child is extremely intense, and if you're the one weirdo you know whose parents don't allow them on Snapchat, it can cause lots of strife and probably be ineffective anyway.
Not saying that laws are the reason, but there isn't much childhood peer pressure to smoke weed. There is peer pressure around iMessage in some countries just cause of Apple, rather than kids finding the obvious workarounds.
The banned websites have negatives, but they also have positives too. I hate to think of the young geeks banned from YouTube’s Kahn Academy, Veritasium, Smarter Everyday, …, and all the DIY tutorials.
i agree there are a lot of concerns with allowing teens / children to use social media as it is today without any sort of way to help them benefit from these tools instead of being harmed by them (which is sadly far too common).
but my concern is that will lead to a less educated population. there is positive, life changing learning that can happen on social media. kids finding their tribe by connecting with people like them in other parts of the country / world. kids discovering skills / crafts they become passionate about. heck, even learning how to communicate effectively with others. i think social media is a treasure when it is used correctly.
ofc, i agree with the concerns and ofc the right "solution" is one that enables the positives and minimizes (and ideally eliminates) the negatives. and having social media as a closed, proprietary, centralized product that can't be tweaked (e.g, choose your own custom algorithm, or filter out a "type" of content that you don't want to see, etc.) is the core problem here. a decentralized social media would allow even regulators to apply much more fine-grained controls so that they don't have to remove access entirely.
but sadly bec. we don't have a good way to apply fine grained controls to how we use social media, it seems blanket banning entirely for an entire group of people is the best approach. like, i get why it may be necessary (it seems like most / many australians are currently on board), but i really hope this inspires people to build better social platforms that give more control to users.
This is what happens when there's a lack of robust options for parents to deal with the issue themselves. As a technical person I can prevent my kids from accessing these apps on any of their devices, regardless of whether they're at home or not. But if you're a parent who is not you're pretty much limited to the flawed offerings from Apple and Google, who are financially incentivized to make it as hard and as full of holes as possible.
Anything done "for the kids" is always a scam. When you get asked to use KYC to get on hacker news, just remember you fell for it if you supported this.
I will do everything in my power to keep my kids' connected to their social networks. I have a strongly opposing view: social media is one of the best inventions and there is no way or need to protect people from participating.
With all the negative effects they bring the society has to learn how to live with it instead of pretend fighting.
Controlling access to any substance is a long process, and the motives aren’t always clear at the beginning.
I’m not sure why Australian policymakers chose to take this step now, but regardless of the motive, it feels like a meaningful starting point. Social media’s engagement-driven echo chamber model has contributed to a deeply divided world, and governments stepping in can at least make parents’ jobs a little easier.
I've not seen any mention of how this affect families.
A lot of my family growing up lived in different cities. We kept in touch via social media. PSTN was expensive and impractical. Postal mail was obviously less practical.
Does this new ban move kids to using email to keep in touch with friends and family? Are they now completely isolated from the rest of the world?
> Does this new ban move kids to using email to keep in touch with friends and family?
You had social media but no ability to send DMs?
In an attempt to not deliberately misinterpret you, next to zero of my current ability to keep in touch with anyone in my life via the internet, distant or otherwise, depends on social media, so forgive me if this seems like a strange take. Kids need access to YouTube in order to talk to their family?
> Are they now completely isolated from the rest of the world?
It's only in extremely recent history that anyone, especially kids, had access to the rest of the world in any meaningful way, or at the resolution available now. I don't think it's remotely healthy for adults to concern themselves with the hourly regional issues wherever they're occuring in the world; it costs society a great deal more than it earns imo (but it's very profitable for the companies on this list)
> In an attempt to not deliberately misinterpret you, […] Kids need access to YouTube in order to talk to their family?
Your attempt has failed; obviously I’m not taking about YouTube, but about things like WhatsApp, Telegram, WeChat, Instagram, and other social media which families actually use to talk to each other on a dialy basis.
Perhaps you don’t use these, but most of the world population uses some of these (or something similar) to keep in touch with family and friends.
Heck, even when I was a teen (before smartphones) I kept in touch with friends over social media. We’d even organise meeting up through it.
Out of all of those, only Instagram is on the list (or I have heard has complied despite not being on it).
You seem to be confusing messaging software and social media ?
Do (the others than Instagram) have an algorithmic feed, or (effectively) do not work without making an account ?
I guess that there's also Discord (that isn't on the list but has still complied) that is in an awkward in-between ?
(IMHO both Instagram and Discord ought to be banned anyway, for everyone, because they're deep web platforms that are owned by Meta/Tencent, and are therefore a threat to the open web and liberal democracy.)
This would be a nonstarter in the US. SCOTUS has ruled "minors are entitled to a significant measure of First Amendment protection." (Erznoznik v. City of Jacksonville, 422 U.S. 205 (1975)) This sort of blanket ban would collide with that.
While I'm not sure about this ban, _something_ is causing normally nice, peaceful Australia to be somewhere I don't feel safe anymore. My relatives in Melbourne have left, after being physically attacked and had their property vandalized by mostly young "activist" types who, no doubt, get all their news from social media.
Honestly, this feels like another case where the headline sounds bold, but the real impact will be minimal. Any age-based restriction ends up in the same place: platforms are forced to collect more data just to “prove” someone’s age. When the target group is teenagers, that’s basically a privacy disaster waiting to happen.
From a technical perspective, this is impossible to enforce cleanly. Anyone with even basic internet literacy can bypass it with a VPN + fresh account + throwaway email. And of course, the teens most determined to get around it will be the ones the policy is supposedly protecting. The bigger issue is the false sense of security. Parents and politicians get to feel like something has been “done,” while the actual online risks don’t disappear — they just move somewhere less visible. If the goal is genuinely improving teen mental health, digital literacy and real support systems work far better than regulations that will inevitably leak.
I wonder how many of the people who are against it have young teens. It's easy to rail against the ban, or paint it as some plot to get everyone's IDs, when you're not personally affected by it. As a parent of young teens, I 100% support it.
When I was a teenager I responded to bans by trying to get around them like warning stickers on music.
Talking about the dangers of D&D or the Satanic Panic seemed idiotic to me and still do.
But when people explained why something was bad I would listen. Did their concerns seem legitimate?
I'm 50 and I've never smoked a cigarette. In the movies it looked cool. But I saw older people with horrible health issues and also the smoke smelled horrible and made their breath stink. Those people were not lying to me about the danger of tobacco.
So are people lying about the dangers of social media? But if you think it is bad for teenagers then how do you convince them that it is? I would rather have commercials with teenagers talking about how they were depressed or developed eating disorders or whatever from looking at social media. Then they stopped and now they are happier with more real life interactions.
I can tell you that I deleted my facebook account in 2016 (didn't use it much) and haven't been on instagram in 5 years. I don't miss it at all. All facebook ever did was annoy and anger me.
HackerNews used to be full of moderately smart people. This is basically Reddit level comments.
Think for a moment instead of just accepting whatever the media is telling you to think.
How many social networks are there?
Are some of those decentralised?
Will kids move to unmoderated underground ones in response to this?
Will the government expand these laws now that it achieved a foothold?
Parenting and teaching your kids to think and understand how the world works is how you really solve the problems. Not building weak fences and encouraging government over-reach. Raising and guiding your kids is YOUR responsibility, not the governments.
All this came about because some absolute slog of a parent had their kid kill themselves and blamed social media. Where the hell was he while their kid struggled?!
Obviously you have no kids or live in a remote cabin isolated from society.
Banning social media in principle is like banning the sales of alcohol and other drugs to underage people. Those bans are good for society irrespective of your parenting ability. It helps that those negative things are less accessible to the vulnerable.
Now, how the social media ban is effected in practice is a different point. And people here are rightfully skeptical of ID verification and such things, since that opens the door for way more surveillance outside social media.
I do have kids and they are well adjusted individuals. I spent time parenting them and showing them how the world works.
Turns out the social media drug loses all it's power if you reveal whats behind the curtain. Just like real drugs, dont be scared to show your kids what the consequences are.
I wasn't aware that banning alchohol and drugs to minors had any positive effect tbh. If anything that in itself made them more desirable and sought after.
I "endured" the same simply by virtue of my upbringing: our parents de facto banned not only social media but even just mobile phones until our mid teens.
One purpose of laws us that they clearly state: this is good and this is bad. Many such barriers are cultural, but sometimes they do not work or are actively attacked, so they may be backed with a law.
TIL English teenager isn't necessarily the translation of Dutch tiener. Wikipedia at least says 10–19 for us and 13–19 for English. In German the word teenager is also used and the page gives both definitions on the same page without realising it's self-contradictory
Idk that anyone takes this so literally (as that you're only a teenager if your cardinal age ends in the literal word teen and so twelve is definitely not a teenager), I've always understood it as "in their tens" but that may be my origin
It technically means that, but teen is often synonymous with young adult which is 13-18. The newly an adult period is a year, not two years. 19 year olds are considered to be too old as a default in many teen spaces. https://www.ala.org/yalsa/guidelines/whitepapers/teenspaces
>You may be "in michigan" but are you "from michigan".
I have literally 0 reason to answer this, it has absolutely nothing to do with the conversation, but to placate whatever weird obsession you have, yes. I was born in Michigan.
>Why would you say north america unless you have ties to canada.
Why do you care? Is North America offensive now or something?
I said "North America" because, for the purposes of this specific conversation, it doesn't matter at all. Except to you, apparently. For some unknown reason.
I try not to be super US-centric on international forums. First time someone's ever started questioning me about it, though.
North america encompasses the US, Canada AND MEXICO. Not sure what the age range for "teen" is in canada. If you are not canadian, why are you speaking for canadians. Don't think they even use "teen" in mexico as they speak spanish in mexico.
> I try not to be super US-centric on international forums.
HN is an american forum. You can be US-centric if you want. I give you permission.
The ban is also for anyone who refuses to submit their private data (face scan or government ID) to an unrelated 3rd party company which will invariably store that data with insufficient security.
The ban does not specify how companies are supposed to do it.
Eg Snapchat is not requiring ID (which the average Australian 15yo wouldn't have anyway), they're trying to determine age with the user's camera, and this is trivially spoofed using video played back on another device.
This bit a community discord server of mine where I am a mod last night since we have a large oceanic contingent, somehow NZ got swept up in it too and we scrambled a bit to change our onboarding and other general policies.
Next election is in 2028, so 15 an 16 y.o. will be able to vote. I expect a strong preference in that group, but IIUC Australia has single seat per district, so I'm not sure if that changes the result.
I feel like just making kids lie about our age was pretty effective back in the day. Those of us who lied knew we were going into adult spaces, hid our irl identities, and learned how to behave.
Then Facebook convinced people social media was supposed to be about your "real" identity, which made us sitting ducks for scammers and propaganda. Now we have governments demanding we provide our identity papers before we are allowed to participate.
Frankly, I would have been pissed if this were the case when I was a teen and I got a lot of healthy & useful value out of social media.
That said, some of the subcommunities I've seen created, particularly among young women, seem obviously unhealthy/toxic and regulation is probably needed there. I'm thinking of things like '#edtwt'.
But I also think we need to avoid ruining things for smart, responsible kids by focusing on the worst.
An absurd decision with dangerous second order effects, many of which lead to VPNs and other privacy tools being next, just look at UK hyping and building that up right now. I hope they will vote accordingly when they're of age, not forgetting what liberties were taken away from them in the name of very dubious benefits, easily circumvented, and prone to exposing them to greater danger going through unofficial channels. Trying to really address the issues younger generations are facing is clearly too difficult for the geriatric, decrepit ruling class that just won't let go, and this helps them further every government's ambitions of increasingly regulating the means of communication between people. Actually, it's not that it's difficult, they simply don't care.
Really, I think most people in tech generally believe that getting teens of social media will be a positive thing. The question is how to go about it.
It's understandable, to some extend, that people will protest government interference, but it's also an industry that have repeatedly show itself to be incapable of regulation itself. I don't really see the big surprise, most government are relatively hands of, until you prove that you're incapable of regulating yourself. Most regulation happens after the damage is done.
I do think that 16 is a bit low, I'd like to have seen it be 18, or a complete ban on algorithmically generated feeds (I believe the latter would be the better option).
I have seen a swift uptick in "Australians" negatively posting on social media networks about the new restriction.
Notably the central theme presented by these same "Australians" was that there should be no changes, limits or restrictions to the types of information collected by social media companies, or how they handle such personal information, rather that everything should be exactly as it was... how very convenient.
Some were even so incensed about their personal privacy that they wrote how much they disagree with having to share their SSN with online platforms.
As many of you would already know, mentioning a "SSN" is a give away that the "Australians" are not genuine people. These accounts are perpetuating the lie that Australians must provide a government identity to access these services. While an ID can be used, it's not mandatory and is actually one of the less convenient options, in comparison to 3rd party verification or a face photo.
Seems a bit of a disingenuous argument to complain about taking a photo of one's face for verification, but having no qualms about using the social media network to post photos of oneself for public viewing.
Social media is cigarettes. There are lots of studies showing the negative impacts to say that limiting their reach is probably good for society and individuals.
Just about all arguments against this are the same arguments that would stop governments limiting booze or tabaco
I really hope other nations, including the United States, copy this. Australia proved that it is possible. I think the results will be so overwhelmingly positive that others will take notice. Good job Australia!
Reading "Anxious Generation" is a must for all parents in this day and age.
Isn't it a little early to declare success? I think the bigger worry with the US though is not whether it is technically possible, but whether anyone in power cares to actually help kids versus using this it as an excuse to implement Orwellian surveillance upon citizens.
Alcohol, tobacco and many other products have age restrictions, so do cars and many other products of the modern society. Social media can and should have age restrictions.
This is a nonsense take that gets perpetuated over and over. For some reason.
Purchasing alcohol or buying a car is not the same as verifying your age on an internet property. They aren't even comparable. This is just as dumb as saying "well you have to verify your age to go into a bar". Sure, but does the bartender or salesman who sells you the alcohol completely remember every pixel of your photo or video selfy, permanently? Or do they just remember your face more generally?
The problem with these age verification laws is that they harm everybody, adults and kids. They don't do anything to protect kids and their sole purpose is a way for governments to suppress things they don't like. Any age verification technology (be it age estimation or similar) has a permanent record of the photo ID or video selfies (or whatever you use to prove your age) that you give it. Forever. If these systems didn't have those records, the result would be you having to verify your age every time you visit the website. There is a massive, massive difference between getting alcohol at a bar, or going to a strip club or similar, and providing your photo ID to a bouncer or bartender, who probably won't remember your ID after 5 minutes, versus a computer which permanently remembers it. That is the differentiator.
Surveillance could be part of it, if you let it be. Improved mental health, education, and social outcomes for each generation is also pretty darned important.
I hope it won’t, because the whole thing is just a medium to enable digital ID using fears as a justification, in this time it’s kids.
The whole ‘anxious generation’ isn’t because of social media, it’s because the new generations are hopeless and helpless (incl genz and millennials too), wherever you look in any domain, it’s bleak times waiting ahead for them, boomers fucked them up severely and now want to suppress them with laws and bills and control them because they know for a fact something will snap at this current rate.
For people in an industry that is _built_ on A/B testing, HN sure expects governments to get everything perfect first go with no edge cases or externalities doesn’t it!
I dont like it when government tests in production. I dont think anyone should be happy with governments testing in production, especially when they have already claimed victory, and are doing a world tour to sell the concept to other countries.
Of course it is possible, why would it not? I'm glad this is happening and I'm sure it'll follow in other countries, probably not the in the US though. Frankly I really hope most people just get off social media's grip and start interacting the way we used to.
I've said this before, but if countries want to mandate compliance, they should be required to provide the mechanism for compliance.
The rollout of this has been pretty rough all things considered, much of it because the mechanism for compliance is flawed. Anthony Albanese's latest instgram posts are full of comments from teens saying things like, "how am i still on instagram if you banned us". The primary reason for this is most providers are leveraging age-estimation techniques, because the law specifically states:
> 63DB Use of certain identification material and services
> (1) A provider of an age-restricted social media platform must not:
> (a) collect government-issued identification material
In an effort to prevent identity theft, the bill as originally written(1) was updated(2) to forbid platforms from collecting government IDs as a proof of age. Even if you support the intent of the bill, the design-by-committee approach made the requirements so easy to circumvent that it's effectively security theater.
But thats what this law does not allow according to the head of this chain, specifically government ids are not allowed to prove age, even if you delete them unless I read it wrong
Just telling you the options I was presented with, having to go through the process. I'm not sure what the alternative is for false positive identifaction as a minor.
Should have been done 20 years ago, all the millions of miseries that could have been prevented, if politicians hadn't fallen for the Zuckerberg/Sandberg narrative.
Many of us grew up without social media and turned out to be fine!
Anyone arguing against this ban is delusional what social media does to undeveloped brains. There are plenty of studies to support this as well.
Social media is harmful to children. We are talking about 10 yo having access to non-stop stream of inappropriate content for their age. You can blame the parents but social media is now fact of life that cannot be so easily escaped.
Like buying alcohol, gambling, driving, voting and other similar things which are restricted under particular age, the discussion should be about at what age is safe for children to participate in the public discourse.
I really hope similar controls are implemented across EU.
The only appropriate comment here would be invoking Goodwin Law. Everything else is too mild to describe the journey of former democracies to totalitarian regimes.
Let's not go overboard. While I don't agree with this law, it's not much different from other underage laws that are commonplace: alcohol, tobacco, driving... I don't think it's an indicator of totalitarianism, it's just the same-old lawmaking philosophy updating to new developments.
It has to be read in sequence with other changes in Australia.
The government has been working tirelessly for more than a decade to prevent growing dissent from sweeping the major parties from power.
The government has wrapped itself in the dual flags of nationalism and protecting kids to shield themselves from an enormous volume of rational criticism on this topic.
Changing a law, in and of itself, isnt worrying. Its that minor parties these kids could have supported are facing a triple whammy, kids will be less likely to engage with them online, they have a steeper threshold to pass when accessing the senate, and they have had a large funding changes that disadvantage them.
My personal favourite analogy is gambling. The constant microdosing of dopamine to get you to hang around and spend just a little more ~money~ attention.
Every concern about "teens" is explicitly mirrored by a concern about low-capacity adults, which is why Australia et al are so concerned about "disinformation" and the need to control speech of all kinds. This effort should be seen in that light.
So-called social media is proven to be just a huge scam operation and manipulation mechanism for the ultra-rich robber barons at Silicon Valley. Denying it from kids is same as denying tobacco or alcohol companies sell amd advertise to them. Hopefully future generations have spend their childhood reading, studying and socialising with other kids, not living fake lives and being hunted by slimy adult men. Hopefully they take a one look at this shot and go ”nope, not for me” and do something with their lives.
Good for you Australia. I hope EU follows suit soon.
Society is like poorly written software with lots of patches, new features are added (social media) and then stuff randomly breaks. A fix is eventually deployed, sometimes the fix works; sometimes the fix causes more bugs.
And so we move forward, like Gordon Freeman in unforeseen consequences.
Nobody said nothing as social media and the attention economy took over the world.
"Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” — Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park
Just a reminder that the Australian government has chosen to not ban sports betting advertisements including live odds and crosses to betting companies inside sports broadcasts
that kids watch
And parents have asked the gov to ban
But they won't because tax revenue
So don't try and tell me this government is all about the kids
"It's just kind of pointless, we're just going to create new ways to get on these platforms, so what's the point," said 14-year-old Claire Ni.
Claire Ni concluded it best. They are just going to find new ways. Imagine a kid stopping using something because of the law or government ban. Those lawmakers are just delusional if they think they can pass a law and the kids will stop using social media.
That’s like saying we should let children smoke because as a fifteen year old I was able to acquire cigarettes.
I might have taken up smoking (to be fair I took it up when homeless from being around older homeless people who smoked) but a large cohort of my generation didn’t.
Australia does not have a bill of rights. Our freedoms are guaranteed by our participation in the electoral process which is very high. This government governs with a large majority and the social media legislation is broadly popular with parents and older people.
The law of unintended consequences will apply. The legislation has been written in such a way that there is some flexibility in the application and there are some safeguards but its not directly addressing some of the biggest social harms. It's primary purpose (despite the conspiracies) seems to be populism and being seen to do do something for the kiddies.
The much bigger social problem is gambling which is out of control here. The second, related problem, is the use of techniques and studies by the gambling industry in games and social media to increase engagement which is what is messing with peoples heads. The government does not dare to touch the gambling industry or stop algorithmic placement of content. This would cause immense damage to company profits and create lobbying pressure.
I think you could argue teenagers have a right to discuss political issues in the public forum. That's basically the definition of good citizenship, and (for better or worse) social media is the public forum of the day. Kids don't go from zero rights at 17 to full rights at 18; minors' rights are limited, but they do have rights.
I dunno if that'd fly in Australian courts though.
Well kids can discuss political issues across other discussion boards just not those on the social media sites impacted by the ban. They can also continue to do it say, in person in public.
I think the discussion of political issues in a sensible way on platforms like instagram, tiktok, X, Reddit etc for those ages is perhaps a lower priority than the mental health impacts that those platforms in general provide.
What other discussion boards? They've all been subsumed by Reddit.
I was on Reddit a lot as a teenager. I was the kind of argumentative kid who likes to iron out the wrinkles in their beliefs by defending them, and the internet offers and endless stream of people willing to discuss niche subjects. It had a positive impact on me.
What mental health impacts? We haven't really established that social media has any, writ large. Jonathan Haidt's The Anxious Generation has been very influential in teen social media ban discourse (in fact, I'm not sure the Australian ban would have happened without it), but Haidt never manages to establish a link between social media and depression or anxiety [1]. People just assume social media is really bad for teens, but the extent to which this is true, the proportion of the population for which it is true, and the extent to which social media may actually be valuable to some teens (e.g. to gay kids in conservative towns who are looking for community) is just not established.
I have a real problem with policy that seeks to cut teenagers off from communities they're part of without any interest in establishing the value provided by or the harm caused by those communities.
[1]: Haidt notes that teen hospitalizations related to mental illness have risen since the early 2000s, discounts the recession and climate change as possible explanations, and then just assumes that social media is the only other explanation (it isn't; for instance, teens started getting hospitalized way more after Obamacare lowered the cost of hospital stays). Elsewhere, he's cited a self-report survey indicating that social media use had a high mental health impact on teens, but the indicated impact of social media was greater than the impact of binge drinking, which was greater than the impact of eating fruit, which was greater than the impact of having survived sexual assault (https://bsky.app/profile/michaelhobbes.bsky.social/post/3kxs...). So, that survey is not reliable. Basically, Haidt doesn't actually have any evidence of how bad social media is for teens. He relies on his audience already believing this intuitively.
Interesting to frame this as a bad thing. As a parent, I would take that as a feature, not a bug. To me this is very suspicious why there seem to be so many people here, who I am assuming are mostly adults, advocating so strongly strongly for <16 olds told be on social media, as if it was something they need.
The “social media version of war crimes” is just .. war crimes.
15 - 16 year olds will grow up to inherit the war crimes of their state. The liabilities of the state are the responsibility of every single citizen.
And, let us not forget, that a government is always and only ever held accountable to its citizens if those citizens are well informed.
“Protecting children” is one thing. But a state that feels the need to defend itself from children - by mass murdering them at scale - is another thing entirely. Let us also not forget that the Australian government is a wholesale violator of human rights, and has committed genocide and participated in heinous war crimes with impunity, pretty much since its inception. This is a nation which was still practicing forced sterilization of cultures its ruling classes deemed inferior, well into the 1980’s. This is a nation that literally got away with the modern worlds’ first genocide.
That state of affairs is never going to change if there are a generation of bootlickers, raised by the state, to never question the state.
There will be a generation of Australians, in 3 or 4 years time, who will either strongly resist the totalitarian-authoritarian actions of their state - or they’ll participate in them.
any kid who cant figure out how to slide right by a government hack is a looser, and while we should feel a little bad for both of them, presumambly someone will take pity and fix there phones up , and let them know that there is sex and everything on the net
I don't necessarily think this as it is will "work" but I'm all for someone at least trying to do something. Yes, there are a bunch of externalities and potential second order effects that don't sit well with me but, at this stage, I'd rather some attempt at trying to regulate than throwing up hands and saying its all too hard.
Also, dont buy the this is the slippery slope to more authoritarianism etc. as an argument against it because if they're going to go down that path they would anyway whether they did this or not frankly
Anyway, it might not work 100% of the time, hell maybe even <10% but any additional friction to knock this kind of social media from being so ubiquitous is a small victory in my eyes
"I don't necessarily think this as it is will work" != "harmful" or "dumb"
Like do warnings on cigarettes work? I definitely saw a guy move cigs to older pack he had from china because he didn't like ugly warning picture on the new pack. Do mandatory id checks work? If I saw some kids get their hands on smokes does it mean "it doesn't work" and therefore there should be no limits on big tobacco?
I like to win another poster said about addiction to cigarettes other things. The world drugs was an absolute failure. I think that is how this is going to go, lots of regulation and expenditure for something that's going to ultimately fail. Can't really work unless it's a little authoritarian, such as permitting Websites to only allow youth who have a permit. But I am in agreement, we need to do more, and we can't really depend on the parents anymore. So I think in a way, we have to make it costly for children to do things they're not supposed to be doing, but without disadvantaging certain groups.
Regulating dark patterns and recommendation algorithms would benefit everyone. Banning social media until age 16 and then suddenly allowing teenagers into the toxic social media world feels half-baked and somewhat misses the point to me.
> Teen account holders under 18 everywhere will get a version of Reddit with more protective safety features built in, including stricter chat settings, no ads personalization or sensitive ads, and no access to NSFW or mature content.
Starting Jan 1, 2026, Texas SB2420 is also requiring ID verification for all app stores. It's not about "think of the children", it's lazy parents who chose unAmerican totalitarianism and billionaires weaponizing government to eliminate privacy and make data brokers rich.
I'll take on the low status role of not knowing if this is a good idea.
I've seen the data showing teen sanity nose diving concurrently with social media penetration. I'm also a borderline kook libertarian.
So I appreciate the arguments in both directions, and I think the only way to find out if it works is to try it out. Preferably on a remote isolated island without nuclear weapons, in case things go badly :)
This has nothing to do with protecting kids...This is the classic "OH WONT SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!" meme that governments fall back on to terrorize and coerce the herd. There's an obvious push by neo-liberals to implement a digital application (ID) that they can use to "authorize". What the UK and Australia and the US homeland security really want is the ability to see a troublemaker and to toggle a switch on their digital certificate\token to dissociate them from the internet. No doubt they've got legions of Keycloak systems stood up and ready.
Now, all we have to do is mandate that you pass a psychiatric test in order to use social media or LLMs. In this way, we can protect the mentally disabled. People are killing themselves after going on sites like Reddit. It's too dangerous to the mentally disabled.
Yay for the Aussie government. Hope the sociopath tech bros take notice and clean up their toxic products. And the little tech bros protesting here.
The Aussies passed strict gun control laws in 1996 .. suicides and homicides decreased significantly. Another field where we Leaders of the Free world (or not) can learn from the "World down under"!
Saw a screenshot last night of someone who can't get into JIRA (or some other Atlassian product) until they either submit two forms of government ID or record a face scan. Seems like a great and effective initiative /s
Text of the screen:
"Your Atlassian account is not age verified.
Laws in your country require us to verify your age before accessing some products, including Jira and Confluence. This process takes 5-10 minutes. This can be done using two pieces of government ID or by performing a face scan."
I think if we are going to ban people under 16 from social media, we should also ban people over 70 from social media.
At least as much mental and societal damage is done by elderly falling for bigoted, scammy, manipulative nonsense online than by teenagers having their self-esteem lowered.
As recent holiday gatherings have shown us, the young handle social media far better then the elderly.
Not really, we just say the parents are more attuned to their child then the national government. I love the dystopian argument that without age laws parents would be out buying cigarettes and booze.
A lot of the criticism is based on the concept that it won't be technically watertight. But the key is that it doesn't have to be watertight to work. Social media is all about network effects. Once most kids are on there, everyone has to be on there. If you knock the percentage down far enough, you break the network effect to the point where those who don't want to don't feel pressured to. If that is all it does, it's a benefit.
My concerns about this are that it will lead to
(a) normalising people uploading identification documents and hence lead to people becoming victims of scams. This won't be just kids - scammers will be challenging all kinds of people including vulnerable elderly people saying "this is why we need your id". People are going to lose their entire life savings because of this law.
(b) a small fraction of kids branching off into fringe networks that are off the radar and will take them to very dark places very quickly.
Because it's politically unattractive, I don't think enough attention has been given to the harms that will flow from these laws.
Well, yes but the other problem is this is putting authoritarians in charge of more stuff. I had a comment comparing this to allowing people to eat too much food and that is literally where the logical outcome of this sort of thinking goes - it happens in practice, that isn't some sort of theoretical risk. The more the government decides what people can and can't want to do the worse the potential gets when they make mistakes. And this is further normalising the government making decisions about speech where they have every incentive and tendency to shut down people who tell inconvenient and important truths.
The risks are not worth the rewards of half-heatedly trying to stop kids communicating with other kids. They're still going to bully each other and what have you. They're still going to develop unrealistic expectations. They're probably even still going to use social media in practice.
That is an argument and worth monitoring, but IMO it's not a strong enough argument to stop this.
This sort of ban is the same as existing laws banning the sale and consumption of alcohol or driving until kids are of age they will (on average) have sufficient maturity to handle the responsibility. Something we accept.
Kids are not banned from digital communication. My daughter can still send text messages and make phone calls.
Kids are not banned from the consuming content on those platforms. They simply can't have an account to create their own content as it was too often abused. For example, my 12yo daughter was asked by a friend to message bomb and abuse a 12yo her friend had a crush on. That's mild compared to some of the stories I've heard from platforms like Facebook, and between about 10 - 16 many kids are just nasty.
I believe that the line in the sand over which platforms this applies to is the ones that leverage account history to supercharge the already addictive behaviours caused by UI designs optimised to manipulate your attention and direct your purchasing power towards whoever is paying them. Something kids are particularly vulnerable to. The algorithm doesn't care if it is pushing you towards radical content as long as you are watching it for as many hours in a day as possible.
How long will it take them to ban communications ?
A big reason they are pushing this is Cyberbullying....yet a recent death in the news this week, the kid was literally bullied/sextorted via SMS....not social media.
Without banning SMS and possibly calls as well, it debunks this argument
That's the slippery slope fallacy. You assert that communications will be banned as a consequence of this, but provide no evidence that this will cause the banning of all communications.
The assertion is not that something will inevitably happen because of this other than the further normalization of government authority over individual autonomy. That is an inherent result of this, as well as the prohibition of sale of alcohol and drugs to kids. You can argue on and on whether or not these are good, righteous, moral laws, but you cannot deny the intrinsic fact that widespread acceptance and even support of widening the scope of government control normalizes government control
Government control is the only way to address corporate abuse, because they are the only body that have both enough power (to restrain corporations) and the possibility of being influenced by voters. Too much government control and you have a problem. Too little and you have no safeguard against bad actors.
Government already had the control. It's enforcing the will of the people, and the parents DO want this. So I don't see the issue.
Not sure who you have spoken to, but I don't know one single parent who wanted this. In fact most of them have said they will assist their kids to bypass it.
> How long will it take them to ban communications ?
Just ban Australia themselves.
> A big reason they are pushing this is Cyberbullying
Oh really now? It has been going on for so many years... A big reason they've been pushing this is it impacts their own pockets i.e. the traditional media companies.
Well I should have worded it "A big reason the say they are banning it is Cyberbullying" , I don't believe that at all, but you are 100% correct, they hate big tech as it always beats our corrupt, biased and inept traditional media.
Bullying is not new and was performed via sms before the internet. Social media however allows for easier targeting especially for bad actors that are not in the kid’s friend/acquaintance group.
> Bullying is not new and was performed via sms before the internet.
Pretty sure the internet was a thing well before kids got dumb phones.
> Pretty sure the internet was a thing well before kids got dumb phones.
The internet has evolved meaningfully over the last 10 years, even. Evolved might be generous, though.
Yeah, myspace was already dead and buried 10 years ago and we’d all stopped using msn/aim and moved to other platforms by that point
That is true. The ubiquitous mobile internet and social media I should have said.
I remember when a bully would have to go up to you themselves to mete out whatever harassment, and you could avoid a lot of it by just being aware and avoiding that particular person.
Juxtapose that with today, where any one bully can create dozens of accounts to bully in a swarm, and the bully has constant access to you from your own pocket. Also, a person in Minsk or Timbuktu or whatever couldn't just come up to your house in the middle of the night to harass you out of boredom.
This "we could do X before computers, why are we trying to ban X-with-computers now?" line of arguments is just intellectually lazy. If a bad behavior was well moderated in the past because it was labor or resource intensive, the sudden removal of those constraints is a material change that demands revisiting. Put another way, if a constraint stops working, we should change constraints, not just do the old constraint with a confused expression on our faces.
You can do all of this with SMS.
Kids know how to download or use free texting apps and sites, giving them access to potentially thousands of different numbers from which they can engage in harassment campaigns. In fact, it's an incredibly common tactic.
Similarly, someone from Minsk and Timbuktu can do the same thing, they have access to the same tools.
My point was not "oh, social media bullying is some kind of special case compared to other ways kids today bully their peers". My point was "modern bullying is different from historic bullying, and dismissing modern bullying as the same as historic bullying is intellectually lazy"
> Bullying is not new and was performed via sms before the internet
I seem to remember real bullies would do it to your face before the internet. Not just anyone behind a keyboard.
Funny enough, adults are also prone to bullying in large groups online. This does not go away later in life.
That is true and we have certainly seen our fair share of that.
Adults are however also better equipped to deal with that, especially if they have not been subjected to such abuse as children. It is worth noting that online bullying is however not the most serious matter here, rather (in my mind at least) it is the systematic targeting of kids/teenagers to get inside their head and get them to perform violent acts against themselves or others around them.
This appears to be a slippery slope argument: if they ban specific algorithmic social media platforms that have a verified extremely negative effect on children, soon they'll ban all communications.
It could happen that they ban all communications, but if you think so, it needs its own argument; it can't hang off the social media ban. Otherwise it is like saying that if they ban children from drinking beer, soon they'll ban them from drinking liquids.
> How long will it take them to ban communications?
Following your reasoning:
Alcohol is banned for children. How long until they ban all drinks?
Driving is banned for children. How long until they ban all self-directed transport?
Voting is banned for children. How long until they pan all political opinion?
No. Just no.
All those services are wall-gardened so without an account, you already cannot consume the contents.
I feel like people are either arguing in bad faith, or we’re trying to talk to fish about the water. Its so obvious to me that people are going to get their identities stolen and the internet is going to get so much worse that I can’t understand how someone would think otherwise.
That’s a choice made by those services. They can change it.
> That’s a choice made by those services. They can change it.
Why do these services have to lose? That's a choice made by this country's government. They can change it.
They’ll lose revenue in Australia. If more governments copy this move, they’ll lose revenue there too.
> If more governments copy this move, they’ll lose revenue there too.
That's like saying every government should copy the new tariffs too. If only it was so simple...
> They’ll lose revenue in Australia.
Why is it always 1-way? Australia can also lose people and lose people's interest.
Lol you think people are going to leave Australia because their kids cant go on Tiktok?
Well, who knows what they will be doing if it is not Tiktok. Hopefully they will pick up a book, but doubtful. They need a way to communicate with their peers.
I'm not seeing how this stops kids from communicating with their peers. That seems like a bad-faith argument as they can send an SMS, make phone calls, send emails, meet in-person, play video games, etc. The things many of us grew up doing with our friends.
Yes, I did those things in 2000. Except when I look at the city I grew up in, it is no longer safe for kids, and kids do not even go outside anymore, and I do not think social media is at fault here.
BTW SMS and phone calls cost money.
Sending e-mails was not a thing even when I was a kid, 25 years ago.
Playing video games, yeah well, that may be the only thing where they may communicate. Except that is going down in the shitters too these days. Say "shit" or "fuck" (especially) and get banned from chat for days.
> Except when I look at the city I grew up in, it is no longer safe for kids, and kids do not even go outside anymore
Which city? I ask because I am raising my kids in Chicago. It is far safer than when I was a child and I was under the impression that most cities are far safer. We also have plenty of kids playing outside in our neighborhood. I'm not saying you are wrong, but my lived experience is significantly different.
> BTW SMS and phone calls cost money.
That depends on where you are and what network you are using. That same would go for using social media sites which require internet connection.
> Sending e-mails was not a thing even when I was a kid, 25 years ago.
I was also a kid 25 years ago and we absolutely sent emails.
> Which city?
I prefer not to disclose it (somewhere in Central Europe), but there have been extensive discussions here on HN about how many modern cities have become increasingly hostile to children because their design prioritizes cars over walkability and accessible public spaces. The concerns I am referring to stem directly from that context.
> That depends on where you are and what network you are using.
In my country, prepaid SIM cards still charge per call and per SMS. The alternative is a monthly plan, which at least for young people without their own income was not really financially practical. Back then, even adults did not use these monthly plans, if it was even available at the time here.
> I was also a kid 25 years ago and we absolutely sent emails.
That is interesting, because email never became a popular medium among kids where I grew up. What was popular, however, were synchronous, real-time forms of communication: in-game chat, ICQ, and especially MSN Messenger (I miss those days), and a local web-based chat platform that many of us used. Email, by contrast, felt slow, so we only used it occasionally, for example, when I used it to check up on someone to finally get on Yahoo Chat.
Do not get me wrong, when I was a kid we were always outside, hanging out in abandoned buildings that are long gone now, for example, and I barely see any kids running outside together in groups like we used to. They are probably inside playing games or something. :P
(There are still many playgrounds where you can see very young children playing with their parents. But they are way too young to use a computer or to be left alone, even, so I am not referring to them.)
May I ask where you are from? The contrast is quite interesting, and I would like to hear more.
Families aren't going to move because their teens can't use social media.
I am not sure I understand how it is relevant to my comment.
No, about half of them (mostly) aren't : Reddit, YouTube, Twitch...
(That's also not what «walled garden» means. You're thinking about «deep web».)
> I believe that the line in the sand over which platforms this applies to is the ones that
You know a law is broken when its definition is defined by random people "knowing" where and how it applies.
> This sort of ban is the same as existing laws banning the sale and consumption of alcohol or driving
No it's not. Is every social media platform banned? How is it defined? This is the equivalent of going into a supermarket with a "kids" alcohol section and 1 for everyone else hand-picked by whoever in charge.
Like the worlds richest man claiming to be a free speech absolutist. Because you just know the sappy fuck has your best interests at heart.
> You know a law is broken when its definition is defined by random people "knowing" where and how it applies.
These are government regulations regarding kids. Nothing new here, we’ve been regulating what you can market to kids for decades. I’m not buying a slippery slope argument.
As a parent myself, it definitely helps when you can collectively avoid having your kids on these platforms. I can’t express how much easier it is to restrict it and not seem like a kook when authorities are also on board.
> These are government regulations regarding kids.
No, they aren't just that, because they are government regulations requiring everyone wanting access to something that cannot be marketed to children under the rules to prove that they are not a child, which is not inherently essential to a regulation of what can be marketed to children.
There is a difference between regulating what can be marketed to children and mandating that vendors secure proof that every user is not a child.
(Just as there is a difference between prohibiting knowingly supplying terrorists and requiring every seller to conduct a detailed background check of every customer to assure that they are not a terrorist.)
It actually doesn't say they must verify ID. It says "reasonable steps". Actually, it says they must NOT verify ID unless they also have a way to do it without verifying ID. The fine for requiring an ID upload is the same as the fine for letting minors on the platform (30k penalty units, whatever that means).
Of course, nobody is sure what "reasonable steps" actually means, other than a selfie or ID upload.
Here is the text of the bill: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display....
A penalty unit is an inflation-indexed, revenue-indexed fine.
alcohol, cigarettes?..
It's different. You show an ID card to a human if you don't look old enough. They look at it and return it. The ID card doesn't get scanned or tied to all your future recreational drug purchases - you don't have an account or a trail that identifies you.
When uploading ID documents, your account gets tied to your real world identity. That's not a precedent the government should be setting, because private entities having an excuse (the law) to require identification erodes privacy, and because in the future other services could be required to ask for an identification, too. Yes, it's the slippery slope (aka "boiling the frog") argument, but that's how laws that erode privacy evolve - step by step.
Now it's account for social media, then it's porn sites, then it's forums where you might see porn or discussions on suicide, drugs or anything deemed morally hazardous. They might require an ID just to view the site or require the site to not make it public. If (or "when", if we don't oppose such laws) enough countries mandate something like this, most sites will likely require an account for all content, regardless of where the person is located, as otherwise they'll likely have to prove that they've not only geolocated the IP of the visitor, but checked that they weren't using VPNs, Tor or similar services.
As for using zero-knowledge proofs and similar technology to make it less infringing on privacy - I very much doubt the government (any government) to implement this with 100% privacy and security.
> they look at it and return it. The ID card doesn't get scanned
Actually in Australia, IDs usually do get scanned and stored. About the same time I was getting too old for clubs, they were starting to introduce ID scanners. You line up, hand over your driver's licence or passport, they slap it on a wall-mounted scanner, the scan goes into a database and in you go. No scan, no entry. Nowadays I think they just use phone/tablet scanners.
Parent of kids old enough to go clubbing, and have been to a few venues in the city myself recently because of that. Have also worked on this tech in a small capacity in government.
Yes, handheld is now used. If you use the digital licences app on your phone in NSW/QLD the licence details are picked up by a QR code and cross verified via an auth API with Services NSW / TMR QLD. You are also checked against a database of banned patrons, against court ordered exclusions, and police issued exclusions. If you use the physical licence, an extra step of ID —> licence details extracted occurs, then the same process is followed.
I agree that people will lose their identity online if age checks become normalised. That’s not been the case with the club and inner city alcohol venues checks.
Aren't those things organised the same way Apple face id is organised where the app itself can't get the biometric information, they just get a yes or no? That would be stupid as hell.
In Finland the government has allowed banks to offer (2fa) identification services to those that are using their services. If I sign into a government site using my banking ID, the bank gets paid for providing the service. To my understanding none of my actual ID information is transferred to a party wanting to identify me.
The Linkedin 'validate your identity' was the first time i was asked to actually take a picture of my passport/scan the chip. I'll refuse until they'll allow me to identify with my banking ID.
This must be an exception, and not a rule. I've lived in Melbourne for years, and have never had my drivers license scanned.
In some bars and clubs in various countries it's common for the door staff to take your ID, hold it up to the security camera, then return it before you can go in. I've seen it in France and the UK. The reason I've been given is so that anyone who causes trouble can be identified for potential prosecution.
This has been the case in Canada for 20 years
In the US they also get scanned and stored.
> Now it's account for social media, then it's porn sites
Actually, in lots of places it was porn sites first, but...
> As for using zero-knowledge proofs and similar technology to make it less infringing on privacy - I very much doubt the government (any government) to implement this with 100% privacy and security.
I wish they did, that would be huge.
They scan IDs at every gas station I've bought a lottery ticket in now for at least a year or two. US.
Yes, but those are in the physical world. [1] In digital realm, having to verify your ID has way more consequences. My passport has been leaked and I have a “quick cash loan” in my name as a result of that.
---
[1]: Tangentially, those are trivially circumvented in many countries. When I was a teenager in St. Petersburg, we’ve used a “duty free delivery service”, which (I suppose) just stocked liquor at the duty free shop on the border with Finland, and then sold it. Not sure how legal was the core premise (probably not), but we used it because their couriers didn’t even pretend they need to check our passports (definitely illegal).
In many countries, alcohol is available in grocery delivery services. Couriers happily leave your order at the doorstep even though they are supposed to check your ID. In many other countries, even buying in-store is possible (e.g. Japan, where in any konbini you can just press a button on screen saying “yes, I’m 21”).
So stupid. An image of an ID should never be a replacement for the actual ID for future use. I hope that loan was easy to dispute.
I hope it will be! The creditor says something along the lines of “you’ve confirmed your phone number using SMS code so it must be you; no, we won’t tell you which number we’ve sent the code to, that would be privacy violation”. I’ve tried everything I could do online and nah, nobody really cares.
I think I still can dispute it in court, but for that I’ll have to go back to Russia. (I could hire a lawyer, but the amount is like $300.)
We're literally at the point where we have KYC laws just to post on the internet.
The slippery slope is long behind us, we're already at the bottom.
Oh, we can go bottomer.
I thought you had to use your real name when posting on USENET back in the day before spoofing.
No. What is this revisionist nonsense? Where the hell did you think the meme of "On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog" came from? Conventional wisdom was alias up, or maintain a well-known handle. Do not use or share personal info. Ever.
Once you hit rock-bottom, it's time to bring out the jackhammer.
First they came for the people who worry about slippery slopes. I didn't speak out because I don't worry about slippery slopes. And that's that.
The problem is that it's a government regulation regarding everyone, because now everyone must prove that they're not a subject of this new law.
Do you think there should there be police on every corner you must submit your ID to to prove you're not an illegal immigrant?
Is that not literally what everyone has to do in order to consume alcohol?
Imagine having to show your ID demonstrating you’re not subject to the law punishing you for driving a car without a driving license.
I don't have to scan my face, upload my ID and share my biometric data with multiple 3rd parties, who will then lose and leak my private data, every time I drive a car.
This law isn't letting anyone use social media freely until they're suspected of not being an adult, at which point they have to age verify. It requires everyone to identify themselves whenever they want to view, interact, reply or share content on the internet.
This is not true. Its users suspected to be underage which will be asked.
Additionally, the law makes no judgement on the technology used to identify age, just that social media companies need to make an effort. I suspect that companies will not want to deal with the data security issues (very illegal to share pictures of underage people without consent), and will not be "sharing" with 3rd parties.
To comply with the law, platforms are gatekeeping content they deem controversial/NSFW/inappropriate/inconvenient behind age verification walls.
Everyone who wants to view, interact with or share that content has to verify their age to do so.
> I suspect that companies will not want to deal with the data security issues (very illegal to share pictures of underage people without consent), and will not be "sharing" with 3rd parties.
There are countless instances of exactly this happening, over and over again, not to mention that it's the way age verification's implemented now nearly everywhere lol
That’s actually part of the problem.
Pretty much every company will contract a 3rd party service to perform those checks, making sure they get as much bang for as little buck as possible. Said services are usually the weak link that shares the data with others, often through PNGs in public buckets so that Russian teenagers have an easy job CURLing them.
If the government took security seriously, it’d endorse a solution and then take responsibility for it, given it came up with the law in the first place.
The government isn't helping you, they just pushed every child in Australia to un-moderated and decentralised social networks. Complete free for alls.
4chan, Mastedon, BlueSky, PeerTube, Pixelfed
They have millions of users. They're about to get more.
No, you can't block these. No, you can't order these to do anything.
This idea that regulation fails to destroy industries is farcical. Most examples of “failed regulation” like American prohibition were runaway successes as public policy. Whether it is good or desirable is a different question.
The idea that someone is going to make an engaging experience on a “decentralized” network is honestly a bit silly to me. The market potential of this business is low. Decentralized networks with much larger incentives have failed to capture critical mass.
There will be side effects, but social media has been so ridiculously corrosive to the welfare of teenagers that I can’t imagine a ban would be worse.
>Most examples of “failed regulation” like American prohibition were runaway successes as public policy.
You pick one of the worst examples? Prohibition drove a black market for spirits . the 21st amendment repealed it because the government missed out on hundreds of thousands in taxes.
The reason to make the law and repeal it were both awful. The lessons learned were all wrong. It's just awful all around (and I speak as someone that doesn't really drink much).
Yeah, this is absolutely one post hoc interpretation of it. The black market for spirits absolutely pales in comparison to public health and legal data, which conclusively show that second order effects of drinking like liver disease, public intoxication, and domestic violence plummeted.
This prohibition era retcon is a way to justify the fact that people like to drink and there were many people who stood to make money on re-legalization.
Which is why I said the question of it being a good thing is different. I encourage you to look at the data, as someone who also enjoys to drink.
Government bans are surprisingly effective in most developed countries.
"success" can be viewed in different lenses. In your lens of "did it make America healthier", sure. I wouldn't be surprised.
My lens is "did America actually learn anything valuable from this period?". And all I see is "We The Government are fine poisoning our citizens as long as we profit from it". A lesson that passed on to cigarettes, then hard drugs, then fast food (which persists to this day), and now with social media. Then The Government wonders why no one trusts them to do the right thing.
In that lens, I'd say prohibition and its downstream effects on how to regulate in general was absolutely awful and damning.
That’s a fair interpretation! I meant in terms of the stated goals of the Prohibitionist movement. I imagine they would agree with both of us (and be very angry about it)
> poisoning our citizens
*allowing our citizens to make their own choices about what they consume
Is that what happened with cigarettes?
Remember how pervasive cigarette ads used to be?
Human behavior is variable and can be influenced, even against our best interest.
At what point do we acknowledge advertising as a form of psychological attack that causes people to do harmful things they wouldn't otherwise do?
The government's role in this imo shouldn't be to allow corporations to try to convince people to hurt themselves and then to sell them things to hurt themselves with, but then turn around and restrict people's rights to slow down the self harm. Rather I believe the government should seek to annihilate corporations that try to harm the population.
Is not the implicit relationship between corporations, people, and government, such that corporations want to be allowed to exploit a population for profit in return for some nominal good, and the government allows that only so long as the good outweighs the harm?
Why not?
May I interest you in my ReVitaleZ water? Every bottle is energized with radium!
I've got a marketing campaign ready that will sweep the nation and convince millions to ReVitaleZ!
Oh, nothing like a little radiation fear mongering to convince the public they need government approval for every single drop of drink and byte of food we put into our bodies. It's for our own good, after all!
Meanwhile, years after the actual Radithor radium water [1] scandal, the very same government was merrily blowing up atomic bombs in open air, in the desert [2].
And even today there are crazy people around the world happily consuming radioactive gas in specially designed spas [3]. They should be locked up for their own good, the government always knows better!
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radithor
[2] https://www.pbssocal.org/shows/artbound/downwind-upshot-knot...
[3] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9073685/
Nothing like a snakeoil-monger bemoaning pesky government regulations with misguided exaggerating of the dangers of Big Government.
I'm shocked the same government which supports global warming and mass species extinction, and which threatens to bomb "shithole countries" "back to the Stone age", has a less than perfect attitude about nuclear weapons. Shocked I say!
Next I suppose you'll say that this same government hasn't clamped down hard on coal power plants which, in addition to their CO2 emissions, generates ash which destroys waterways, kills people, and is full of radioactive waste?
I'm so glad our governments always know better than that!
It would be a shame if food and drug laws were in place mostly because even rich people and politicians can't ensure their food and drugs are safe.
It's time to take my protein powder supplements. I'm glad the government inspects every manufacturer so I don't have to worry about doing my own lead tests each time I buy some. Thank you Orrin Hatch for your diligence!
> The idea that someone is going to make an engaging experience on a “decentralized” network is honestly a bit silly to me. The market potential of this business is low. Decentralized networks with much larger incentives have failed to capture critical mass.
When decentralized networks win, they often win so big that they become invisible. AOL is dead, the web isn't. Email, the global telephone network, the internet itself, these are all decentralized networks.
The hardest part of doing this for social media is actually discovery. It's easier to show people an "engaging" feed when your algorithm has access to the full firehose to select from. But that doesn't mean doing it in a decentralized way is impossible, and if you pass a law that drives people away from centralized services, the incentive to do it goes up.
The “engaging experience” is the entire problem. The fact that it’s harder to do addiction engineering on a decentralized network is a feature.
Aaannd then the mask came off, proving you were a moralistic authoritarian. I suppose you support cartels destabilizing entire nation-states with billions of criminal funds too
As others have mentioned it's the critical mass and the algorithmically-addicting dopamine treadmills that are the problem this law seeks to address.
What social networks are these? If they aren't complying with the law, they can (and should be) blocked.
You're also missing what folks keep saying: the network effect isn't there. It needs to be popular enough that there's social pressure to be there. If it's that large, it's going to be large enough to be on the radar and then be under enforcement.
Slippery-slope arguments, for the most part, exist to fear monger folks away from change, even when the argument itself is non-sensical.
>What social networks are these?
well for one: I find it humorous how this law has an exception for Roblox. That really speaks to how up to date lawmakers are on the situation (or worse: how easy it was for Roblox to pay them off). I don't see how it's a slippery slope when the corruption is before our very eyes.
Each company was required to put a statement to the eSafety commission explaining why they should be exempt from the law, even GitHub. The eSafety commission also have an open monitoring period where they'll repeal the law if it isn't working as intended, and will release research.
I don't think it's just corruption, there are people who are trying to do the right thing, even if flawed.
Roblox AND DISCORD. Somehow YouTube is considered “dangerous” though.
YouTube didn’t make it through because of how it actively pushes alpha male crap at teenage boys. The Tate brothers and others who push the whole toxic masculinity, man are superior, men must protect women even from themselves, to be a man you must be able to fight, men are owed a position of power and women should be subservient, etc. It was a very strong feature in the early debate, and something educators put in as part of their submission as being an extremely noticeable shift for young men, and those same young men quite consistently stating the same content they viewed.
YouTube’s tendency to push extreme rabbit holes and funnel towards extremism and conservatism in young men is what led to them being included.
"YouTube is targeted for a ban because it shows children conservative viewpoints" seems somehow simultaneously an obvious free speech violation and a proper own-goal for the conservatives pushing these rules.
You seem to be telling on yourself if you think Andrew Tate's viewpoints are representative of conversative viewpoints and not just toxic misogyny.
Anyone can find specific things to dispute about Tate's views, but "traditional gender roles exist for a reason" is obviously not the position associated with the left.
You're putting Tate's views in an overly good light with the way you represent it. "traditional gender roles exist for a reason" is the very lightest possible way you can phrase his viewpoint.
He hates women, to the point of trafficking them. He's a predator and he spreads hate, and it reflects poorly on conservatives if they feel that represents their political views.
There is a generic flaw in humanity that controversy brings popularity. The result is that if you take the core of something popular (e.g. the political beliefs of half the population) and then sprinkle some rage bait on top of it, you'll have an audience. This is the business model for the likes of Tate.
The problem is, it's also an asymmetric weapon when you try to ban that unevenly. If you censor Tate but not the likes of Kendi who use the same tricks, you're saying that it's fine for one side to play dirty but not the other, and that's how you get people mad. Which plays right into the hands of the demagogues.
So all you have to do is achieve perfect balance and censor only the bad things from both sides, right? Except that that's one of the things humans are incapable of actually doing, because of the intensely powerful incentive to censor the things you don't like more than the things you do, if anyone holds that power.
Which is why we have free speech. Because it's better to let every idiot flap their trap than to let anyone else decide who can't. And if you don't like what someone is saying, maybe try refuting it with arguments instead of trying to silence them.
"YouTube is targeted because it shows children hate content, which happens to be a popular viewpoint of conservatives."
Fixed that for you.
"YouTube didn’t make it through because of how it actively pushes alpha male crap at teenage boys"
Which previously parents could blocking using the parental tools. Now they cannot because logged out will still show said videos.
The government are idiots
YouTube is just a content hose though and it does not care what it shows you, you can go down some dark routes with YouTube just by letting it play.
>Slippery-slope arguments,
Slippery slope arguments exist because the act of governing has the tendency to converge on ratchet effects. It never bloody loosens, do every damn inch has to be treated with maximal resistance.
Sure, except that for the most part conservatives seem to be happy to watch their rights slide right down a hill when conservatives are in charge. See the entirety of US politics at this point.
Society already puts limits on children's access to media, their access to addictive substances, advertising that's allowed to be shown to them, etc. The internet, and especially social media, is a gap in the existing limits. This isn't a slippery slope, it's adding a missing set of compliance.
Social media is: media, addictive, shows unregulated advertising to them, is psychologically harmful, and their algorithms have been radicalizing them.
Regulation is absolutely needed here. I'd rather see tight regulation, rather than being blocked completely, but social media companies have been highly resistant to that. For example, they shouldn't be allowed to show advertising, they shouldn't be able to do tracking, they shouldn't be allowed to have an algorithm led feed, notifications should be mostly off by default (and any notification that is shown to primarily exist to make you open the app should be disallowed).
The problem with changes like that is that they destroy the network's engagement and remove their profit, and for the most part, it's changes adults would like to see as well. Making those changes for some countries laws would push other countries to introduce similar laws and not limit them to children.
>What social networks are these?
That's the point, there are always fringe social networks you don't know, and they are probably x10 toxic than reddit comment sections.
It's a bad point though, because those are fringe and don't have network effects that would pressure most children to join them. You become a social outcast if you don't participate in <popular social media of the day>, but the kids participating on fringe sites are likely already outcasts.
We should be aiming to remove purposely addictive things from our children's lives, and all currently popular social media platforms are addiction machines.
So it “helps” so you don’t have to be the bad guy to your kids and instead now everyone needs to give the government a method to tie your online presence and speech to you.
> As a parent myself, it definitely helps when you can collectively avoid having your kids on these platforms. I can’t express how much easier it is to restrict it and not seem like a kook when authorities are also on board.
This pattern of thought is exactly the issue. Stop offloading parenting of your children to government! That won't end well for neither children nor adults.
It takes a village to raise a kid.
You cannot parent in isolation and outside of society. How society is structured has an huge impact on parenting. It is delusional to think of parenting as some kind of thing that exists in isolation separate from and not influenced by the rest of society. Parents often can only have little influence themselves.
This is a value neutral description. Though I do think total parental autonomy in parenting is not a worthwhile goal and also not at all realistic. As parents you have to deal with society.
What does that mean for social media bans? To me mostly: network effects are wicked strong and fighting against them as an individual parent is basically impossible. This can lead to parents only having bad choices available to them (ban social media use and exclude them from their friends, allow social media use and fry their brains). Are bans that right solution? Don’t know. I’m really not sure. But I do know that it‘s not as simple as „parent better“.
In discussions similar to this I often see parents expressing their happiness with a state taking the role of a "bad cop" so that the parents can just wash their hands off telling their children it is state's fault they can no longer use TikTok ("I can’t express how much easier it is to restrict it and not seem like a kook when authorities are also on board." from OP) instead of having a proper conversation about harms of social media with the children. This is literally a cop out for them from a proper parenting.
From my point of view I'm already paying for their brats with higher taxes, now I will also have to gradually give my documents to random web sites more and more just to reduce the "burden" of parenting on lazy parents...
You're missing the collective action problem. When 95% of kids have TikTok, telling your kid "no" doesn't just mean having a conversation about social media harms, it means making them a social outcast. Sure, you can be that parent, but you're choosing between your kid's mental health from algorithmic content versus their mental health from social isolation. Individual parents can't solve network effect problems, that's exactly what policy is for. This isn't laziness, it's recognizing that some problems require coordination beyond the family level.
>I often see parents expressing their happiness with a state taking the role of a "bad cop"
As an actual parent, I have never heard of this or seen it. Can you provide some real examples?
> Can you provide some real examples?
How is the quote from OP's comment that is right at the end of the sentence you cited not a "real example"?
You said you've seen it happen "often" and provided no examples other than the one you are using to make your point. You implied that you have heard it multiple times in different contexts. I was asking for some of those contexts because as someone who is a parent and interacts with other parents frequently, it is not something I've encountered.
This pattern of thought is exactly the issue. Stop offloading the responsibility for creating a reasonable environment! That won't end well for neither children nor adults.
It's an extremely American religious belief that everything is an individual problem. Luckily, almost no other country has this religion.
Firstly, I'm not from the US. Secondly, I don't agree that forcing bunch of random web sites and apps (i.e. not government or banking sites/apps) to demand ids from their users is a "reasonable environment".
Luckily, they aren't doing that - the Australian law actually bans them from demanding IDs, unless they provide an alternative as well.
Here is the law: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display....
It’s quite simple really - you have the choice not to use those services. I don’t get what the anger is about here.
You are being obtuse. The anger is about services I'm used to may be forced to demand my id in the future because modern parents can't be assed to configure parental controls on their brat's phones (or are too afraid to do that).
I agree it would be more privacy-conscious to do the banning in the opposite way, by putting the banning logic on the end device, and mandating websites to send a signal that they are banned for minors. This header already exists (and for some reason it's a really long random-ish string). Someone should propose this to lawmakers.
Since the law doesn't actually say how it should be implemented, it's compatible with existing law. Actually I wonder if simply sending the "I am 18+" header would already be legal in Australia. Probably not, on the basis that it doesn't actually work right now, but maybe they could convince a judge that it's actually the browser's fault it doesn't respect the header.
You are giving authoritarians benefit of a doubt for no good reason. Vagueness in such laws is usually to allow selective enforcement by the people in power and not for you (a regular user) to have an "escape hatch" from negative consequences of the law. The reality of the situation is that there are currently no other ways to enforce age checks besides asking for an id and any kind of theoretical parental-controls-configured browser headers are years away from deployment, best case.
The Australian law isn't vague in saying that it's illegal for websites to require you to upload your ID. The penalty for requiring users to upload their ID is the same as the penalty for deliberately allowing minors.
You are repeatedly making big claims about the Australian law without citing any specific parts supporting them. I don't see anything in the law that:
- Makes it illegal to ask users for ids.
- Sets the same "penalty" for requiring ids as for "deliberately allowing minors"
Please either provide supporting evidence or stop making misleading claims.
https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display....
Section 63DB.
Please actually read before making me waste rate limit slots.
I did actually read it - section 63DB allows them to ask for and collect ids as long as they also provide "alternative means". Which in reality means that they will first ask for a selfie video, then for id unless you have lots of grey hairs and wrinkles. Which makes it even worse because they will also have your biometrics in addition to bunch of personal information from your id!
This is not "offloading parenting of your child to the government" it is acknowledging that a certain action can be far easier to take (getting a child off social media) if the government puts in laws to support those actions. Social media relies on network effects, this might weaken those effects and make it easier for individual parents to keep kids off those tools. Not sure why it upsets you so much.
Are environmental laws are a way of off-loading all environmental care to the government?
Are laws against violence a way of off-loading physical protection to the government?
> This is not "offloading parenting of your child to the government" it is acknowledging that a certain action can be far easier to take (getting a child off social media) if the government puts in laws to support those actions.
Compromising my privacy in order to allow you to omit having some tough but needed conversations with your child (i.e. _parenting_) regarding harms of social media is not a sacrifice I'm willing to make. Homer Simpson was supposed to be a parody on a bad father, not a role model with his "You're the government's problem now!".
> Are laws against violence a way of off-loading physical protection to the government?
Of course they are! I support government protecting me from violence in some capacity, although I don't support "chat control"-like laws since the cost/benefit doesn't seem to be favorable.
> to allow you to omit having some tough but needed conversations with your child regarding harms of social media
As any parent knows, if you tell your kids that something is harmful, they will stop immediately. No questions asked. I've never met a child who did something their parents told them not to do, have you?
> I support government protecting me from violence in some capacity
So, you do like big government telling people what they can and can't do, as long as you feel it directly helps you. That said, laws against violence don't protect you from violence, the laws kick in after the fact.
> I don't support "chat control"-like laws since the cost/benefit doesn't seem to be favorable.
Possibly because you don't have kids and thus maybe not a full understanding of the cost/benefit? Perhaps, instead of lecturing actual parents about what parenting is like, you could ask questions about the cost/benefit you claim to be interested in.
> As any parent knows, if you tell your kids that something is harmful, they will stop immediately. No questions asked. I've never met a child who did something their parents told them not to do, have you?
You can configure parental controls or take away the phone.
> So, you do like big government telling people what they can and can't do, as long as you feel it directly helps you.
Yes, of course!
> That said, laws against violence don't protect you from violence, the laws kick in after the fact.
They protect me by discouraging other people from committing violence on me, obviously.
> Possibly because you don't have kids and thus maybe not a full understanding of the cost/benefit? Perhaps, instead of lecturing actual parents about what parenting is like, you could ask questions about the cost/benefit you claim to be interested in.
Cost/benefit for me, not for Homer Simpson-esque dads. You already took responsibility on yourself by becoming a parent, now please do the hard part (the parenting).
> You can configure parental controls or take away the phone.
Your first suggestion was silly, so now you have pivoted to telling me another way to parent. All the while have zero experience of your own. Did you know that social media is accessible on devices other than personal phones? Kids use computers and tablets at school (as early as 1st grade) with access to the internet.
> Yes, of course!
Which is my entire point. Parents, on the other hand, have to worry about people other than themselves.
> They protect me by discouraging other people from committing violence on me, obviously.
Now you are outsourcing your personal protection to the government. I have to pay extra because you can't defend yourself. You took on the responsibility of protecting yourself by being born.
> Cost/benefit for me
We get it, you don't care about anyone else. Things that help you are good, things that inconvenience you are a product of other people's errors. Nothing more really needs to be said.
I mean, it does invite the Government to your household, just like marriage (which is a legal contract) invites the Government into your bedroom. I oppose both.
Parents are supposed to be parenting, without the help of the Government. You do not want your kid to spend their time on Facebook or Instagram? Do something about it yourself, as a parent. I understand that tech-illiterate people may be at a disadvantage here, but we are on HN and I am pretty sure we are able to:
Set up a Raspberry Pi (or any other SBC, or even an old x86 box) running Pi-hole with custom blocklists, configure DNS-level filtering with time-based access rules, or implement iptables/nftables rules on your router to enforce schedules. You can use hostapd with separate SSIDs for children with different firewall rules, set up a transparent proxy with squid + SquidGuard for content filtering and time restrictions, or configure your router's DHCP to assign specific DNS servers per MAC address with dnsmasq managing time windows. If you want more granular control, there's pfSense or OPNsense with packages like pfBlockerNG-devel for domain blocking and traffic shaping, or you could write a simple cron job that modifies your firewall rules based on time of day. These are all straightforward solutions that don't require government-mandated age verification systems with their inevitable privacy nightmares and implementation overreach.
The technical capability exists; the question is whether parents are willing to invest a few hours to implement it rather than demanding legislation to do their job for them.
> Parents are supposed to be parenting, without the help of the Government.
Why wouldn't we want the government to support parenting in similar ways the Government support's retirement, personal security, entrepreneurship, education, health, and other societally important activities?
> These are all straightforward solutions that don't require government-mandated age verification systems with their inevitable privacy nightmares and implementation overreach.
Yes, they are. They all also stop being effective as soon as a child is outside of your wifi network, which was my entire point.
> whether parents are willing to invest a few hours to implement it rather than demanding legislation to do their job for them.
Framing it this way doesn't really help your point. It proves that you don't understand what parents are actually dealing with. It is the same response that people on HN have when a non-developer writes a technical article in NYT.
This issue affects the privacy of all individuals, not just a narrow subset of users.
Mandatory identification and age-verification requirements are against privacy, justified under the familiar refrain of "think of the children". The critical question is how far society is willing to go in accepting pervasive surveillance and data collection under this rationale. Not long ago, we expressed concern and even disdain toward such practices when observing them in countries like China. Today, however, the gap between those systems and our own is narrowing to an uncomfortable degree.
FWIW there are technically sound, privacy-preserving solutions to achieve this goal. Zero-knowledge proofs, for example, can verify eligibility or age without disclosing identity or personal data. These solutions are well understood and feasible. Yet they are consistently excluded from policy discussions and implementations. This omission suggests that the underlying objective is not genuine child protection, nor meaningful respect for individual privacy, but rather increased control and data accumulation.
> They all also stop being effective as soon as a child is outside of your wifi network, which was my entire point.
True, these solutions do not work outside your Wi-Fi, but the point is that government-mandated age verification compromises privacy for limited benefit. I believe parental guidance (and the guidance of their teachers, ideally) and household controls are more effective. In any case, the broader point is that there is no technical silver bullet. Parents will always need to combine education, guidance, and trust-building with any tools, rather than relying on government mandates that compromise privacy.
Yeah except the guy is a kook and an enemy to a free and open society.
Personally I'll take "kook" (or worse) as a trade off for safety and sanity of my children any day of the week.
And if the government regulates your children join an after school program where they learn outdoor survival skills, exercise, and learn the popular political parties glee club.
There would be nothing new here?
The argument is that kids being online isn’t the governments business one way or the other.
The slippery slope argument is always secondary, but how often has government regulation not grown in size and scope? Combine that with how norms shift and the type of large scale identity infrastructure put in place to support this, can you honestly say this isn’t going to grow?
All of that also ignores the possibility (read inevitability) that a bad actor/authoritarian would exploit this access further without popular support.
And we already see what India is trying to do - force phone manufacturers to have an always on GPS feature where the government can track you and disable the phone’s feature where it notifies you if something is using your location.
And they tie your SIM card with your ID.
This got rejected in the end, btw.
Only because Apple refused. I’m not saying Apple is a good guy. If Trump had asked, Cook would have hired people from DOGE to implement the feature.
Authoritarians use social networks to undermine democratic principles so not exposing kids to that takes power away from them. Or did I misunderstand something?
My take for a while has been that authoritarian ideas (both hard right and hard left) dominate on social media because of the short form short attention span format. Authoritarianism tends to run on simple slogans, grievances, and identity politics. That stuff is very well suited to 140 characters, memes, and short videos.
Liberal ideas require more explaining and historical context, and they don’t play well when everyone has been triggered and trolled into limbic system mode by rage bait.
Liberal politics speaks to the neocortex. Authoritarianism speaks to the brain stem.
My take for a while has been that authoritarian ideas
That's odd because I don't see a lot of that. Care to elaborate?
In what country do you need to be shown some of that?
Australia
Liberals can also be authoritarian. See reddit, where ideas that don't conform are typically downvoted out. Here too.
I’m using the word liberal to mean things like liberty, individual rights, democracy, and the rule of law. That’s why I also mentioned hard left authoritarianism.
Also there’s a world of difference between people registering dislike on an online forum and the use of state power. It seems like a lot of people these days draw no distinction between removal from a private space or even people just showing disapproval and actual state force.
This doesn't surprise me much; social networks have worked in tandem with governments, allowing them to call the shots to remove any content that opposed their political agendas, narratives, and opinions, to the extent that facts were flat-out censored to paint certain political opponents in a bad light, or worse, create potential legal issues.
It created a world where: when disapproval inside an echo-chamber fails to a critical mass of people telling the truth, just pretend the content doesn't exist and then gaslight people using official media outlets, including Congress and the White House.
So it gave people the impression there's no difference between the two. Not only were disapproval and state force in agreement, they colluded.
While your point (about the potential for liberal authoritarianism) is true, reddit is an example of partisan, not authoritarian, behavior.
> authoritarian
>downvoted out
Erm...
Russia has elections, where people overwhelmingly vote for Putin..
Pretty sure OP means liberal in the sense of "classical liberalism". Ideas like free market, rule of law, private property, etc.
You’re confusing democracy with tyranny.
You're assuming mutual exclusion. Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner.
we’re people, not fairytale beasts
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Authoritarians also use state influenced media to undermine democratic principles.
Social media is the worst state propaganda machine ever created. Destroying it would be a huge hit to authoritarians.
Bahaha right, so that way dissidents have no way of speaking out. Man, I'm sure they'd hate to see that happen.
The civil rights movement was organized before social media existed.
MLK would have been banned from YouTube.
Yes, absolutely, and most of the media would have portrayed him as an antifa rioter.
Maybe the civil rights movement wouldn't even be possible in this era.
When did social media enable dissidents to do anything?
The Arab Spring, the Mahsa Amini protests, the recent resurgence of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, have all been conducted primarily using social media.
This is a very narrow scale when taking the bigger picture, as these are just prominent events in Middle Eastern history since the growth of social media usage, say after 2011.
You are not even considering the travesties avoided due to social media, what regulatory action has been avoided (or taken) to avoid social media backlashes.
You are being extremely disingenuous, and you are directly attacking some peoples' only hope of minimizing repression. I urge you to reconsider your beliefs. This directly and critically affects me.
I’m sorry for you and by all means, keep social media where you live. Maybe the next Arab spring will work out better than the first one and TikTok will enable that.
Where I live, we’re already free from repression and social media threatens to reintroduce it.
Yeah but with social media they can also undermine them outside of their state.
Agreed!
I guess the question is, how should citizens communicate with each other? Who should apply the restrictions? If the authoritarian state is applying the restrictions, then it's probably for their own goals.
An authoritarian state might have more legitimacy in applying the restrictions than a for profit company. Think about it.
But really, people should communicate with each other by means not including algorithmic feeds optimized for engagement. Preferably including as little emotion as possible when it comes to discussing policy.
> by means not including algorithmic feeds optimized for engagement
I think that's the problem, not "social media". We're typing these comments on social media, after all.
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It seems to me that this is much bigger problem for vulnerable or stupid adults. You can be naive when you are young but you can change.
I would say that much bigger problem is possibly the influence of these sites on development of young people. We know it's addictive, we know it's harmful. Cigarettes and alcohol are banned for the same reason so I'm kinda glad for this Australian experiment. We'll see.
Authoritarians use power. That’s why consolidation of power is bad. Government is historically the most dangerous place to centralize power.
The government has laws saying people under 16 can't drive cars, do you think that's part of the slippery slope that has led to all of those happening-in-practice bad things?
Yes but every time you drive on the road you don't need to prove you're over 16.
It would be true if the windows are totally black or humans under 16 are looking totally adult.
No. It would be true if the car didn't turn on the engine unless you showed your face and ID to some on-board computer of the car.
> The government has laws saying people under 16 can't drive cars
We did, though. The chances of getting caught were slim to nil. Will kids (and adults for that matter) have the same easy opportunity to evade enforcement here?
I thought the point of laws was not that enforcement is perfect but rather that the consequence of getting caught created a counter-incentive to doing the thing?
The point of laws is to document what everyone in a community has come to agree on, assuming a democracy. Or, in a dictatorship, what the dear leader has decided upon. Any punishments encoded into those laws may serve as a counter-incentive, I suppose.
But baked into that is the idea that enforcement isn't perfect so you can still disappear into the night when you have that urge to do whatever it is that is technically illegal. This allows acceptance of laws that might be considered too draconian if enforcement was perfect. However, it seems in the case of these digital-centric laws that enforcement will become too close to being perfect as, without the need to hire watchful people, there is strong incentive to make it ever-present.
Or maybe not, but that is why the question was asked.
We wouldn’t have this problem if the tech companies can “self regulate” (lol). But us engineers just can’t help ourselves but find even more effective and efficient ways to harvest eyeballs and stoke hate.
And yes, I mean engineers. Just a few “inventions” off the top of my head that got us here:
- infinite scroll - Facebook’s shadow profiles - recommendation algorithms
Don’t pretend it’s not engineers that came up with these.
The issue is that lower profits are attached to self regulation, as is community backlash. Large tech companies rarely have a moral compass and their decisions are attached to return on investment to their financiers.
Prisoners delima...
It’s Australia, it’s a nanny state and always has been, and much as the locals complain, they also love it, and keep voting for it.
The rest of the Anglo world is much less obsessed with government control than the US is; UK is absolutely fine with cameras everywhere, for example, and has almost no protection against parliament. Law enforcement is much more seen as by the people and for the people in these countries.
> It’s Australia, it’s a nanny state and always has been
Australians think of themselves as carefree but good hearted larrikins who snub their nose at authority, and would always be ready to duff a steer or two from a wealthy cattleman for some hungry orphans. The reality is this type of Australian only remains as fading memories in Henry Lawson stories, the few that ever existed. The real Australian is not only a spineless sticklers for the rules completely subservient to authority, with little sense of adventure, but is also very envious of others driven by their greedy and selfish nature.
During covid "lockdowns", Australians were far more eager to tattle on other commoners for breaking the precious rules than they were concerned with questioning government's hypocritical behavior or unscientific rules and policies. It was fine in their minds that their rulers misbehaved, so long as their neighbor didn't get to take their kid to a park if they weren't allowed to as well.
EDIT: I don't mean this to sound overly harsh to Australians, it's not unique to them. What is funny is just their opinion of themselves. At least the British are admittedly subservient sticklers.
We regulate kids in all sorts of ways, this isn’t different. Kids don’t need social media to communicate.
Why not compare it to smoking cigarettes or drinking alcohol? You need to be an adult to decide legally you can do that and that makes sense. Its the same thing here.
Exactly, go tell your physician, that any kind of authority is bad.
Its a two sided bias, on the one, governmemt authority is categorically bad and on the other you cant participate and change it. You could frame social media corporations in the way, but not, when you are a libertarian, i guess.
The attempt is to remove the market do exploiting the attention of children for profit. This doesn’t have to be perfect to be worth it.
What’s more, the idea that this puts children at the mercy of authoritarians is laughable. The US tech industry has shown us beyond doubt that they are perfectly ok with genuine authoritarians in charge, provided the dollars keep rolling. Fuck them, and good on ya Australia.
What about future governments in Australia? This is ripe for abuse and scope creep. It also ties a uniform ID to an account, simplifying tracking and surveillance by corporations and governments.
Plus, this is asking everyone in the country to give up their biometrics (face scanning is one implementation) or link your government issued ID to your social media account (look at the UK to see how this turned out - people are being arrested for simple tweets against the government). Sacrificing the freedom to be anonymous online to "protect the kids"
> It also ties a uniform ID to an account, simplifying tracking and surveillance by corporations and governments.
That is by no means the only solution. A lot of work is happening in the area of cryptographically verified assertions; for example, a government API could provide the simple assertion "at least 16 years of age" without the social media platform ever seeing your ID, and the government never able to tie you to the service requiring the assertion.
Companies and governments see age verification as an opportunity to hoard data for facial recognition and other ML/AI training sets.
It will always be cheaper to go with a vendor that forces you to scan your face and ID, because they will either be packaging that data for targeted advertising, selling the data to brokers, or making bank off of using it as population-wide training datasets.
Governments will want the data and cost savings, as well.
Both corporations and governments will want to use the platforms to tie online activity to real human beings.
Arguments like these end up like arguments for PGP in email: yes, in a perfect world we'd be using it, and platforms would make it easy, but the incentives aren't aligned for that perfect world to exist.
Don't project the contemporary US administration on other countries, please. Not everyone lives in a cynical regime.
> a government API could provide the simple assertion
Yes, it could, but we don't have that, do we? They launched the ban without implementing a zero-knowledge proof scheme as you described. In a very short amount of time the providers will have associated millions of people's accounts to their biometric information and/or their government issued IDs.
While this is a good thought.... Do you really trust the Government to implement a cryptographically verified assertion correctly, and not track which website is making the request, for which individual at what time, and then cross reference that with newly created accounts?
I trust the EU for one, yes, because it doesn't really have the capability or agencies to create massive databases on citizens. Aside from that, there's really a lot of research going on around zero knowledge proofs and verified credentials and such; involved researchers have very obviously already thought about most of the knee-jerk concerns voiced in this thread.
Seems foolish to trust them. The EU is fundamentally undemocratic with the unelected Commission proposing laws and decision making hidden within councils. It has been steadily centralizing and concentrating power, creating a dense web of regulations that have been strangling member states' stagnant economies. Right to free speech is notoriously bad in Europe. The EU is trying to increase military power, and ultimately a centralized European army.
Does that work already? If so, how?
If the API asks for a users minimum age at a certain time, how can the government not know which data set it has to check?
It can be achieved with a zero-knowledge proof - there are many schemes, but in essence, they all allow you to prove something (e.g. your birthdate, validated by a government agency), without revealing who you are. You can prove to a third party "the government authenticated that I was born on 1970-01-01" without exposing who "I" is.
Some worthwhile reading on the topic if you're interested:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof#Zero-Know...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_signature
It should even possible to construct a protocol where you can prove that you're over 18 without revealing your birthdate.
Zero-Knowledge Range Proofs: https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/430
"Zero-knowledge range proofs (ZKRPs) allow a prover to convince a verifier that a secret value lies in a given interval."
ZKP is better, but still not foolproof. Depending on the implementation, the government may now know that you have an account, or at least attempted to open an account on that service. You will have a hard time denying it in the future if the government asks to see your posts (as the US is currently doing at their borders).
> ZKP is better, but still not private. The government now knows that you have an account, or at least attempted to open an account on that service
Umm, no. That is not how a scheme like this would work.
> That is not how a scheme like this would work.
When implemented correctly, yes. I've edited my wording slightly to indicate that.
I just don't have faith in most countries, including Australia, to implement it with protecting the privacy of their residents in mind.
> When implemented correctly, yes.
I disagree. I can't think of an implementation mistake that would allow just the government to see what services you sign up for.
You could of course screw it up so everybody could see. If the government put a keylogger on your device then they could see. However broadly speaking this is not something that can be screwed up in such a way that just the government would be able to see.
The protocol wouldn't even involve any communication with the government.
> It should even possible to construct a protocol where you can prove that you're over 18 without revealing your birthdate.
Not just theoretically posdible, people have done it: https://zkpassport.id/
Sounds interesting, but:
"This is experimental software. While it has undergone external review, it has not yet received a formal security audit. Please use with caution and at your own risk in production environments."
The anonymity is that the government doesn't know who is asking for the verification, not that the the government doesn't know whose majority it should attest.
> simple tweets against the government
Which tweets do you have in mind? Because it not does not describe any of the high-profile tweet-related arrests I have heard of.
You can't link your government ID to your social media account. The legislation doesn't allow social media companies to gather this data. It's specifically not allowed.
In other words: this legislation is useless, and entirely stupid, and kids will bypass it trivially. Teenagers are exceptionally good at bypassing that which they find stupid, or gets in their way of what they consider to be fun, or a right.
It doesn’t have to be impossible to bypass. It just has to create friction so less and less kids end up on social media over time.
How much friction isn’t going to create then?
There will be next to no friction.
"...simplifying tracking and surveillance by corporations and governments."
Decades ago when the Australia Card—an ID system for Australians—was first proposed there was an almighty outcry from the citizenry and the project was seemingly shelved. What's happened since is that our Governments quietly ramped up their computer systems and collected the data anyway, this Law will only enhance that collection further. Moreover, recently Government introduced what at the moment are voluntary digital IDs which it sold under the guise that having a single ID will make it easier to deal with government services, etc. Unfortunately, most will unquestioningly swallow the official line and miss the fine minutiae.
I've never heard any politician or Government official come out and say "We'll never introduce an Australia Card because we're free people" or such and I'd bet that I never will. Fact is, we Australians already have had an 'Australia Card' for years, it's just that we don't carry it around in our wallets as we do with our credit cards.
Our democracy would be vastly improved if those whose governance we're under would actually tell us the truth.
Edit: Despite my comment about this new law, I agree kids need protection—so we're damned either way. I see no easy solution.
I don't know the details of the implementation, but this sounds like an argument for strong data protection laws (and so no data retention) rather than inaction.
Also, I'm really struggling to think of examples where people have been arrested for "tweets against the government". The Linehan case? Most of the ones I can think of are like that — so basically culture war bullshit and overzealous policing of incitement laws.
In actuality websites just have to do something, not use an id. Most of them currently just want you to upload a story then use ai to guess your age, it's as accurate as you might suspect if you're very sceptical
They don’t need age verification for that. If you ever connect to social media even once without a VPN and a number of other protections, they can link an account back to you.
Sorry, you are crazy if you trust American tech companies (that you have zero control over) rather than your own government which in theory you have a lot of control over, but it does depend on your flavour of democracy.
Until these controls on American tech companies Trump (via all the tech CEOs fawning over him) had more control over Australian society than your own government.
The rest of the world needs similar restrictions on American tech and social media unless we all want to have American bonkers (and increasingly authoritarian) politics fully exported to us.
"The rest of the world needs similar restrictions on American tech and social media..."
Yes, it does but don't kid yourself, all of Big Tech will cooperate with governments for mutual benefit. Big Tech collects data that governments would otherwise have difficulty collecting, if Big Tech is refrained from collecting data because of regulation and privacy laws then both lose out.
We should never expect governments to maintain our privacy or protect us from Big Tech leaching our data. In short, we're fighting different enemies on two fronts and that's a difficult and invidious position to be in.
It is not that simple: Authoritarians that want to "protect" their gender-questioning or orientation-questioning children from having online access to trans and gay spaces online are not only enthusiastically backing Australia's social media ban, they are involved in the very creation of this legislation, and are delighted in its negative affects on LGBTQ teens.
There is considerable overlap between those who subscribe to the "trans people are a contagion" moral panic of writer Abigail Schrier, and the "ban social media" advocates in AU who were instrumental in creating this legislation.
> It is not that simple: Authoritarians that want to "protect" their gender-questioning or orientation-questioning children from having online access to trans and gay spaces online are not only enthusiastically backing Australia's social media ban, they are involved in the very creation of this legislation, and are delighted in its negative affects on LGBTQ teens.
Lawmakers in the US have said this explicitly[1] concerning laws like KOSA[2]:
> A co-sponsor of a bipartisan bill intended to protect children from the dangers of social media and other online content appeared to suggest in March that the measure could be used to steer kids away from seeing transgender content online.
> In a video recently published by the conservative group Family Policy Alliance, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., said “protecting minor children from the transgender in this culture” should be among the top priorities of conservative lawmakers.
A bill that implements mass surveillance, chilling of free speech and the hurting of marginalized kids is really killing two birds with one stone for some legislators.
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-politics-and-policy/sena...
[2] https://www.stopkosa.com/
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There's not really any plausible explanation as to why referrals to pediatric gender clinics became so skewed towards girls who want to be boys, other than social contagion.
The sticking point is that it's politically controversial to point this out because of progressive beliefs about gender identity as an unquestionable facet of someone's being.
I'm pretty sure this take is incorrect on multiple accounts. Trans demographics tend to skew towards trans women by about a third, not trans men - at least in all the research I've come across.
And regardless, increased acceptance and awareness of different gender identities can very plausibily explain increased numbers, not "social contagion". Calling it a contagion is pretty indicative of your underlying beliefs here.
Regarding the change in sex ratio for childhood referrals, this is well documented. See for example this paper:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324768316_Sex_Ratio...
"Social contagion" is social science terminology. It's meant as an analogy not a pejorative.
> "Social contagion" is social science terminology. It's meant as an analogy not a pejorative.
Some social scientists say the analogy is misleading, the term is poorly defined, and contagion has a pejorative connotation irrespective of intent. They are correct.
Well documented should imply multiple papers across multiple countries and across multiple time periods.
If that's the one and only paper you have, then it's a single UK paper that covers seven years of GIDS referrals from numbers that are near zero in 2009 to 1800 referrals in 2016.
Statistically, looking at the last graphic in the paper, it's less a case of "becoming so heavily skewed" and likely more a case of "taking several years to reveal the pattern and weights".
There's scarce numbers to begin with to make a strong claim as to the "natural balance" of referrals being evident at the start and this "being skewed toward" the later clearer pattern.
There are other papers showing the same sort of pattern elsewhere. For example, you can see one cited in that paper within the introductory paragraphs.
As the commenter upthread noted, the adult demographic is more weighted towards men who want to be women. Why would childhood referrals have become shifted in the opposite direction, much more towards girls who want to be boys?
Why is the question;
> There's not really any plausible explanation as to [..] other than social contagion.
is a leap.
> Why would childhood referrals have become shifted
\1 Have they really shifted, or have the stats on a relatively new thing in a few countries firmed up from nothing, to bugger all, to enough to see a pattern?
\2 As to the pattern now seen - a few boys question whether they like being boys at an earlier age than a few more girls then question whether they like being girls ..
there are other factors, eg: I heard there's a "big change" in the lives of young girls at an age that coincides with a 'surge' (small numbers in a country the size of the UK) in girls exploring whether they want to be girls after all.
Social patterns, depth of communication about places existing where gender question can be asked, word of mouth, etc are factors that play a role - but they are not the sole factors at play in these very low incident observations.
My suggestion to yourself, looking at the questions you've raised and how you've framed them, is to perhaps study some epidemiology and find a mentor with first hand real world experience with low frequency data that gradually comes to light as social norms about reporting evolve - eg: SIDS data in the 1970s / 1980s.
You seem to be making a great many mistakes based on preconceptions and "feels".
If only the Dutch hadn't destroyed quite so many records in "their" East Indies .. there might be other gender frequency records to draw on <shrug>.
To claim there are not really any other candidates for a skew (in that direction or the other) you would have to (like Shrier herself) go out of your way to not bother to talk to trans people, or their doctors, or their families, or sociologists, or talk to any of the people who spend their lives researching gender, what it means, how it affects us, what assumptions we make, whether those ideas stack up when confronted with empirical research, etc etc. I'm not really interested in discussing further with a 30 minute old account.
What is your alternative explanation for why referrals have so sharply skewed towards girls who want to be boys, within the past decade or so?
It is doctors who first drew attention to this phenomenon. See for example Tavistock whistleblower David Bell.
Increasing social acceptibility and awareness is not mysterious to people who understand that many perceptions about gender are constructions that occur in social contexts.
Why do I owe you any specific "explanation" when the context here is that you are treating Shrier's pseudoscientific book that literally tells parents in the closing chapters that if their kid has a trans friend they should consider moving cities to get their child away from their trans friend as though we are supposed to take transphobic hate literature at face value.
Maybe a better step than me agreeing to do that is that instead you should take the entire corpus of medical literature on the subject, as well as the voices of trans people on the subject of trans people at face value first.
I have no interest in your JAQing off[1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_Asking_Questions
You don't have to suggest an explanation for this demographic change if you don't want to.
The statistical evidence for a change in the paper you linked and the other papers in the area is extremely weak.
At one end of the scale is very little data that gives an unreliable picture with a high degree of variability, at the other end of the not very long in time scale is somewhat more data that provides a better picture.
To make such a fuss about " this demographic change " indicates a lack of exposure to such statistics.
Why are you attempting to make such a big deal of bad data here?
The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
Maybe just think critically, without conspiracy about it for two seconds. With anything else, I'm sure you'd see the classic survivorship bias error you are making here.
Could you elaborate on what you're alluding to, please?
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No plausible explanation? I disagree.
It’s about the social safety of transitioning. The paper you referenced is from the UK, which is famously a TERF island (trans-exclusionary radical feminists). In the TERF island, it’s much less safe to be a trans woman than a trans man. Adolescents can sense the risk of being a trans woman is much higher, so many trans women stay in the closet and don’t come out.
Then why were there more boys who want to be girls referred prior to a decade ago, compared to girls who want to be boys?
The radical feminist movement in the UK has existed much longer than this, since around the late 1960s to early 1970s.
Because a decade ago marks when the American right decided to scapegoat transwomen after losing their previous scapegoat, gay people and marriage, to SCOTUS in 2015.
2015-2016 is when rhetoric online and globally shifted towards villainizing trans women that weren't on the public's radar before. This was exported to UK politics and has been an incredible political success.
If that is the cause, how does it explain both the sex ratio shift and the rapid increase in referrals starting from around 2011-2012 onwards? There were gender clinics across Europe reporting similar demographic changes in pediatric referrals. This precedes the political developments in the US that you mentioned.
[flagged]
Please stop. HN is not a place for political/ideological battle, including about this topic. What HN is for is curious conversation, including about difficult topics, but the guidelines apply, particularly these ones:
Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer...
Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.
Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Speak for yourself, literally. I'm in that "rest of us in LGB".
It's actually quite the contrary, the rest of the LGB looks at gay transphobes as the hypocrites and useful idiots they are.
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There's not really any plausible explanation as to why so many left-handed students tend to skew towards boys, rather than girls, other than social contagion.
When my parents were kids, there were no left-handed kids. Social contagion is the only explanation for as to why there are suddenly so many left-handed kids today, especially since many of them are boys and not girls.
But the adult demographic of left-handers doesn't have, and didn't have, a sex ratio skewed in the opposite direction to the youth demographic. So how is this a relevant comparison?
People assigned male at birth come out later than people assigned female at birth on average. Trans men and trans women receive different stigma. Many AFAB children and adolescents referred to gender clinics identify as non binary. AMAB non binary people reported less acceptance in LGBT circles even. And biology could be a factor.
You are correct. And when they try to undermine you they prove your point. There are more mtf people than ftm people because until recently, the it was not a trend among teen girls.
On the contrary, that has nothing to do with the LGB. Shrier believes the T concept, specifically, is a social contagion like anorexia.
A wall street journal opinion columnist - Shrier- with zero medical training wrote a book to create a moral panic in the public about trans teens, based on the discredited ideas from Lisa Littman's ROGD "research", where in this case the word "research" actually means: reports from parents recruited from well-known anti-trans websites.
Their comment did not attribute to Shrier any view of sexual orientation. People who consider gender identity illegitimate and people who consider sexual orientation illegitimate overlap.
And, people who consider gender identity illegitimate and people who consider sexual orientation legitimate overlap.
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I thought it was pretty settled that it was social contagion similar to other mental illnesses in the past.
So are we banning all advertising to children? Or only banning them from communicating and posting with each other?
If it's about monetizing child attention not about speech control why isn't every single toy ad, food ad, movie ad, also banned?
> So are we banning all advertising to children? Or only banning them from communicating and posting with each other?
Kids are not banned from communicating and posting with each other; the ban exempts a number of direct messing apps, as well as community apps like Discord:
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/dec/10/social-media-b...
If I had to over-simplify it, then the ban appears to mostly target doom-scrolling apps. I say mostly, since I'm not sure why Twitch and Kick are included
Twitch & Kick are likely included because they can breed parasocial relationships between streamer & viewer.
Haha, no, here in Australia we can't even ban gambling/betting app ads on TV during sports when lots of kids are watching!
Because all those aren’t close to being as harmful as social media is.
We do ban the things that consume children the way social media does.
Alcohol, addictive drugs, etc.
The data on social media harms is mixed at best. We know for a fact fast food, cosmetic ads for girls, are strictly more harmful.
This is nothing more than speech control under the guise of "won't someone please think of the children"
> The data on social media harms is mixed at best. We know for a fact fast food, cosmetic ads for girls, are strictly more harmful.
True, but let me remind you that we didn't have conclusive data on smoke harm until the 50s, but this doesn't mean that smoking was not harmful before, nor that we were lacking any clue before coming to a conclusive study.
At the moment we don't have any conclusive study about e-cigarettes, but I'm sure you would never give kids e-cigarettes just because we don't have 30/40 years worth of data.
> This is nothing more than speech control under the guise of "won't someone please think of the children"
This is a bit more complex than this. Kids and adolescents online are targeted with all sort of techniques to leverage their attention in order to make money. I understand the speech control worry, and I agree up to a certain point, but I don't see how ignoring the problem makes it any better. What are the alternatives we have? I'm genuinely asking, not advocating for TINA. I have two kids and I see the effects of social media on them and on their friends.
Keep in mind that this cannot be offloaded to families, for multiple reasons: - many family just don't have enough data or knowledge to make informed decisions - until the network effect is in place, banning your kid from social media while all of their friend are online can be impractical and cruel - parent decisions can affect kids health and overall society outcome; allowing a wrong decision by the parents (because the society doesn't want to handle the problem) would be unfair for the kids and no wise for the society.
As in many aspects of life the best solution is neither white nor black, but a shade of grey, and is far from being perfect. Looking for a perfect solution is a waste of time, resources and unfair for those that are affected in the meanwhile.
I understand the concerns, and probably Australia approach is not the best, but it's also the first. We probably will need a period of adjustments to reach a sound solution.
If you read the rhetoric it is not about removing commercial exploitation of children. It is about removing child bullying, grooming and algorithms that lead to things like misogynist content and eating disorders.
I generally agree with parent commenter - some of this will be helped by the ban but theres a serious risk a small number will go through fringe social media even less policed or normalised than the big American ones and have much higher risk on some of these issues than before.
and the other other problem is that this does nothing to disincentivize toxic advertisement and predatory behaviors they will just follow where the target are.
You know we kids did perfectly fine before there was social media? The point is, arguably we did a lot better.
> I had a comment comparing this to allowing people to eat too much food
We do that for drugs already. Of course, the correct way to do it is not to try to ban a substance or control supply but simply to ban advertising for addictive stuff. I don't think that works for social media, though, due to the viral nature of it.
Come on dude, you are on HN. You probably know that social media is no longer about free speech. It’s a targeted advertising machine that is extremely effective on kids and teenagers. It preys on them so, so efficiently. It’s a technical work of art. A young mind is extremely susceptible to the algorithms on those platforms. Much more than adults are, and adults are already really susceptible. This is what this ban is trying to shield kids from. Not from them talking to each other.
The Social media platforms of today are very clearly harmful to our youth. Just like alcohol and cigarettes are to a developing brain. Why can we ban those and not this?
> It’s a targeted advertising machine that is extremely effective on kids and teenagers. It preys on them so, so efficiently. It’s a technical work of art. A young mind is extremely susceptible to the algorithms on those platforms. Much more than adults are, and adults are already really susceptible.
Sure, but the Australian government's definition of an age-restricted social media platform doesn't mention advertising or algorithms at all. Technically, their definition also covers algorithm-free social media like Mastodon, which I'd argue isn't nearly as harmful.
The framing of social media as something that's inherently bad no matter how you do it is a framing that helps social media giants like YouTube, Instagram and Facebook to continue to "do it" in a way that harms people. I'm sure they love the idea that the ills of social media can be solved by banning their least profitable users while doing nothing to regulate what they do with the others. They're probably thrilled that their healthier algorithm-free competitors haven't even entered the conversation. They want to be the tobacco companies of the future, because making addictive things for adults is incredibly profitable.
Biggest problem of social media is the addictive effects. It’s a dopamine creation machine. Hopefully people will see it like alcohol and cigarettes in the future.
Why do we have to ban networked communication for teens instead of regulating it?
Nearly everything about it that’s bad for teens also sucks for the rest of us.
How many degrees of separation is this from adult regulation? Want to provide age information to a site so you can look at porn without any guarantee that information won't be used for additional profit? That's a real thing in the US.
Government assumes zero expected trust reciprocation because they don't have to provide trust reciprocation and can do what they want, and government is comprised of co-opted humans.
Err on the side of sovereign freedom. Arguing about banning this or regulating that is all second principle stuff, and nanny states all strike me as the tail-end of civilization.
I value my kid not being exposed to porn as a child well above your right to privacy while watching it.
The ubiquity of the internet and children’s access to it is something we haven’t reckoned with yet. The differences between pre social media and mobile vs now is immense. The people seeking to capitalize on getting children addicted to something are numerous and well motivated by LTV.
Their incentives and the wellbeing of children are directly at odds. We already regulate things that are addictive for children.
People might give their kids a drink extralegally. Nobody is saying “hey kid, why don’t we watch porn together so you can develop healthier habits.” Nobody is creating a “starter Instagram” with their teenage daughter.
These forms of media are NOT SAFE FOR KIDS. They have observably negative population wide outcomes and are as reasonably banned as lead in pipes.
Then be a parent and turn on parental controls.
Oh, I don’t let my children have electronic devices at all.
But schools do. Their friends all have Internet enabled devices in their pockets. The library he goes to has poorly secured devices. The school library does too.
This is what I mean by the ubiquity of the internet. It is functionally impossible to control access to the internet as a parent and allow your children to develop independence.
I do what I can, and have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars at this point to opt in to like minded environments. My oldest at ten is observably different than children at his age and doing great.
His friends that come from poorer families, like the ones that I grew up in, might as well have Roblox as a third parent and suffer from ridiculous behavioral problems. The school curriculum in SFUSD is years behind my curriculum was in Georgia when it was a bottom quintile outcome program.
It does not take much looking to see something is thoroughly wrong. I think a lot of it has to do with the mass experiment of Internet access we’ve run on children.
Fair.
Funny enough I lived in the Atlanta metro area from 1996 to 2022. I had a house built in Decatur in 2003.
I started dating my now wife in 2011. She lived in Alpharetta. As soon as I met my now step sons who were 9 and 14, my first thought was in going to have to sell my house and move. There is no way in hell they are going to survive Decatur public schools.
We moved to Johns Creek at first and then had a house built in Forsyth County. Yeah this Forsyth County
https://youtu.be/WErjPmFulQ0?si=qfgRouGzQvm_nI1h
The attitudes in the burbs of Forsyth changed since then as people came from other places and it grew. But we very much stuck out. My son loved it there and still lives in that area and rents a house nearby where you use to live.
Strangely enough I live in the same general area - right in the middle of Gwinnett. What an odd coincidence that the three of us happened to come across eachother in an HN thread before knowing this.
"It does not take much looking to see something is thoroughly wrong."
Agreed, but observation suggests that it takes much more effort to do something about it—effort that the majority cannot muster or are unwilling to commit to.
"Want to provide age information to a site so you can look at porn without any guarantee that information won't be used for additional profit?"
That's the Orwellian payoff: people self-censoring and frightened to act for rear of retribution or their reputation. It's the authoritarian's ideal approach to control.
I think you might be confused here.
Providing age assurance is what banning teens from social media requires. This is already happening in the US in several states.
Regulating social media is the alternative.
Mate for 1000 years priests decided what we could eat on Friday's.
You've never been more free.
Right, it sucks for all. What truly pisses me off is that early on very smart people in Big Tech realized that to make a financial killing they'd have to get in quickly and lock in populations before governments et al realized the negative implications and introduced policy/regulations.
As with addiction or clicking a ratchet forward, they knew that reversing direction would then be nigh on impossible. Society seems to have little or no defense against such threats and I'd bet London to a brick that it'll be repeated with AI.
Social media isn’t social anymore. People don’t use it to talk to anyone. It’s about mindlessly scrolling through chum guided by an algorithm.
hey they can still use networked communication - e.g. whatsapp, signal, etc. This ban is only concerning the following services
Facebook Instagram Threads Kick Reddit Snapchat TikTok Twitch X (formerly Twitter) YouTube
I was all for this legislation, thinking the positives outweighed the cost, but after reading the list of affected services, I now disagree.
Why didn't they just legislate that all social media apps content must be like Facebook in 2005. No recommendations, chronological timeline only, and you only see posts from users you explicitly added. That would have benefited everyone forever, and not enabled some small subset of apps to collect your govt id or the law to be irrelevant when the next popular social network comes along.
They effectively banned only the popular cigarette brands, instead of regulating nicotine.
If services would argue this would make them all the same, then add a clause where the user can opt in to have an algorithm shove content at them like now if they are over 18.
This way everyone can use the basic service for true socializing, but the harmful stuff is actually regulated out by default.
Too much money etc for this to ever happen, but geez they could have done a lot better.
yeah, there's always 4chan.. and rumble might get an uptick in users today, where they can view all the content youtube has banned
Oh, and how do you know it will stop there? Control freaks don't stop at the first step.
First they came for Facebook, and I didn't protest, I was not on facebook.
Here's what's going to happen next: Whatsapp/signal/telegram groups will become wildly popular. Which gives the wannabe-fascists the excuse to ban those as well 'for the children'.
We've seen this salami tactic often enough to know the pattern.
You are too modest! You should start your poem denouncing those pesky spam filters than hinders the honest viagra pill salesmen! Then you could regret your inaction when google downweighted zit-popping videos, and maybe you have reached the point where it becomes reasonable to regret losing Facebook the genocide facilitator.
There is a qualitative distinction between 'I filter for myself what I don't want to see' and 'The State decides what everyone is allowed to see.'
Not too sure about those zit-popping videos. But in my time, we had rotten.com - so I might be immunized to that kind of stuff. Personally, I find a honest zit-popping video no worse than yet another AI voice going on and on about some non-topic, clearly written by AI as well. I don't seek out either, but the zit-popping at least is over after 10 seconds.
But that's Google curating content. State censorship is something else entirely. Once justified "for the children" or "for security", it never stops at the first target. It grows, layer by layer. We’ve watched that pattern repeat for centuries across every medium humans have ever invented.
Facebook, the genocide facilitator? If we are honest, so has the printing press. Let's ban letters, they have facilitated genocide.
The printing press spread enlightenment, propaganda, revolutions, and atrocities. The State tried to control that too. It failed every time. It will fail with the net, for young people and for old ones.
Repression never works long-term, it always creates pressure that eventually breaks the system that produced it. Historically, societies tend to get worse before they correct themselves, because authoritarian overreach generates exactly the instability it claims to prevent.
Jefferson’s warning about the recurring need to renew freedom wasn’t a call for violence - it was an observation about the cyclical nature of power, repression, and reform. Every attempt to restrict communication has eventually collapsed under its own contradictions, and the internet will be no exception.
It's not networked communication that's a problem, it's a company pumping algorithmicly prioritized feeds of content while being run by unscrupulous profit driven people.
Well that’s kind of my point. If we regulated against that kind of content pipeline, we wouldn’t have an excuse for big brother to be demanding we prove our age to access websites.
>Why can we ban those and not this?
we didn't ban cigarettes, we disincentivized them. Why can't we do the same here? regulate the algorithms, not the platform (the platform ultimately being "the internet").
This is just a cat and mouse game where every few years the government will ban whatever the kids like. That's not how you create a high trust society.
> we disincentivized them.
In Australia, not that much and we (Australia) passed the point of diminishing returns and moved into the zone of incentivising a criminal black market.
The state of play today is that foreign nationals, Syrians and others, are chasing billions in illicit tobacco revenue, denying that to the Government as income, firebombing and shooting up cars, shops, and families of rivals.
The brutality levels have risen to the point where old school leg breaking Chopper Read era crims are speaking out about going too far, involving families and "breaking code".
Social policy always has a balance.
In the US, all persons under 21 are banned from purchasing cigarettes.
How popular is vaping under teens in USA?
Yes we disincentivized cigarettes. But now both illegal drug use and legal weed use is up - win?
https://nida.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/2024/08/canna...
Comparatively, sure. I don't think either of those are as addictive or as deadly as tobacco use.
Citations?
It’s not that I have an opinion either way. Having anything that messes with my lungs is something I don’t touch. Not that I’m a health nut. But I have been a gym addict for over 30 years.
I mean, your source there is telling us that cannabis and hallucinogen use are up, vaping (weed and nicotine) is up and smoking is in decline.
Hallucinogens are generally considered not very addictive, they are drugs that people use infrequently and their direct health effects are usually pretty minimal - LSD for instance is a mild stimulant and vasoconstrictor, but that's no real health worry for younger users. There are mental side effects in a minority of users (HPPD etc).
Compare this to tobacco which is well known to be one of the world's most addictive substances and kills fully half of lifetime users, I'd say a society in which people 9% of people used hallucinogens in the last year is preferable to one in which (like the US was in 1965) 42% of people smoke daily.
Cannabis consumption doesn't have to involve your lungs, people consume all sorts of edibles and drinks these days. Vaping cannabis is definitely worse for your health than abstaining from both vaping and smoking, but it doesn't contain the combustion products from burning plant material. Smoking cannabis; well I honestly don't know how that compares to smoking tobacco in terms of health risk, but it is less addictive and users are less likely to be "pack a day" types than they are with cigarettes AFAICT.
Vaping nicotine, similarly, is widely considered worse than not vaping nicotine and users may be more prone to respiratory infections, plus there is often poor quality control on ingredients. But again, tobacco kills half of lifetime users.
So yeah, if I had to choose whether to have higher smoking rates or higher hallucinogen and weed use rates in society, based on expected health outcomes, I'd go with the hallucinogens and weed.
If you want to read about the comparative risks of drug use (including tobacco and alcohol, but written prior to the explosion of vapes) I highly recommend "Drugs without the hot air", a book by Prof. David Nutt, one of the UK's foremost experts on the topic. The general takeaway is that heroin, cocaine, tobacco and alcohol are the worst, and that most other drugs slot in below there somewhere.
>"You probably know that social media is no longer about free speech, It’s a targeted advertising machine"
Youtube for one is an advertising machine. On the other hand it is one of the few places where one can find some amazing educational and entertainment content. Prohibiting it I think is a crime.
Besides, lately Politicians stick their noses everywhere. It is just way too much.
It's not banned for under 16s, they just can't sign up.
Which means they also do no longer benefit from family-grouped Youtube Premium, which means MORE ADS ... which is exactly what we tried to prevent, right?
YouTube just needs to create a kids account feature which can’t post or comment.
They already have that. Youtube Kids. And it works horribly because apparently Family Guy counts as "for kids". And that's not even the tip of the iceberg on the problems presented.
Tech is trying to push all these wonderful LLM's on us, telling us how it works like magic. Meanwhile, it can't even follow basic public TV labeling.
Youtube kids is designed for toddlers, and should probably be shut down entirely. What I'm talking about is something designed for 14 year olds where they can still subscribe to channels, have paid ad free, parental controls, etc. But not upload videos or use it in a social media way.
Youtube (regular one) is already designed to be kids-friendly. There are no war images since recent AI moderation rollout. There are a lot of very forbidden words which can lead to ban account. There are a lot of mildly forbidden words which just do not appear in subtitle. You can not say anything bully on comments - it will be removed instantly. I don't consider anything bad in YT except of the whole top of popular bloggers - because they are clearly aimed at low-IQ people. Just don't be a stupid, and your kids will not watch the bloggers. Buy more instruments of all kinds for your kids and they will watch a lot of educational videos explaining different know-hows.
The main target of these bans algorithmic content curation and the addictive nature of such algorithms and the possible harmful content that could be presented. So no?
Maybe that instead of protesting against the regulation we should ask the platforms to provide ads-free and algorithm-free service to kids under 16.
Interesting. I don't know if you intended it, but algorithm free means no recommendations to me - even no recommended videos alongside existing videos. You want a video? You have to search for something.
I think that is a surprisingly good solution. You can still access educational information, or really whatever videos you want, but you have to actively seek them out rather than ingest whatever is spit out at you.
Search results are pretty much the same thing though. It's a ranked list of recommended videos. It's just based on your text instead of the video you're watching.
I've used plugins like unhook in the past which do exactly this and it's nice. Now I just follow channels via rss and block everything else on the page. Same deal.
I'd support that.
Yeah but content curation ( e.g. building your own Alrogrithm TM ) is the only way you get out of the advertisement hell of Youtube. Browsing Youtube on Incognito and your feeds filled with Mr Beast and Tryphobia AI Generated contents.
Don't use recommendations unless showing to YT that your request are always great and just don't click lowball content even once on your first hours of using YT new profile.
It is a targeted advertising machine, that is one of its functions. I also don't think there is anything wrong with that. I don't think the government has any businesses banning speech either. I also don't believe they want to "save the children".
Now tell us what you think about drivers licenses
The question here is, is social media addictive and is it harmful. If we have enough evidentiary proof, then yes, it should be banned just like we do for alcohol or cigarettes. We also ban porn for kids. And we don't need any ID proofs in implementing the ban. So we have a precedent. It's not perfect, but society knows it's bad, government, family, schools come together and implement the ban. No need for IDs etc and give more control to government.
Some of us don’t mind government regulation as much as your parents told you not to like it. I just say this because it’s usually those types of parents that instill this kind of stuff and their children not to trust the government but some of us actually do. We are pretty happy with the way things are. It’s not naïve either. It’s seriously a problem when people talk like the government is meant to be not trusted.
I typically think regulation is ineffective and poorly structured. Banning social media for teenagers is such an obvious social good that I can’t see a downside. The kids are not alright.
You don’t see a downside from having the government tie your ID to your online presence?
No, not really. Any sufficiently motivated state actor already can. I would be unsurprised to be able to dox you as a mildly interested individual. It is usually not very hard.
People usually reference things that they are ashamed about as a reason to justify this fear of ID based services. I don’t find this compelling whatsoever. Every platform I’m on that is even mildly associated with identity is more enjoyable and interesting. The idea that the marketplace of ideas is slowed by identity is not something I’ve seen in practice. In authoritarian regimes we already see ways to circumvent internet anonymity. So no, I don’t see the downside.
Open to being persuaded here though, about 5 years ago I would have agreed with you.
You realize right now today the US is forcing people to have public social media profiles to enter the country and they just started firing people for saying mean things about an irrelevant racist podcaster?
Why make it easy for them.
>Some of us don’t mind government regulation as much as your parents told you not to like it
I wasn't told to hate government regulations. 30 years of horrible, ineffective regulation taught me to hate these poorly thought out regulatoins. I grew up under No Child Left Behind. I saw the TSA form before my very eyes. I'm right now seeing ICE roam free, regulations be damned.
I don't hate the idea of regulation. I don't trust the people who are trying to regulate.
From the outside it does look like the US is especially bad at it.
Australia has had a pretty good track record with writing/implementing regulations.
US seems the only western nation with high trust issue with its own government.
Aussie, Canada, much of the Europe have no issue.
Had no issues.
I don't put much stock in slippery-slope style arguments. If you're going to make an argument like that, you need to support it with other instances where the same group/government has actually fallen down that slippery slope, to great detriment, in a similar enough situation for it to be likely to happen here.
Without that, it just comes off as hand-wavy anti-government fear-mongering. It's telling that you used the term "authoritarians", as if any law that's passed that can restrict what someone can do is necessarily authoritarian... which, well, as I said, it's telling.
I'm more concerned with the fact that these sorts of laws don't just affect kids: they require adults to supply government-issued identification in order to use these services, which I think is crap.
Authoritarians were already in charge of social media. At least these new “authoritarians” are elected and have some duty to people and society rather than just a few rich shareholders.
Still, even the most libertarian among us generally won't oppose restricting youth access to tobacco, or restricting recreational access to hard drugs.
That's the thing. We don't really ban "youth smoking". We ban sellers selling to youth. Who's accountable is everything in law.
Targeting platforms is like only banning one brand of cigarette. People will just find another. We should instead attack the "seller" here, being the algorithms optimized for selling and not for the enrichment of society.
So, considering there is a clear health issue with fast food and television, shall we ban them from having anything other than fruit and books (but not too complicated ones, we don't want them to get potentially suicidal ideas)?
You’re framing this as an all-or-nothing choice. The logical inverse of your argument would be: "should we unban hard drugs for everyone, and allow alcohol, tobacco, or porn for kids?"
That kind of binary framing doesn’t really move the discussion forward.
A more constructive approach is case-by-case. Different things sit at different levels of harm, and "ban everything" vs. "ban nothing" isn’t a workable model for society.
You know, I am in a country that allows alcohol for children (in different intensities, e.g. beer at age 14 with parents present, age 16 in the supermarket, age 18 for the hard stuff). As it turns out, our kids are alright.
Tobacco and porn have been more strongly regulated lately. In my teenage years, they were easily available to anyone with coins in their hands. Turns out: that didn't destroy us either.
The first beer, the first pack of strong tobacco (Rothändle, the dirtiest, hardest stuff), the first tiddie magazine from the railway station kiosk, those were rites of passages. It was a way for teenagers to push the envelope, realise alcohol makes you wobbly, tobacco causes diarrea (believe me, that Rothändle stuff was more chemical weapon than 'smooth'), and ultimately, all women look about the same undressed, so it is pointless to keep buying. They were small, recoverable mistakes that taught teenagers where their limits were.
Now we have banned all that away - but the teenage urge to self-realization and rebellion found a new way to social media. And: social media is safer: no-one got lung cancer from TikTok. No-one woke up in a hospital for facebook poisoning.
Ultimately, it is the rebellion the fascists dislike, not the fact that people earn money with it. So we ban that, driving teenagers to ever-more-destructive behaviour.
Teenagers need an outlet to be teenagers without living in a state sanctioned panopticum. If society pathologizes every form of adolescent experimentation, if you let control freaks raise your children, do not be surprised if they turn out to be either actual rebels, or something much, much darker.
Yes because it is so hard for kids to get alcohol and cigarettes. Kids have been sneaking and smoking cigarettes forever.
Prevention policies work:
"In 2015, 9.3% of high school students reported smoking cigarettes in the last 30 days, down 74% from 36.4% in 1997 when rates peaked after increasing throughout the first half of the 1990s"
I am seeing 22%
https://www.getsmartaboutdrugs.gov/news-statistics/2024/10/1...
As one of the libertarian people here, my concern is that this “what about the children” will force IDs to post. Because how else could it be done?
That said smoking and Instagram are probably best avoided by kids
It’s already a solved problem- load a digital ID into a wallet app, the operating system can then perform a zero knowledge proof for each website that the user is over 16. The government issuing the ID doesn’t know which websites it’s being used for and the website only gets a binary yes/no for the age and no other personal info:
https://blog.google/products/google-pay/google-wallet-age-id...
How does this solve the problem of both governments and corporations wanting to implement this in ways that allow them to hoard datasets?
As it stands, the government in the US uses an identity verification vendor that forces you to upload videos of multiple angles of your face, enough data for facial recognition and to build 3D models, along with pictures of your ID.
I use Tor, so I get to see how age verification is implemented all over the world. By large, the process almost always includes using your government issued ID and live pictures/videos of your face.
There are zero incentives to implement zero knowledge proofs like this, and billions of dollars of incentives to use age verification as an opportunity to collect population-wide datasets of people's faces in high resolution and 3D. That data is valuable, especially for governments and companies that want to implement accurate facial recognition and who have AI models to train.
Nothing "solves" the problem of governments wanting to collect data on you. Governments will likely always want this, until we start caring about the issue enough to elect ones that don't.
The important point is that such invasive approaches are not required; clearly, however people already authenticate with government agencies for getting a driver's licence or passport would suffice. I think it's the responsibility of knowledgeable tech people to advocate for this.
I suspect that this is going to happen one way or another anyways. You already have to scan your face at the airport here.
Well, phones and computers have had parental controls for well over a decade.
That doesn't solve the problem: it just defers it. Who's allowed to have a digital ID?
Microsoft users :)
Or do you expect the government to understand there are other operating systems out there?
Most people in western countries already have id. I think the ship has ling sailed on that.
Most being the operative word. In human-centric bureaucracies, people who don't have ID (for whatever reason: religious conviction, a feud with the relevant government agency, a legal status the computer system was never designed to represent) can still access services in many cases. Naïvely computerising everything will effectively remove rights from those whose paperwork doesn't check out.
ID verification is a universal hammer, to which all problems look like nails, but we shouldn't be so quick to reach for it. Not all of its downsides can be solved with cryptography.
Everyone the government decides can have one, the same way every other government ID works.
IOW, this problem is as "unsolved" as the problem of deciding who's allowed to drive a car, or travel to another country.
> restricting recreational access to hard drugs.
You might want to double-check your definition of "hard drugs", "libertarian" or both.
This is not about stopping kids from communicating. The list of negative consequences of being on social media is long and real.
A government regulating something is also not authoritarian.
"Government bad" is not an argument by the way, and also not a given. It's just libertarian confusion.
The "stuff" is already in the hands of authoritarians. When huge swathes of the world's "social estate" lies in the hands of a very small number of individuals with overwhelming incentives to tweak the "stuff" for their own benefit (exerting their authority over the estate if you will), then you're already in that territory. At least with elected authoritarians you have some theoretical influence. Good luck getting a Facebook/X policy changed.
>And this is further normalising the government making decisions about speech where they have every incentive and tendency to shut down people who tell inconvenient and important truths.
You really should think about how idiotic this libertarian talking point is
It would be valid if you had a populace that was educated (implying that when people heard the inconvenient truths, they would be able to parse fact from fiction and not be ideologically driven), combined with a tyrannical government that would be in power and afraid of the general populace knowing that information and starting a revolt.
This situation is pretty much impossible. How can an educated populace elect that government in the first place? If the population was dumb and elected a fascist government (i.e USA), they would just ignore anyone speaking inconvenient truths (i.e how MAGA is blind to all the stuff that is going on).
Secondly, information dissemination is pretty much impossible to stop these days with everyone being on the internet all the time.
The only people who complain about government silencing them these days are racists who wanna push some racist or "anti-woke" narrative, or the brainrotted people like anti-vaxxers. Because in their mind, they live in this false reality where they believe that everyone is brainwashed by the evil government and they are the actually "woke" ones.
I'd even go one step further: it does not have to be enforceable at all. This has to do with teen's psychology. For whatever reason, kids just fight their parents but listen to their schools and government a lot more. Of course, there are exceptions, but I'm talking about trend. The kids in my school district were generally angry towards their parents when they couldn't get a smartphone when their peers did. However, when my school district introduced the strict ban of electronic devices in school, the kids quieted down and even bought the same reasons that their parents were saying: attention is the most precious assets one should cherish. Kids complained that the problem sets by RSM (Russian School of Mathematics) are too hard and unnecessary (they are not by the standard of any Asian or East European country), yet they stopped complaining when the school teacher ramped up the difficulty of the homework.
So, when the government issues this ban, the kids would listen to their parents a lot more easily.
Absolutely this. We have limits in place for usage of a bunch of this sort of stuff, from not at all to up to an hour, and we'd be constantly tested and pushed on these limits. Constantly. "But my friends are..." is the usual start to it.
Government says you can't chat with just anyone in Roblox, and suddenly it's accepted that this is just what it is. Not only that, but limits and rules on how much and when you can watch YouTube and the like are also suddenly more acceptable.
So far what my kids are saying is that this is broadly true across their peer groups. The exceptions are just that, exceptions. The peer pressure to be in on it all is lessened. And in turn, that means less push-back on boundaries set by us, because it's less of a big deal.
(And I face less of a dilemma of how much to allow to balance out the harm of not being part of the zeitgeist vs. the harm of short form, mega-corporation curated content).
That's exactly what its part of it.
So many people are looking at this from a technical stand point and how water tight or perfect its going to be.
But there is a large psychological part of this that helps parents and I know that part of it is what a number of parents I've spoken to like about it.
Its not just about the current generation, but the next wave of kids who have grown up under these laws, the psychology of it will have changed.
Yes, there is a normative aspect to it.
This also works with other things such as alcohol and (old school) smoking (neither of which has watertight control, but the control is still very effective).
> a small fraction of kids branching off into fringe networks that are off the radar and will take them to very dark places very quickly.
I don't think this is much of an issue at all. The path of least resistance, by an overwhelmingly wide margin, is just using a proxy, TOR, or whatever else to bypass the filtering. Sites will be doing the bare minimum for legal compliance, and so it won't be particularly difficult.
Beyond that I'd also add that for those of us that were children during the early days of the internet, "we" were always one click away from just about anything you could imagine in newsgroups, IRC, and so on. It never really seems to have had much of any negative effect, let alone when contrasted against the overwhelmingly negative effect of social media.
I don't really know why that is, and I half suspect nobody really does. You can come up with lots of clever hypotheses that are all probably at least partially true, but on a fundamental level it's quite surprising how destructive 'everybody' communicating online turned out to be. And that obviously doesn't end just because somebody turns 18.
The real problem is social media. Their machine learning algorithms are optimised to boost toxic content, as they result in more engagement (time spent). This is a fundamental trait of humans. Even babies look at angry faces longer than happy faces.More time spent means more advertising revenue.
It means the current generation gets exposed to a lot of toxic content all in the name of driving advertising revenue. In the olden days you could get everything, but it wasn't forced down your throat, or rather your reels.
I agree with you 100%, but I would add the bubble effect.
You watch something, you like it, then you get all the time similar things.
Simple example: you click on a post about vegetarian meals. Then the next you see is cows ending up in a slaughterhouse. And then etc.. In less than a week, your posts are all about "why become a vegan".
The end effect is that they shape our children culturally, and it's very hard to explain what is true vs what is fake. Or why something is right vs wrong. They are just not there yet.
> a small fraction of kids branching off into fringe networks that are off the radar and will take them to very dark places very quickly.
‘Fringe networks’, and ‘off the radar’ feel like a very negative framing for a kind of smaller, more intimate, and often pleasantly communal feeling internet that I quite like!
Old fashioned online forums—maybe even Hackernews itself?—would likely fit into this ‘fringe’, ‘off the radar’ internet, and yet, it still feels much less toxic here than it does on twitter.
> The real problem is social media. Their machine learning algorithms are optimised to boost toxic content
…and you need a massive network to enable this, right? You can’t do it without the money, and the volume of content, that the giants in this space have.
If this just pushes kids onto the small web—sure, it’s not _all_ wholesome—but at least it’s not as carefully, as deliberately manipulative.
> a small fraction of kids branching off into fringe networks that are off the radar and will take them to very dark places very quickly.
I've been grappling with this all afternoon and I still cannot determine what my stance on this.
I grew up when the internet was a bit of a wildwest, and I've definitely seen things online that I wish I never had without my consent.
But there's also a bizarre thought that mayb exposure to this isn't such a bad thing because it keeps us human, and aware of privilidge and our safety - and why that is such an important thing to think about
I'd equate it at some level to seeing the inside of the production of food and being put of eating meat, or eating anything non-organic again.
I'm not sure I would like my own children to see it, but I'm hyper aware of what conflict and crime looks like as a result.
Comparatively to social media at least I was making a choice to click on something risky or that I would not like to see rather than having a algorithm choose for me. Not sure if I am just becoming a middle-aged tech dinosaur though.,
Your comment made one word immediately pop to mind - rotten? But I'm increasingly of the opinion that the 'dark stuff' on the internet isn't really the problem, so much as the seemingly innocuous stuff like people posting extremely 'select', if not outright fabricated, sections of their lives on social media. It gives people a mistaken perception of what their own life is like or what it could/should be like. Even more when this is taken to the next level with insecure kids consuming and interacting with one another in this context.
And then there's the issue with ourselves even. We pretty much all do, say, and believe dumb things when we're younger. It's just a part of growing up. But I can't imagine what life must be like if you mix this reality with social media. Not only does this then stay attached to you forever, but pretty much anything can be artificially reinforced. With both factors probably working to impair general maturation.
These are all just consequences of 'normal' things that you'd have even if we censored 100% of vice on the internet, and it's still quite awful.
When we were growing up, internet was for smart people. Chat rooms and video games were for "nerds", the "cool" people all hung out in person.
When someone wanted to do something counter-culture (i.e the *chan websites), there was actually a shared interest behind it. People would spend time making content and actually doing things on the web.
These days, internet is so ubiqutious that the majority of the users are simply consumers. There is no drive to build anything. Modern day kids aren't going to be spending time trying to figure out how to get around social media bans with technology, because most internet users simply just don't care enough to organize and build something.
I think one difference from how we grew up (remember bbs’es?) is that it was something in your desktop, not an omnipresent force in your pocket
And here lies the actual fix unless you just want to sit back and wait for regulators to pick it up - phones should be the means of communication, not consumption.
Remove those apps that make you do so, and the world becomes a little bit brighter over time. I did it years ago with FB apps (which was draining battery while unused, typical fb crappy engineering when they can't even snoop on you in more subtle ways) and have 0 need to put anything there. I can check FB on desktop if I need to, and do so rarely due to lack of any actually interesting stuff there.
Same can go for any other social cancer out there.
Yeah the current situation is akin to having to open a pack of cigarettes every time you wanted to check the weather or use satnav.
In the EU you don’t need to upload your ID anywhere, the service can use the government’s portal for ID verification. In the case of age verification they can get a yes/no response if the age is above some threshold. This is opaque to the service so they wouldn’t get any additional ID details.
> In the EU you don’t need to upload your ID anywhere, the service can use the government’s portal for ID verification. In the case of age verification they can get a yes/no response
The issue is that now the government knows what you are doing online, and that should never be allowed to happen.
I grew up when the Internet was truly free, before Facebook even existed. People shared source code, videos, MP3s, games, regardless of "copyright" or "intellectual property." To some extent, it is still possible to do all of this, but these freedoms are being eroded every day by making the Internet less anonymous. The endgame is obviously to force people to pay for things whose "marginal cost" is zero in the language of economists. "Protecting the children" is just a convenient excuse.
> The issue is that now the government knows what you are doing online
There's zero technical necessity for this. You could do zero knowledge proofs with crypto key pairs issued together with the eID.
The Swiss proposal for eID includes stuff like that. If a service needs proof of age, you use an app on your phone to generate the response, which is anonymized towards the requester and doesn't need to contact a government server at all.
I don’t really get your point. Your government is generally able to compel your ISP to give them logs of all of your traffic, if they don’t already vacuum it up, so it’s honestly a bit naive to think it shouldn’t be allowed to happen, because in practice it absolutely can.
There is a distinction between getting data from an ISP and getting it via your use of their portal, but I’d argue it’s without much of a difference in reality.
There's an enormous difference in the government having channels allowing for the disclosing of private material to them and just giving them all of it from the get go, and it is not unlike the difference of allowing the government to jail people and allowing it to arbitrarily jail people for life.
The difference is legislation, in both cases. Permissible data exchange between government services is legislatively encoded. Permissible sentences are legislatively encoded.
Since we don't see a whole lot of moderately healthy democracies arbitrarily jailing people for life, one might reasonably assume these sorts of controls work.
> This is opaque to the service
The "service" is irrelevant. I think most people would trust Porno Hub to be discreet about their visits. That's in their business interest. But now they have to tell your government about all the times you're visiting Porno Hub.
And nobody should trust their government.
Also, keep in mind that western governments share with each other. There will come a time when Australians will try to enter USA but they'll get flagged at the border because the AUS government shared that this particular individual visited Porno Hub and a few other age-restricted websites 7,000 times in the last 30 days. Red Flag!
> And nobody should trust their government.
Nobody should trust a billion dollar corporation, that's why we have democratically elected governments. All these power hungry fucks counter balance each-other, to some extend at least.
> democratically elected governments.
51% of a vote can go the wrong way now and then.
Yes but winner takes all is not the only voting system in existence, and democracy goes beyond just voting once every few years.
> democracy goes beyond just voting once every few years.
What else is there? You are effectively only asked to choose between bad and worse candidates at a fairly low frequency.
You're equating democracy to presidential elections, that's not the full extent of it. Free press, transparency, independent justice, referendums, etc. are all part of a democratic system. Norway / Denmark / Switzerland do it better than US / UK / France for instance.
Hot take, nobody should trust anybody. Trustless systems could certainly exist for this, if the government took the time to care.
Trust is key to modern society. Any measure aimed at supplanting trust increases transaction costs in the economy.
To be entirely fair, a government that would abuse your vague "am I allowed to access porn" history seems well into the territory of a government that would just make it up. A nefarious, powerful entity has no real requirement to be honest in their maliciousness.
They also have more direct means of accessing more specific data via ISPs, audits, banks, etc.
I think the government making stuff up is worth considering, but isn't it a kind of different threat model?
The hypothetical government isn't going to make stuff up about me, some nobody, on a flight to the US to be a tourist or something. They statistically don't care about me. However, the US morality police might decide to statistically care about everyone who watches porn.
But if I'm a somebody, say a former or potential whistleblower, or a local politician, etc. then a government might have a specific motive to do me dirty and not care about being honest.
I guess there's a wide and blurry line between being a "nobody" the government has no motivation to lie about and being a "somebody" that deserves special malicious treatment.
The moral outrage crowd in the US have no power. The people who can and will act against you will only use morality as an excuse, not a cause. Being some nobody, the government has no interest in you anyway. You can watch porn, they can know it, and nothing changes, because you're still a nobody.
(If you watch porn online, you can be pretty sure they already "know" it, because you're not doing it in the privacy of your own home, you're doing it on a public network with next to no secrecy about who you are or what you're doing).
That is an assumption. The games the powerful play leverage truth and provable things. I think there is a lot of need for privacy and abuse of dragnet information before you get to the government framing people.
Like January 6th and vaccines causing autism and climate change denial and election rigging and Haitians eating dogs and Venezuela drug boats?
Are you and I living in the same reality? They're constantly just making things up out of nowhere from nothing and refusing to back down. Now to the point of arresting US citizens with a secret police and committing international war crimes in open waters.
I didn't say people don't lie and do bad shit. Not sure where that came from.
Just because people lie, doesn't mean we need to shrug ok lets just hand over all our private data everywhere.
But I dig ya! What the current US government does is abhorrent.
> Like January 6th and vaccines causing autism and climate change denial and election rigging and Haitians eating dogs and Venezuela drug boats?
That you categorize all of those things in the same boat is very partisan. And it is exactly why a government controlling access to information is a very bad idea. Some of those things aren't real phenomena, others are just over hyped and some are real and very much proven. The news sources you got those opinions from are highly partisan but you trust them implicitly even though you have access to the Internet and can cross check many of them. That you can make such blind mistakes is exactly why elected officials should never control the flow of information. And to give you an example of an opinion that very much matters, consider is nuclear power green or not? The wrong answer about that is doing more damage than your most hated official could ever do.
Reality isn't partisan.
- January 6th was an attempted coup of the government coordinated by Republican interest groups and antagonized by Trump.
- Vaccines do not cause autism.
- Climate change is real and anthropological in origin.
- The 2020 election was not rigged for Biden and there exists no evidence of impropriety of any kind.
- Haitians did not eat people's pet dogs in the USA. This was just plain, out-in-the-open racism.
- The US military is using the WMD, sorry, I mean the "drug boat" excuse on vessels 1,200 miles away from US waters to execute a dozen people at a time. They are providing no evidence and performing no seizures or investigations. Then they are violating international law and their own documents on war crimes and service member's duty to refuse by having them execute shipwreck survivors.
Everything above is a fact. Not an opinion. Not partisan. A fact.
You mean like Epstein? We've got a bunch of truths about rich people and nothing happens.
The fear of an evil government misusing something, more often than not, is a thought terminating cliche. It means we cannot regulate, or create any laws about anything, because evil people could abuse those laws. In reality, evil people do evil shit, irrespective of the laws available for abuse.
Right... but I don't think I was suggesting anarchy.
Cops do it all the time even when bodycams show otherwise
Not just the US, but image entering Qatar or Indonesia with them having that knowledge of your access to "adult content".
That's a very good technical solution, but socially it can be foiled by an official-looking alert saying "failed to scan card, please do X instead".
And that's assuming the technical solution is deployed everywhere. I'm in the EU with one of those IDs, and I still had to upload photos of my passport and scan my face to open a bank account. The identification process even had its own app that I had to install.
But then again, should the EU follow up with a similar policy, it could mandate the use of these checks and prevent/penalize ID photos. I’m very optimistic here.
Exactly. I'd concede this point if I'd seen a giant public awareness campaign informing people which official sites to use and general safety awareness about it. I can tell you, literally nothing like that has happened. Not an insufficient effort at it - no effort, nothing. It's clear the people in charge are just head in the sand about this aspect of it.
I’d say you made a good risk-benefit analysis, recognizing the potential upside of the ban (breaking the network effect, reducing social pressure) while raising important concerns about security, privacy, and a possible migration to more dangerous online spaces. That kind of debate is essential.
But I also think some of the consequences you fear (widespread scams, a mass shift to “dark” networks, extreme social isolation) are not guaranteed. They will depend heavily on how the law is implemented, how platforms handle age verification, and what healthy social alternatives (offline or moderated) are offered. I do believe it’s possible to design a safe system.
Personally, having seen many dire predictions fail to materialize in the past, I don’t view this as either a “clear net benefit” or an “inevitable disaster,” but rather as a social experiment with real potential for success as well as serious unintended consequences.
I support the Australian law and would like to see something similar in my own country. We can’t simply assume an invisible hand will resolve this issue for the better. Still, it’s worth watching closely and following the empirical data over the coming months.
Like anything it's a matter of magnitudes. My best guess is that any negative side effects are going to be of a trivial magnitude, cancelling out a small amount of the upside on net. At the very least it's an experiment worth running, and if successful, worth extending to further regulations for adults too, especially around mechanics (not the content itself) such as the algorithmic feed.
Australia has APIs that can be used to verify ID without uploading them, but American tech companies has always refused to use them.
a) is solvable by a system that instead of collecting IDs reveals only the single bit of information required b) parents still need to do their job
Arguably parental control should have been enough to avoid all of this but the regulation still helps parents. It’s way more difficult to ask kids not to have social media when all of their friends have it.
I would have preferred stricter social media platform regulation for everyone forcing tech companies to take responsibility for what happens on their platforms. It’s not that they are dangerously only for kids
In other words it solved the multi-agent coordination problem amongst parents, which otherwise would require the majority of them to be rational and good (a tall order).
Australia already has a government digital ID verification service, so this social media ban is just a first step towards legislators realising they can force people to just integrate and use that, then there is no user data changing hands.
Edit: > or use an Australian Government accredited digital ID service to prove their age
Here you go. If you’re concerned about your personal data, only use platforms that integrate and use this.
There has only been one accredited Digital ID that sort of isn't government and that's Australia Post's Digital ID which they're now winding down in favour of the government's. While the Digital ID act does allow for these third-party accredited providers, I think we can realistically expect that the only one that will be in use will be the federal government's.
It’s called “myID” https://www.myid.gov.au/
>Here you go. If you’re concerned about your personal data, only use platforms that integrate and use this.
The Australian Governments IT Security is a joke.
My concern is very much those two concerns plus the fact that I value being able to be anonymous. We're increasingly losing that in the real world with CCTV and AI that would eventually allow people to be tracked (like in China), I do want to have one last bastion of privacy.
That said, I fully support laws that ban phones at school, I chose my kid's school because they do not allow any electronic devices on campus outside the computer lab where kids can go to to do research. Every day when I bring my kid to the school bus, I see that children say hello to each other and start chatting. There's another very well ranked school that picks up kids in front of my apartment and they allow phones. The kids all stare fixedly on their phones as soon as they sit on the bus. Having a country wide ban of mobile devices in all schools would I think serve most of the same purpose as the social media ban while having a lot less externalities.
These are exactly my thoughts as well, both the positives (it doesn't need to be air-tight) and the negatives (providing documentation). I don't know that there is a great system here. The best I can think of is having independent third parties that people can register with and that can provide a 'proof of eligibility' token tied to an e-mail address or something similar with the explicit, backed by law, understanding that sharing more than that proof of eligibility with a third party is a criminal offense. The money side of things would be that FB and the like would pay the proof company a service fee so they make money and FB gets the proof without getting access to your documents. Just a thought.
The criticism is not that it wont be watertight, its that it will be ineffective in achieving what they say the reasoning is.
1. Kids are already moving to platforms that are not included in the ban, groups of friends will choose their own apps to make their group home, including Russian and Chinese apps ( already happening now)
2. Some kids have found ways around the included platforms...not surprising
3. One of the reasons they are spruiking is to stop Cyberbullying. Its ironic then that a big problem in schools across the country is physical bullying in the school grounds, with the educational authorities doing nothing about it. I know this one to be fact and have multiple instances that I personally know of where it happens and no action is taken. Our Government doesnt want to know about this at all
4. The platforms that have been banned are mostly "Big Tech" something that our Government hates with a passion, while many others go untouched. Discord is not included nor Telegram (how are these not social media, they literally allow people to socialise). I feel this is more of a weakening jab at Big Tech by our government to "stick it to them"
5. Day 3 and its pretty ineffective so far. There are many under 16's still have accounts on the blocked socials, and within the Family circle the only one that has been banned is actually 17, having her Instagram blocked ??? so not an awesome start at all.
Discord might not be officially included, but they still complied.
«Big Tech» is a bad term to use IMHO, but if you do, why wouldn't it cover Discord(/Tencent) or even Telegram ?
Going to say Nope there....I know a lot of kids using discord, they do not have age checks in Australia.
Seems like it was only newly introduced for Australians wanting to access Discord (not-)servers (and/or channels) declaring themselves 18+ only.
But you have not addressed the problem that governments control the flow of information in this case here.
The antisocial media may be irrelevant, but I still fail to see why a government should be able to proxy-control the flow of information. So I am totally against this. I am also against antisocial media, but I don't see why a government actor should filter and censor information here.
"the Social Media Minimum Age legislation specifically prohibits platforms from compelling Australians to provide a government-issued ID or use an Australian Government accredited digital ID service to prove their age.
Platforms may offer it as an option but must also offer a reasonable alternative, so no one who is 16 or older is prevented from having a social media account because they choose not to provide government ID. This includes situations where other age check methods return a result the user does not accept."
Digital ID is optional by default. Service providers that integrate with the Digital ID can apply for an exemption to make it mandatory. Given the mandatory nature of age verification checks for social media, the fact that social media is typically free to use and ad-supported and the cost of age verification would be prohibitive for smaller apps without significant VC backing, an argument for exemption could be made on the basis that their legal obligation can't otherwise be fulfilled without a prohibitive upfront cost.
Some fair points to consider.
Consistency at school means more and more parents and families are practicing their internet exposure the same way as well.
How this is being done might not be the greatest, and it might change how social media is used, or invite the next thing after social media. Most platforms have dreamt of being a users core identity service as well and that might be it.
The multiple independent studies that show the effect on children developing brains from scrolling and screens alone, let alone the content (be it social media etc) is something worth offering an approach to as well, parents can't be expected to be DIY and self-educate against the types of software that are so optimized to achieve their independent objective of the software - keep us using them.
> A lot of the criticism is based on the concept that it won't be technically watertight
Those who do that, are not interested in this ban working, they are the individualists assaulting the community.
> a) normalising people uploading identification documents...
we have technical measures for which there is no need for the end user to upload anything. With oath you can basically have a simple age check; nothing more.
> (b) a small fraction of kids branching off into fringe networks that are off the radar and will take them to very dark places very quickly.
You can always minimize the fraction, but you can never make it go away.
> Because it's politically unattractive, I don't think enough attention has been given to the harms that will flow from these laws.
This was a politically bold move and there will be no harms that will come out of it; especially when compared to the status quo.
Those who feign concern about this usually have vested interests into stopping this bill; their "interest" is just another attempt in stopping it albeit with a more "nuanced" approach.
> normalising people uploading identification documents and hence lead to people becoming victims of scams.
This law in Australia explicitly prohibits companies from using ID document verification for their age gating specifically because of concerns like this
> If you knock the percentage down far enough, you break the network effect to the point where those who don't want to don't feel pressured to.
I've seen this argument a lot, and I don't think it really matches reality - I very much expect that the problem users of social media who are teens will tend to be the ones that will want to get around the ban (and will easily be able to).
Kids who just have an account because they are "pressured" to probably aren't actually really using it much or problematically?
And the other problem is that everyone knows it's a silly law so I don't think there will be any less pressure to have accounts because enough kids will be evading it. The ban will only motivate many kids (if you know much about how teenagers think)
> a) normalising people uploading identification documents and hence lead to people becoming victims of scams
The reasonable approach to solve this problem is verification protocol that mandates integration with the apps chosen by users. You have your wallet with digital ID and you use only it on any website, sharing the bare minimum of details. No uploads of anything anywhere. Independent wallet providers ensure privacy and prevent state overreach.
> (b) a small fraction of kids branching off into fringe networks that are off the radar and will take them to very dark places very quickly.
Unfortunately dark places existed in mainstream social media too. It’s something that should receive sufficient attention from law enforcement, nothing has changed here.
> sharing the bare minimum of details The reasonable approach, yes, but the approach most in the interest of the governments and corporate players driving these laws...?
I think people are overindexing on how much of this is "get more data on users".
I don't get why people believe there's a conspiracy here. There's perhaps a large tent, but "social media bad" is not a controversial opinion! "The gov't should do something about it" is more controversial, though I think the controversiality is less heavy in spaces with parents, teachers, places where people have to deal with kids.
Not that this is how things should be determined, but... I think reading this as a "get more data and track people" play feels like giving everyone involved too much credit. It really just feels like what it says on the tin here.
It's very simple. Parents can configure parental controls on their children's devices.
I personally think, Facebook and Twitter need to be taken down because Zuckerberg and Musk are using the ppatform to interfere with politics.
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Yeah I never understood the watertight arguments. Just about any law can be circumvented or violated, that doesn't invalid having the law.
> normalising people uploading identification documents and hence lead to people becoming victims of scams
We've long lost this war.
I'm in Italy, staying at my 3rd Airbnb. I was surprised when the first asked me, casually, to drop a photograph of my passport in the chat. I checked with Claude: yep, that's the law.
(I'll remind you that Italy is in the EU.)
On checking into this place last week, the guy just took a photo of our passports on his phone. At this point I'm too weak to argue. And what's the point? That is no longer private data and if I pretend that it is, I'm the fool.
I'm pretty sure in most places in the world if you are travelling from abroad you are asked to share your passport, and have been for a very very very very long time.
The difference between sending it over a chat and handing it over to a clerk (who then photocopies it or types in the data into the computer) feels almost academic. Though at least "Typing it into the computer" doesn't leave them with a picture, just most of the data.
> The difference between sending it over a chat and handing it over to a clerk (who then photocopies it [...]
The difference is that the paper copy is local and only accessible to the hotel (and any government employee that might come knocking).
The digital version is accessible to anyone who has access to the system, which as we know well on HN includes bureaucrats (or police) with a vendetta against you and any hacker that can manage to breach the feeble defenses of the computer storing the data. That computer isn't locked down because the information is not valuable to the person who holds it; they're paid to satisfy a record-keeping law, not maintain system security.
> at least "Typing it into the computer" doesn't leave them with a picture, just most of the data.
Agreed, except now uploading a scan is the easiest way to file the data.
Good points.
I do agree that "not without a warrant" is a pretty load-bearing thing and it _should_ be tedious to get information. When a lot of info is just so easy to churn through that can activate new forms of abuse, even if from an information-theoretical point of view the information was always there.
And it's not even just about public officials. All those stories of people at Google reading their exes emails or whatever (maybe it was FB? Still) sticks to me.
Yeah but previous attack vector:
- Fraudster has to bribe hotel staff, or get on staff and then work there and steal documents. Tricky.
New attack vector:
- Fraudster rents out Airbnb. Trivial.
Well, even there, you're doing a transaction worth hundreds to thousands of dollars probably.
This pretty much lowers the bar to any random website on the internet can ask for ID to do something as trivial as look at a photo.
In a world where social engineering is the last unsolvable security vector, this is significant even if it is just a matter of degree.
> normalising people uploading identification documents
It's also important uploading to where. To Facebook. And the bulk of advertisements Facebook runs are literal (with literal meaning of the word literal) scams. And they are powerless[1] to stop it.
[1] not incentivised
> normalising people uploading identification documents
This is dependent on implementation.
From what I have heard (from ConnectID), some sites are using services like ConnectID as a way to have your bank verify you are of age without releasing any ID or specific details.
But I don't think it's all of them, and I agree it's a risk.
> fringe networks that are off the radar and will take them to very dark places very quickly
Soo... we already have a problem with some youths running into extremist content on Facebook, TikTok, Telegram ... no "fringe" network needed.
(b) a small fraction of kids branching off into fringe networks that are off the radar and will take them to very dark places very quickly.
This already happens, and I don't see how a law like this would significantly change the volume of edgelords and incels funneling into imageboards
There's internet culture precedent for this. 4chan itself has an early history of picking up leftovers from communities that were banned on other sites/forums/platforms.
4chan's origin itself fits that archetype, as well. It was created when a hentai subforum got banned on a larger forum, and the community moved over to the new imageboard.
It acts as sponge for more than just edgelords.
On your second point, that might be a little less of a concern. Granted there can be dark places anywhere, they're _so much easier_ to find online, and have to potential to be so much more reinforcing for problematic behavior.
b) This was always the case in past too, but I think this is handleable.
But most importantly, there's no expectation of kid to be on social media anymore, which is much more important than whether they are actually there or not.
very few laws and law makers take into consideration secondary (and beyond) effects.
Normalizing ID and ID uploading (instead of banning it) is really what makes this bad.
A good law would just have completely banned these platforms from the country. (Even the Canadian Kik, because freeware, therefore closed source, therefore a platform.
EDIT : Looks like it's instead the Australian Kick, The Register had it wrong ? Same deal. (Especially with its owners having a gambling background.))
I wish the EU would be bold enough to do this, especially with Trump's bullying, but I have already been disappointed in the past, despite the situation clearly calling for strong actions like these...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkDAXsF4oXA
> Because it's politically unattractive, I don't think enough attention has been given to the harms that will flow from these laws.
I ask if those harms are worse than what social media has done to a generation of young people?
I fully support this ban and even restricting online time marginally, tbh, until they're adults. The internet is not the place it once was. The primary focus of the internet today is to entrap you and monetize you at any cost. Social media is absolutely vile and ruinous for the development of young people (it's not helping adults either, mind you).
Social networks aren't that social anymore. Around 65% of the facebook content is not shared/generated by your friends in your social graph. So they're all just a Tik-Tok clones basically. Short dopamine addiction info-snacks with more and more AI generated slop. (and some of the slop is interesting like Cold War military tech stories from books read and visualized by AI).
The network effects doesn't matter that much for the Tiktok's of the world.
triggering thoughts…
it’s a difficult balancing act, and I tend to agree as blocks are put in place, there are very likely two groups of outcomes: the kid gives up and finds other alternatives which can be healthy or unhealthy, the kid perseveres and bypasses the block
both provide good learnings and shape development, but blocking isn’t the answer, communication, understanding, and moderation is
the alternative that one could flood the kid with unfettered access till the kid becomes nauseated and desensitised doesn’t really work either because it can be too risky
the best solution may be something in between, make it a hinderance more than an inconvenience, like the parent post, and go for the greatest impact on network effects, the evil genie in me would make all these platforms super unreliable, spotty at best
but hey, it’s a developmental milestone for the average generation member to rebel against the member’s previous generations
Curious about your thoughts on (a). I understand privacy concerns but not your point about scams. How are people going to lose their life savings? A photo ID is useful because you can compare the photo on it to someone human. Passports contain mirochips. If losing your ID was so dangerous people would be in trouble all the time, because people lose them all the time.
I guess it comes back to again not whether things are technically watertight, but how socially normalised something is. People are used to giving their ID out for significant transactions. This law says now that pretty much any random website has a good reason to ask you for ID documents. So when someone seeking to steal your identity already has two forms and is just trying to fill in that 3rd document to get over the line to where they can call up the bank to reset your password - the bar just got lowered. They no longer have to trick you into thinking it's a message from your bank or anything else significant. It can literally be "oh my cousin sent me pictures of their grand kids, let me just get my passport to upload so I can see them".
herd immunity, but for social media
> (b) a small fraction of kids branching off into fringe networks that are off the radar and will take them to very dark places very quickly.
Congratulations, Australia, you just drove a ton of kids into the arms of psychopaths like 764.
If you think Instagram and even 4chan are bad, that's nothing compared to the groups that sadly, are usually kids that were groomed themselves, who goad other kids into self-harm, violence and suicide through extortion, love bombing and literal cult shit.
Instagram might make you feel sad, but it doesn't threaten to kill your family if you don't strangle your pet cat and carve CVLT into your chest for a bunch of organized pedophiles online.
My understanding is that 764 are mostly active on mainstream social media platforms, where most "fringe networks that are off the radar and will take them to very dark places very quickly" tend to operate, contrary to GP's concern.
> (a) normalising people uploading identification documents
You might not know it or think too often about it, but most "real life" services we use require online identification, at least in Europe. Even on a simple rental agency portal in Germany it's recommended to "verify" your online identity to get more chances. Which means: just do it. Sure, you're free not to do it, as landlords are free not to care about your application at all.
Do you want to renew your car papers? E-ID is there (or whatever existing alternative).
Bank? The same.
In Germany the government[s] are pushing for Digitalization since years, which many laugh at as "ahah, what a joke, it's just filling an online module and sending a fax". It was true 5 years ago. Now I was super surprised because I recently had to do some bureaucratic BS and it's like any "normal" internet service that would require an identification (which is not just via a credit card or so). It's still not 100% accurate or "frictionless" but they're seriously getting there, which is super hard in a country where govt office A won't share data with govt office B. Compared to standing 1 hour in line to get just a stamp on a paper this is light years ahead.
The same will happen to these platforms, because that's the only solution we can think of, as of today. We all stand and watch Facebook making profits off our kids, making them depressed, etc. If you fine them, you're a communist, if you block them, you're a Nazi.
This is the most balanced alternative: you can still run your business here, people can still use social media, but let's not fuck up anymore our new generations, children, teenagers. They are the grownups of tomorrow.
Also, as some other comments mentioned elsewhere on HN: assume your data is already stolen or "publicly" available (maybe hidden somewhere).
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Father of five here, and founder of a social media marketing company (exited). Our kids are up against problems we didn't have during the great expansion of social. The three big things:
1. State level actors and well funded not for profits are fighting an information war to influence our kids. And they are very good at it. Down to having troll farms to talk one on one. Every time something new happens in the world, my younger kids ask me about what they saw on Tik-Tok and their initial understanding is shaped by a well funded actor, and is often completely a false narrative. The solution is be open and talk about it with your kids.
2. Criminals are even better at social than state level actors. They are smooth. And they are on platforms you wouldn't expect - like games. And criminals aren't all about fraud. They sell drugs, they try to physically steal in real life from your kids,they'll try to get your kids to do something embarrasing and blackmail them with it, and even can be human traffickers. Again, the solution is be open and talk about it with your kids - and make sure they know it's ok to ask, and it's especially ok if you think I shouldn't share this with Dad or they person is saying not to show your parents.
3. Sexual predators are even better at social than the criminals. The difference is that the predators can't hide behind national borders so they are very careful. Same solution as $#2, but this one is really tough because when your kids come to you about it, they may have shared something with the predator that the predator is using to extort them into hooking up. Don't attack or blame your kid, focus on making sure the predator never gets to them
I do not believe for a minute that social media was good for my kids as they grew up, but I'm not sure that you can even begin to fix it the way AU is trying to - regulating speech, association using prohibition is dipping a colander in the river to filter the silt.
I'm not sure why a person would want to let their kids hang out any place where that stuff you report is common, if it's at all possible to avoid it. I'm gonna continue to run with "no social media", which has worked so far. They can message people they actually know IRL, somewhere without a feed full of crap from people they don't know. That's plenty.
Like I can't think of any analogous place in physical space I'd let my kids hang out unsupervised, and the amount of time I intend to spend watching (supervising) them scrolling Insta or TikTok on anything like a regular basis is zero, and the likelihood of their choosing that as a thing they want to do if I'm otherwise available to do something fun with them is also probably somewhere around zero, which means... no social, since it ain't happening supervised.
Like I also wouldn't take them to a bad part of town and leave them there for hours. Why would I do the digital equivalent? Even if we talk about it afterward... why? Maybe occasionally as a "here's how to spot shit" lesson but not enough that they'd need an account or anything.
> I'm not sure why a person would want to let their kids hang out any place where that stuff you report is common,
A great percentage of serious crimes (from rape to fraud) are committed by family and friends of the victims. Should we not leave our children with our family alone?
The best move is to teach your children how to not be victimized. It is part of "being responsible for yourself". My parents taught me how to be safe in a bad neighborhood because sometimes you have to go there. They taught me how to pick good friends who wouldn't do bad things to me. They taught me how to spot the precursors to bad things. They let me hang out unsupervised. Because they taught me how to be responsible for myself. Why not teach your kids how to navigate the internet safely.
> A great percentage of serious crimes (from rape to fraud) are committed by family and friends of the victims. Should we not leave our children with our family alone?
But I'm pretty sure that like 50+% of interactions with family aren't crime.
> Why not teach your kids how to navigate the internet safely.
No reason to involve any serious amount of time browsing feeds of shit in that. I don't make them roll around in poison ivy, either. Absofuckinglutely not more than once. Exactly how much exposure to something of approaching-zero value and significant harm do they need? I'm going with "just enough to notice it's one of those so they can run the other way".
[EDIT] To put all my cards on the table, I think an extremely reasonable middle ground for Internet targeted ad networks and content-promoting algo-feed social networks would be to saddle them with an appropriate amount of liability for content they promote, which amount would surely be enough to put them all out of business. I see their feeds as the Internet equivalents of a crack house. I'm not gonna send my kids there—I'd rather see them gone, period. I will tell my kids what they are, and how and why such places might hurt them, in hopes they stay away. But I don't think some kind of "exposure therapy" or something is appropriate. The correct, moderate use of social media feeds is to avoid them entirely.
90% of all childhood sexual assaults are perpetrated by close family and friends[1].
If stranger danger is a motivating factor here, statistically, you should side-eye your close friends and family much, much more often and never leave them alone with your kids.
> But I'm pretty sure that like 50+% of interactions with family aren't crime.
You can say the same thing about social media interactions.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/child-abuse-neglect/about/about-child-se...
You've misunderstood this conversation and/or are applying statistics extremely poorly. This is not serving whatever point you're trying to make, and is a distraction from productive discourse.
I think you established too broad of a scope for discourse to be within the parameters you were hoping.
Immediately upon reading your comment, I thought about the general overprotection and over-supervision of kids which leads parents to drive their kids everywhere, prevent them from learning to use the subway on their own, or even live in cities. But what I think you were getting at is more about smaller hypothetical physically analogous places, but it's hard to think about what those places are in real life without relying on assumptions that may be more likely to occur online than in any significant concentration in the real world.
Imo, the most threatening place for kids to be in real life in terms of external factors, day to day, is around cars, bullies, bad actors within the family, and then maybe church/sports teams, but all of those are usually safe unless they're not, you can't realistically do anything productive about that without sacrificing their development as a human, except prepare them and guide them.
Online, it's just a whole different beast, and I'd think it would be games and social media, anywhere a gaurd would be let down, but imo the greater threat isn't criminality as much as it is nearly every other aspect except basic chats.
Not really. You asserted that unknown people are dangerous, while most of the replies to you are is pointing out that there are serious classes of crimes where people your child knows well are the most likely to commit them. I think sometimes perception is not reality, and the greatest danger to your child isn't society as a whole. It's a lot closer to home than anyone wants to think.
> I don't make them roll around in poison ivy, either.
My parents taught me what poison ivy looks like so I did not roll in it.
Likewise teaching your kids what a skinner loop is and how scrolling a feed is putting yourself in a skinner loop is really surprisingly effective. Kids like having agency, when you show them that tiktok does things to take your control away they listen.
That sounds great in principle, but many parents are either not interested or present enough to do so, or themselves lack the skills for it.
And that's the root cause of many, many issues.
It's a pity so many of these issues get simply patched up through other means instead of properly addressing the real root cause.
If you have kids it is your responsibility. If you have kids and are not interested or present enough, this is literally the problem.
Again, you being right doesn’t change anything. This is the world we live in, and that means we need to work with what we have. Which includes inattentive parents.
So... what's the point. Outlawing being an inattentive parent doesn't fix that problem. I'm not sure human beings have found a fix for that that has optimal outcomes for the kids.
This is wildly unpopular, for good reasons, but if I want to get a third dog I need to apply for and get a license from the council - they’ll come round, inspect my property and ensure that it’s adequate for a number of dogs, that it’s secure and my current pets are well treated before issuing it.
The disconnect between this and children seems wild to me. Why don’t we display the same amount of concern for children?
Well. A possible solution might be to limit the exposition to social media children have by creating a law, which is the topic of this thread?
>"The best move is to teach your children how to not be victimized."
Your GP advocated world-building a child's physical environment to avoid digital - which is simply unrealistic for their later years as it is, and coddling them so nothing that could even potentially victimize them in the digital world would be able to reach them. So, genuinely: What's it gonna be?
Are you going to teach a child the real-world application and use cases for being responsible for themselves, not becoming victimized and carrying themselves well, and learning to act appropriate in an increasingly-digital world; or not?
Otherwise; saying you'll teach your kids real-world application for being responsible for themselves and not being victimized, and then not giving them a space to see the importance of those practices out of fear that they'll succumb to it, is having your cake and eating it, too.
Teaching your kid being street smart is only a band aid or cope as the younglings say these days.
Because the issue is:
- your street smartness is an outdated smartness
- there are multiple different types of assholes waiting to victimize someone that you don't know about
When the police, court, positive socioeconomic factors work only then do you for sure minimize the risk of your child being victimized.
The internet has open the floodgates to be a piece of shit and made it hard to do something about it.
Because if you live in the wild west it's a matter of when not if.
FYI “cope” is closer to “delusion used to help you cope with reality” rather than “superficial fix”
Also, I think that some strategies, such as “comfort asking a parent for help navigating a situation” are timeless defenses against strategies like blackmail. There are probably some street smarts that change and some that stay the same.
Well yes, street smart is both.
It's a temporary solution based on the delusion that you can't work on a systemic level to reduce criminal or thuggish behavior.
Ultimately I do think some form of self defense is good to know, but you can't expect it to be effective than situational.
What I’m seeing in Australia is most parents know it’s bad, and want their kids off social media. But it’s a Herculean task when the social media companies have such a grip on their kids and when all the other kids have it.
It’s the same story with banning phones in schools. Everyone knows it’s the right thing to do but individual parents or teachers don’t have the power to do it alone.
Here is the thing: It seems there are many people out there, who are so much influenced, that they worry about something like: "But how will I reach my child via phone, when they are at school! My kids need their phones!" Not realizing, that not too long ago, no parent had to reach their kid at school via phone, and if they did, they would call the school itself and have a message delivered or get the kid on the phone. This happened so rarely, that it was not common over the whole amount of students.
This assumes there is no added benefit to being able to reach your kids/be reached by your kids easier than it was historically. While I agree it's probably not as critical as many parents might make it seem, there are tangible benefits. Off the top of my head:
- Before cell phones, we were also in an age of far less mass violence in American schools. I completely empathize with parents wanting their kids to have an emergency contact device, given the relative increase in violence at schools.
- There is a long history of kids being abused, sexually or otherwise, by authority figures in their school. Having a lifeline like a quick text to a parent can easily be the escape hatch from a predator convincing a kid to do something unsafe.
Having a cell phone isn't going to help even a little bit if there's an active shooter at a school. The only thing a kid should be doing in that situation is hiding, or escaping if it's safe to do so. Likely it'll make things worse... some kid will get a loud notification on their phone, which will give away their location to the shooter.
The predator example sounds pretty flimsy and unlikely to me as well.
Honestly, your reaction to this just seems to follow the fear-based rationales that people put forth for a lot of things, when the fears are overblown or the risks are low.
In the United States specifically, deaths from violent crime have mostly been trending down over the past few decades, with the exception of a year or so.
> - Before cell phones, we were also in an age of far less mass violence in American schools. I completely empathize with parents wanting their kids to have an emergency contact device, given the relative increase in violence at schools.
A very US-centric problem that requires a very US-centric solution. No need to drag rest of the world into that sh*thole.
Anxieties of parents who can't manage their insecurities and other issues shouldn't propagate into how kids are raised in general, especially on families which can handle their emotions better. Some freedom, some unknown and yes some form of risk is part of it. I love my kids just like the next person but this emotional need to helicopter parent them is pretty toxic to their personality further down the line.
The stuff about abuse is so typical about any such topic - a slippery slope when there is no end on how many additional restriction on society should be applied just to prevent some potential next situation. If you live in properly dangerous place, then move and don't just follow money at all costs life is too short for that, much smarter and easy to solve than enveloping your kids in ever-increasing surveillance and security.
You have to realize that this approach really harms them in subtle but powerful ways. Then ask yourself - is the extra safety I am gaining not actually outweighed by extra damage I am making on them? I don't claim I know the objective answer, but gut feeling tells me they may be +-equal at best and at the end everybody loses.
> the social media companies have such a grip on their kids
We are talking about US companies in particular. Everything that was being done to try to mitigate the vileness and toxicity has been forcefully rescinded in the name of US profiteering.
There is only one viable option, and that it for countries that reject poisonous US social media to choose/identify/build a better platform that is safe for children, safe for news and information, and safe for society and for Democracy itself.
I know few countries that reject poisonous US social media in favor of better platform that is safe for children, safe for news and information, and safe for society and for Democracy itself: the peoples democracy of North Korea, the democratic republic of Iran, the not authoritarian society of Russia, etc
I see tremendous correlation between restriction of access to some websites and straight up dictatorship that pretend to protect it's population from the evils of foreign influences.
Perhaps you have the causality reversed, friendo?
Them being platforms is most of the issue. Protocols (like Mastodon or PeerTube), not platforms.
Of course individual parents have the power to do something. Take the phone when they go to school. Problem solved.
I agree but this sounds harder than it is. Not every parent is an expert in arguing against these actors that have very deep pockets.
You don’t need to argue to anyone you can do what you want and lay down whatever law you want.
I know HN users often fantasize about being the hardass parent who puts their foot down, but this obviously isn't something that scales to solve a population wide issue. Coordination between the government, tech companies, and parents is going to solve this a million times better than just telling individual parents to deal with it.
Ok that's been tried and didn't work. So clearly something new needs to be tried.
How does it not work? The phone is in your pocket and not your kids during the school day.
It hasn't worked because basically every kid today is on social media despite a decade of information about it's harms. Getting over a million kids off tiktok is going to take coordination between the government, tech companies, and parents. Not just berating parents for not winning the war against big tech.
Interesting mental gymnastics here - under no circumstances should kids have no phones, and of course we talk about full smart phones. Everybody should do their best to make it as child-friendly as possible (which goes against primary incentives of every involved corporation giving you that free software to use) because... it would be nice? It would be appropriate?
In ideal world those are all good expectations. In actual ugly world out there, seemingly getting uglier each day, its dangerously naive. We talk about children dammit, its first and foremost responsibility of parents to keep them safe from all serious harm. You want to have contact? Give them dumb Nokia and they can never use an excuse it ran out of battery, and if lost it will be cheap to replace.
Or whatever else, but don't give them full access to whole internet and then be surprised when they go straight to its ugliest and most addiction-forming parts. They face peer-pressure? Tough one, but having some mental resiliency already during teens is great for rest of life, and maybe the shallowest and most pathetic of peers aren't the best crowd to hang with anyway. And its not like any actual popularity is gained, just blending in a faceless crowd.
> let their kids hang out any place where that stuff you report is common, if it's at all possible to avoid it.
You're talking about cutting kids from all online services, including multiplayer games and community wikis.
It also means your kid has no experience of online interactions with strangers, basically no SNS literacy, which also sounds like a disaster waiting to happen to me.
> You're talking about cutting kids from
> all online services
Not even close? I don’t know how you got that.
> including multiplayer games
Nah. My kids play plenty of multiplayer games. Local’s fine, online with people they know is fine, online in games with no or extremely limited communication is fine (Nintendo consoles are good for those)
> community wikis
Are community game wikis hotbeds of scams, predation, and astroturf rage-bait influence campaigns? I’ve read them much of my life (if we also count Gamefaqs) and never noticed this.
> Nintendo
For online gaming, that's 5ish game lines ?
Then Splatoon communities are pretty active, with third party tournaments, discord channels especially during fest flourish. Private matches are a pretty core component of getting good at the game in team events, and Nintendo rightfully limits how much it wants to deal with that side of things.
As a result, if your kid gets into the game, they'll be looking at that from the sideline while other kids get a lot more support.
> game wikis
In general any wikis that allows for limited scope communication, like a discussion between two users in some obscure thread where only the two will be notified of updates, is ripe for abuse. Then game wikis are where kids will be found.
While moderation teams are usually doing a stellar job, it's a cat and mouse game with utterly motivated attackers and highly valuable targets. So stuff will happen.
That kind of stuff won't surface outside of very egregious incidents, but working in an adjacent field to gaming communities, it's definitely a thing.
> While moderation teams are usually doing a stellar job,
This is an assumption, that I would argue, is more muddled in practice.
T&S teams largely want to do a good job, but they are a cost center, and currently they are being defunded or shifted into simple compliance.
The biggest weakness, and the current shift, is for the conversation to move towards talking about the benefits of moderation to community, rather than only reduction of harms.
That process has largely started since last year, and the defunding of teams is also underway.
All of that aside, we do not have any publicly available data, or independent third part assessment that gives us some estimated prevalence rate. (Not that prevalence is truly calculable)
"This is good for this" doesn't mean it's the only thing we use?
People are real eager to tear down a point that was simply "maybe don't let kids use algo-feed social media, because it's an actual garbage fire". The vast majority of the Internet does not have the same problems, to the same degree, as places like Instagram and TikTok. Some of it may have other problems and may be worth looking out for! But most of those other places also have, like, some redeeming features.
Am I also to let my kids wander in toxic waste dumps? I'm pretty surprised at the kind of push-back this is getting. I don't got time to supervise my kids on TikTok or whatever, so... no TikTok. I also don't have time to supervise them playing with boxes of rusty razor blades, so I try not to give them access to boxes of rusty razor blades, either [edit: I can predict the disingenuous replies to this part, so further suppose the blades are bubble-gum flavored and literal hundreds of billions of dollars were spent on packaging and presenting the box and blades to encourage kids to put them in their mouths; there, that's closer to algo feed social media, pretty much no reason to engage nor allow your kids near it, loooots of reason to keep it way the hell away].
This seems really straightforward and reasonable to me.
This comes down to how people raise their kids, so I don't expect we'll all agree.
> Am I also to let my kids wander in toxic waste dumps? [...] I don't got time to supervise my kids on TikTok or whatever, so... no TikTok.
Ideally I don't want to supervise my kid, in the sense that trying to watch over everything they do, every service they use and every possible interaction is a lost cause.
They can IRL go to toxic waste dumps, buy razor blades at the store and let them rust, there will be no way to foolproof even at that level, and I don't to have to watch over them every single time they go to the store in case they buy razor blades. Teaching them to not buy sharp stuff, avoid rusty things, and not listen to people advising them to do so has better time/effort ROI to me. Kids not allowed to go to the store without parental supervision also has to me a lot more negative impacts.
Arguably teaching kids what to avoid on Tiktok or Youtube is a lot trickier, and there will be craftful attempts at bypassing most parent advices, but I hope we have enough of a safety margin and communication occasions to detect when something's going wrong. And if it happens, I'd prefer it happens now when there's many eyes on the kid to detect the issue, than 5 or 10 years from now when they're alone in the ir dorm, can sign contracts, buy a lot of delicate stuff, get access to drugs, drive, get people pregnant etc.
> It also means your kid has no experience of online interactions with strangers, basically no SNS literacy, which also sounds like a disaster waiting to happen to me.
I think it would be better to allow them to be exposed to all this in a later phase, once, for example, they have plenty of experience with offline interactions with strangers. Learn how to walk, then learn how to run.
I really don't think the opposite order would work.
You would get them used to the more intimate and private interactions first ?
While doing small talk at the bus stop, telling someone you go to the middle school over there is small talk. Doing the same online is asking for problems.
Online interaction require a completely different mindset for a kid, it's a big enough gap IMHO to be treated as a separate thing that can be learned in parallel of offline interactions.
You can learn to swim while learning to walk.
> They can message people they actually know IRL, somewhere without a feed full of crap from people they don't know.
Just how do you think they get introduced to TikTok? What do you think gets posted in the school class WhatsApp group chat?
My kids' WhatsApp group chats are mostly a torrent of sharing idiotic TikToks, YouTube Shorts, and celebrity Instagrams.
Which my kids can't watch… until they're savvy enough to bypass my restrictions. Until then, they'll watch it in school, on their friends' phones - little consolation there.
And when that pauses, they just have stupid sticker wars, and the kind of impolite banter (often misogynist/homophobic in nature, definitely not age appropriate) that may well have been par for the course when I was their age, but that I would never have committed to in writing, in essentially a public space. Not to mention the almost bullying.
The mere suggestion by my kid (on my advice) that a separate space was created to discuss actually important stuff, like forgotten homework assignments, test dates, etc, was met with incredulity and laughter by peers (the almost bullying).
Kids teach their peers how to act. Peers have way more influence than their parents. We need a majority of kids to understand TikTok/etc are bad for them.
Ah, the inevitable "meh, give up, it's hopeless" post, to go along with the "why don't parents do their fucking job and leave us alone?" posts. No thread on HN related to parenting and technology is complete without a healthy dose of both sorts of post.
Sorry, I'm trying to do my fucking job, as others demand.
To look past the "give up" post, it did have a good point about how children will get into contact with such feed monsters.
I think it will be a good idea to try and get other parents on board. Other parents of the kid's classmates. Maybe they are struggling with this too, but don't see the way forward. And you can show them the content of feeds and shit that kids consume. You can come up with some minimum age or other idea, which you suggest for children to have, before you as a group of parents allow them to access things. Or you can come up with a once a month special lesson or something, where you show what can go wrong to the kids, and cooperate with the school.
I dont think that comment materially undermined your position, if anything it supported it?
Exactly.
My kid has a smartphone but no data plan; no social media; can't take it to school.
When I did that, I was the annoying one, who they fought every inch of the way.
When the school banned phones in the playground, I was suddenly one of the first to get it right, in their eyes.
I'm trying to do my job too. But we need certain rules to be consistent throughout our society. Even if they will be broken, it matters that the rules are there and we can agree to them.
The issue is, that many people think social media like TikTok and FB and so on are good and that they are letting their children "participate in modern life" or something like that. They are utterly uninformed about these things, or so media brainwashed themselves, that they will fight you to the teeth standing up for things like FB.
I had that happening. I explained to someone, that FB is a criminal company, that's spying on everyone and everything they do, and just had that 5 billion sum to pay for mishandling personal data. But do you think that that person would come to their senses? Nope, ofc not. They argued on and on about how it is a force of good and whatnot.
Am I wrong in feeling like the solution you outline is only applicable to an individual's kids? But at the societal level, it clearly seems we can't depend on enough parents to do what you talk about. Something else is needed.
I don't have answers to give. Certainly not a fan of the government approach of "everyone must prove their age online now", which I believe is how the AU law is done. (casual listening to Security Now podcast about this for a long while now)
"Everyone must prove their age online now" creates a trail of identity that kills anonymous speech dead. Anonymous speech is very important to maintaining freedoms... such as freedom of speech and freedom of association.
> "Everyone must prove their age online now" creates a trail of identity that kills anonymous speech dead.
That depends on the implementation. Do it the wrong way, like many countries or US states, and that is a problem.
Do it right, like the EU is doing in their Digital Identity Wallet project, which is currently undergoing large scale field trials, and the site you prove age to gets no information other than that you are old enough, and your government gets no information about what sites you have proved age to or when you have done so.
> That depends on the implementation.
Not really. Either you have freedom of speech or you have restricted speech. The more restriction, the less freedom you have.
> the site you prove age to gets no information other than that you are old enough, and your government gets no information about what sites you have proved age to or when you have done so.
As long as the broker in the middle can be trusted, cannot be extorted by government power or private wealth... in other words: unpossible.
In the system the EU is using you are the broker in the middle.
Briefly, your government issues you a digital copy of your identity documents cryptographically bound to a hardware security module that you provide. For the first iteration this will be the security module in your smartphone. Later iterations will support standalone smart cards and plug in security modules like YubiKeys.
If you wish to prove your age to a site a cryptographic protocol takes place between you and the site which demonstrates to the site that you have a government issued identity document that is bound to a hardware security module, and that you have that module, and that the module is unlocked, and that the identity document says that your age is above the site's minimum age requirement.
No information is transmitted to the site from the identity document other than the age is above the threshold. There is also nothing transmitted that identities the particular hardware security module.
> Do it right, like the EU is doing
Doing it right like the EU? You mean like the EU, scan everything that is sent through anybody's phone in the name of protecting the children?
> the site you prove age to gets no information other than that you are old enough, and your government gets no information about what sites
That is the case for now. What happens when the lobbies get in there and decide that this info is actually very valuable and that they should have the right to know who is visiting their client's websites and apps, will the anonymity remain? I think not.
And what about the defense industry who in the name of fighting terrorism will demand that users that identify themselves on "suspicious" sites now need to have their data recorded?
The issue is that once everyone is using this system, then it's very easy for any government to come and start expanding the scope of the data recorded and as always under the cover of good intentions.
This is how it goes: - In 2025, they record nothing - In 2026, they start logging IP addresses and passing along suspicious log ins to the cops - In 2030 they start recording more and more data until all anonymity is gone
I wouldn't touch the EU's identity wallet with a 10 foot pole and I certainly wouldn't use anything that the EU is doing now as a benchmark considering what happened with the Chat control law recently.
Logging IP addresses for use by law enforcement started in like 2004.
I remember ISPs and Web cafés complaining quite a lot.
But I guess you mean on the client software side itself ?
The EU is very double edged though. It has great projects, undoubtedly. For example GDPR was a gigantic step forward, even if many people here, who are US-centric mostly, don't want to hear that. But on the other hand the EU also has loads of shit that members and lobbies try to push, like for example chat control.
Let's hope that this project you mention works out, if indeed it works like you describe.
> Anonymous speech is very important to maintaining freedoms... such as freedom of speech and freedom of association.
Ha! Tell that to an American and they would laugh if it wasn't for ICE threatening to shoot you for trying to get close enough to ask.
It is frustrating, to have this argument, when the current state of the art to mould speech, has already found ways around this defensive line.
Currently speech is shaped by producing a glut of speech, and then having the most useful narratives platformed by trusted personalities. Simultaneously, any counter views which do not support the goals of the media-party, do not get aired. Education, science, evidence and journalistic standards are eschewed and authoritarian techniques of loyalty and trust are used to take advantage of whatever story is currently most engaging.
The churn in anonymous forums is used to identify narratives that are the best evolved to spread and gain engagement.
Don’t mistake me for saying anonymity must be given up. Do recognize that worrying about anonymity today, is very much like people talking about the way things were back in their time.
If it helps - from a utilitarian perspective, free speech enables the free exchange of ideas in the service of debates to understand reality. The marketplace of ideas.
Currently the marketplace is captured, and it is not a fair fight between state actors, media teams, troll farms, A/B tested algorithms, and regular folk on the other side.
The invisible hand of the market IS working, ensuring the optimum outcome given the current constraints, or lack thereof.
If we want to defend speech for individuals, if we want a fair fight, we need to address the asymmetry of powers, and lack of recourse.
Hard disagree on anonymous speech. Individual humans should have free speech but that is divorced from anonymous speech.
With anonymous speech you don’t even know if you’re talking to a person or a program.
If you want to say something, then say it with your identity. You don’t get to be anonymous when saying something to my face so why should it be allowed across a screen?
> If you want to say something, then say it with your identity. You don’t get to be anonymous when saying something to my face so why should it be allowed across a screen?
My face is not my identity. Do I have to tell you my full name and address when I talk to you? I sure hope not!
Beyond that, what about the threat of violence for saying something? As another commenter points out, this is a real issue for marginalized groups, but also could easily become an issue for your average citizen sharing their political opinion.
While I agree it would be nice having some level of assurance that you're talking to a human, particularly going forward, the only way I could support such a system is if no party involved would be able to track what I visit or pin an actual identity to me as a user - but, perhaps more importantly, it also needs to not be easily broken by those actors who it's trying to stop. Otherwise it's useless and just hurts your actual citizens.
> My face is not my identity
Nah, it’s infinitely more identity than a screen name. If you speak in person I know which human being had those thoughts. In the medium we’re communicating over right now neither I nor you could tell if the counterparty was just a computer program.
> Beyond that, what about the threat of violence for saying something? As another commenter points out, this is a real issue for marginalized groups, but also could easily become an issue for your average citizen sharing their political opinion.
If you’re in that situation then you already don’t have free speech, so honestly that tradeoff seems like it doesn’t matter
> While I agree it would be nice having some level of assurance that you're talking to a human, particularly going forward, the only way I could support such a system is if no party involved would be able to track what I visit or pin an actual identity to me as a user…
That’s a lot of words to say you don’t agree with the idea. Pinning an actual identity to you is what makes it non anonymous
> If you’re in that situation then you already don’t have free speech, so honestly that tradeoff seems like it doesn’t matter
What? Are you saying that if you face the threat of violence for saying something, you don't actually have free speech? By this logic, literally nobody anywhere has free speech.
> By this logic, literally nobody anywhere has free speech.
Nobody anywhere has freedom of speech. And a majority of people don't really think about what it means and don't want it in the purest form despite what they say.
Two examples of "free speech" that are protected in the U.S. under the first amendment:
1. Overt racism (less threat of imminent violence).
2. Nazi apparel.
Say the wrong word or show the wrong symbol in certain settings and you'll quickly understand what I mean. Furthermore I'm confident > 50% of U.S. citizens would find you in the wrong and would support whatever happens to you without much consideration of legality.
Freedom of speech is an ideal with no successful implementation and I don't think that's a bad thing. I prefer to live in the real world where saying stupid shit has consequences and people think just a little bit more carefully about what they say.
Yea, if you don’t say what you think because of fear of violence, you don’t have free speech.
I’m actually surprised at your surprise. Is there a definition of free speech that includes not speaking because of violence?
To be clear I’m speaking of “free speech” as a right in the absolute sense. I am aware that various situations and events degrade that in every attempt to implement it. Having anonymous speech lets your circumvent that somewhat, but comes with the tradeoff of disinformation and societal manipulation we’re currently dealing with.
Also for clarification are you describing violence from other citizens or violence from the government? I need the clarification as I wasn’t specific enough myself in that I don’t think there is currently any anonymous speech if the government wants to identify you, only anonymity from the average Joe.
I'm speaking of violence from other people, yes.
> but comes with the tradeoff of disinformation and societal manipulation we’re currently dealing with.
I'd rather solve those issues in ways that don't eliminate anonymity and privacy on the Internet. Furthermore, as I noted in a previous comment, any such system must be immune to being circumvented by those actors doing those things. Otherwise, they will quickly adapt and we go back to business as usual but with less privacy.
> I'm speaking of violence from other people, yes.
Is this the violence from other citizens? Is this the violence from state actors? Your answer is not clearly answering the question.
I'm talking about other citizens.
> I'd rather solve those issues in ways that don't eliminate anonymity and privacy on the Internet.
Then we will have to disagree. I think the anonymity is the source of the problem and there is no workaround for it. I would prefer this problem solved instead of waiting around for someone to possibly figure out an alternative while we suffer under the weight of all discourse being flooded by disinformation so that no one can agree on reality.
If your ideology leads to its own destruction than it’s a failed set of values, and that’s what I believe is happening to people who value free speech without divorcing that from anonymous speech
You continue to ignore the very glaring issue with trying to address these issues by de-anonymizing speech - that is, any such system will be easily circumvented.
Furthermore, the idea that we can't address this in any other way is wrong. We can work to combat and ban misinformation and propaganda campaigns. We can outlaw it for domestic politics. We can work with other countries where such efforts come from to stop them. We can put warnings and other labels on misinformation. To say nothing of the education angle.
When you say “…any such system will be easily circumvented.” What do you mean by “circumvented”?
If I’m proposing that your statements are tied to your identity what’s the circumvention there? Just fake IDs?
> Furthermore, the idea that we can't address this in any other way is wrong. We can work to combat and ban misinformation and propaganda campaigns. We can outlaw it for domestic politics. We can work with other countries where such efforts come from to stop them. We can put warnings and other labels on misinformation. To say nothing of the education angle.
I don’t see how you can have a problem with making statements tied to identities as an attack on free speech but then suggest that the government decides what correct speech is. That seems like a direct attack on the “free” part of speech separate from the less important “anonymous” part
Edit: also sorry for the delay, HN’s automatic blocker kicked in
> When you say “…any such system will be easily circumvented.” What do you mean by “circumvented”?
I mean... bypassed. Ignored. Fooled. This might be with fake IDs, it might be by compromising the system itself, it might be something else.
> I don’t see how you can have a problem with making statements tied to identities as an attack on free speech but then suggest that the government decides what correct speech is. That seems like a direct attack on the “free” part of speech separate from the less important “anonymous” part
Interestingly, I really haven't said anything about "free speech", nor have I taken the position that the government is unable to already tie your identity to your online activity. Anyway, those responsibilities I outlined could be put on the platforms, if you somehow trust them more, or perhaps a third party service.
Out of curiosity, supposing identity verification doesn't work out, what ideas might you propose for tackling the issues of misinformation and propaganda?
>Out of curiosity, supposing identity verification doesn't work out, what ideas might you propose for tackling the issues of misinformation and propaganda?
No idea, would have to see the anonymity go away and see how society restructures
Just thought I'd share the EFF's take[1] on the importance of anonymity and its long history with free speech:
> Anonymous communications have an important place in our political and social discourse. The Supreme Court has ruled repeatedly that the right to anonymous free speech is protected by the First Amendment. A frequently cited 1995 Supreme Court ruling in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission reads:
> > Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. . . . It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation . . . at the hand of an intolerant society.
> The tradition of anonymous speech is older than the United States. Founders Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay wrote the Federalist Papers under the pseudonym "Publius " and "the Federal Farmer" spoke up in rebuttal. The US Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized rights to speak anonymously derived from the First Amendment.
> The right to anonymous speech is also protected well beyond the printed page. Thus in 2002 the Supreme Court struck down a law requiring proselytizers to register their true names with the Mayor's office before going door-to-door.
To build on that, the Fourth Amendment protections against general warrants stems from the fact that general warrants were used to identify and persecute anonymous authors, many of which were founders and framers.
[1] https://www.eff.org/issues/anonymity
Probably only works for as long as you are not living in a dictatorship, authoritarian state, utterly corrupt country, or similar. Then suddenly we would want our anonymity back.
While anonymity comes with its own issues for society, I am not convinced it would be worth it getting rid of it.
While what you're saying sounds like a reasonable enough stance on the face of it, keep in mind that this would deeply fuck over closeted queer folks among other marginalized groups.
It would. Currently they and everyone else are getting deeply fucked because the signal to noise ratio on the internet has been obliterated and everyone is being manipulated all the time by misinformation from humans lying to bots.
I think the trade off for a lack of anonymity is worth it. This is crass and old but the penny arcade guys identified this decades ago
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/greater-internet-fuckwad-theo...
Yes, this is one of those game theory traps like the prisoners dilemma, because it requires coordinated action across a large group of people. Unfortunately the lowest common denominator parenting is not able to handle the problem, because the parents don't understand the situation, are addicted to platforms themselves, and just generally don't have the necessary skills.
Government regulation is a ham fisted approach that risks unintended consequences / secondary effects, but it is generally good at breaking the game theory traps because it changes the playing field for everyone. That is fundamentally why we have government at all - to solve coordination problems.
The government can also act as the faceless bad guy who 13 year olds can get mad at while parents shrug and say “sorry that’s just the law”.
>not a fan of the government approach of "everyone must prove their age online now", which I believe is how the AU law is done
This is not how the law is implemented. The vast majority of verification is being done by 'age inference', ie analysis of the content the user consumes or posts to infer likely age. Only accounts suspected to be children by the inference process are being required to verify or have the account disabled. In practice, the inference process means very few accounts are required to provide any proof of age. Personally, I haven't been asked to verify by even a single website.
The age inference process is described on this page under 'What is Age Assurance?' https://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy/your-privacy-rights/social-m...
If you think we can't depend on parents for the kids education, school should handle it.
> Every time something new happens in the world, my younger kids ask me about what they saw on Tik-Tok and their initial understanding is shaped by a well funded actor, and is often completely a false narrative.
As someone who remembers the near lack of anti-war voices on network/cable news in the lead-up to the Iraq War (Donahue on MSNBC being the lone example), I'd like to get more details on your strongest example here.
There wasn’t much but the mostly fabricated WMD narrative was questioned a lot. Now the current administration makes an endless stream of fantasies and lies which go almost entirely unchallenged.
> There wasn’t much but the mostly fabricated WMD narrative was questioned a lot.
Cable and network news did not question that narrative, aside from the exception I mentioned. Read David Barstow's Pulitzer-winning stories in NYT-- cable news shows even had retired generals pushing for war without disclosing all kinds of conflicts of interest.
Edit: I should add that in reality there were protests with record numbers of people during the buildup to the Iraq War, and there were many articulate arguments against the war by all kinds of people. However, that was not the narrative presented in Network/Cable News.
The average adult has a carefully curated understanding of the world based on a completely false narrative but nobody clutches their pearls about that
I'm guessing they mean Gaza, and that the author is pro-Israel. Which really undermines their point.
Seriously, the biggest and most prevalent danger to kids online, is unregulated marketing directed towards them building unhealthy habits and potential loss of self worth due to unreachable ideals potrayed in advertising.
Not any of the three points you bring up there.
Those superpredator bogeymans you make up here, have to actively seek you out and have a limited budget in comparison.
State actors are after everyone, not kids primarily. In the current state of thing I would have no qualms just shutting down X, Facebook, YouTube Shorts and TikTok live for starters for all.
>> Our kids are up against problems we didn't have during the great expansion of social.
I'm not sure I agree with this. Our societies globally have become hugely polarised and are manipulated daily because of social media. The damage done by social media is 100x greater than any good that came from it and the lives of adults have been affected by on it a societal level at least as much as the danger to kids.
It isn't possible, but if social media was suddenly completely unavailable I think the world would get a lot better in a very short period of time.
> Our societies globally have become hugely polarised and are manipulated daily because of social media.
Watching 18 year old kids getting drone striked every other day has done more for the anti-war movement than a hundred years of post-WW1 globalist utopianism. The only demographic of war hawks you find online anymore are psychotics and boomers, both being unfit for military service.
This is the fundamental reason why western countries are turning on social. The TikTok ban had less to do with Chinese influence campaigns and more to do with it being a platform where Israeli war crimes were openly discussed without being hindered by shadow algorithms.
You’re seeing Zionists like Larry Ellison make plays in the media space for the same reason; military-aged white men are going off the plantation, and Zionists feel threatened by it. That is literally all these bans are intended to remedy.
I am from Ukraine. Tell me anything you know about drone striked humans. For you it is just pictures from Internets happening far far away, you never know why do they find themself being drone striked.
What anti-war actions have you done to prevent the end your life by drone striking? Post some dislikes, duh?
> For you it is just pictures from Internets happening far far away, you never know why do they find themself being drone striked.
I’ve seen more than one begging for his life getting blown up by a grenade dropped out of the sky. The killers then post videos glorifying these executions complete with music and motion graphics.
> What anti-war actions have you done to prevent the end your life by drone striking?
I haven’t done anything, and that’s the point; there is nothing that will compel me to treat my fellow man in the way I have seen men treated in this footage.
Scrolled too far to find this. It is largely about the points you made.
It is OK if your kids "and their initial understanding is shaped by a well funded actor, and is often completely a false narrative."
I bet that if I would meet you, I would unleash multiple similar cases to you personally for less than 1 hour. I am almost sure I can ask such kind of questions that would reveal your kids giving better (less brainwashed) result than you do.
I really really hate the term "troll farm" it completely minimizes nation state level propaganda machines down to something that sounds like its just one big internet joke for gags.
The cutesy 'fun' language of 'troll farm' itself deflects accountability from what are coordinated psychological operations. It makes it sound like some rambunctious kids in basements having a little weekend fun.
It was very illuminating though obvious when recently Twitter started showing account country of origin and all of the MAGA political accounts pretending to be American get revealed as run out of Nigeria and Russia.
The scale of the operations is immense now.
> run out of Nigeria and Russia
... and India. Wasn't expecting that at all.
Is this really an attempt to regulate children's speech or association any more than denying kids entry to a pub?.
I don't think the framers of this law are even worried about what kids are saying or who they associate with, as long as it isn't the criminals, sexual predators and state actors you mention.
Frankly if kids were visiting a physical hang-out where they could expect to be attacked by such people, any and every responsible guardian would order them to never go there.
I feel like everyone in this thread is assuming this is a good faith move by Australia to help kids in school and with socialization.
I think phones and social media are harmful, but I get the sense there's a political motive behind this. We've been hearing politicians complain for years that they're losing the youth when it comes to long-standing foreign policy positions, etc... And suddenly they ban social media. Rahm Emanuel is campaigning for the same thing in America.
I don't believe they're overly concerned with "helping the kids" unfortunately
I don't think we should normalise children on platforms where the content contains political agitation, sexual and violent content, crypto and fintech scams, etc. Especially when this content is packaged up to them and commodified.
These platforms make more money than the ATO (Australian Tax Office) brings in a year. I think they have the moral obligation and means to create safer spaces- either inside or seperate from their adult platforms; they can reduce or prevent the types of harms when children are exposed to this type of content.
Whether this approach is the best one, or even worth it as it is written in law is definitely something you can argue, but the idea that there isn't a legitimate goal here (keeping children safe), just isn't true. I know not everyone that says this always has good intentions, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be preventing harm upon them.
If you look back at vox pops from when drink-driving laws were introduced, or when seatbelts became mandatory, or when ID requirements were tightened, the arguments for and against were eerily similar. We haven’t changed much in that regard, but now people wear seatbelts, children can’t buy cigarettes as easily as they used to, and drink-driving rates have fallen. I think these are noble goals.
The platform operators have a responsibility to remove garbage from their site. I don’t see how it’s better if adults are the recipients of these alleged harms. And I definitely don’t see how the platform operators are going to clean up their act if — rather than being penalized — they can pretend that the problem has vanished into thin air because a specific category of vulnerable users is now de jure disappeared.
> rather than being penalized
The problem is, currently doing any kind of content filtering, as in making illegal stuff hard to find, and having a moderated semi walled garden, plays right into the noisy fuckers brigade.
If I were to design a TV programme which is aimed at 11-16 year olds, where I just play soft porn every 15 seconds, offer guides on how to do financial scams, and encourage the children to hide away from their parents as they watch. it would be banned instantly, regardless of how much "good" content I put in there.
People would say it's irresponsible to expose kids of that age to such things.
Yet, here we have social media doing just the same.
The reason why we make it illegal to beat kids, sell them smokes, drugs, booze and generally treat them like shit, is because we want well rounded functioning kids who are able to live a long an illustrious life as part of society.
Giving them a device that feeds them war, porn, rage bait, and huge lies, all for the profit of a few hundred people in america seems somewhat misguided.
I'm glad when I was a teenager the adults in my life were less concerned with protecting me from wrongthought. Are modern teenagers more or less credulous consumers of information than adults, I wonder.
Where did you grow up? Because America in the 80s was all about shutting teenagers out of violent video games and music with naughty words.
I grew up in DC in the 21st century.
Things used to be more scrutinized. e.g. look at the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Hot Coffee controversy and legal fallout over sexual content that existed in the game data files but could only be accessed by modding the game, at which point you could just mod the content in. Porn websites also used to generally put anything explicit behind a credit card barrier, and there was an attempt to require that that the supreme court struck down.
That was just a handful of loud busybodies, and society was smart enough then to not hand them the legal reins to placate them.
maybe the early aughts, none of this was the case when i was a teen it was basically unencumbered access
Pretty sure the US has had things such as age ratings for movies, which are enforced when possible, and laws around advertising to children and false advertising for quite some time.
I miss the good ol' days when you could see some cut off breasts alongside the snake oil ads in the papers. People are so stupid these days.
Try go get a beer as an 18 year old then :)
A beer is almost exclusively a negative thing. Access to youtube…?
It's not remotely the same thing. Social media apps are highly engineered addiction serotonin-drips.
You had wrongthought because back then there was at least a chance that the material was objective. Today you have Fox News et.al. and scores of highly propagandized feeds spewing nothing but agenda-pushing propaganda.
It's not the same.
It’s not about wrongthought, but manipulation and deception, blended with advertisements exploiting child psychology, coupled with peer pressure.
> when I was a teenager the adults in my life were less concerned with protecting me from wrongthought
V-chip, movie ratings, music ratings, top shelf magazines, raising the age for smokes, the water shed, censorship of tv networks, chat rooms, computer in the living room, primitive walled gardens (AOL et al)
All of the "it was freer in my youth bollocks" is just that. Bollocks. But, I see that you like the idea of a person's social/sexual education being shaped by misanthropes looking to grift a new lifestlye for themselves regardless of the harm it causes others. All for profit and power. Not for betterment of the world.
> Are modern teenagers more or less credulous consumers of information than adults, I wonder.
The first example of something that you see is normally a big opinion former. If you see the local big city constantly portrayed at a lawless hell hole, its going to stick with you. As will the the race baiting, as will the utter bollocks herbal-remedy-cures-cancer 100% of the time shtick. Espeically if you've not got far enough through school to develop research skills, or critical thinking skills.
> All of the "it was freer in my youth bollocks" is just that. Bollocks. But, I see that you like the idea of a person's social/sexual education being shaped by misanthropes looking to grift a new lifestlye for themselves regardless of the harm it causes others. All for profit and power. Not for betterment of the world.
Uh, yeah - I never had to show an ID to use the internet and I could use the internet however I damn well pleased. "All for profit and power" -> No, I learned a lot from the internet, it changed my life in a positive way.
None of the things you mentioned are even remotely the same scope as requiring ID to use parts of the internet. I could still watch mature movies, v-chip was irrelevant in my life, smoking is completely different, etc. etc.
The answer to my question is that teenagers today are obviously less credulous than the adults in their lives and you can see this every time you interact with older adults.
The parts of the internet that are now banned for Australian teenagers are unlikely to change their lives in a positive way and much more likely to lead them into mental illness.
I taught myself advanced math as a middle schooler and high schooler on youtube, which is now illegal. Could they really not make it more targeted?
I taught myself programming, drawing, and 3d modeling on the internet. But it was on platforms like SiteDuZero and various forums. Even today, if you go on something like https://bbs.archlinux.org , it's very hard to land on something like the cesspool the homepage of YouTube and X can be.
there is lots of very good educational content that is only available on youtube.
Behind the mountains of absolute brainrot. I agree. Yt has amazing content But the majority that trends is garbage
well i’m sorry some kids (and adults) are idiots who enjoy brain rot, but i would have been pissed as a kid if the adults came for my intellectual communities because some kids are morons
>All of the "it was freer in my youth bollocks" is just that. Bollocks. But, I see that you like the idea of a person's social/sexual education being shaped by misanthropes looking to grift a new lifestlye for themselves regardless of the harm it causes others. All for profit and power. Not for betterment of the world.
I remember logging on to Microsoft Networks, clicking "Adult Chatroom" and saying "Hi adults, my name is <blah> and I am 12" and getting a bunch of very positive, thoughtful replies.
>Espeically if you've not got far enough through school to develop research skills, or critical thinking skills.
Some of the people being banned include these nice kids.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6_News_Australia
Their founder is now 18, but most of their research and social media people are 14 - 16.
I feel like these kids A, have developed the necessary skills to operate the internet, and B, have a human right to access and report on the information contained within.
>a person's social/sexual education being shaped by misanthropes looking to grift
The grifting misanthropes are in my honest opinion the people trying to prevent kids from accessing information. The "grift" is that kids have political interests and rights to access information and community, especially vulnerable kids, and the grifters want to "return" to a state where parents were the only method via which kids can access information. The internet is there for among other things, censorship resistant access to other people. The cost of this bill, assuming kids don't just keep stepping over the barricade, is going to be tremendous in terms of suicide in LGBT and disabled areas.
So tell us, why do you hate kids so much?
It's not so much teenage credulity, or coddling parents. Teen suicide is the easily quantifiable tip of the iceberg when it comes to mental health outcomes. Conspicuously it started trended up after 2008, around the nascence of Facebook and smartphones:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...
> Following a downward trend until 2007, suicide rates significantly increased 8.2% annually from 2008 to 2022, corresponding to a significant increase in the overall rates between 2001 to 2007 and 2008 to 2022 (3.34 to 5.71 per 1 million; IRR, 1.71)
That's also when the Great Recession happened, giving young people bleak outlooks for their future, outlooks which never really recovered. Nothing was fixed, and things have only gotten worse since then.
The data doesn't bear that out. I remember the GFC well because my whole industry imploded during it. It certainly did recover by every measure.
US GDP: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDP
US unemployment: https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-une...
S&P 500: https://www.macrotrends.net/2324/sp-500-historical-chart-dat...
US inflation rate: https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-infl...
> US GDP: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDP
GDP doesn't matter much when your life will be worse than your parents'.
> US unemployment: https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-une...
Dead end jobs with little to no benefits, no pensions, time off, low pay and few hours count as "employment".
Their parents and grandparents had pensions and could work at one employer for the entirety of their careers with growth opportunities, and could afford homes and healthcare while doing so.
That was a big part of the shift in 2008.
> S&P 500: https://www.macrotrends.net/2324/sp-500-historical-chart-dat...
Doesn't matter to a kid without significant ownership of financial assets.
> US inflation rate: https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-infl...
Post the wages vs productivity graph for the last 20 years, it's more applicable to concerns of students and young adults.
> That was a big part of the shift in 2008.
Your hypothesis might be right, but I've provided data, and you're providing opinions. I'm fine with being wrong in my claim, but I didn't earn the downvote when no-one seems to have a clearer hypothesis with better evidence. First, show me that this shift is peculiar to 2008. And then show me that this is what teenagers are killing themselves over.
In America, we haven't made it illegal to assault children. We should, but we haven't.
In the same way it's better that adults are the recipients of the harms of smoking, drinking or gambling. It's still not desirable, but societies have settled upon thresholds for when people have some capacity to take responsibility for their choices.
Not saying those thresholds are always right and should definitely apply in this case, but it surely isn't an alien or non-obvious concept.
Adults love 'garbage'. How do you define that?
There is also the problem that making platforms responsible for policing user-generated content 1) gives them unwanted political power and 2) creates immense barriers to entry in the field, which is also very undesireable.
I have no idea how to define it. I also don’t know if I’m personally convinced one way or another about the harms. Just think the platforms would probably have to be made to make more substantial changes were it the case.
I don't want Mark Zuckerberg, or the government, deciding what's garbage. If they can empower the user to filter this stuff out on their own accord, that's great.
The second problem is that the medium itself is garbage. Algorithmic feeds strongly encourage clickbait and sensationalism. Removing content does nothing to change the dynamic.
So, do absolutely nothing is your plan?
Sometimes doing absolutely nothing is the right thing to do. Not everything can be improved through top-down intervention, and many things can only be made worse.
The comment you’re replying to raised the idea of empowering the users. That’s probably the way to look, but the danger is always if we do that using top down enforcement in a way that promulgates more harm, including stifling vibrant and necessary speech.
My very radical opinion is that section 230 of the CDA was our original sin. The Internet was better when it wasn’t divided into a few centrally managed private social media silos. It’s better to have a vibrant, messy, competitive, and very grass roots public square.
Yes. The internet is awesome and the government will destroy it.
Ah yes, the genocides, fascists and blackmail are just delightful parts of that awesome internet that any kind of cooperative governance would simply _ruin_
genocides are happening online? That's pretty remarkable.
no, but incentives to commit genocide are spread through social media. [0]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_genocide
I bet people used phones, letters and the pony Express before that.
The government committed that genocide...
The genocides would have happened with age verification or not, don't conflate the two.
Ironically, the solution to both the proliferation of genocide and social media causing harm to kids is the same, and it's a solution that helps everyone: legislate the source of the problem, the product itself and what we colloquially call "the algorithm".
Algorithmic optimization and manipulation that causes harm needs to be banned wholesale, across the board, from advertising to social media.
Instead, we get legislation that not only makes it easier to identify everyone as verifiably monetizable users to platforms, it also makes it easier to keep the proles in their place.
> I don't think we should normalise children on platforms where the content contains political agitation, sexual and violent content, crypto and fintech scams, etc. Especially when this content is packaged up to them and commodified.
I hope we can agree that allowing every social media site to devolve into the above is the bigger problem. There can be some places that are adults-only; just like reality though, the world is better when open-by-default, with some places gated to adults-only.
Shifting focus to "Why are we letting some of the most profitable companies the world has ever seen get away with being a cesspit?" lets us keep kids safe by default, doesn't attack E2EE, and doesn't default to the internet becoming a surveillance state.
If we start by getting Facebook and Twitter (et al.) to clean up their acts, we can all work, yell, and vote together, instead of some yelling about their kids being shown unexpected pornography, and others yelling about the internet becoming a surveillance state.
Because both can be real concerns - but a starter solution can get the vast majority of voters on-board, and garner real progress, instead of giving Facebook more data and control, or governments a turn-key dictatorship.
I don't think we've shown that that cleanup is possible.
Whenever platforms have taken even the smallest steps in that direction, the right-wing authoritarian political parties freak out and blackmail them into stopping, or in the case of Musk simply buy them out outright.
If cleaning it isn't possible, getting kids to know it and navigate the filth is required. Same way we teach kids how to interact with people on the street and get a sense of who to trust when they're in trouble and how to avoid trouble in the first place.
I agree. However social media is so addictive that even if we are aware of its harm, we stil use it
I wonder if the next generation will be facing this same sentiment.
For instance TV was basically a drug for the last generation, there was people watching near 8 to 10h of TV a day. It might have been replaced by something else, but I don't think our current generation has this specific issue.
From that POV, currently people in their 30~60s are the more stuck to social networks and raging against fake news all day, while younger generations tend to be on different services with potentially a lot more reduced circle of users.
Do we really know how the generation that is 5~6yo right now will react to our social media landscape ? (put another way, are we fighting the last war ?)
>I don't think we should normalise children on platforms where the content contains political agitation, sexual and violent content, crypto and fintech scams, etc. Especially when this content is packaged up to them and commodified.
The law could instead prohibit scams and violence?
>These platforms make more money than the ATO (Australian Tax Office) brings in a year.
Irrelevant.
>but the idea that there isn't a legitimate goal here (keeping children safe)
Almost every other avenue, including doing nothing, has more merit than that which has been implemented.
>If you look back at vox pops from when drink-driving laws were introduced, or when seatbelts became mandatory, or when ID requirements were tightened, the arguments for and against were eerily similar.
Theres some basic negative freedom implications from those, but they dont intend to ban a class of person from accessing a mundane element of human society.
> These platforms make more money than the ATO (Australian Tax Office) brings in a year.
From their users in Australia? Clearly not.
> I don't think we should normalise children on platforms where the content contains political agitation
Why not? Why won't you give political agency to young adults? I'm saying this as a kid who grew up in Romania, just after Ceausescu had been executed, so throughout the '90s, I do very well remember all the political news and commentary coming my way (I was a teen), but I can't say that it bothered, not at all, it made me more connected to the adult world and hence more prepared to tackle real life just a little bit later on.
I won't comment on the other stuff, because that would make me bring back memories of watching TV1000 (a Swedish TV satellite channel) late at night on Saturdays, also in the early '90s, I won't say for what but suffice is to say that I turned out ok.
There's hardly any parallel between the type of political content (or corn) that was available on TV in the 90s, and what's found in today's social media. It's not political commentary, it's a constant stream of pure, unfiltered manipulation, lies, brainwashing, prejudice and antisocial behaviour.
Rush Limbaugh started broadcasting in the 80's. Fox News in the 90's. Prior to that you had decades of propaganda against "communists" and anti-war protesters. Prior to that you had blatant lies about what would happen if black people got civil rights. Before that you had blatant lies about women's suffrage. The bullshit has always existed in very large quantities. The common uniting thread for the vast majority of the bullshit is conservative beliefs. They are always doing their most to make the world a worse place for some group or another.
> It's not political commentary, it's a constant stream of pure, unfiltered manipulation, lies, brainwashing, prejudice and antisocial behaviour.
This is exactly what conservative talk radio was like, and it radicalized a bunch of boomers – especially the ones with long car commutes who had limited counter examples. There’s a direct line between the guys joking about eating spotted owls or how feminists were too ugly to worry about rape to the modern environment, or saying that the government was discriminating against white men, but the difference now is scale and variety: now it reaches more people and there are more flavors available so the young woman who would’ve been turned off by Rush instead gets some wellness influencer talking about how birth control causes cancer.
Small things I want to add or say:
- It's not young adults, it's 15 and under. Personally I would classify 17-20something as young adult (it's a bit subjective isn't it).
- The younger children don't really care about politics honestly. Curious if you have an age that you're ok with only ensuring irl politics for children? I think age to vote is a much bigger concern for me here in terms of civil liberties.
- Parents can still make that choice for their child (unclear how this will work to me yet, to be fair).
- I've become convinced no one really practises 'politics' online. People barely even debate anymore. They argue, they perform activism, they aggitate, its what gets attention (thanks to social media). I'm worried people think this is normal, it's not- political discourse used to be much more productive. I remember when fallacies were actually brought up logically on the internet and people actually cared about the accusation.
- I did explicit rp with adults as 7 year old on MSN chatrooms back in the day :')
Social media is full of extremist and untrue content of all types. Antivax or free birth content are just two small examples of viral content that is untrue and kills people. It has a very negative effect on adults, and adults at least have brains that are fully-developed.
Exposing kids to the firehose of misinformation on social media just poisons their brains. Political agitation is mostly political misinformation. Even among the causes online that I agree with, most of the content online is deeply biased, one-sided or inaccurate.
You can guess exactly how authorities would define "political agitation", though. dangerous things to allow them to ban.
I don't think we should allow the government to ban political agitation, but I do think its fine to allow the government to ban children using social media
The most dangerous, untrue, and extremist content I've ever seen has come from governments.
Lies upon lies about WMDs and going to war for our freedoms and how we need to "liberate" Libya and fund and arm rebels and insurgents. Millions of people killed, trillions of dollars wasted and stolen.
Someone who is not completely trusting of politicians or pharmaceutical corporations, or who wants to give birth like 99.999% of humanity has, really are so far down the list of "dangerous misinformation" they don't even register.
Oh hey it's my favorite Romanian stupidpol poster. Didn't think I would run into you here.
> I don't think we should normalise children on platforms where the content contains political agitation, sexual and violent content, crypto and fintech scams, etc.
You mean like the outside world?
What happens when these hot house flowers of yours reach whatever magic age and get dumped into all of that, still with no clue, but with more responsibilities and more to lose?
I haven't noticed a whole lot of governments, or even very many parents, worrying about doing much to actually prepare anybody for adulthood. It's always about protection, never about helping them become competent, independent human beings. Probably because protection is set-and-forget, or at least they think it is... whereas preparation requires actually spending time, and paying attention, and thinking, and communicating. Maybe even having to answer hard questions about your own ideas.
... and since when are kids supposed to be protected from politics? We used to call that "civics class".
If your children are being exposed to sexual and violent content in the real world, that is called an "Adverse Childhood Experience" and it is predictive of everything from poor adult earnings to heart disease: https://www.cdc.gov/aces/about/index.html
I think you're taking things to an extreme.
Let's make some distinctions first.
On the one hand, you have violence and pornography, and also other crude content. There is nothing good about exposing children to these. It does not contribute to their growth or to their maturity as human beings and it is ridiculous to think it could. On the contrary, this content will cause psychological harm, causing distortions in their emotions, in their habituated appetites, in their self-understanding, and their understanding of normal relations. When deviance like that is tolerated, it shifts the Overton window. Children observe this tolerance and roll it into their sense of normality. Individuals suffer. The quality of society degrades substantially.
On the other hand, we have political agitation. This one is more difficult to define and handle, especially in a liberal democratic society. There are examples of obvious political agitation, of course, but children should generally not be exposed to political agitation at all, except as a subject matter at an age appropriate level and in an appropriate pedagogic setting. Children don't have the intellectual or emotional maturity to examine such material in the wild on their own where they would be at the mercy of unscrupulous adult manipulators who couldn't care less about the well-being of children. (Ask yourself what kind of person would want to involve children in their political agitation to begin with.)
So, there's a big difference between common sense things like these and coddling children. We want to prepare children for life, not teach them adaptation to depravity. You throw them into the filth of social and psychological pathology. Neither violence nor pornography should be normalized even in the adult world - it is harmful to the adults who consume it as well - so the idea that we should prepare children for life in some violent and twisted pornland is preposterous. Nobody has to put up with that garbage, and the law should be making sure they don't.
> and since when are kids supposed to be protected from politics? We used to call that "civics class".
The whole "don't talk about politics" is so toxic IMHO.
Sure you might not want to ruin your dinner with the family members you see a single day every year. But otherwise, making it sound like a taboo could be widening the tribalization and anchor the feeling deeper into people's identity. Let the people talk about what they care about, including when that affects who the next president is.
yeah social media is proving itself to be a bad actor like big alcohol, big tobacco. No incentive to do the right thing or improve anything. ripping audiences away from them is the only way they'll understand.
>If you look back at vox pops from when drink-driving laws were introduced, or when seatbelts became mandatory, or when ID requirements were tightened, the arguments for and against were eerily similar.
If you think the arguments are eerily similar, I feel like you haven't really been listening to the arguments against these types of age-verification-for-websites laws.
I mean, there's some similarities, of course. But I think there are some very stark differences.
>I feel like you haven't really been listening to the arguments against these types of age-verification-for-websites laws.
Or maybe I just have a different conclusion to you? Because I do care, I do try to listen to the arguments. I'm no stranger to advocacy for civil liberties, they are important to me. I think all else being equal, freedom should be valued more over harm prevention. So if I'm for these laws, consider that a sign of how bad these sites have become, not how uninformed I am.
> I mean, there's some similarities, of course. But I think there are some very stark differences.
Yep of course it's not a 1:1, I agree. I don't mean to imply that people saying the same arguments today are wrong simply because people in the past were, but it does make me think more about it when I spot the same rhetoric.
Often both sides have very reasonable concerns, as an example, the question isn't "should we have all or no freedom" Either extreme creates issues, yet both sides have valid arguments worth our time considering. We settle somewhere in the middle.
Here's one vox pop with the introduction of breathalizers in UK (1967): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_tqQYmgMQg
>"Or maybe I just have a different conclusion to you?"
Whatever your conclusion is, it’s sort of beside the point I was making, which is that the many of the arguments about mandated seatbelts (or smoking, alcohol) are meaningfully different than the arguments being made today about age verification for websites.
>“So if I'm for these laws, consider that a sign of how bad these sites have become, not how uninformed I am.”
This is kind of reinforcing what I said in my first comment. Most, if not all, of the arguments against these types of laws aren’t based on the premise that these sites aren’t bad. I haven’t seen anyone saying that TikTok is a societal good. Almost everyone agrees there.
I’m saying that the main arguments are different. I am suggesting that there are more differences between the seatbelt debate and the age-verification-for-websites debate than there are similarities. Which is why I thought your comment of “eerily similar” was off-base.
They are different laws with different contexts but the type of rhetoric and logic used to justify them are very similar, right? I already agreed they are not 1:1 nore was it meant to be. I agree with you there. If there's a more specific point you want to make, I'm keen to hear it!
> the arguments against these types of laws aren’t based on the premise that these sites aren’t bad. I haven’t seen anyone saying that TikTok is a societal good. Almost everyone agrees there.
There's people in this thread talking about jews being behind this ban to ensure zionism continues, using only a social media agitprop post to justify it. We are in the mud at the moment, so I'm sorry but I'm not taking that for granted, people have diverse views.
> I’m saying that the main arguments are different. I am suggesting that there are more differences between the seatbelt debate and the age-verification-for-websites debate than there are similarities.
Let me try explain this figuratively:
A doctor might give free care to someone in a medical emergency on a plane after all they have an ethical responsiblity to do so if they can, but that doesn't mean they're obliged to care about your canker sore.
Now imagine a doctor not treating one or the other because "It's not that serious". It's the extent of the harm or risk that actually indicates how insane or sane that doctor's response is, just as much as the doctors actually response to it is.
We can sit here and say "yeah it's not that serious" but one patient is dying and another basically fine. Just like those people that thought drink driving wasn't that big of a deal, people think social media "oh yeah that's bad but what you going to do", it's the same shrug and 'oh well' attitude. That's what I think is eerlie similar. Now whether or not that's appropiate or not depends on whether you think the patient is having a heart attack, or just has a sore lip.
I do agree people aren't generally saying TikTok is good, but people are saying TikTok isn't so bad as to regulate age verification. Do you see how these things play into each other?
So you're using many, many words to say that you disagree, and none of them to explain how you disagree?
I (not the person you're disagreeing with, BTW) would be interested in your demonstration of how you disagree.
My takeaway is that jfindper is saying that seatbelt laws had a justification that does not have a parallel with this action regarding social media.
IDK if this is how they would say it, but I think argument for seatbelts is that there is minimum disruption to usage, there is limited revocation of other rights, and the societal benefit is large and pretty unambiguous.
The idea that I have to give up privacy, expose myself to additional risk (by having my identity logged), increase the chances that mentally susceptible people will have more exposure to fraud in order to get a solution that is not clear on how effective it will be makes the parallel a bit academic, if not an out right straw man.
> I think argument for seatbelts is that there is minimum disruption to usage, there is limited revocation of other rights, and the societal benefit is large and pretty unambiguous.
Said like this, it looks to me that it has a parallel with social media.
> The idea that I have to give up privacy
You don't have to, though.
> expose myself to additional risk (by having my identity logged)
It doesn't have to be, we can have privacy-preserving age verification. Now we could discuss the specific implementation, but in general that's feasible.
> increase the chances that mentally susceptible people will have more exposure to fraud
It's not enough to say it: is it actually the case? You can already get phished by trying to access a social network, how does that make it worse? I don't think it's obvious. While the problem with kids and social media is, at this point, very well documented.
> if not an out right straw man.
I, for one, think it's an interesting experiment. All the arguments above could be used against making cigarettes illegal for children. Yet I am very convinced that making cigarettes illegal for children is the right choice.
If we are so concerned about the materials make the platforms moderate them like they used to do. Banning them reeks of favoring the murdoch outlets which are free to spread misinformation
The ban is being enacted by the Australian Labor Party, which the Murdoch media is certainly not friendly with. If it ends up favouring Murdoch, it won’t have been deliberate.
Murdoch media killed a story critical of Labor government member so there is not _no_ evidence of support here.
https://archive.is/Hlr4l
You mean this guy? https://www.crikey.com.au/2022/08/29/albanese-murdoch-meetin...
The traditional outlets you are referring to are now worse because of social media.
nothing is worse than social media - absolutely nothing
I bet you Sky news gets more views through social media than TV broadcast these days! Many of their hosts are all over X, spreading misinformation. They are downstream from social media now, not seperate from it I suspect.
Murdoch benefits from the political agitation that the landscape of social media provides.
I do agree on making platforms moderate themselves. This legsliation helps do this by creating a discussion about the harms, enforcing a culture of harm (this is not for all ages, not default for everyone). Saying to the companies: "Hey, if you don't want to be regulated, clean up your platform so it's safer". Will that happen? no idea, but if it doesn't, no children is still a good goal (it's how you get there that has the contention).
> I don't think we should normalise children on platforms where the content contains political agitation, sexual and violent content, crypto and fintech scams, etc. Especially when this content is packaged up to them and commodified.
This may be true but it has nothing to do with what the person you are replying to said.
The original comment suggests that the policy is politically motivated. The commenter replied with other reasons for the policy other than political agitation. I think its a valid response.
I also don't buy the implied claim from the original commenter that age-limits are paternalistic/suppressive with regard to political thought/speech. Large tech platforms control political thought/speech on a regular basis, a lot of which is executed by state actors. Even in the absence of devious actors, algorithms are editorial by nature; they are not neutral infrastructure by any means.
No, sorry, it's orthogonal to the poster's comment, which states that, regardless of merit, the purpose of the ban is political. Arguing for or against it is beside the point.
Perhaps the original comment should have been more direct in and just said that Zionists are the ones pushing for these bans. The head of the ADL has made comments about this. A video by Sarah Hurwitz, Obama's speechwriter, went viral recently about how social media needs to be banned for young people because it's hurting the zionist movement.
https://x.com/jennineak/status/1992395176283922767
The head of the ADL is a firehose of stupidity; that does not mean he controls policy. I also reject the pretense that public opinion of Israel would be higher among teens without social media, given their actions over the past few years.
I think this is a bit of a conspiracy colordrops, honestly. It's the same sort of stuff as on Infowars.
Is that all you got? Ad hominem?
No sorry it wasn't a dig at you: the video was posted by someone who appears on Alex Jones' Infowars, talks jewish conspiracies. I just don't take that stuff seriously, doesn't make it wrong and if there's an argument you want to make I'll listen.
That video was literally posted by hundreds of accounts. I just picked the first one I found in search. And exactly how is "Jennine K" anything like Infowars? Did you even bother to look? Do you want me to find the exact same video from a "reputable" account? Can you address the contents of the video? It's direct and unedited, her exact words.
I assume you are a Zionist, based on your rhetorical techniques.
Zionism is when healthy information choices? I don’t trust infowars, sorry but that’s served me quite well over the years.
I did look, you’re being obtuse again, after all how else would I know it’s from an infowars adjacent account.
You strike me as the type of person who thinks e-safety commissioner is CIA, they also call me a zionist for doubting that- it’s the goto ad hominem for people embroiled with I/P conflict.
This sort of social media bs and the way it affects political discourse is why social media is so damaging, much of it is just political propaganda.
Tell me what do you take from the clip?
You are completely untrustworthy. You clearly have an agenda. Nothing I posted has anything to do with Infowars, so you multiple attempts to slander me expose that you are purely agenda driven. This thread is over.
I don't really have an agenda but I have opinions I'm wanting to share & discuss– some of which I'm certainly wrong about. It doesn't feel to me as if you could honestly say the same.
You don't want to believe what I say, you don't think of me as trustworthy. Well I'm not, and you don't have to. You are welcome to your own opinion. That should put me above the likes of many, including infowars and those on sharing that video who believe they know and have a right to say everything. I'm not the one invoking political agitprop here, I would have rather discussed the topic of the submission.
> 1: "I get the feeling this has nothing to do with preventing harms"
> 2: "heres the harms and why I think we should prevent them"
Not trying to be rude here colordrops but I think you're being a too obtuse here, especially when the original person's comment was basically just "I don't trust them" (which is totally fair), I would rather engage in a good faith discussion of our opinions.
> This may be true
Do you think it's true?
The ingredients for this legislation trace back to an organisation called "Collective Shout"[1], by Melinda Tankard Reist, who readers may be aware of from their previous efforts to pressure Steam to restrict games with adult content
I happen to think there are plenty of valid points regarding harmful content on steam and valid arguments about the harms of social media, but I do not believe Collective Shout is a benevolent actor in combatting those harms or steering the solutions, as their proposals nearly always deliver harmful effects on LGBTQ people - and this fits with Reist's previous work[2], eg under Sen. Harradine
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_Shout
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melinda_Tankard_Reist
My favourite micro pressure-group in Australia is the Pedestrian Council of Australia.
Whenever there's talk about car safety measures, e-scooters or anything else, the press goes to the official-sounding "Pedestrian Council of Australia" for comment. And obligingly, Harold Scruby who is the CEO, Chairman and entire membership of said council will hold forth.
He's been spectacularly successful at getting himself listened to, as if he represented something.
Collective shout are just as illegitimate.
I thought you were making this up, as it sounds too ridiculous to be true. But no, it's a real thing.
The key to his success seems, at a glance, to be raising his media profile by taking controversial positions (which I suspect he may not sincerely hold) that guarantee news coverage. Similar to how populist politicians in the UK game the BBC's "balance" policy by always taking a contrarian position to any given topic to secure an interview or place on a discussion panel.
Yeah it reads almost like something Terry Pratchett might have made up :)
And I agree, he’s got a way of providing reactionary, contrarian soundbites, which keeps the papers going back to him.
That is just a thought-stopping reference. Why does this literal nobody who nobody has to listen to have the total backing of both major political parties? That is the real question and it obviously goes back to narrative control and the move from democracy to an authoritarian managerial state.
moral panics are useful for creating authoritarian states. If a moral panic is not presently available, in 2025 it may be easier it's ever been before to cultivate one.
I actually do think people directly see the negative public health impact, its so visceral in so many parents lives, and that that is the driving force behind all of this.
I love being cynical, but I actually do buy these efforts as being purely "for the kids", kind of thing. Sure, there are knock-on effects, but I do buy the good faith-ness of phone bans in school and of these social media bans for kids.
I think this might be true at the parent level, but less and less true as you climb up the government ladder.
The shitty part is that when the parents really do believe something is "for the kids", it becomes that much easier to push through laws that have awful side effects (intentional ones or not). Which is why "for the kids" is so common, of course.
It's very unfortunate. As a parent, I feel like it requires regulation at the national level because I can't win against Meta (FB, Insta), Google (Youtube), Snapchat and TikTok.
My son is 15. My talk to him went something like this: There's a lot of porn and nasty things that you can't unsee, so be careful what you look at. Also, those extortion gangs target teenage boys, so if some girl is suddenly hot for you online, come see me immediately so we can troll the ever loving fuck out of them. I think it went pretty well. We like doing things as a family, but more like the Addams family...
Yes! I'd call this preparation for life.
Education and believably honest offers of support are needed to navigate the world, which is ugly and evil in some parts. Restrictions are really just counterproductive because curious young people are drawn to restricted stuff, and age restrictions build a sense of 'us (the young) against them (the adults)', so it's hard to convince that you actually offer honest support. Restrictions also focus on the bad parts, while we should instead focus on the good parts, the advantages of a global network of anything, which is totally amazing. Restrictions are counter productive.
Humans need to learn to live here, and it starts when we're young and curious.
Ok, now we have no restrictions. Timmy just got his driver’s license at 13 and is on his way to 7-11 to pick up a 24 pack because he’s young and curious.
The context is in the article. The context is access to information and communication. This is about forbidding young people to listen and to talk.
That's the only way that can work in the long term.
Also have a 15 year old, same talk. Seemed to be just fine.
Holy Kimchi on a Popsicle Stick!
I feel validated!
Bless you the holy spirit of Bad Religion.
Remarkably, Youtube's logged out experience will still be completely available to all age groups. And an a Australian HN user mentioned that one 14-year old had another (presumably older looking) 14-year old do the "video selfie" for her to verify her account on one the sites. So I'm not sure the fight will go away, but it may be slightly more tractable.
It will normalize people thinking that uploading their state-issued ID to whatever contractor is validating accounts is safe and normal.
Most people probably agree something needs to be done at scale. Banning kids sounds neither effective nor long term beneficial though, and at the core of it seems to deflect from solving deeper issues.
It looks like they're "doing something" while nothing really changes or potentially gets worse. Trying to regulate Meta/YouTube from there has IMHO become harder, as kids are on paper supposed to be out of the picture.
Interesting, my experience is completely opposite; I'm not losing to them at all.
Honest conversations with your kids from an early age are key.
How do you know you’re not losing?
How many years of evidence do you have?
I think I won my battle against being addicted to games… but I don’t go back to find out.
I'd view that as more of a works for me argument than necessarily actionable. Social dynamics are complex and personality, status, etc, plays into which relationships end up mattering, being convincing, etc. I.e. some children bond closer to a grandparent not because parents have failed in any way at honest conversations.
You don't know you lost until after it happens. Then it's too late.
3 kids, same honest conversations, 2 where it worked and works very well, 1 where it is a constant battle.
So sorry but no, the platforms are addictive and not all the kids can resist against an armada of statisticians ensuring the systems stay addictive only through honest conversations.
By the way, this would mean you could solve all the addiction issues if it would be working...
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> It's very unfortunate. As a parent, I feel like it requires regulation at the national level because I can't win against Meta (FB, Insta), Google (Youtube), Snapchat and TikTok.
Sorry, but this just isn't the case. I have children very much in the target age here, and they only have a passing understand of what social media even is due to us explaining how unhealthy it is to them.
It's unfortunate you feel incapable of achieving the same, but abdicating your responsibility as a parent to the state isn't the answer.
I remember there being an experiment where parents were placed in a room with some toys their children were allowed to play with and some toys their children weren't allowed to.
They measured the parents perceived level of control against their actual level of control by seeing if they stopped their children from playing with the researchers laptop that had been left in the corner of the room.
Part of me wonders if it was apocryphal, I'm not sure if a test like that would get past an ethics committee (at least since laptops existed)
Likewise, the state abdicating its responsibility and placing the burden solely on parents isn't fair either, and that is exactly the environment we currently find ourselves in.
Yes, let's allow cigarette manufacturers to target children, and let's the capable parents teach them. Same for porn, alcohol, drugs. If your kids have issues, it's your fault, not society's. /s
you could if you just whitelisted the apps you wanted your kids to use
And make sure you do it at their friend’s houses too, and on every public device, and make sure they never leave that locked down app bubble ever.
and delete the web browser?
Computers (they each had their own) in public space and no phone until 14. Worked great w/o no filtering or whitelisting of any sort.
there are similar mechanisms for controlling website usage. school computers do it all the time
ballpark percentage of parents that are technically savvy to set this up? I'd put that at 0.0284%
Banning the printing press in Europe would have stopped the 30 years war.
Somehow I don't think anyone here would approve of the long term consequences.
The end result of this will be that everyone needs to give their real name and address to view social media.
Anything you say or watch that the current government doesn't like will result in police coming for a chat.
That's a bad analogy, more like :
Printing Press <=> The Internet
but
Social Media <=> Some specific forms of (mostly centralized) publishing
It's not that the people don't genuinely believe what they're saying. It's that they've deluded themselves into thinking their ideological right is "for the kids".
There's always been Reefer Madness sorts of people. Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll, Video Games, DnD, Rap Music, Homosexuality, and on and on. Today it's half woke mind virus and half DEI (for lack of a better term). Most of the people that spout this stuff genuinely believe they're fighting for the kids.
Its not good faith because its already broken by vpn. And its forcing kids with no credit cards to download free and malware ridden ones. How would you measure any level of success from this initiative? Doing something isnt a solution if it has tons of bad sideeffects
> its forcing kids with no credit cards to download free and malware ridden ones
It very much is not.
It very much is. Free VPNs almost always have some sort of catch. E.g. HolaVPN users agree in the ToS to become an exit node for other VPN users: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hola_(VPN)
If social media is so compelling, then teens almost certainly will take whatever steps are necessary to access it.
Proton has a good free offering.
That's not the point though. The kids can just not get a VPN, and instead do something else with their time.
Because social media is so easy to cut out you dont need to ban it or its so addictive you do?
> Its not good faith because its already broken by vpn.
One does not follow from the other.
We make speeding illegal even though even the most affordable cars can trivially bypass all speed restrictions. It doesn't mean that the efforts to curb speeding are in bad faith just because it is still possible to bypass speed reduction rules.
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> That[']s a great comparison.
Thank you. I thought it was a pretty good analogy, too.
>Wonder why banning homelessness works so well[?] Oh we don[']t ban it? Must be because we don[']t care enough[.]
I do not understand what point you are trying to make about homelessness, and how that would be at all relevant to keeping teenagers from having accounts on social media.
That's not a great comparison.
I was just pointing out that the existence of ways to violate a law, does not in any way, mean that passing the law or enforcing it is a bad faith effort.
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Of course they aren't. If they were actually helping kids, they would be going after algorithmic feeds in general and the most predatory platforms like Roblox (especially given its recent scandals), doing something about kids being exposed to gambling advertising, etc.
The bill was put up for public comment for less than one business day before being rammed through Parliament. Australia is just sending out one of the horsemen of the infocalypse so that other countries have an excuse to follow suit. Like how our "Assistance And Access" Act was a test run of the UK's "snooper's charter".
This law will just lead to:
1. kids pretending to be adults so they sneak through these filters
2. platforms winding back their (meagre) child safety efforts since "children are banned anyway"
3. everyone being forced to prove their age via e.g. uploading ID (which will inevitably get leaked)
>going after algorithmic feeds
This is such an older person take. Users really like Algorithmic feeds and see the removal of such a feature to be platform destroying. Cronological feeds are still easy to game and abuse.
>predatory platforms like Roblox
What makes roblox a predatory platform and what would you change to make it not a predatory platform? To me Roblox is a predatory platform because of the age group of people not because of the platform design.
> kids pretending to be adults so they sneak through these filters
The real question is: how hard does it make it for them to pretend to be adults? We just need it to be hard enough that most kids won't do it.
> platforms winding back their (meagre) child safety efforts since "children are banned anyway"
If the law forces the platforms to properly ban children, I don't see how they can do that. If you're thinking that the platforms will just say "it's illegal for children to join, so we don't have to do anything because they shouldn't come in the first place", then I don't think the law is made like this.
> everyone being forced to prove their age via e.g. uploading ID (which will inevitably get leaked)
Some countries have been working on privacy-preserving age verification. I find it's a lot better than uploading an ID.
> We just need it to be hard enough that most kids won't do it.
Silly though that sounds, it might work. Because it's social pressure from other kids to be online that drives many kids into being constantly on Instagram and Snapchat. If you're not online, you don't know what's going on. The big social networks monetize FOMO.
If a sizable fraction of kids aren't on social media, that's not where it's happening any more. The pressure goes away. Or goes elsewhere.
Validating your comment.
Freakonomics did a podcast about what you are describing.
https://freakonomics.com/podcast/are-you-caught-in-a-social-...
Kids pretending to be adults know they are doing something wrong. They are likely to practice acting like adults, don't pressure each other to join, and are harder for predators to find.
> algorithmic feeds in general
Do you only use /new of HN...?
>We've been hearing politicians complain for years that they're losing the youth when it comes to long-standing foreign policy positions,
When Twitter added its location feature and it turned out that political accounts with millions of followers are run out of Pakistan or India you have to be crazy to still deny the scope of foreign influence that is exerted over social media.
You see it with the rise in anti-semitism or Russia's explicit promotion of influencers targeting Western youth. Why on earth would we let our kids be brainwashed by foreign intelligence agencies? There is no reason to assume this is some "hidden agenda", this is as big of a public issue as the mental health of teenagers. The United States used to have media rules that limited foreign ownership in companies with a broadcasting license, and now 14 year olds get their political lessons straight from Moscow, it's ridiculous.
To be fair, "anti-semitism" claims have been 90% bad faith. Gaza was the internet's Vietnam.
We got just as mad at the internet letting our citizens at home see the brutality as we did with Jane Fonda and calling her "Hanoi Jane" after she traveled to Vietnam to bring light to the conflict(not a war).
I don't think there's any merit in being upset at dead children being reported because it messes with our national security goals. If the goals don't have public support with truthful reporting, they're basically illegitimate.
I would reject the notion that shifting public sentiment is a result of foreign influence campaigns, which is not to say it doesn't exist to an extent.
I've seen plenty of real information, from non-anonymous American journalists that I'm certain are the largest factor in any sea-change amongst Americans.
And despite the claim, I've yet to see solid evidence of large, pakistan-based accounts wielding massive influence on twitter. Most anonymous accounts that focus on current events tend to be located in America, Europe, or Canada from what I've seen.
Agreed. I'm no fan of social media, and especially not a fan of TikTok and Instagram. But I really doubt this is about the kids more than it is about getting another foothold along the path of controlling internet access wholesale.
The Australian government didn’t do this because of any concern about children; it’s to punish (mainly) Meta for backing out of the Australian Social Media Bargaining Agreement [1]. Other social media companies are collateral damage.
News Corp wanted Meta et al to pay for the privilege of sharing links to News Corp articles (imo, ridiculous). Meta played along for a short period, but has now refused to engage, which has clearly upset News Corp (and their shrinking top line). It’s slowly changing, but it’s an unfortunate truth that News Corp still has incredible influence over Australian politicians, hence this had bipartisan support.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/nov/12/meta-coul...
Just in case anyone is sceptical, is quite literally paying for sharing links - the legslation [1] says in part 52B that
Part 52B (1) means that the code explicitly defines that a social media site publishing a user post containing a link to a news site as being considered exactly the same as the social media site ripping off and publishing a copy of a whole article!The supporters of the bill then went around pretending that social media sites were ripping off whole articles and showing them on their sites with their own ads, when they are actually just linking and showing the title, thumbnail and sentence summary that the news site provides in its meta info!
In the end, the news media bargaining code is effectively just a shakedown to extract money for nothing from tech companies. Part 52B makes the whole thing indefensible.
1. https://www.legislation.gov.au/C2021A00021/latest/text
> I feel like everyone in this thread is assuming this is a good faith move by Australia to help kids in school and with socialization.
Most Australian schools banned phones a while ago. Attempts were made to measure the outcome. For example, South Australia saw a 72% drop in phone-related issues and 80.5% fall in social media problems in early 2025 compared to 2023 [0]. Other states reported similar results. These early figures are a little rubbery, but overall look very good. The social media ban is in part a response to that success.
The only major concern I have is de-anonymization of the web. It's worse than just de-anonymization. They've opened the gate for organisations like Facebook to demand government ID, like say a photo of a drivers licence. It contains a whole pile of info these data vultures would like to get their hands on, like your actual date of birth and residential address.
The sad bit is I doubt de-anonymization was goal, in fact I doubt they put much thought into that aspect of all. If it was the goal there far more effective ways of going about given the corporations permission to "collect whatever data you need to make it work". They could have implemented a zero knowledge proof of age service. But given the track record of their other computer projects, a realistic assessment is it had near zero chance of being implemented at all, let alone on time and on budget.
But if they had of insisted the providers implemented some sort of ZKP themselves, I would have found it hard to argue against given the past experience in schools.
[0] https://ministers.education.gov.au/clare/school-behaviour-im...
Is that the same report that failed to mention they changed the testing methodology for the year after the phone ban, and that an improvement was expected in SA test scores regardless?
The report title
> School behaviour improving after mobile phone ban and vaping reforms
Vaping !?
If we're discussing effect of phone bans at school, I think looking at a period where nicotine addiction was also strongly reduced makes the numbers pretty hard to interpret.
Scrollable video is killing the Dems in general, not just because of Israel. It's like all the worst of local news crime reporting on steroids.
Each party is splitting into factions. I imagine the establishment of both parties think social media is a problem
Maybe. I think it's overall a rightward shift, only in urban cores is it accelerating a leftward shift. To the extent that it is motivating marginal voters to vote (which I think it is), it is also benefitting the right. It's also breaking down ethnic voting patterns in a way that benefits the right, I think.
It is not motivating marginal voters to vote. The choice is between two nearly identical establishment candidates from two private clubs. The electorate is going the same way it's going in Europe, except in Europe other parties are legal (although marginalized through parliamentary methods.)
In the UK, for example, Reform has been consistently polling the same as the Conservatives and Labour added together., and all three of those added together only represent 2/3 of the electorate. In the US, that translates to 2/3 of people becoming non-voters.
Why that might look like a rightward shift in the US is because the Republicans don't fix their primaries (since the 90s), and their voters actually have an effect on who gets picked to run. Why it won't actually be a rightward shift is because Republicans ignore their platforms after being elected, and don't mind getting thrown out at the end of a term or two to work at the businesses they helped while in office.
Democrats simply don't believe in any sort of democracy anymore. They invest all their effort into yelling at black people and Hispanics, and raising as much money as they can from the worst people in the world. The rest of the time they spend attacking anybody running to the left of them as racist or Russian, while their media outlets simply ignore those people other than when they're helping promote the slander. That's whats pushing away "ethnic voting."
As a black person, I know when the voting season is here because I see a bunch of paid Democrats running around calling black people who criticize their party ethnic slurs and using the word "massa" a lot. Republicans don't do that. They don't rely on black people so just ignore us. Democrats rely on us, but will never do anything for us, so they use terror.
I definitely think your views are a good example of what I mean, it’s giving internet poisoning.
People in power just want total control of the narrative and they don't want you to find out the truth about anything. Look at Walz in MN--he's like the ultimate Jedi "nothing to see here" mind trick with his wholesome grandfatherly persona, which is furthest from the actual reality of who and what he is. They all just want to force you into their reality and they hate it when you don't go there.
This is a ban on “children” having access to a social media account? What are you on about ?
It's almost as if a country's population need more than 2 parties to express themselves.
The two party system exists because even in a multi party system (eg. those that exist in proportional representation governments) still end up as "In government" vs "In opposition"
Secondly, we employ "adversarial" systems for two branches of government (legislative and judicial) because it's a hell of a lot easier to spot flaws in ideas of people you are opposed to (as opposed to some European Judiciaries that have "inquisitorial" systems, where a judge investigates activity)
Very often in the proportional systems people opine that "grand coalitions" should form, with the two largest parties, although that loses a lot of the advantages of the adversarial system, and has a tendency to steam roll smaller interests in the country.
Finally, the Greeks pointed out that governance within societies cycles through a series of styles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_cycle_theory
The USA itself has gone through SIX iterations of how parties should look https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_system#United_States
> Secondly, we employ "adversarial" systems for two branches of government (legislative and judicial) because it's a hell of a lot easier to spot flaws in ideas of people you are opposed to (as opposed to some European Judiciaries that have "inquisitorial" systems, where a judge investigates activity).
if that would be the case, why is the adversarial system not working in its current practice?
Also, i think the difference between the judicial systems of parlementary/european and the american system have more to do with the difference between civil and common law.
European goverments are really the legacy of the revolutionary french idea's of a civic state, in which citizens have duties to the state, and have rights being garantueed by the state. The state itself is being granted the authority to do this by its citizens through some process.
> if that would be the case, why is the adversarial system not working in its current practice?
I have to ask if you understand that "being easier" is not a guarantee of anything other than... wait for it...
It being easier.
I think the Greeks called our form of government an oligarchy. Elections as popularity contests are so easily swung by money.
Instead, democracy was determined to be selecting public officials by random lots.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition
I guess it's a bit like the jury system.
I read an article not long ago on here about how promotions in companies should also be done by lottery in order to break up cabals.
I think the degree to which money swings general elections is vastly overrated and would love to see your evidence to the contrary.
No amount of spending will get you a democrat senator in Texas, for instance.
It is less that it swings elections, though it has marginal effects via voter mobilization, and more that it keeps candidates from even running at all: https://data4democracy.substack.com/p/money-doesnt-buy-elect...
Money won't get you a Democratic senator in Texas, but it makes you 100x more likely to get you a Republican lawyer than an average Republican.
And there were a number of State supreme court elections that were alleged to have heavy monetary investment from a couple of billionaires that did not end up working in their favour.[1]
For that matter there is an Australian billionaire whose "investment" also does not appear to have worked in his favour [2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Wisconsin_Supreme_Court_e...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clive_Palmer
I read somewhere that Rupert Murdoch was able to swing some elections a while ago in Australia and the UK. That was through his media ownership though.
The toxic impact of Fox News is longitudinal, rather than being about a single election, and mostly acts by pushing conservative parties to the far right: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/fox-news-incomparable-rol...
There are other ways for money to impact politics beyond individual general elections. As well as funding community organizing and creating long-term propaganda, it's much easier to impact ballot initiatives (paid signature gathering works, for example, where paid canvassers don't.)
Public politics, and private company politics are very similar, although private company politics are less open to scrutiny.
The issue with the lottery is the need to ensure that the candidates both want the role, and are capable of doing it.
The latter, who is the right person to say "X is unqualified because.. " (and the Peter Principle suggests that just because someone was good at a lower job, eventually they're going to be put into a job they are unqualified for)
The theory with the current style that the person who puts themselves forward most definitely desires to win the job, and, as they rise up through their party system, have some level of competence, as adjudged by the people they have convinced to put them forward as a candidate.
Further, the adversarial nature is supposed to then mean that that person's opponents can call out the reasons that that person isn't suitable for the job.
Unfortunately, this ends up being a muck raking exercise, and the complaints might not amount to anything more than innuendo, further, there's no guarantee that they will even be heard (the supporters will provide evidence that the opponents themselves are not qualified to make any criticism)
Unfortunately a lot of elections these days, US or otherwise, tend not to end up being "This candidate is awesome, let's vote them in", but, instead "the incumbent is terrible, get someone, anyone, to replace them" - in the US Biden was voted in because Trump 1.0 was deemed a failure, and then Trump 2.0 was voted in because Biden was deemed a failure. Right now the Democrats appear to be on the rise again because Trump 2.0 and the Republicans are being deemed a failure. This isn't to diminish the wins by some actually good candidates though (although how good they are remains to be seen, and is a matter of... opinion).
Which is why parliamentary systems are so much more stable than first-past-the-post.
They let voters express their preferences, and leave building the coalitions up to the politicians. Instead of expecting voters to understand that their preferences are expressed during the primaries, and the general election is just to pick which coalition wins.
It is crazy that no one in America is promoting a Constitutional amendment to fix the basic governance.
> Which is why parliamentary systems are so much more stable than first-past-the-post.
I think these are somewhat orthogonal.
You can't have first-past-the-post in a parliamentary system. But yeah, that's the one dependency they have, otherwise, those are independent. You can even have weird districtal systems that look parliamentary and use first-past-the-post.
Either way, majoritarian elections are a plague and must be avoided as much as possible.
Isn't the UK FPTP in a parliamentary system?
Every political party ON THE PLANET has always had to manage internal factions, it doesn't matter if you're talking the Soviet Communist Party, the Democrats, the Republicans, The Tea party faction.
There's absolutely nothing new about parties having internal divisions. Even the fact that at the moment everything is so partisan is nothing new, history has shown that several times over the past century that politics has followed a penudulum that swings from partisan extremes, back to centrist moderates, and then back to the extremes.
Youtube really wants to send me down the alt-right pipeline. I watch a few WW2 history videos and suddenly I must identify with "Mr Mustache" as the kids say. TikTok wants to radicalize me the other way, and shows me every video of a cop abusing their power that they can find. It cuts both ways.
I think what's killing Dems is that they don't understand the medium. Mamdani did really well by making good social media posts. Him and Trump had a grand old time at the whitehouse because they have a competent grasp on social media in common. Newsom has been trolling lately and his approval ratings are only going up.
Dems being a million years old is killing the dems.
> I think what's killing Dems is that they don't understand the medium.
Generally agree, but
> Him and Trump had a grand old time at the whitehouse
Yeah, but that wasn't entirely positively received, despite his earlier social media success. Him buddying up with Trump was a huuuuge turn off for me.
> Newsom has been trolling lately and his approval ratings are only going up.
Newsom's content is also a huge turn off for me, and I am not convinced that his supposed approval ratings are not simply more CTR type machinations from the DNC. Maybe there's some segment of the population that genuinely wants whatever the hell Newsom is pushing content-wise, I certainly don't have #s on my side. Mamdani's efforts - Trump buddying aside - were much better.
> Dems being a million years old is killing the dems.
Yes, but I think age is simply a proxy for a number of other highly correlated behaviors and positions. Most progressives can name a couple of >70yo dems for whom these complaints do not apply.
And there are 31 year old Dems who sound like James Carville reincarnate.
Unfortunately, the young Dems with the biggest fundraising rolodexes are usually the ones supported by the fundraising apparatus that already exists.
Mandani did really well in NYC which is entirely consistent with the social media helping the left in urban cores but hurting elsewhere.
I think it is structural about the medium because it elevates the profile of relatively rare things like crime or ‘wokeness gone amok’ that dems are losing on. Similarly, with regards to ICE, it is helping dems by also raising the profile of rare incidents. But on net I think this sort of coverage hurts dems more than it helps.
Do you have evidence that it hurts elsewhere?
It isn't like the left was doing well in rural America before social media: people in the urban cores just didn't know what was going on there, and they didn't know what was going on the urban cores. But when I was growing up, people thought Bill Clinton was a communist in league with Castro.
Meta == Phillip Morris - This is a public health issue and will likely need to be treated like tobacco. Kids can't vote so I don't see the political motivation.
Good analogy.
The solution, however, isn't prohibition or age restrictions; it's either regulating the algorithms or holding these companies responsible for the adverse outcomes their platforms contribute to. Safe harbor laws made sense when tech wasn't filtering/promoting content, now that they are influencing the material we see, these laws must no longer apply.
This may mean adopting a modern equivalent to libel laws. Something akin to: if an algorithm pushes false information, the company behind the algorithm can be sued for harm. Disallow terms of service that force arbitration or cap liability limits.
I think the solution is banning accepting compensation for third party advertising.
I know all the reasons it "wouldn't work", but I'd love to see somewhere try this.
That makes me wonder, if only teenagers could vote would they ban adults from social media?
Social media is not good for adults either. Being able to choose your vices is one of the privileges we give to adults.
When I was 18 the legal drinking age had just been reduced to 18. That only lasted a couple of years. I don't think I'd vote for lowering it to that age again actually.
They'll vote eventually, and preferably won't be damaged in irreparable ways by then
I just can't get behind any of it, sorry. The puritanical moralizing feels so good until you cause a revolution or the species goes extinct.
Isn't treating it as a health issue the opposite of "puritanical moralizing"? No one suggested placing a Scarlet S around their necks.
It really isn't a bad thing for kids to be told they can't do something occasionally. It kind of helps prepare them for being an adult where it happens all the time.
Any of it? You can't get behind cigarette bans for kids?
Social media has caused at least two genocides so far, and their data centers and AI slop are helping drive us towards an earth incapable of supporting human life.
So what you are describing is just the base case.
Handwaving “public health” doesn’t make it so.
Suppressing the evidence of it doesn't make it not so: https://www.firstpost.com/explainers/meta-project-mercury-sh...
Australia is a huge contradiction.
“Kids” are no longer old enough to use social media as they are “kids”. At the same time Australia states are updating laws believing “kids” are old enough to be treated as and tried as adults in a court of law.
Indeed. We will stick them in prison, but they can’t use social media. It’s a farce.
How is that a contradiction?
Its not uncommon for laws that allow for teenagers (14 or above) to be tried as adults for more serious crimes.
Should we prevent kids from doing things we think will harm them? Yes, should we give harsher penalties for kids who commit more serious crimes? Potentially.
There's no motive other than "easy politicial win". The kids aren't gonna vote against you (they don't vote), parents will vote for you, you get to show people you protected children and passed legislation. Politicians support anything that keeps them in votes and campaign contributions.
Kids dont vote, but when they do they tend to come in radicalised and swinging. Voter intention in Australia has shifted heavily towards minor parties over the last decade. While this is currently being captured by our preferential voting system, the tipping point is 1 - 2 elections away.
Isolating kids from current events and society can easily be seen as a potential extra bullwark against changing voter intentions, because Minor partiers tend to favour social media engagement against paying for expensive ads.
> We've been hearing politicians complain for years that they're losing the youth when it comes to long-standing foreign policy positions
I have literally never heard this.
The ban doesn't stop teens consuming social media content like tik tok. Your argument seems like quite a stretch.
> The ban doesn't stop teens consuming social media content like tik tok.
That is exactly what the ban aims to do? TikTok is literally listed in the article as one of the platforms ordered to ban access by under-16s
The ban is on having an account. Tiktok video is publicly viewable.
> Tiktok video is publicly viewable
Is it still publicly viewable without age verification in Australia? It's a little unclear from TFA whether the ban is purely on account creation, or also applies to viewing.
Yes. Ditto Youtube. And 4chan.
It takes the completely ridiculous idea that harm is caused by having an account. Youtube even pointed out that, the lack of account means it cant work its algo magic to try and push age appropriate videos to users. Government doesnt care. No Account. No Problem.
Ironically, youtube is now more likely to send kids andrew tate or russian propaganda to kids.
I'm in Australia on a phone without VPN and do not have a Tiktok account: googling "Tiktok" just now direct linked me to Tiktok's Web app and started auto playing.
AFAIK this is strictly on having an account.
I'm very surprised you've never heard anything like this.
Here's Hillary Clinton onstage a week ago: https://x.com/prem_thakker/status/1995961131215847749
As another Australian, I have also never heard this.
There is a lot of Australian-American political confusion/conflation in this whole thread.
All the ban does is stop kids from having accounts, if the service allows anonymous usage then they can still find somewhere to doom scroll. My teen son has been blocked from Snapchat, and was this evening doom scrolling on Tik Tok until I blocked it on our home network.
I'm curious to understand why your approach to TikTok is banning it. Why do you think this is the right solution? Are you concerned at all about your son's ability to cope independently from oversight and control?
No, it’s that he will spend hours doom scrolling whatever they feed to him.. I’ve tried to lead him down a path of watching more educational stuff on YouTube but he will just end up doom scrolling shorts.. I’m trying to figure out ways to enable him access but not have him waste hours with shorts.. I know there must be short form content that’s good but I’ve not seen any evidence watching over his shoulder.. I block shorts on YouTube for myself even.. at this point the best I can think of is allowing access in short windows of time with longer chunks of blocked access.. if anyone has ideas I’d love to hear them.
Short-form content (if you can call it that) is a weapon of mass attention span destruction. IMHO the doom-scrolling loop it creates should be illegal, regardless of the audience.
100% It's this that I have the problem with TBH.. not using services per sae
What happens when he goes to school? Moves out? You die? Who will be there to block TikTok on the LAN?
That is Hank Green's Focus Friend is for, right?
Adults actually are trying to solve this problem.
You assume that banning usage was the first step instead of the last step.
I'm not OP, but I'm guessing they started with talking to the kid, or more intermediate steps.
> Are you concerned at all about your son's ability to cope independently from oversight and control?
Kids aren't fully independent for good reason, and a very hard part of parenting is deciding how much independence to give them vs. sheltering them from the parts of the world that will hurt them. If a kid comes home with drugs or hardcore porn it is completely reasonable to confiscate them with no regard for independence and control. Is TikTok the same as heroin? No. But it is provably harmful in any number of ways that young brains do not have the tools to handle, and the benefits are arguably non-existent for most. With other things like sports, we know that there is the possibility of getting hurt, but that can be mitigated and the benefits far outweigh the risks.
I'd rather have my heroin addicted son do it at home, where I can be there to take him to the hospital, talk to him about it, etc., rather than make him go out into the streets alone. Banning it doesn't seem like a productive approach
We aren't concerned only about existing addicts, but potential future addicts. Especially for something like social media with strong network effects, where decreasing use is non-linear.
Banning substances dramatically decreases use: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00414-015-1184-4 and legalized opioids dramatically increased heroin use: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/15360288.2015.10... Access matters.
The question is always: A. What do people use instead? (banning pot, for example, increases use of heroin and alcohol, which is good for alcohol companies but bad for public health. If banning social media sent kids to 24/7 news channels, it might not help, but I haven't seen evidence of that.) B. How much is organized crime funded by the increased black market? (In this case, kids are a limited population that doesn't have a lot of money, so the answer is probably "not much".)
Banning substances naturally decreases use, that's obvious, but prohibition criminalizes use, which will always persist. You cannot stop drug use. Drug legalization so far has resulted in declining use of dangerous substances like tobacco and alcohol. Far more young people today choose smoking pot over smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol. Many people choose not to drink because they've observed the widespread dangerous effects of it since it's been legal. If heroin was made legal all over the world today, you'd 100% see increased use. But maybe humanity needs to see the consequences in order to respect them? Just like alcohol and cigarettes?
> I can be there to take him to the hospital, talk to him about it, etc.
Nanny state! Let him take himself to medical facilities, and deal with the consequences himself instead of interfering
HELL Let's ban hospitals, they're just interfering in the natural order of life.
Real talk: I know that those are strawmen and you most definitely think that where you draw the line is right for you and your family (assuming that you have one), but the reality is that the line gets moved a LOT as children grow - your line might be great if you have developed a good relationship with your son, and he's received a good social education from his friends/network and he's over a certain age.
It fails very quickly if he's, say, 5 years old and/or he's had no friends that model good/bad behaviour and/or you and he are human meaning that communication, interpretation, and any hint of resentment lies underneath (keep in mind that teenagers are geared to fight/be angry/dislike their parents, for the specific reason that it motivates them to leave home and begin their own lives)
I like your libertarian approach. You're right the line can move a lot. Of course, my support/interference would (hypothetically speaking) be different on a situation to situation basis, my reasoning is simply love. If I love someone, like my son, I want them to be free to make mistakes and hurt themselves, and certainly if they start hurting others I would seek to stop that. I think it's important, though, to be there for people, nut the line does change like you pointed out. So I'm really not sure- my decisions would be situationally dependent. I'm still inclined to say that prohibition is ineffective and potentially more dangerous for some people
Without wishing to completely sidetrack the discussion...
> I like your libertarian approach.
Their idea is to prohibit government...
What we are seeing in Australia is a community that has decided that the best course of action is to say that children under the age of 16 are generally too young to have the skills to deal with some social media.
You yourself are comfortable with the idea that a 5 year old is far too young for social media (and kids that age /can/ work devices to access social media if they want)
The question really is, at what age should we draw the line.
16 is arbitrary, but the ones most able to manage the interactions are the ones that will have the skills for circumventing the blanket ban, and the ones that aren't that savvy, won't.
I'm actually glad to read about a parent taking responsibility. There's nothing important about Tiktok that won't wait until the child is 16/18.
Serious question: Do you now have, or have you ever had, children to raise?
Non-American countries are also importing a lot of American politics. I'd rather that didn't happen and is alone worthy of curbing in my opinion.
It's also a massive propaganda channel. We can argue about whether any one particular state is involved in that or not but gut reaction is that if this were the real concern, their solution would be to regulate and censor what is posted online rather than kicking them off the platform and thus detaching them from the teat of (alleged) indoctrination. (that push for censorship also exists).
Maybe Australia and the US are not involved in any social media propaganda campaigns but, at least in the case of the US, there is most certainly an abundance of precedence.
I don't know the sincere feelings of these types wrt the safety and well-being of children but I don't think the goal is "getting them back" wrt policy or whatever.
> It's also a massive propaganda channel.
The problem is that school curriculum is as well. I remember going to school in Texas and hearing the phrase "Northern War of Aggression" to describe the Civil War.
Censorship is never about cutting off information, it's only ever about cutting off information that the censors don't like. Given how openly hostile both AU and the US's governments are to progressive politics and worldviews, I am dubious that this isn't about controlling kids' access to a more open view of the world than their schools will give them.
I'm not saying you're wrong but I'm still unconvinced. I think it is a very obvious backdoor to forcing online ID without having to call it an ID law.
I think you and I are on the same side of this particular argument.
The Australian government isn’t banning books. It’s banning access to harmful content for people under 16.
One morning I logged into Reddit and saw a video of Charlie Kirk get his head blown off. I didn’t want to see that, but for some reason it wasn’t taken down yet. I’m really glad my 12 year old daughter didn’t have to see that…
> It’s banning access to harmful content for people under 16.
Even the most comically overt authoritarians will use justifications like this to ban content.
> One morning I logged into Reddit and saw a video of Charlie Kirk get his head blown off.
Then I think you may have seen a fake video. No such thing happened to him. If we're discussing serious subjects such as censorship and deaths, avoiding hyperbole to falsely bolster an argument is probably best.
> I’m really glad my 12 year old daughter didn’t have to see that…
Why would you give your 12yo daughter unrestricted access to Reddit, as a parent? Why must the government stop her, for you?
Also, since that already happened, and government restrictions weren't in place, and she didn't see it, clearly you've just disproved the need for those restrictions to avoid that outcome; your daughter didn't see the harmful content, despite there being no government-mandated restriction.
Luckily this is much less the case in Australia - or pretty much any developed country.
It's still somewhat the case, but the propaganda in schools outside of the USA is much less than the propaganda on social media.
I had the uncommon privilege of attending a year of high school in Japan, and rest assured there is no lack of propaganda in other countries' schools, even if often by omission of truths.
I am not Australian, but I suspect high school textbooks are likely less than entirely forthright about sensitive subjects like Residential Schools and their role in settler-colonialism.
And it was much less than the propaganda on social media, wasn't it?
This worldwide push for online ID verification is absolutely not in good faith, and I'm shocked at how few people on "Hacker" News are seeing it for what it is. Imagine going on 1990's or 2000's Usenet and telling those folks they'd have to upload government ID to prove they weren't children and keep using the system. Virtually everyone would have shouted this Big Brother shit down until it was their dying breath.
Parts of Usenet actually mandated real names. The idea was to make discussions more civilised. It didn't. And on top of that people were now subject to stalking and doxxing. I remember a poster who had a link to a defamation site in his signature. The site was targeted at another frequent poster in that newsgroup, detailing his address and his alleged intellectual failings.
America had all the access to free information and voted in an authoritarian anyway so what’s it matter ?
I don’t care anymore about this emotive argument that you’re putting forward. The government knows everything about you because you pay for internet. Maybe you pretend to yourself you’re someone anonymous because you use a VPN but if they want to know who you are, they know.
At least maybe this ban will stop some of the idiocy bleeding into the next generation.
America has been subject to a thirty-year propaganda war by foreign actors.
Information in America is free as in speech, not free as in beer: money talks louder than truth. That has let billionaires unravel the stabilizing features adopted after the Great Depression that kept capitalism limping along for an extra century.
But think of the children! Or the terrorist! Or communists! Whichever makes you accept the surveillance state.
The nanny-state control freaks used "think of the children" so often over the years that it became a meme, and yet here we are. What a workhorse!
Why does the motivation matter so much? It’s not a global ban, it’s not a permanent ban, nobody is going to jail. It’s like seeing if moving the smoking age to 18 will improve health outcomes.
It’s ruining their lives as far as we can tell, and at the end of the day it’s just one country testing it out. It’ll be stastically significant, culturally close enough of a sample set for us to learn from.
I’m curious to see what the 1-2-3 year effects are. We need to let some real life experimentation happen, somewhere, instead of accepting what every conglomerate wants.
I get that “it’s easy to say” for me as someone completely unaffected by this law.
The study that was posted last week regarding at school banning of phones was enlightening. It improved scores within two years after a bit of resistance. Boom!
I want them to have a chance at being healthy and well-educated; we can’t stop teens from smoking altogether but we can sure limit their access by default.
Don’t you know this is the end of democracy as we know it because kids can’t easily look at toxic content online anymore ?
All popular grooming platforms were already excluded from this policy
I thought that was curious as well. Roblox is allowed? Really?
> Rahm Emanuel is campaigning for the same thing in America.
I get the sense this is supposed to signify something; don't know the name, but looking at their profile, great career, Obama's chief of staff. What's the implication?
He is a pro-authoritian-control Democrat, so it is unsurprising that he is more worried about control of information than he is the Constitution. His background is in finance and his political goal is generally management of the country by a monied elite without particular oversight.
He was paid by Goldman Sachs to help Clinton get elected by raising massive amounts of money. During Obama's term he structured the DNC to be about his personal power rather than supporting Democrats across the country, costing Democrats the midterms. As mayor of Chicago he covered up a murder committed by a police officer and refused to comply with transparency laws.
On the other hand, this particular position is probably just part of the Israeli campaign against TikTok: Emanuel volunteered for the IDF and has long been an anti-Palestinian activist.
Both can be true. The question is, do the benefits outweigh the consequences? I'm of the opinion that parents need to help regulate teen exposure, not the government. It does feel a bit like censorship.
Just my anecdote addled opinion but i seems like most of the people being mentally "cooked" by social media are in their 30's ,my generation, and up to maybe late 60's.
¿Por que no los dos?
Current social media is terrible for children (and everyone, but we let adults drink and smoke) - this is known. They've been told many times they need to change or they'll get banned. They have not. This is known. It reminds me a little of when Australia banned Amazon because Amazon refused to charge GST (their version of VAT or sales tax).
The surveillance part is about adults having to upload their identity. This concern is entirely separate from the part where children are banned.
In most legal jurisdictions that I know of, kids aren't legally allowed to be able to access to pornography either. How is that working out?
The only way to even attempt to enforce these things is with government mandated age verification. Few people want that as it represents a massive violation of privacy and effectively makes anonymity on the Internet impossible.
The insistence on perfect age verification requires ending anonymity. Age verification to the level of buying cigarettes or booze does not.
Flash a driver's license at a liquor store to buy a single-use token, good for one year, and access your favorite social media trash. Anonymity is maintained, and most kids are locked out.
In the same way that kids occasionally obtain cigs or beer despite safeguards, sometimes they may get their hands on a code. Prosecute anyone who knowingly sells or gives one to a minor.
> Flash a driver's license at a liquor store to buy a single-use token, good for one year, and access your favorite social media trash. Anonymity is maintained...
Ask a woman in a liquor store whether her anonymity is maintained by this scenario...?
The current liquor store approach for buying liquor is hazardous for a good chunk of people and we need to acknowledge that - even if acquiring a token somewhat ameliorates the compounded risk from presenting ID multiple times
So many of these internet ban proposals feel like someone creates a single cartoon scenario that captures ~2% of the use cases, and happily charges ahead to a proposed solution as though they've sufficiently thought about the people affected and the harms involved.
I've seen many women buying alcohol and cigarettes. After a certain age you aren't even carded. It isn't obvious to me that it's a big worry for women in general.
However, I accept it may be a concern for some due to a history of stalkers. They have alternatives.
They can ask a friend to buy a token on their behalf. It's always legal to give alcohol to a friend you know is of legal drinking age. Same thing.
They could find liquor or tobacco stores with women cashiers. And rotate between stores to avoid showing their ID to the same person multiple times.
> So many of these internet ban proposals feel like someone creates a single cartoon scenario that captures ~2% of the use cases
I think the "problem" with my proposal you're harping on is the "~2% of use cases" you're talking about. My proposal isn't foolproof but it is anonymous. Just like alcohol and tobacco sales today.
If we're saying social media is the new tobacco and must be kept away from kids (I agree on both counts) then we must not intrude on the privacy of adults any more than we would when they buy actual tobacco.
It makes no sense to want to control access to certain websites more strictly than access to actual poisons that cause disease, violent behavior, and death. Otherwise it's clear it was never about "the kids". It was about control, speech policing, and ending anonymity online.
Forcing everyone to upload IDs makes all women vulnerable to stalking and harassment. It's strictly worse.
> Ask a woman in a liquor store whether her anonymity is maintained by this scenario...?
Is she not going to say "pretty well compared to a surveillance database, one or two people that are probably going to forget immediately"?
> The current liquor store approach for buying liquor is hazardous for a good chunk of people
What chunk of people?
Are you trying to imply that this chunk includes women in general? It's really easy to find random women without looking at an ID. If this is about addresses, anyone taking actions based on "a woman probably lives here" has about the same effect as picking houses at random.
> Is she not going to say "pretty well compared to a surveillance database"
No, instead she is likely to avoid talking in abstractions and instead talk about personal experiences of getting stalked online by multiple people she has had to show her details to in the past, who may include storekeeps, police, university staff, etc, etc. Eva Galperin is an excellent source on the way many of our procedures are designed in ways that do not at all account for the potential of stalking and harassment, though her focus is on how this continues to unfold in the technology space.
I can't really follow how a woman showing an ID to a lecherous cashier allows said cashier to stalk her online. Where she is, presumably, speaking about personal experiences anonymously.
Generally you can't get through life with no one knowing your name; even women at risk of stalking. As you already pointed out they may have to show ID to police, university staff, employers, landlords, medical staff, banks, social workers or other government employees. Buying a single-use token annually to get on social media doesn't meaningfully increase that risk profile. And as I already said, if they're that worried, they can ask a friend to buy it for them.
Very big citation needed for saying it's "likely" she has been stalked by multiple people because they got a glance at her name. Especially because someone that just wants info on an attractive woman can find a hundred times as many candidates by scrolling facebook.
I'll believe it if you have proof, but you need proof.
I don't see the danger of pornography, tbh. Oh, much of it is sick, sure, but violent video games are far more harmful. Would it be better to depict loving, caring relationships? Hell, yes! But there are so few of those these days.
My teenage son struggles to have any meaningful dialog with any of the girls his age. It's like he doesn't exist. The few kids who are "dating" is basically the exact scenario that MGTOW depicts--girls only go for the elite jocks and ignore everyone else like they don't even exist. Everyone is miserable. Many will eventually grow out of it, but I don't think the females will ever view themselves as doing anything but "settling" because of the nonsense programmed into their heads. And yes, social media is largely responsible for how extreme the situation has become. In the 90s, girls were picky, but nothing like now. So all that young men have left is like AI chatbots and porn and it's better to not take that away from them, too.
It could be designed to be anonymous.
Government runs authentication service that has your personal details.
User creates account on platform Y, platform Y asks government service if your age is >18, service says y/n. Platform never finds out your personal details.
OAuth for age verification.
The government still knows your identity in this scenario, so it's a pretty limited form of anonymity (i.e. only suitable for activities the government isn't hostile to)
I know Americans don't want to hear this, but once the government turns hostile, internet anonymity won't save you, just like how guns won't save you (hello propaganda and a large and very active brainwashed minority that also has guns).
The only thing saving you from a hostile government is a well educated populace that really wants democracy and is willing to fight for it (through constant activism, peaceful & other types of protests). This is where many democracies are failing now. No amount of technology or rules can replace large amounts of constantly vigilant eyes that understand how democracy is subverted.
I would rather optimize for not giving companies too much power and end up with a Kafkaesque patchwork of corporate abuses and regulatory captures.
Can't you just put a middle man on there then? Get a non-profit organisation like Mozilla to ask the govt. on behalf of the user.
The organisation asks the govt, and gives back a signed token.
The the only thing the government knows is that an age verification was requested. Once verification has been done once for one site, it can be used for future verifications.
The middle man in this scenario can mask the URL that is requesting age verification, but what's to stop the government compelling traffic logs from the middle man?
Nothing more than what prevents them from getting logs from your ISP about the sites you visit after verification. In ideal countries they need a court order for that, in less ideal ones they just scoop up the logs preemptively.
The government then knows all the services you use. No bueno.
There are better ways to do this including zk proofs, but you gotta work against people mass reselling them. Could do some rate limited tokens minted from a proof maybe.
Let's be real. Unless you're putting in the effort, the government already knows. Especially so on the sites listed in this ban.
To an extent I agree, except consider that governments of smaller countries probably don’t currently have the means to know, but they with such a system it would be served on a silver platter. Additionally, it could be leveraged as a means of censorship system restricting access to undesirable content
Some concerns: - government gets a list of every website that requests your age - every website has to register with the government to initiate age verification checks
Which pretty much puts an end to any notion of an open internet. But maybe a system I prefer to one where a bunch of random startups have my age verification biometrics .
Would zero knowledge proofs work here? I'm not enough of a cryptography nerd so I don't know if it would be a practical use-case.
> Would zero knowledge proofs work here?
Yes, but that would then require more infrastructure. For example, Australia does not have a national ID card - or a national proof of age card (each state, however, does implement a Proof of Age card, eg https://www.nsw.gov.au/driving-boating-and-transport/driver-...).
So, what is your zero knowledge based on? Who is the signer?
Under the Identity Verification Services Act 2023 we have IDMatch (https://www.idmatch.gov.au/). This whole setup can simply be extended to have third parties act as an intermediary between the government and the party attempting to get proof of age. Similar to AusPost's DigitaliD (https://www.digitalid.com/personal). But let's not have that company owned by the Government :)
It's pretty cooked that we are asking the social media companies to go ahead and prove to the eSaftey commissioner that they have measures in place to stop kids from getting access to social websites, yet they have to use unreliable measures like selfies to do it. The companies can't win here. This won't be the last you hear of this. https://youtu.be/YTwBStZIawY?t=306
>The only way to even attempt to enforce these things is with government mandated age verification
Yes, that's what they did.
Seems like they were particularly angry with our 6 News Aus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6_News_Australia
Where kids were reporting on and educating each other about news and politics.
> I feel like everyone in this thread is assuming this is a good faith move by Australia to help kids in school and with socialization.
I mean... you can say that about most of things in life. Behind every social movement or policy, it's always a mix of good faith, cynical fearmongering, and opportunism by people or organizations who stand to gain something from it. Does it matter?
If you think that social media and smartphones are harmful to the youth, you (a) should probably be glad that someone is doing something decisive about it; and (b) you get a large-scale experiment that will hopefully prove or disprove that.
This is an extremely unethical experiment.
Asking "cui bono?" is always a sound question to ask in a political or commercial context, but it should not be the only one. Don't fall prey to appeal to motive. Even if the motivation is self-serving, it need not be bad per se.
> I feel like everyone in this thread is assuming this is a good faith move by Australia to help kids in school and with socialization.
Really! My experience is quite the opposite. I see a lot of people explaining why it's a bad idea.
It's four horsemen of the infocalypse 101. Look at the platforms they allowed to continue - discord and roblox, the specific worst of all socials with the most predators, least effective countermeasures.
The purpose of a thing is what it does. Australia's policies do not protect children. They quite brazenly and blatantly leave children vulnerable and exploited. The question of what those actions accomplish has a simple answer - narrative control, censorship, and weaponization of public discourse against dissent.
The real solution to these problems are cultural. If you want the best outcomes for kids, then reinforce stable loving family environments, empower a culture of resilience and competence and capability, impose accountability for wrongdoing, negligence, and careless operation. If teachers and families are leaving kids vulnerable, the solution is better education and more information.
None of the policy Australia crafted does anything good. It's just another power grab using "won't you think of the children?!" as the excuse. Next year it will be terrorism or drugs or money laundering, and they'll keep constricting around civil liberties until they have absolute control.
They'll also put various racial and ethnic officials in prominent positions, so that you may not criticize anything lest you be deemed a racist or bigot (super effective social engineering.)
> The real solution to these problems are cultural. If you want the best outcomes for kids, then reinforce stable loving family environments, empower a culture of resilience and competence and capability, impose accountability for wrongdoing, negligence, and careless operation. If teachers and families are leaving kids vulnerable, the solution is better education and more information.
This is just complete bullshit. Ah yes, my solution to this problem is just to require every single family to be infinitely better in every way imaginable. What is the proposal if that can't happen? We just execute people who don't meet the "stable loving family environment" No doubt in my mind you are from the generation of a stiff upper lip
You fix it with better culture. You don't throw away your principles and liberties because "bad things are happening to children, quick, burn the system down!"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp...
It's nothing to do with "better culture" There are completely pragmatic and realist solutions that both respect privacy and liberty.
The research has been done and is concrete. Social media is horrible for kids and especially young girls. Now it's time for people to create solutions
As far as Australia is concerned, this isn't as much of a throwing away of principles and liberties as it might look. It's classic Australia to have a heavier hand in these types of ways. Admittedly though, less social media use generally sounds like a better culture to me.
Are you Australian?
> they're losing the youth when it comes to long-standing foreign policy positions
It's well known that foreign actors are all over social and that the west's foreign policy is (rightly so!) hostile to them.
Maybe. Do you forget that people use to not have phones or social media and they still had independent thought? Just because kids aren’t introduced to videos and comments about politics at a young age, doesn’t mean they’re going to be brainwashed by the ruling government. Societies operated just the same before social media.
Edit: Dont get me wrong, there could be ulterior motives, but kids will have other ways to educate themselves on the happenings of the world beside social media
> I don't believe they're overly concerned with "helping the kids" unfortunately
We don't need laws for most things, and yet we've built ourselves a society where everything is a law.
As someone with kids, I’m really surprised to hear this. I viciously keep my kids off social media. There’s no political connection. It’s a safety and mental health concern.
70-74% of voters in Australia and the UK want this. It's also a bipartisan legislation. It has nothing to do with a conspiracy among politicians.
It's not just about the kids either. People know those kids are going to grown up and impact them one day. An avalanche of broken people is not conducive to what I want on a purely selfish level as a non-parent.
Clearly this comment is propaganda. This bill had bipartisan support and the Labor government has a significant share of the young voters who are over 18.
I think adults are barely able to take reasoned political positions in today’s online environment, but at least an adult has the experience to make the attempt. Exposing kids to the type of online political persuasion we have today means that we are exposing them to something they have not got the tools to navigate. They just get swept up into whatever the popular idea of the day happens to be. To me, the argument that separating kids from social media separates them from today’s political onslaught is one of the best arguments in favor of it.
Yep, ADL and others publicly supported the US TikTok forced-sale specifically because of Israel, including the bill sponsors.
Maybe they will use more common sense then getting manipulated by bot farms.
TikTok is not going to make kids better informed about foreign policy.
Congrats for arguing for... enabling child exploitation?
The esafety report stated it was not allowed for sites to screen all users ages, and that all services had to provide a non id method of age verification.
Yes, specifically Australian Labor hate social media because while they are to the left of the overton window here, in reality they are a centre-right party pretending to be progressive. But social media is where the actual progressive people congregate.
This social media campaign though I believe actually came from a campaign by the newspaper The Daily Telegraph, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. Labor are always trying to placate News Corp media, and News Corp media still blatantly tell their readers not to vote for Labor. It hasn't worked for decades, but Labor seem to believe that one of these days it will be different (it won't).
So politically it ticks some boxes for them, helps them suck up to the newspapers that will always hate them, helps diminish social media spaces where their opponents (actual progressives) congregate, and generally demonising "big tech" does just play well politically here.
The policy has like 70% popular support.
"What are they really doing?" is a stupid conspiracy brained question: trying to win the next election obviously and whatever you may think, representing the electorate.
(I hate the policy personally)
The enemy (AUS) of my enemy (social media's effect on kids) is my friend (this ban). Their motivation is only mildly interesting.
Whether intentional or not, one consequence of a success in this area would be to isolate older people from the views of young people and to stifle the younger generations influence on these communication media in the future.
Personally I suspect these elderly people in powerful political positions to be quite afraid of kids, it wouldn't be the first time in history, but it's likely the first time they're this old and as alienated from younger generations as they are.
Perhaps we're seeing patriarchal class societies mutate into primarily gerontocratical societies.
I chuckled when I read that, when over-16 is considered elderly.
What will we do when we no longer have the views of 14 year olds at our fingertips? Well, hopefully they will write their views down on notepaper, and in two years we'll hear all about it.
A conspiracy theory? This time of the year? In New hampshire????
Apologies, you might be right, you might not, but unless you have some actual evidence you might as well be saying "The Moon landing was a Hoax"
I don’t think the US will ever enact a similar ban. The power to shape young minds is too great, even if these service also increase suicides in children to some degree.
The same algorithms that showed IDF war crimes compilations and turned a generation against Israel can be reshaped to push a different, right-wing narrative. The David Ellison’s of the world have too much power to allow regulation getting in the way of this.
What "they" want is secondary - it's a pretty popular move here in Australia, it's what people largely want.
Labor have been failing at giving people what they want recently, and are generally considered rather lacklustre and weak. But like the vaping ban (which was predicted to be and has now been confirmed to be a backward step), this is something parents are generally happy about.
No conspiracy needed.
> We've been hearing politicians complain for years that they're losing the youth when it comes to long-standing foreign policy positions, etc...
What's the alternative? Going back to TV lying that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and that in Libya there's a genuine rebellion against Gaddafi?
I'd rather have multiple actors fighting to push their views on social to be honest.
I also don't like how quick is social media to jump on labelling anybody with a different opinion as a troll or a bot. This is especially common on Reddit where basically every single subreddit is heavily biased in some direction, heavily moderated to push some views and some views only.
Instead, what we should teach in school is how to treat news (any news really, even your friend telling you he's got a Playstation 7 but he can't show it to you): questioning it, verifying the sources, questioning the possible motives and biases of the source.
I'll be frank: I didn't mind Russia pushing their own news through channels like Russia Today globally. I always thought it was very important to get the views of the other side.
But my view also requires my (normal to me) attitude: question, question, question, verify.
Problem is: it's hard, it's exhausting. Claiming something false takes 5 seconds, debunking it can take hours. Most people already got their problems, and just don't do any of it.
I think not letting children get barraged with misinformation and foreign propaganda might help them.
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unfortunately there is nothing we can do in any society without seeing comments like this… whatever “move” is done comments like this will be there with endless “analysis” about “motivation” for the move… it is what it is…
The nature of democracy and open dialogue I suppose.
But really, when banning a large portion of the population from social media, political motives should absolutely be entertained. Politics is inextricably related to social media in 2025
in 2025 politics is inextricably related to everything
"I think drugs are harmful, but I get the sense there's a political motive behind this."
Social medial is a drug, it has serious effects on the brain function and mental health of children and adolescents. On top of this social media allows predators to freely interact with children.
If people are going to do drugs, which they probably will, they should be able to balance the pro's and cons.
I fully support this legislation, and government regulation around this topic. Given the current (2025) state of the social media landscape, I believe that the positives of restricting access to them for teenagers well outweighs any potential harms.
As the parent of a teenager affected by this ban (plus one who has aged past it): I wish that it had been in place 8-10 years ago, before either of my kids got smartphones. We tried to be reasonably conservative in their introduction to devices and social media, on the rationale that it would do them no harm to delay using those for a couple of years through their early brain development. The real difficulty turned out to be the network effect of their peers having access to social media, which increased the social pressure (and corresponding social exclusion) to be online. Not having access to Snapchat/Discord/etc. at that point meant that they were effectively out-group, which is a Big Deal for a teenager.
We ended up allowing them onto social media platforms earlier than we'd have liked but imposed other controls (time and space restrictions, an expectation of parental audits, etc.) These controls were imperfect, and the usual issues occurred. My assessment is that it was a net negative for the mental health of one child and neutral for the other.
I realise that HN is primarily a US forum and skews small-government and free-speech-absolutist. I'm not interested in getting in a debate with anyone about this - my view is that most social media is a net negative with a disproportionate harm to the mental health of non-fully-developed teenage brains. This represents a powerful collective-action failure that is unrealistic to expect individuals to manage, so it's up to government to step in. All boundaries are arbitrary, so the age of 16 (plus this set of apps) seems like a reasonable set of restrictions to me. I am unmoved by the various "slippery slope" arguments I've read here: all rules are mutable, and if we see a problem/overreach later - we'll deal with it in the same way, by consensus and change.
Thanks for sharing your opinion.
I strongly disagree with this legislation and have found it hard to 'steelman' the other side, which your comment/opinion does well. I found it very informative so just wanted to share my appreciation for you posting it here.
Did you also find the intro negative for your own mental health in the sense that you had to bother thinking at all about it?
Feels like a huge component to me as a parent. What do I now need to know and do and react to, and how does my behavior affect the mental health of my kids.
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I get why people from certain countries instinctively see any government involvement as bad, but I don’t think that’s a universal truth? Yes, bad government can do enormous harm, but I think good government can also raise society above what would happen if everyone were simply left to their own devices.
As others have noted, we already accept a long list of age-based rules: alcohol, driving, tobacco, gambling, movies and games, compulsory schooling, consent, marriage, tattoos, credit cards, pornography, firearms, etc.
Seen in that context, restricting social media for children isn’t some unprecedented intrusion - it’s another attempt to limit access to something that appears harmful for younger people. Will it work? I can only hope. But it seems reasonable to at least try.
I’m not claiming this opinion fits every country - it may be due to biases of where I live. Where I am (and in my opinion), social media seems like a clear and massive net negative, especially for kids. Perhaps in some places social media is a genuinely positive part of daily life, and from that perspective the same law might look like needless government overreach.
Broadly, I agree with your sentiment. As soon as some people rule over others, given enough time, things creep towards total enslavement and disenfranchisement of the others. This has been proven over and over.
The question then becomes, how do we organise society instead?
YOUR government might be a bigger threat than anything YOU might find online, but this statement is just not generally true whatsoever. Given how broad this argument is, if anything, it’s an argument for improving government, not getting rid of it. Every freedom has two sides, the more positive freedoms you get, the less negative freedoms you get, and vice versa. There is no possibility of “infinite freedom”, it’s always zero sum, and so always a balance on a per topic basis, which hyperreductive arguments like this (“state level infringements of freedom”) totally ignore.
Right now the government in question is Australian, and I personally wouldn't trust the government which would force citizens to compulsory wear of masks outdoors and alone in cars.
No one in my government has ever done as much harm to me as the people who share your opinion about taking reasonable measures to stop the spread of a deadly disease.
The slippery slope claims by the anti-mask people have entirely failed to materialise, yet millions died needlessly. Far more people (including myself) were permanently damaged by getting covid before the vaccine.
Ok now you're defending measures like forcing people to wear masks on a secluded beach and somehow you still call such measures reasonable. Yuck.
Decisions made under the context of a global pandemic, which needed to be consistent, easy to understand, and easily enforceable. I'm comfortable with the way that was handled in these circumstances. A mask is hardly an inconvenience.
Anyway, to get back on topic, which country do you think is the best example of the level of government you think is optimal?
So, you haven't identified any actual problems with them being on social media though. For example, were this lament that parenting is hard written 50 years ago:
> As the parent of a teenager affected by this ban (plus one who has aged past it): I wish that it had been in place 8-10 years ago, before either of my kids got introduced to Rock n' Roll. We tried to be reasonably conservative in their introduction to music and lyrics, on the rationale that it would do them no harm to delay using those for a couple of years through their early brain development. The real difficulty turned out to be the network effect of their peers having access to Rock n' Roll, which increased the social pressure (and corresponding social exclusion) to be dealing with vinyl. Not having access to The Stones, AC/DC, etc. at that point meant that they were effectively out-group, which is a Big Deal for a teenager.
> We ended up allowing them a radio earlier than we'd have liked but imposed other controls (time and space restrictions, an expectation of parental audits, etc.) These controls were imperfect, and the usual issues occurred. My assessment is that it was a net negative for the mental health of one child and neutral for the other.
I'm being a bit facetious here but my point is that everyone who is in support of this kind of Parenting-as-a-Service is not identifying any real issue the government should concern itself with. Just that kids are doing something new and sometimes scary and gosh it's just hard being a parent when they don't listen.
> I'm being a bit facetious here...
Maybe just don't do that? It's never helpful in good-faith discussions and just indicates a lack of empathy and maybe a lack of understanding of the actual issue being discussed.
> So, you haven't identified any actual problems with them being on social media though.
The problems GP raised seem pretty clear to me. Could gives us some examples of what you would consider to be "actual problems" in this context?
> Just that kids are doing something new and sometimes scary...
Any sane parent wouldn't send their kids to learn to ride a bicycle on the open road and without any supervision. You'd find a park or an empty lot somewhere, let them test it out, assess their ability to deal with potential dangers and avoid harming others at the same time, and let them be on their own once they are able to give you enough confidence that they can handle themselves most of the time without your help.
The problem with today's social media for children is that that there is no direct supervision or moderation of any kind. Like many have pointed out, social media extends to things like online games as well, and the chance that you will see content that are implicitly or explicitly unsuitable for children is extremely high. Just try joining the Discord channels of guilds of any online game to see for yourself.
Not all things new and scary come with a moderate to high risk of irreparable harm.
Its not parenting as a service. Its not even in the same world as rock in roll. Do you think its ok to have smoking, gambling and sex ads shown on tv during the afterschool 3pm-5pm timeslot? Social media is effectively that x100 because TV ads followed advertising restrictions.
On social media kids will be subjected to undisclosed advertising for all kinds of products legal and illegal. They will be directly targeted and manipulated into real world harm situations and mental manipulation into harmful mindsets.
Most of this cannot be prevented by "being a watchful parent". If your kid watches andrew tate and you see and put a restriction youtube will recommend them a tate adjacent channel or one of the 1million alts that posts clips. Same for tiktok, X and Instagram.The only control you have is to ban them from using the platform which is a roundabout way of achieving the same thing.
Being a watchful parent is neither required nor enough. Being a witful parent is another thing. Try not to ban some digital goolags but to show the real beauty of the world which makes these disservices looking miserable in teen's eyes.
Sigh, I'll bite (even though I know I shouldn't, and it's pointless).
> So, you haven't identified any actual problems with them being on social media
Anonymous cyber bullying (multiple times), performative social exclusion (multiple times), anonymous death threats (twice), deepfake porn with their faces spliced in (twice).
Your straw-man example is absurd and TBH it comes across as patronising. I'm trying to avoid assumptions, but it reads like someone who hasn't needed to grapple with this issue personally as a primary carer. Apologies if that isn't the case; everyone has their own view for what parenting should be.
Somehow we've seen fit (as a society) to regulate the minimum age for sex & marriage, obtaining alcohol, acquiring a vehicle licence, etc. We (as a society) recognise that there are good & bad tradeoffs to these activities and have regulated freedoms around these (primarily via age). Somehow, our society hasn't spontaneously regressed into North Korea.
A lot of the arguments I see in this thread are about whether modern mainstream social media are bad for young people. When the debate becomes about that, it's very easy to defend these types of Orwellian laws. It becomes "This is a problem, therefore the solution is good", without questioning the solution itself. I think this type of thinking is demonstrated, or perhaps exploited, very well by this article (I'm not implying the WEF is secretly behind everything, I'm just using this as an example):
https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/01/davos-2025-special-a...
The first part of that article is an absolutely scathing, on-point criticism of mainstream social media. I find myself agreeing with everything said, and then, suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, the article pivots to "therefore we need completely 24/7 mass surveillance of everyone at all times and we need to eradicate freedom of speech". That article is like a perfect microcosm of this entire international shift in internet privacy.
People and their governments seem to agree that modern social media is a problem. The difference is why. The people think it's a problem because it harms people; governments think it's a problem because they don't control it.
I think that the root cause of this shift to mass surveillance is that people in democratic countries still have a 20th-century concept of what authoritarianism looks like. Mass surveillance is like a novel disease that democracies don't yet have any immunity to; that's why you see all these "it's just like buying alcohol" style false equivalences, because an alarming number of people genuinely don't understand the difference between normal surveillance and mass surveillance.
Australia is a Five Eyes country, with carte blanche access to data that the incumbent social media companies freely share with all the acronym deep-state authorities.
Could you elaborate further on how preventing a sizeable proportion of its citizens from communicating through these established spy-nets, causing them to disperse out to unpredictable alternatives they might not be able to control, increases mass surveillance?
That's definitely an interesting argument I haven't seen before.
I suppose it depends on how effective these types of measures actually are, and also on how many adults refuse to identify themselves. I would assume governments are more interested in spying on adults than under-16s, so the adults are probably more relevant here.
I hope you're right, though. Maybe there'll be a renaissance of smaller platforms. Probably not, but I can hope.
This legislation left it entirely up to the service providers to determine implementation, and so far they don't seem particularly motivated to disrupt my usage by asking me to prove my age.
My suspicion is that fairly simple heuristics of age estimation, combined with social graph inspection, are probably enough to completely disrupt the network effects of "social media" for kids, and achieve the stated objectives well enough that I never have to.
Maybe it turns out that I'm wrong, but why even risk it? If the true policy goal is extending mass-surveillance, why waste so much political capital on such a round-about approach which might yield nothing, or even set back your existing capabilities.
MyID (myid.gov.au) already exists, and could easily have been mandated, or "recommended", or even offered as a means of age verification now. But it wasn't.
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Well, no one is suggesting 24/7 surveillance, we’re suggesting banning children from using social media, as it has demonstrably very harmful effects on their education and wellbeing.
It’s not Orwellian. If it were, then not allowing kids to vote or drink before they become adults would be Orwellian.
We are simply banning kids from a harmful activity until they are old enough to decide for themselves. The ban has to be at a social level decided by the democratic process, because there’s a coordination problem here: it’s not a harm that can be remedied at the level of the individual.
The real villains here are the social media companies that have profited from the misery and manipulation of children, to their ultimate harm.
I find it hard to believe anyone would argue in good faith against this ban. In tech circles there are a lot of vested interests that don’t want other governments to protect the children in their countries from harmful products. Shame on them.
> I find it hard to believe anyone would argue in good faith against this ban.
This is a problem. You will not accept an argument against the ban.
Instead you paint anyone presenting any opposition to any part of it as a stooge of predatory businesses.
> We are simply [...]
It's a simple idea, but the implementation is anything but.
> The real villains here are the social media companies [...]
They're getting out of this easy. You're giving them a free pass.
Tax them. Sue them.
Hold them liable for the content they show users.
Ban social media for children without empowering the social media companies or the government.
You've basically just confirmed what I said at the end, that democracies have no immunity to mass surveillance. 24/7 surveillance may have been an exaggeration but not by much, really. Age verification, as it exists now, inevitably means mass surveillance, in particular tying real life identities to political beliefs and porn preferences on a mass, computerised scale. If you're too young to remember the Snowden leaks I can maybe understand why you'd think mass surveillance is not an inevitable consequence of age verification, but I'm old enough to remember them, so I think it is. The existence and impact of mass surveillance seem to be invisible to you.
> It’s not Orwellian. If it were, then not allowing kids to vote or drink before they become adults would be Orwellian.
To be clear: What do you think you're refuting? I don't think children should be on modern social media. I don't think anyone should be, but especially not children. There are plenty of ways of going about this. This is why I said:
> A lot of the arguments I see in this thread are about whether modern mainstream social media are bad for young people. When the debate becomes about that, it's very easy to defend these types of Orwellian laws. It becomes "This is a problem, therefore the solution is good", without questioning the solution itself.
You then claim that the tech industry, and by extension "tech circles", don't like this because it means they make less money. I'm not sure how forcing companies whose business model is based on surveillance capitalism to do even more surveillance would hurt them, but if it does, it's still not my concern anyway. And conflating random hackers like me with "big tech" seems to have become increasingly common recently.
> It becomes "This is a problem, therefore the solution is good", without questioning the solution itself.
This is a very simplified view. The topic has been disputed for years, and societies has tried to find alternative solutions. But turns out, there is no other well enough working solution at the moment, hence the nuclear option. And sometimes that is the only working option anyway.
Should be noted, this is not a first. Social Media has already been restricted to various degree for kids of certain ages in several countries. Australia is just raising the age from the usual 12, 13 up to 16.
> I find myself agreeing with everything said, and then, suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, the article pivots to "therefore we need completely 24/7 mass surveillance of everyone at all times and we need to eradicate freedom of speech".
So it's a poor article, so what? These attempts are not new. There are regularly political attempts pushing towards stricter regulations and more surveillance. Some work, some not.
> That article is like a perfect microcosm of this entire international shift in internet privacy.
There is no shift. Those views have always been there, even before the internet. This is a normal part of societies, including democratic. There is a constant power-struggle between control and liberty in any society, and the balance is always shifting depending on how good or bad certain problems are at that moment.
But a certain thing which is missing here BTW is a complete ban of all open media, for everyone in all ages and groups. For Government, kids on social media are not a big problem, that will only bite them in the decades to come. But people now, today, who are getting radicalized against the standing order, those are a problem. And nobody demanding for a ban is good sign for a healthy enough democracy. Because think about in which countries this is not the case..
> So it's a poor article, so what?
I believe their point was to illustrate the disconnect between the problem and the solution. They agree with the problem, and experienced "whiplash" when the solution was described.
> For Government, kids on social media are not a big problem, that will only bite them in the decades to come.
In Australia the kids on social media are a problem for the government, today. A 16 year old is less than two years away from voting. Successive governments have laughed at the idea of lowering the voting age to 16 or 17. The government has very little influence on social media -- this is different to older forms of media / communication.
Why ban social media when ad-supported media is the culprit? Remove the incentive (to get users to doom scroll, to polarize, to impulse buy…) and you change the behavior.
I remember when social media was sane 15+ years ago. The problem is the business model, not socializing. It's crazy to ban it when being a teen is the beginning of socializing!
Socialising != Social media. Teens can still use messenger, WhatsApp, phonecalls, text or even....face to face!
That's true. I'll say this though: my social life skyrocketed thanks to Facebook when I was ~18. Not sure what kind of impact it would have had earlier, I was def. more of a kid and social medias were not a thing anyway. Makes sense to me to have an age limit considering cyber bullying and teen suicides and all.
Facebook then wasn't what facebook is today. The social media of the early internet was largely a digital expansion of otherwise healthy social norms. Then the internet blew up. Now it's more akin to the drug dealers DARE warned us about. Still waiting on _those_ free drugs, tbh.
Social media is no longer social - it's just media. At least for most people anyway. The average user, and probably kids even more so, are just scrolling through.
If you're posting as well, or at least commenting on stuff and having discussions with people you know (even if you just know them online), I think that's fine. Like forums, or being in group chats with friends on Facebook, or sharing photos you take with a specific community.
It's when you're only consuming (like scrolling TikTok or Instagram), or when your comments are written for the algorithm rather than for actual discussion (like on Reddit, or even Hackernews to an extent), that social media is an issue.
What is meant by writing comments for the algorithm?
What year was it when you were 18? Facebook was enormous for me when I was 18, in 2008, for similar reasons. However, these days facebook is mostly just ads and generic modern feed garbage content in general.
Yeah because all your peers were on it. It wouldn't have skyrocketed if they weren't.
It’s possible your social life would have exploded without Facebook.
If you found a community on Facebook, you’d likely have found it regardless without it.
I think 70-80% of it is the business model, but the other 20-30% might just be baked into how it is.
Jonathan Haidt talks about how once social media usage became ubiquitous among teenagers around 2015 mental health problems began to skyrocket. And a big part of this was the algorithm serving up content designed to make people feel bad, but another part around feelings of being bullied turned out to largely be kids seeing their friends hanging out with each other without inviting them and this provoking feelings of alienation. That’s inevitable, I felt bad when I found out about parties or hang-outs I didn’t get invited to at that age as well. But I didn’t even know about 90% of them, and those I did I heard about through passing references rather than a stream of pictures and albums about how much fun everyone was having without me.
I think some level of a sense of isolation is inevitable under those circumstances, though I’m not sure that by itself would rise to the level of banning it outright. At least not before trying other interventions like addressing Meta’s “19 strikes before banning you for CSAM” rule. Kids are just the canaries in the coal mine here. Whatever these services are doing that is cooking developing brains is still turning up the heat on adult brains too, we can’t try to pretend we can be psychologically healthy engaging with something that we know is spiking depression and anxiety in our kids.
The culture of interacting just changed as more people got online and more tools became available to expand access to things. You used to just be able to have an unsecured comment section where anyone could come to your website and directly modify the page’s HTML and most of the time nothing would happen. You ought to have sanitized your inputs but there just wasn’t this background miasma that was going to flood your comment section full of spam, scans, and injecting malware into the page if you left an open text-entry box on the internet. Once it hit a certain scale and there was a certain amount of money in it then a lot of mess came with them.
Jonathan Haidt is someone who nobody should take seriously. Pretty much all of the data he cites is cherry-picked and the vast majority of people in trust and safety and similar will tell you that he is probably one of the least reliable authorities on this subject. He's aiming to sell fear, not to actually solve the problem.
The only data point I referred to is the dramatic rise starting in 2015, and the divergence by gender. I don’t think anyone seriously disputes that, just the presumed usage patterns he thinks go along with those. The criticisms of him are basically orthogonal to the point I’m making.
I don't think it's just the ads, I mean we had magazines, TV, and the web, they all had advertising, and no population-level impact on child & teen mental health impact was observed as these were adopted.
Then we got the one-two punch of social media apps on phones, and everywhere we saw these get adopted, we saw depression and anxiety increase en masse.
My own theory is that if you have to pick one thing it's the phone, because screen time/attention skyrockets when you get one of those, and they can have you freaking out about whatever clickbait they're feeding you pretty much 24/7. When I grew up there was just a computer in the den and when I wasn't in the den, whatever I'd viewed on it was out of sight, mostly out of mind.
It's the combination of ads, analytics, personalization, and scale.
Ads mean that you want to keep the user on your platform as long as possible. They are incentivized to make it addictive at the most fundamental level. A company selling movies doesn't care how often you watch the movies you buy, they just want to convince you to buy them. A company that makes money for each minute you spend watching a movie would put out very different products.
Analytics mean they can precisely see the effect of any given change to figure out what makes the product more addictive.
Personalization means they can tailor your experience to be addictive to you, personally, rather than just generally addictive to people.
And scale means they can afford to pay enormous amounts of money to a lot of smart people and have them work full time on the problem of making the product more addictive.
I don't know what you do about it.
> we had magazines, TV, and the web, they all had advertising, and no population-level impact on child & teen mental health impact was observed as these were adopted
That is not true. Distorted body perception, anorexia etc. due to omnipresent photoshopped models in magazines and poster ads where a thing decades ago.
Things escalated with social media, but there were issues long before that.
> Things escalated with social media, but there were issues long before that.
The escalation, the ubiquitousness, is the problem.
It's like the difference to your health between having a can of coke week and drinking a 2 L bottle of coke every day.
The previous static ads of the past are completely different beast compared to targeted advertising and attention driven design(leading to doomscrolling etc).
My own theory is that kids are rightfully anxious and depressed as they can now easily see the state of the world and the direction it's going. This is the world they have to enter soon, and they can do almost nothing to change it, so of course they're more anxious/depressed.
It's crazy that social media is banned but kids are still subject to gambling ads prior to or after watching the footy on free to air TV.
Can they gamble?
Supposedly no but they will soon be able to.
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The ad supported is just the reason to make it addictive. Get rid of all likes/thumbs/follower(counts)/notifications and it loses the endorphins and stops being the problem it is today.
You might not have opened any social media app lately. You need 10 seconds before you're sucked into the feed. Likes are a thing of the past, they just gather your interests by your reaction time on any content they show you.
Hey you spent 500ms looking at this pretty girl dancing, how about some ass now?
I get straight up PORN ads on Facebook too. Twitter at some point showed me porn as well, even if I had specifically curated it to show JavaScript content.
You're not wrong. Even simple "page hit counters" became a target of manipulation once they were common. Human nature is tough at scale.
I'm not sure social media was ever sane. I distinctly remember thinking it wasn't back in my highschool days, so around 2007-2009, which was pretty much when Facebook completely took over the market in Sweden where I lived.
Before then I used to use lunarstorm. Was that the sane period of social media? Maybe, my memory is fuzzy: it's been a while.
At least with early Facebook one was mostly interacting with one's pretty close peers. Back when I joined, you still needed a .edu email address to signup, and there was no real discovery mechanism, so you mostly only friended people who you had met IRL.
Yeah it wasn't ever sane. It was just harder to onboard and you were still interacting mostly with people you knew. Now it's worse because you'll hardly ever interact with people you know.
Now days you just get a feed of LLM content or foreign psyop accounts. Your actual friends are on IM apps.
How come ad supported TV existed for decades without destroying children's mental health?
The algorithms create the engagement, the engagement lures in the ads, not the other way around, at least that's what I think right now.
>How come ad supported TV existed for decades without destroying children's mental health?
Well, there's at least a few reasons this is different than the current situation.
1) It's expensive to make a TV show, it's free to do a fortnite dance or eat a tide pod and post it to several websites. The amount of low-effort, low-quality, probably-harmful content on TikTok or whatever is exponentially more than low-effort, low-quality, probably-harmful TV shows/ads.
2) The availability is on completely different scales. TVs are (basically) fixed in a specific place. Phones are, for most people, within arms reach 24/7.
3) What can be shown on TV is significantly more regulated in most parts of the world, and control mechanisms by governments are more robust (pull a broadcast license, etc.). It's harder to take a website (or TikTok, whatever) offline than it is to pull a harmful show/advert off of HGTV or whatever your favorite channel is.
4) TV is not specifically tailored to the viewer to produce the most amount of happy chemical.
Well arguably TV did destroy people's brains, just a lot slower and less efficiently.
And in fairness, dosage is the difference between a painkiller an a heroin addiction.
It's worth noting that this was a pretty active debate as TVs were going from one in the household to one in every room. "We don't want to put a TV in our kids' room, it'll rot their brains." And there was research to back up that it had a negative effect to some degree.
So why are we surprised that when we put a TV in the kids' hands things got even worse? Meta testified on the stand recently that they're not a social media company anymore, they're now all about video. Tiktok is the new TV. Every app wants to Tiktokify. The money from TV, just pushing an endless stream of video to someone, is very good.
I pretty much agree with this.
We were able to go back to one TV in the house (at least I was), and even avoid a big chunk of the ads when watching TV (by paying for Netflix/etc) and even radio (Spotify/etc).
Except we now we put a garbage TV in every hand.
It's a terrible idea because it's a tiny screen; because it's not a shared experience, but an isolating one; because it's been proven that it's bad for eyesight/myopia. But most of all, it's terrible because the content is crap.
Spending hours watching a never ending sequence of low effort 2min videos that need to deliver on the first 30s (or they're skipped) is not the way to make anyone smarter/saner.
"Do you or a loved one suffer from an abundance of brain cells? Speak to your doctor today about whether The Jersey Shore might be right for you!"
In Australia TV is very commonly referred to as “the idiot box”.
Australians are very aware that it destroys people’s brains.
> How come ad supported TV existed for decades without destroying children's mental health?
I would argue that it did, we just did a poor job of measuring it.
Anecdotally, during my childhood I moved from a place that had very little TV advertising to a place with a normal amount and it had a noticeable impact.
TV programming has to broadly appeal to society generally... you can't really go down a niche algorithm that progressively feeds you more specific content until you're radicalized any certain way (it can sorta, see conservative media, but there are some guardrails). Social media can with much less restriction.
We had the same fear mongering in the 80’s and early 90’s about TV. And in the 20’s and 30’s about radio programs.
Same shit, new generation.
I remember when Facebook required a university address. That made it..unique to me. Perhaps there are ways to have a permitting process for kids through their parents and guardians that only access sites with that permit. Idk. South Korea has those internet license which I chaff at but.. It's a hard problem.
I do agree that banning advertising would be good (though not the only problem). However, you don't need social media to socialize online (text messaging, messaging groups, etc. all still exist).
Yeah, ad-driven feeds definitely pushed platforms into the doom-scrolling feedback loop. But for better or worse, governments don't really know how to regulate "the business model" without blowing up the whole internet economy
A lot of exploitation is not even about money. Some of these platforms don't even make profit. It is about politics.
I long thought this way, but I’ve realized ad-supported social media/internet is an objectively egalitarian funding path that has allowed the open web to thrive and flourish. If you have a way of funding the internet that doesn’t shut out literally Billions because they cant afford it, I’m all ears.
Complaining about ads is kinda like complaining about homeless people. You are just servicing your own annoyance without actually engaging in critical thought. It is selfish behavior.
Decades ago, there was less competition for eyeballs, much more high-quality content (vs. slop), and investors were a bit willing to just build an audience without seeking immediate returns. Early social media was aspirin: a useful drug, but not addictive. Now it's super-cocaine and hyper-meth trying to keep the user high.
Also, what's an 'ad' is an extreme spectrum nowadays with free stuff given out in exchange for a post, people trying to act like paid influencers to fake it until they make it, paid influencers, and listicle affiliate link slop.
I despise ads. I take any chance I can to pay for my content rather than support ad-based revenue.
But you can’t solve that issue with policy. It’s a cultural issue. People are not willing to pay for the content they consume (with money).
Not to mention you would collapse the US economy (I’m not sure if you’re US based, just speaking from my perspective), and likely others, if you applied a blanket ban on ad-supported media.
Oh, alright, I guess we just need to overthrow capitalism and install a different economic system
Alright Australian lawmakers, you heard the man, chop chop!
Florida passed a similar law, and a bunch of other states are attempting to but are blocked by federal courts. Will be interesting to see if the tech industry allows it, or decides to break up the federal government before it becomes too powerful.
> Florida passed a similar law, and a bunch of other states are attempting to but are blocked by federal courts.
When much of government ( federal, state, local ) communication is done via social meda, would it be legal to ban anyone from accessing it?
Or are official government social media sites required to be accessible to everyone?
People under 18 don't have the same rights.
In the US, children's right to free speech has only very narrow exceptions compared to an adult.
The Supreme Court has even struck down state bans on selling violent video games to children because it violates a child's first amendment rights.
A full ban on social media full of protected speech? That passing Constitutional muster would require some legal gymnastics and overwhelming scientific evidence of harm - evidence that is sorely lacking despite what people believe.
> That passing Constitutional muster would require some legal gymnastics
In the previous era of principles, sure. In The Year of Our Dear Leader, 2025? The Republican Supreme Court just needs the order from above, and the Constitution will say what the ruler says it says.
Jackson's Calvinball footnote was not nearly as alarming as it should have been.
Agreed. What rights should they have though?
The Australian ban doesn't block anyone from accessing content.
Unless the social media site puts up super random login gates and A/B testing anti-patterns that blocks you from accessing content?
Break up the federal government?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawn%27s_Early_Light:_Taking_B...
That is basically what the Heritage Foundation wants to do.
Not going to help the tech industry given their largest audience bases are in blue states, who will happily just regulate them to death if the federal government doesn't.
We're already on the fast track to becoming an authoritarian state. It's not too much of a stretch to imagine the next step is dissolving congress and installing a new constitution. Or just throwing it out entirely and defining the law of the land on the whims of a senile man
There's no need to dissolve congress. You instead make sure that (1) a single party stays in power (through gerrymandering, voter suppression and more), (2) the courts are stacked with loyalists and (3) the legislature and courts rubber stamp all decisions of the executive regardless of legality or anything else.
Yeah this is usually how it happens. Whether its ancient Rome, modern Russia, Venezuela, etc all the dressings of the old Republic stay but become subverted by an autocrat.
You also need a country name with 'Democratic' in it:
Democratic People's Republic of America.
That's how you know it's a fully totalitarian state.
Yea, US is probably gonna end up as Russia if nothing changes. On paper a democracy with elections. In practice a dictatorship.
utter nonsense, i truly don't see how people can live in the US and be left with this impression.
Democracy with Chinese Characteristics
atleast the people's republic of china never claims to be a democracy in the liberal western, sense of the word. Politically (on paper atleast) the chinese goverment is very much a marxist state, and it is very clear about that.
Sure, but also why wouldn’t they? It’s historically unpopular as an institution, and clearly toothless.
For the same reason russia and north Korea has elections? It sounds better to pretend the dictator is chosen by the people
it is also a very easy pathway to create controlled opposition. When you are a totalitarian dictator without elections, opposition of any kind is hard to control. With faux elections you give people a "choice" which seems reasonable compared the usual extremes in an totalitarian state.
Democratic institutions only have as much power as they're given.
Have you not been paying attention?
Can you expand on this, what do you think I'm missing?
the Weimar Republic (a democracy) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimar_Republic] certainly never directly voted to make Hitler a dictator - they voted him in, and he used the mechanisms of the state against itself (and crisises, both real and imagined) to seize power completely and become the official Dictator (Fuhrer means ‘leader’ in German). Here is a write up [https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/go-in-depth/germany-...].
Italy transitioned from a regency into democracy - which the fascists used to seize power and form a dictatorship [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_fascism].
When the USSR collapsed, there was a temporary fledging democracy that started to form - that was then hijacked by Putin and twisted to support his now obvious Dictatorship.
In the US, while one can certainly argue ‘they knew what they were voting for’, the Trump voters I knew vehemently denied what is now the obvious plan re: economic policies, starting new wars/crises, etc. that are now the norm.
The current actual behavior of the US gov’t seems to align quite well with historical norms on this front, and continue to escalate. If ‘the people give them the power’ means ‘it’s legal’ (aka it is within a law the people’s agents have voted on and made official), or was voted on by the people, it’s clear the vast majority of high profile behavior of the gov’t lately doesn’t care about it.
If anything, Democracies seem to be inherently ‘dumb’ when it comes to these types of situations.
The idea that democracy either created hitler or wasn't able to stop his rise via democratic action at all is often spruiked in anarchist communist circles, while it's true hitler wasn't voted in the literal sense, neither is Australia's Prime Minister. That doesn't make the PM undemocratic, it's just its own democractic institution inside the party. There's actually nothing in the Australian consitution about PMs.
It doesn't mean you couldn't unelect the party democratically and thus the leader. The public can unelect them from power by voting out the Nazi party of which Hitler was leader (through again, a vote). So this is a case of what I'm saying actually being relevent – if people voted against the nazi party, hitler would not have risen to power. He only gained that power because the democratic institutions, the people let him. This is a case for more and better democracy, of valuing that institution. I've encountered Trump voters who were actually bernie bros and accelerationists - they voted for trump as a fu to the establishment. I think the have a moral responsibility to not vote on those urges and whims. I think this that's bad, even if I can feel the sentiment sometimes, and I think that sort of "democracy bad" is actually a harmful to discourse and simply not true.
We need to bolster democracy for the people, not call it toothless while invoking communism and fascism. I don't ultimately blame Trump for his rise to power, I blame the people for being fickle and perfectionists. Democracy is precarious and precious, not a perfect ultimate catch all. The people need to foster it otherwise the rising tide of populism and fascism will drown it.
Huh? Do you even listen to yourself?
It would be a lot clearer to everyone if you said what you think.
I don't think it's extreme to believe that democracy is the best tool to fight authoritarianism. That's why people like Trump deride democratic institutions and those important to it's function.
You asked for examples where democracies degraded to authoritarianism. I provided 3 recent ones, and yes the US is clearly currently in an authoritarian gov’t.
Your response is to… assert they didn’t happen, and to do nothing different? While being completely unsure of what I’m saying when it sure seems pretty clear?
You've not understood what I said at all. I didn't ask for examples, I asked what you thought I was missing. Turns out I wasn't missing these things at all, we just disagree on the lessons learned there within. Fair enough, we can disagree, but to say I am denying it happened and not to do any different when my entire point was that we need to be MORE democratic, not less – by valuing democracy and not allowing people to tear it down, exactly what I am trying to do now.
Democratic institutions only have as much power as they're given.
What democratic institutions do you think don’t have the power to deal with the current (or those past) situations? I’m not seeing any.
I return to you "Have you not been paying attention?"
Trump didn't rise to power because of democracy, it was in spite of it, Trump literally tried to overturn the election results and still subverts the people's choice by continuing to spread that lie. He talks of jailing his opponents, plays dirty, doesn't respect the rules or democratic institutions. He is the antithesis of democracy and the people (using democracy) voted him in. The people failed themselves and their own people but they did so not as first order goals.
Spartacist uprising, mensheviks vs bolsheviks, etc- people didn't turn away from democracy because democracy itself failed them, they turned away from democracy because they had some idealist world they wanted to get to– by force (i.e not democratic). This is what motivated communist uprises and hitler's brownshirts to subvert the election. Note that this says nothing as to whether they are correct or not in their worldview. Hitler shares this type of thinking and he took advantage of it – just like Trump destroys the media "fake news" or makes voting harder, if we, the people, didn't allow it, we would prevent it one way or another. The problem with Trump or Hitler isn't that they're "too democratic", it's that they subverted the process debasing it in turn.
There is power in the collectve. Unions got this via bloodshed so that they need not bleed more. If we devalue unions because some unions are bad we just live in a world in which capital get to rule and bloodshed returns. It's a regression. It's not the right strategy, we need to work together despite our differences in solidarity despite the fact democracy sometimes leads to imperfect outcomes, all in order to prevent dictators, ensuring they govern with mandate and consent, not authoritarian force.
It's not one single institution like "Congress". Democracy isn't just voting it requires free and fair elections which require free and fair political discourse which requires transparency, and mass media that informs doesn't distorts, etc. If we don't value these the next step isn't voting on it democratically, it's violence to enforce totalitarianism. In some ways, we're already there. Lets not inadvertently enable it.
You seem profoundly confused about cause and effect, and even the meaning of your own prior words.
These things are all happening because enough people are turning into greedy short sighted idiots and overwhelmed/disengaged folks with no balls.
None of this is about ‘power in democratic institutions’ - they have plenty, which is why they are being turned into powering the authoritarianism. Same as in those prior examples.
‘Why doesn’t anyone do anything?!?’ they say, as they refuse to do anything, or allow anyone sane to do anything either.
Because the obvious thing - stand up and use the existing tools to do what needs to be done - requires effort and risk.
And the only ones willing to do that are the greedy or insane.
It's possible we just see things different, I'm not sure why you're so keen to say I'm "profoundly confused"- entirely possible we just have different perceptions no? Lets be more charitable.
I agree things have deteriorated, I agree the state is centralising it's power and becoming more authoritarian that's true. I agree that through democracy authoritarianism can rise, and does.
What I don't agree is that this by it's nature is because people value democracy, it's the opposite. Upholding democratic institutions might include a citizen doing their part to understand the policy, it might be the ICE agent or brownshirt, it might be judges refusing subverting traditions and spirit of law simply because it's not currently being enforced (much of democratic power is procedural and traditional, not by actual force). If people don't value it, it erodes and disappears.
> None of this is about ‘power in democratic institutions’ - they have plenty, which is why they are being turned into powering the authoritarianism
I think we might just both have a superficial disagreement with each other, when I say 'democratic institutions only have the power given to them' I mean to say the power of democracy is derived from the people, therefor if the state decides for the people (authoritarianism) and the people reject this but the state retains that power, well- that is treason not democracy. This is what made Hitler a dictator, he wasn't really into democracy, even though he subverted it, and he also used it to get into power. I'm not sure we actually disagree we might just have different framing. I consider this a failing of the people, yet you consider it a failing of the system (I assume). Both are valid I think.
To me, if people decide through democracy to elect a dictator that shows a reluctance of the population to care about democracy or institutional norms. That's why this stuff happens during broader social & economic downturns. If people want to elect a person who wants to spend the entire GDP on producing paperclips, well I can't really fault them- that is democracy, the only other choice is authoritarianism isn't it?
> ‘Why doesn’t anyone do anything?!?’ they say, as they refuse to do anything, or allow anyone sane to do anything either.
Yep, I agree with this. We do need to be smarter and work together. We do have freedom, including the freedom to harm ourselves. People need to respect that and be more responsible, be more virtuous. If not, we get the government we deserve but not the one we might need.
If your answer is ‘people need to be better’ while they are actively being manipulated and controlled by a bad actor in a position of authority over them (one that was manipulating them to get elected in the first place!), while said actor clearly is getting no negative consequences, my answer is ‘that clearly doesn’t seem to usually happen’ and ‘how do you expect that to occur once they are in power’?
Notably, Brazil seems to have dealt with Bolsanaro - but that was because the gov’t in power actually recognized the danger and put him in jail in a timely fashion, and stopped him from continuing to do what he was doing.
Something, notably, that none of the other examples I gave were able to do (despite some attempts).
The only other way out, based on historical precedent, is blood. A lot of it. But hey, I’d love to be wrong!
Maybe if we keep ragebaiting on social media about every fault of the opposition while refusing/unable to actually do anything about it - or even rally together for any meaningful course of action - victory will be ours! (/s)
TBH these steps are not that easy and probably are not possible in a federated country like US.
Gerrymandering already exists. Voter suppression was huge in the past, and may become huge again. The supreme court made sure of that.
And also... the supreme court keeps issuing partisan decisions.
So... what is left? Number 3?
I guess you're arguing that federalism protects people, but how does it do that in a way that isn't already being eroded?
There's no voter suppression in US, and it won't stand in courts even if somebody pushes it. Supreme court keeps using partisan decision in favour of Dems and GOP, so it remains balanced. What's left is everything you mentioned.
There's no need to do any of things you mention considering that both parties are owned by the same people and are essentially two faces of the same party in practice. Also - almost all the powers that be - including courts and Congress are already for sale/at the service of big tech.
Both sides are not the same,not even close, and the voting record proves it.
> the voting record proves it.
Putting on my tin-foil, devils-advocate hat... AKA I don't necessarily believe this but I also have no counter-argument:
Mostly performative. When it's decided that something actually needs to pass, then you'll get some sacrificial lambs that vote across the aisle. Typically they'll be close to retirement or from a state where they won't be heavily punished for that specific vote.
It's not performative when people are losing health insurance and other people are at risk of starving. I agree with holding out on the government shutdown to try to prevent Americans losing healthcare. But when Republicans are absolutely fine with poor people starving so that they can take away people's healthcare, with a bonus that they get to shut down the government and say "see, government doesn't work", it becomes clear that letting the government shut down (especially food program shutdowns) continue is going to hurt more people than the government shutdown is going to help. So, when you say "performative" it sounds like you support the "both sides are the same" meme, but the ideologies are vastly different - one side is fine with people starving indefinitely, and the other actually doesn't want that.
I would think at least some of this should be obvious, but I guess not?
I mean at some point arguments like this become more akin to Russell's Teapot. If you're making an almost unfalsifiable claim, then the burden of proof is on you to prove it and not others to disprove it.
From a political standpoint, the statement "from a state where they won't be heavily punished for that specific vote" is a weird way to put it, since if you framed it in a positive light it would sound more similar to "the state population falls on both sides of the issue and thus either vote could make sense from their legislator depending on exigent circumstances and other factors" or any number of other explanations depending on the vote and populations.
Both sides are exactly the same when it comes to big tech and the voting record proves it.
That's funny, because the president (Republican) just signed an executive order forbidding states from enacting their own AI regulations. Meanwhile, California's governor (Democrat) is trying to regulate AI.
Please explain how that's "exactly the same".
We'd have the exact same situation in reverse if democrats were in the white house.
No, we definitely would not, but you aren't here to engage in any kind of honest discussion. Your assertions are simply not supported by reality.
I will bet you up to $1000 at 2:1 odds that in 5 years we will still have the same constitution and congress will not have been dissolved at any point.
perhaps we ought to consider banning social media for adults or maybe just dystopian movies.
Russia still has a constitution, a parliament, separation of powers, and an independent judiciary. It even has opposition political parties and elections.
And yet...
Motte meet Bailey
Right, because there's no need to change the Constitution when you have a captured Supreme Court to help you ignore it, and no need to dissolve Congress when they've steadily made themselves less and less relevant over the past few decades.
I do wonder about the normalization of dystopian ideas. Take even a show like Scandal. The fact that one of the big reveals is that billionaires stole the election by targeted hacking of election machines is kinda messed up.
[flagged]
Everybody seems to have missed the memo that all power was concentrated in the Executive branch since the Bush Doctrine, and that since 2016 people have started insisting that the Executive doesn't even have any obligation to the President, the only important vote left (although limited to choosing between two private clubs funded by the same donors.).
If Congress steps away from doing anything but serving donors (helped by the filibuster), and the captured regulators don't have to obey the President, there's actually no democracy left. We're in the impossible situation where Trump not being in control is scarier than Trump being in control.
Even scarier is that the people saying that we're on the way to becoming an authoritarian state are saying that because they think that the voters get too much say. Authoritarianism is when we don't beatify Dr. Fauci, or agree that it's fine for pregnant women to take Tylenol. The upper middle class, in its complete narcissism and fall into self-indulgent fantasy, is entirely focused on aesthetics.
edit: when replies that say that there's already a problem, but seem to be heretical about the covid response get flagkilled, there's a blessed opinion. I have no idea how elite echochambers are supposed to avoid an authoritarian state. Your bosses are kissing Trump's ass, and you're working hard doing things that advance their agenda. They couldn't do it without you.
> In an effort to curtail the organization’s outsized influence, Facebook announced Monday that it would be implementing new steps to ensure the breakup of the U.S. government before it becomes too powerful. [1]
I'm old enough to remember when The Onion didn't just report the news.
[1] https://theonion.com/facebook-announces-plan-to-break-up-u-s...
I believe they're implying that there's an unhealthy amount of regulatory capture in favor of big tech
It was a clever riff on the current situation where business tells government
How about we break up the tech industry instead?
This muskian "I am above laws so I'll break up the USA/EU" is asinine and societies should come down on it like a ton of bricks.
Is the assumption that non "tech industry" communities (e.g: voat, parler, ovaries, gab, truth, lemmy, mastodon, 4chan, 8chan, etc) are less likely to be a problem or to negatively impact teens than the mainstream "big tech" ones (e.g: facebook, twitter, youtube, tiktok, reddit, etc)?
I think if you run a website as a main source of your business profitable or not you’re in the tech industry. It’s a question of scale not industry classification or purpose classification.
The thing with those alternative communities is that they sort of orbit around the larger tech platforms. Their agenda is set by the news-of-the-day within certain X/FB/YouTube subcommunities. Its sort of analogous to wire services in traditional media.
Additionally, people that post on those platforms originally gained notoriety on the bigger tech platforms, and took their audience with them.
Not my point. The original comment said the tech industry can decide to break up the federal government because they don't want to be forced to clean up their act. Societies should be stronger than any industry and fight to maintain freedom, health, peace, and prosperity. If the tech industry is against that, then they should be the ones broken up.
> Societies should be stronger than any industry and fight to maintain freedom, health, peace, and prosperity.
I think (I hope!) we all agree with this sentiment.
But societies also need to be stronger than states, especially in an age of connection and sharing.
States are the main source of uncertainty and violence in the world right now, and I think it's reasonable to hope that the internet will bring the age of peace we pray for.
Obviously the social media giants are not it. They are closer to states than they are to algorithms.
But I'm wary of siding with states over web apps. What we need are healthier (meaning, chiefly, more decentralized and less rent-seeking) web apps.
Exactly, societies need to be stronger than states too and really need to act early. States can become one person or party and it's game over for a long time. Actually, the American Constitution is pretty great at preventing this exact outcome and I still have a lot of faith in it.
but the constitution is just a piece of paper with some words written on it. Without an active civic society protection what is enshrined in the document, it is all but powerless.
> I think (I hope!) we all agree with this sentiment.
As long as it's not farming, defense or healthcare of course. Historically speaking at least.
> They are closer to states than they are to algorithms
This seems like nonsense. All the tech industry does is convince people. It doesn't force anyone to do anything. States have a monopoly on violence. No one holds a gun to anyone's head forcing them to consume <insert content you disagree with>. In a country of equals, everyone's opinion, including <position you disagree with>, should hold equal sway, and be resolved via democratic due process.
Just because many people hold <position you disagree with> and vote for <politician you find repugnant> doesn't give you any sort of reasonable justification to limit the freedom of others to advocate (including on social media) for it.
I agree with everything you've said with regard to the justice of the matter, but I don't think that there is a free market at work in social media.
* So-called "intellectual property" laws dramatically skew what can and cannot be shared
* Censorship at the behest of world governments is rampant, and completely overran anything representing a nonviolent scientific dialogue during the recent COVID19 pandemic
* States, with their monopoly on the legitimate initiation of force, pick winners and losers at every level of the experience, from chip makers to the duopolistic mobile OS vendors to their app stores to the social media offerings. Sure, network effect may describe the reason people join and stay, but the availability of places to join and stay is in no sense a market phenomenon
Consider: the major social media barons meet with POTUS all the freakin' time. Do you suppose that's just because they enjoy his company?
> So-called "intellectual property" laws dramatically skew what can and cannot be shared
Agree! let's get rid of these :)
> Censorship at the behest of world governments is rampant
Agree! States have always pursued censorship to maintain power. That doesn't contradict the point that social media companies themselves are not state actors, and are not the problem.
> States ... pick winners and losers
I'm not sure I'm 100% on board here. States may thumb the scales, but the fact of the existence of FAANG/MANGO seems much more like a market phenomenon than an interventionist project.
> social media barons meet with POTUS all the freakin' time
There is almost no clearer display of corporate self-preservation than social media vendors kowtowing to the president.
Much of what you're outlining is standard run of the mill corruption. The US Government (and others) is acting in contradiction to its stated principles. This is not a new phenomenon, and seems in the category of core human governance challenges.
Is this a new technique where you put COVID denialism into an otherwise good comment? Does it have a name?
I think you may have misunderstood my comment - or perhaps misunderstood the consequences of the censorship regime.
If anything, it seemed like the denialism was amplified by the censorship. What fell by the wayside were the serious, rigorous dialogue that had previously been the best thinking on epidemiology and public health.
I was a moderator and frequent contributor to /r/ebola during the 2014 outbreak; during that time I reached out and began to form relationships with (and respect spectrums for) various epidemiologists and academic departments. And it was really hard during the COVID19 pandemic to watch people like John Ioannidis, David Katz, Sunetra Gupta, Michael Levitt, etc. be totally cut out of the conversation while a group of second-stringers who were willing to toe the corporate line took their place.
Was it your experience that the censorship worked to _stem_ denialism? It seemed to me that it made it much louder and much worse, muddying the water of genuine discussion and research.
The idea that real, serious scientific debate was stymied by social media platform policies doesn't pass the smell test for me. Facebook/twitter/et al were making good faith efforts to stop the flood of downright harmful misinformation, and government didn't force them to do it. None of even the most questionable scientists were ever silenced. Those folks had the right wing press broadcasting their worst ideas to the world, the didn't even need social media when they could get on Fox News every day of the week.
It was the final attempt of social media even trying to be something more than a cancer. Now? Every social media platform (especially Facebook and twitter) would have zero problems being the driver of modern day pogroms, complete with running betting markets on the outcomes, if it would keep their share prices up.
> None of even the most questionable scientists were ever silenced.
...a literal nobel laureate, a literal Einstein scholar, and literally the author of the most cited paper in the history of open publishing were all censored.
Multiple scholars of the Hoover Institution. The director of Oxford Center for EBM. An author of the most widely-assigned textbook in preventative epidemiology. Two editors-in-chief of BMJ publications. Literally the BMJ itself had articles removed from Facebook! The British Journal of Medicine was censored from Facebook dude!
Tenured professors form Yale, Johns Hopkins, Oxford, Harvard, and Standard (several from Stanford in particular) had their work either totally removed or subject to shadowban-style censorship.
What can you possibly be talking about? I'm broadly anti-credentialist, but I can't fathom not noticing what happened: The world's foremost experts were silenced; we all watched it happen.
Let's not mince words here: there was a _thunderous_ chorus of the world's top experts opining against lockdowns. And social media depicted something entirely different, and entirely false. It wasn't like... close. Lockdowns never gained anything resembling mainstream support in the actual real world of epidemiology.
David Katz, Michael Levitt, Carl Henegan, Monica Ghandi, Scott Atlas, Vinay Prasad, Eran Bendavid, Sunetra Gupta, John fucking Ioannidis (my personal favorite author of medical science for over a decade prior to COVID19, and arguably the most accomplished medical scientist of our generation)... I can go on and on and on. How on earth are you conducting your "smell test"?!
All the most impressive minds of our age were cast aside so some second-stringers from suburban Virginia, who had been collecting a paycheck from NIH and CDC but not doing anything resembling continuing education at their alma maters, could babble nonsense about interdiction and hold aloft the Imperial study which they obviously didn't understand (and which all of us who read it knew it was destined to retracted from the word go).
There were a tiny few serious academics who endorsed lockdowns. And some were genuine experts who simply got it wrong. I respect Carl Bergstrom and Marc Lipsitch enormously, and I give them credit for sticking their head above the parapet - I think they genuinely believed in horizontal interdiction and, although they were absolutely wrong, I don't think they were intentional being propagandistic.
And I don't think they went out intending to be amplified as they were. I only wish their other work were amplified as much as when it was convenient for the lockdown narrative.
...but it's simply, totally false that accomplished academics and experts weren't censored. I can't even approach that with a straight face.
A lot of people with credentials join the grift train, yes. Apparently it's quite profitable. Listing many of them isn't really an argument that the grift is true.
What a bizarre and reckless take. I thought this 'no true scotsman' nonsense was put to bed in 2022.
By this metric, who is _not_ a grifter? You have to be Scott Gottleib or Peter Daszak - shilling pseudoscience while sitting on the boards of corporations making billions from the pandemic - to _not_ be a grifter? Is that it?
It seems my opinions are influenced by facts, and not by a parade of firstname lastnames. Thank you for testing this hypothesis.
> Literally the BMJ itself had articles removed from Facebook!
These people got their stuff published in the British Medical Journal, so nobody in the scientific community had the slightest problem seeing it.
Facebook posted a fact check where the story was shared pointing out some problems with it. They didn’t “censor” anything. It was frankly entirely reasonable and the BMJ should have done better in the first place. Facebook did “combat bad speech with more speech”, the thing you’re supposed to do, and the cranks absolutely lost their minds.
In any case, the danger is over now and we can rest easy knowing that Facebook won’t lift a finger to prevent millions from being misled about vaccines causing autism. They’ll sell ads alongside the posts! phew
...let's get our facts straight here. I hope we can agree on this nutshell:
* During phase III of the Pfizer trial, there was an unblinding event which was not initially disclosed. At first, it appeared that it might only have been a few dozen participants, but later disclosures showed that it was more serious.
* The BMJ learned of this - again, only knowing about a few dozen patients - from the regional director of the contractor carrying out one of the arms of the trial, who was fired the same day she reported the unblinding to the FDA (as required by law). This disclosure included photographs of documents, in the study area, with unblinding information on them.
* The BMJ published what was, in retrospect, an extremely cautious report, even though by that time it was becoming clear that the problem went even beyond mass unblinding and into falsified data, so much so that the contractor's quality control check team were overwhelmed trying to catch up in the days between Jackson's termination and the publication of the report.
* In response, Facebook added an inane "fact check", calling the BMJ a "news blog", and which got several of the above facts wrong. In fact, the "fact check" didn't actually make any coherent assertions about the actual content of the article at all. It seemed its primary function was to add an insinuation of doubt, via scary red boxes, about the BMJ report, without any critique of the substance or merits.
* Three days later, Facebook went further - preventing the story from being shared at all, and adding warnings to users commenting on the article (in places where it had already been shared) that they risked having their accounts degraded or terminated for spreading misinformation.
* All the while, board members of Pfizer (one of who was a former FDA commissioner) were permitted to deny these assertions and smear the whistleblowers (in what, in retrospect, turns out to have been actual misinformation) with no "fact checks" or prohibitions on sharing.
* Months later, Facebook acknowledged that they took these actions at the urging of the White House.
...I don't think it's the least bit far-fetched to call this "censorship".
Facebook 'reduced distribution,' they didn't block. And again, your original claim was that social media somehow blocked scientific debate, which is categorically false. All these claims are hand-waving away the fact that this was published in the BMJ from the outset.
Facebook could throw all their servers in a wood chipper today and it would have zero effect on scientific debate in the world.
All that a state does is convince people. States don't really exist. They're fictional constructs that sometimes convince a police officer to break into a murderer's home and kidnap him. And most of us agree that's a good thing. However sometimes they convince a police officer to break into a protestor's home and kidnap him. And some of us agree that's a bad thing. Other times they convince bomb makers to make bombs and convince aircraft mechanics to attach them to airplanes and convince pilots to fly over hospitals and press the release button. That's bad too - sadly not everyone agrees on that.
You've written this with a certain sardonic tone, seemingly in efforts to show the person to whom you're responding that their view necessarily leads to the particular brand of anarchism you're espousing.
And I must say, I find your argument and phraseology very convincing. I agree with everything you've said here; states are not imbued with any particular magic. They simply convince people to do things that, if people weren't filled with the mindset of exceptions that seem to come when engaging in public services, they'd never ever do.
I have a degree in political science, and I wish that the reading material required to get that degree displayed more of the technique you've used here.
I mean, it's good prose but it's just sort of hand-waving away all the history of how we ended up with modern states. States solve a lot of problems, they're not perfect but I'm pretty passionate about not living in walled cities because there are hordes of raiders who go around enslaving everyone.
I think you both may have misunderstood my comment. It's not about history. It's simply a rebuttal to the idea that something which "only convinces" is less influential than a state. States themselves also fall into that category, and therefore we can see that things in that category can be so influential they need forceful restraint.
> States have a monopoly on violence
This could be amended to "States have a monopoly legitimate on violence". Your comment seems to deny the existence of "legitimacy" as a concept. How do you distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate use of force?
No, states can't do violence because they don't have hands, so they can't hold guns or bats. The violence is done on behalf of the state by some of the people it convinces, mostly police officers and soldiers.
Because Fedgov stopped any real anti-trust regulation over a century ago and have shown they have no will nor ability to change that since.
Why not both?
It's not going to happen, at least not in the land of crony capitalism.
I agree. It’s just there has not been a pro-EU vote in any form or capacity by any EU population. So the stopped doing referendums but the EU grew only even more unpopular- and lately with VDL and KK, its as if its a cruel joke we all expect for it to end soon.
EU is holding, but the fact that every authoritarian (US, China, Russia) is trying to break it apart should tell you something. It's like the only one remaining, and they don't like it.
You may not agree, but VDL and KK have more balls than most men who have run the EU in recent history.
If they had any, they would be in front line… not asking me to go get myself killed :-)
So unpopular that the only country who ever decided to leave is now regretting its decision
Just to make myself clear: I don’t think the UK made the right move. But if you ask most countries in referendums they will choose to leave.
Ps. I know HN likes the EU very much because they see it as an opposing power to their home issues but it’s not that. The EU, in its current form, has many structural problems. That doesn’t mean that Europeans like Musk, Trump or Biden.
What are you talking about? Lots of countries have voted to join EU. Any country can leave when they want. EU is still popular in most countries.
Can you name a referendum of a country within the EU that has to do with the EU in some form or capacity and received a positive vote? Netherlands, France, Italy and Greece all voted at a certain point in time. The result was always a “no”.
The EU is not popular, within Europe, at all. Maybe the idea is great, but the implementation is certainly not.
what are you on about? this idea of a referendum is a straw man. Member states joined the EU through mechanisms of their state. (Acts of parlements, referendum or something else).
Also, the votes you are described are all about the implementation of certain ideas/legislation inside the context of the EU, not about the organisation itself?
> what are you on about?
I'm a European citizen, stating the obvious. Happens to be the contrary of what most ppl in here think it is.
> Member states joined the EU through mechanisms of their state. (Acts of parlements, referendum or something else).
They did. That was a long time ago. When the EU was created the expectation was to align salaries, social welfare networks through access to cheap lending through the common currency, even though politicians like Margaret Thatcher understood the role of the ECB the moment it was proposed. Indeed her last speech as a PM in the house of commons is legendary[^1].
> Also, the votes you are described are all about the implementation of certain ideas/legislation inside the context of the EU, not about the organisation itself?
Most voters don't make that distinction. The fact that every time a government wants to implement an unpopular idea uses the EU as an excuse doesn't help ofc.
To recap: given the opportunity, the majority of countries in Europe would choose to live the EU today, if you ask them. It was much easier for the UK to do so, because they were not part of the monetary union.
[^1]: "[...] the point of that kind of Europe with a central bank is no democracy, taking powers away from every single Parliament, and having a single currency, a monetary policy and interest rates which take all political power away from us.", M. Thatcher, Excerpt from her last speeh as UK's PM (1990).
As an Australian experiencing this first hand and considerably older than 16, absolutely nothing has changed. It seems like all the social networks are doing age estimation of accounts and only taking action on those that fail and are detected as underage. The change is otherwise completely invisible if you're an adult user. Obviously I'm only a sample size of 1, but I've not heard of any other adults being adversely affected by this, so it seems the estimation is accurate.
Pretty well executed - I'm impressed. Given how seamlessly this occurred, it will undoubtedly be rolled out in Europe next year, as the EU has expressed an interest in doing so, but was waiting to see how the implementation went in Australia.
Apropos social media and age, I have some relatives with the last name of Aam. (Åm or Aam is an old farm in the Volda area of Sunnmøre, Norway).
If you try searching them in Facebook, you get a message telling you your search has been stopped and you should seek help you sicko, searching for... "Age abuse material" maybe? I don't know why it freaks out on those three letters, but it does.
This was in the news a year ago, and they still haven't changed it. Go and try if you want.
So allow me to doubt that the implementation is going to be smooth. For you maybe. If you instead end up in some algorithmic Kafka nightmare, don't count on your social media friends to notice.
You have to see if it's in a corporation's interest for false positives or false negatives. For you and AAM, it costs Facebook almost nothing for a false positive on "age abuse material" so I would expect them to continue to flag your family name as a false positive.
With snap and others, I would expect them to focus on reducing false negatives and give the benefit of the doubt to the kid who is under 16. Worst case, you say "Mea Culpa" and update your algorithm accordingly to any cases that you missed but the state has found.
I'm an adult, not living in Australia, and yet my backup Roblox account has been barred from using any form of in-app chat unless I send my face and ID to some third party service.
All of my (adult) friends living in AU had to perform various forms of age checks on almost all platforms they used, which seems to be very far from invisible.
I'd much prefer anonymous, safe, reliable age checks (that can be done!) that don't require me to spray my personal data at the dozens of companies either in the weird jurisdictions or with dubious privacy commitments records (like Bluesky using Epic Games services, famously fined over half of billion dollars for violating children's privacy laws and deceptive practices). Yeah, that's doable. No, won't happen because it's a out the control.
As an Australian the only platforms I have that asked for an age check were Discord and Bluesky. Which is funny as neither came under this legislation, they're implementing this because they chose to.
Nothing from Reddit or any of the Meta platforms which have to comply with this legislation.
Can you give examples of what your friends had to do for each platform? No one I know has been affected, so it does seem “invisible” to me. However I’ve also been an adult for quite some time now. If you don’t mind me asking, are your friends young adults?
One is young adult (20-ish), graduate, another is 40-ish "professional". They live in the opposite parts of the continent, have completely "normal" /mundane interests (we bonded over a specific book series and share one more hobby).
It did not affect them too much, but they had to use either their government issued id or consent to biometric scan (age estimate via camera).
Nothing particularly problematic, but nevertheless irritating and may become a deal breaker.
Nothing has changed for my 15 year old either. It’s business as usual today for her.
She says only one of her friends has been challenged by a platform so far, and that was by Snapchat. That friend got another 14 year old friend to pass the facial age detection check on her behalf.
It'd be funny if suddenly a lot of adult Asian women could no longer use social media
> pass the facial age detection
Are you kidding me? So the answer is let's let some random vendors used by said corporation scan her face? This feels like using DNA sequencing to confirm you're tall enough to ride the rollercoaster.
It’s just as reliable as you’d expect from a system that relies on shitty cellphone camera pics.
They’re trying to guess the age of someone who could pass for 11 or for 22, and who with careful use of makeup could push that figure in either direction.
For some reason (and this is one reason people think there's a conspiracy), that is the "preferred" form of age verification. It certainly saves the government from having to do IT.
Interesting, was she unable to pass the test just didn't even risk it, thinking the algo is good and can reliably detect reality?
She failed on the first attempt, handed her phone to the friend to try, and then the friend passed.
> but I've not heard of any other adults being adversely affected by this
I’m a 40 year old man and I’ve been impacted. A huge circle of people I know have been impacted. A number of companies now want to scan my license or my face, which will be fantastic when they keep it (despite saying they don’t) and then get breached in 6 months.
>Pretty well executed - I'm impressed.
It seems like a handful of sites havent even switched over. Most are just estimating. Theres no clear indication that the execution has been anything but botched, unless convenience for older people was the only metric.
The execution didn't finish; it started. Big policy changes typically take time to solidify, and it'll probably take a bit to get a reliable read on its trajectory. But there is international momentum on this, so making predictions based on whatever percentage of people that were supposed to have their accounts deactivated actually did the day of (if we even have that data, and I doubt that we do), is probably not going to be useful.
The government have previously stated they won’t pursue breaches unless they’re particularly egregious anyway so this is basically shameless political theatre.
ABC did a poll of a large number of kids affected by this, and only 6% estimated the legislation would be successful.
ABC polled a cohort that's going through the most rebellious period in their lives and asked them whether they think authority figures can effectively prevent them from doing something they want to do. Had I been asked the same question as a teenager, I would've answered no every single time, regardless of the actual circumstances.
Yes but theres also no data to suggest that they are incorrect.
Pretty much aligns with how I have felt it here in Aus as well
> Pretty well executed
There's a long way still to go on this. It's one of those changes where positive effects are experienced early but many if not most of the negative effects will surface over weeks, months or years.
A lot of debate here is debating a social media ban. But what actually being banned is accounts, not access.
Australian teens can still scroll TikTok, Instagram, and watch Twitch streams from logged out accounts. They just can't comment, like, or upload their own content.
One might argue that this removes the algorithmic feeds. But I would wager that social media companies will just use browser fingerprinting to continue to serve algorithmic content to logged out users, if they aren't doing this already.
My take. This ruling seems to impact the content creators (from Australia specifically) more than the content viewers. Which I'm not sure is the intent of the legislation.
I don't use social media but from occasionally trying to look at a link someone has sent me, the experience of viewing these sites without being logged in is very limited. If you can see anything, it's maybe one post and then you get a popup demanding that you log in to see more or view the whole thread.
I think they'll loosen that for Australia after this.
> But what actually being banned is accounts, not access.
Is this implied, or is this detailed in the law? I can see why this would make sense. So many businesses just have a link to their facebook page as their business website, which you should still be able to view. And presuming platforms like YouTube fit the definition, banning kids from watching anything on there would be pretty rough.
> One might argue that this removes the algorithmic feeds. But I would wager that social media companies will just use browser fingerprinting to continue to serve algorithmic content to logged out users, if they aren't doing this already.
On the subject of YouTube, I wonder if they would allow for the creation of teen accounts, which restrict all social media functions but allow subscriptions. But would that then also remove algorithmic recommendations? What about data harvesting off those accounts? If so, I might have to look up how to get a teenage fake ID.
> browser fingerprinting to continue to serve algorithmic content to logged out users, if they aren't doing this already
This is going to be a poor substitute. New browser, updated browser, lost cookies, new phone, different device... Those all will reset your algorithm and the companies will have a hard time tracking down data they can associate with you.
Quite a decisive move by the Australian government. I don't know if it's a move in the right direction or not but the research clearly shows that around the time social media became mainstream, teens' and preteens' mental health took a nosedive (Especially girls).
maybe it's a step in the right direction but you can't regulate away ALL parenting. I know kids in the 5th grade getting brand new Iphone 17s! i've even seen one kid at the age of 7, getting their own Ipad. some parents even force their kids to use play on their iphone, just so they don't have to keep an eye on their kid anymore. My jaw really dropped to the floor on that one.
at some point, you just have to say that parents need to start parenting again. i'm a parent, and i can tell you it's not that bad.
How are you going to prevent kids and teens from joining everything that's bad for them online??? I think regulation is just band-aid.
the ideal solution would be to have parents say "No screens" until a certain age, unless it's supervised, or on a managed device that just lets them get their homework done.
The challenge is that once they are teens, there's a pressure from others and an inclusion aspect, or access through friends and all that.
If you're the only parent putting so many rules on your kids it exclude them from what all their friends are doing and so on. That too can have a negative impact.
The balancing act becomes tricky. If they all can't use social media, it doesn't create that impact of being excluded, they all need to adapt to socialize without.
The way I see it, it's a combination, society shouldn't create a difficult environment for kids and parents to navigate as that increases the burden on parents which will likely fail. And parents need to also make sure they appropriately regulate their kids as otherwise that increases the burden on society which will also likely fail.
If both play their part though, we can raise better kids to grow into more apt adults later in life to the benefit of everyone.
I don’t have kids, but I can see how one parent banning their kid from social media could create issues when the others are on it. I was a quirky kid that already struggled to make friends and any additional imposed quirkiness would have been devastating.
That said, and I don’t mean to oversimplify this, but what about really teaching your kid how to handle whatever bad stuff you feel is on Facebook and such? Not just one sentence as they walk past, I mean making it such a routine part of your teachings as a parent that you get to the point where you have shared moments laughing at the absurdity of it all.
I’m a few multiples of the age in question and I haven’t used Facebook in a long time, but last I heard one of the main issues is people only showing the doctored up highlight reel of their life. If that’s still the issue then I get that it can cause anxiety, but that’s also part of real life and a teachable moment. Granted I wasn’t bombarded with “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous - GenAI Edition”, but the concept of someone being ‘fake’ isn’t new, and neither is the need to be able to see through it and mentally deal with it. That is the world they’re going into, whether it’s a rented Ferrari, the fake Rolex, or just a photo filter and picking one image out of 700.
i'm geniunely curious about how you made the jump from "here's a single regulation" all the way down the slippery slope to "can't regulate away ALL parenting". does this one regulation cross that threshold? how'd you get there?
in an ideal world, parents would also prevent their kids from smoking, but the fact that in many places minors aren't allowed to purchase tobacco sends a social signal and actually does seem to put a speed bump in place deterring casual use.
is it not _also_ ideal to have some of these regulations in place? does it not help parents make the case to their kids?
it does help. i think this is a good step in the right direction.
but there's still a lot of stuff that only parents can do. for example, screentime in the home. you can't really create a law that says no screens for anyone under the age of X because there will exceptions (movie night, homework, etc).
Screentime helps, but it doesn't really solve the problem. They still see the exact same content shared by friends at school, and 15 minutes a day is enough to do damage.
We have had 10+ years of asking parents to solve the problem and the situation has only gotten worse. "Just parent better" is good advice at an individual level but it doesn't solve problems at a society level.
> you can't regulate away ALL parenting
This is absolutely true. However, when you do away with the kind of regulation a healthy society needs, you can't then blame everything on parents.
Regulation has been presented as a bad thing for a long time now, even though it's what cleaned up our rivers that used to catch on fire. Just like taxes have been presented as a bad thing, even though they paid for all the public infrastructure we use every day.
As a society, we've lost a vision for the middle ground. It sure feels like we need to find it again, and the sooner the better.
I can't see this as decisive.
* The ban only targets ten services.
* The ban applies only to actually logging into the service - everything can still be viewed when logged out. Users are still being tracked while logged out.
* Reddit (and possibly other services) are complying simply by using heuristics to detect under-16 users - they're not even employing any reliable verification measures.
> The ban only targets ten services.
This is considered a startup phase AFAICT, with others being looked at as necessary.
> The ban applies only to actually logging into the service - everything can still be viewed when logged out. Users are still being tracked while logged out.
Sure, but it stops kids bullying each other, and a service you can't fully interact with is not very interesting, stops kids putting their pics/videos/whatever online.
> Reddit (and possibly other services) are complying simply by using heuristics to detect under-16 users - they're not even employing any reliable verification measures.
They are using heuristics and then an external verification service if the heuristics set off an alarm. It's not perfect at present, sure, but I don't think it has to be.
We'll see how effective it is over time I guess.
Hugely decisive! Feels more like a policy for idyllic hypotheticals. "Suppose we could ban social media..." well, hey, they actually did it.
I'm very interested to see how their socializing evolves in response to such a shock. Do the social behaviors of pre-internet times re-emerge? "Third spaces" reappear overnight? We shall see!
I think one must also re-evaluate how in modern times a parent can be charged (by a perfect stranger) for the crime of neglecting their child when allowing them to rove unrestricted outside (within reason). I've heard of this happening in both the US and Australia, the HOA mindset really needs to die.
> a parent can be charged (by a perfect stranger) for the crime of neglecting their child when allowing them to rove unrestricted outside
This is more about criminalising poverty than anything about parenting. I live in a rich part of Wyoming. The kids are fucking feral.
I live in Philadelphia in Mt Airy. I see kids of all races around all the time. Sometimes my kids. The only place I read about parents being jailed for their kids being outside is HN.
Where are you from? Sweden? Denmark? Fun fact for Europe: America is quite a dangerous country. At the very least, this is why parents fear the outdoors. And much of our nature is polluted. There are cases of this. I agree it's wrong, but it's good to understand the background.
And as far as the internet: I am part of the younger generation and I welcome this change. I see how it affects my generation every day.
I am also from a younger generation and from a state that has experienced quite a bit of pollution, but before the popularity of the smartphone ~2012 or so, there was still much more play outside. As for crime, it has been on a downtrend for decades, and many areas are the most peaceful they've been in years¹. I admit this may still be higher than in Europe, but this is exactly the fearmongering message platforms like X try to spread to garner support for authoritarian policy
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States
1. I am not saying people are playing outside at the same levels. 2. I live in the rust belt and don't need to be told what I see is fearmongering. I have been personally affected by it.
America isn't universally dangerous, but it is very diverse. Where I am (Western Pennsylvania) there are kids outside running around all the time (maybe less now that it's very cold out). It just depends where in the country you are.
This might interest you:
No Such Thing as Bad Weather by Linda McGurk
I read this book in school and it's about this difference between Europe / Scandinavia and a rural part of Indiana
I'm not saying kids don't play outside, just that the violence is why some parents fear it. I agree the internet makes this fear worse but frankly, EVEN ONE CRIME is scary enough if you ask me
A 26 year old girl was set on fire in Chicago public transportation. It's really unforgiveable to me when people then say I'm "fearmongering"
Yes, I fear being attacked on public transport!
I think a huge part of that is context. Age, location, time of day, etc. I’d be curious to see numbers on this, usually it’s just asserted as “back in my day we played outside and got dirty all day!” but then I hear those same (usually now grand-) parents talk about all the tv shows/movies they watched as they espouse their views on modern media!
My assumption is a lot of those people who proudly proclaim that lifestyle were raised in (segregated) suburbs and have rose tinted glasses. But I’m also making assumptions like them, so again I’m curious to find info on this.
These are very very isolated outliers amplified by a media hellbent on ragebait.
You've never tried to free-range raise your kids then. Some friends in our neighborhood had the police called on them for riding their bikes around the block, and the cops followed the kids back to their front door and then talked with the parents.
I have. I also, crucially, don't live in America.
This article, also crucially, does not relate to America
when did kyrra mention they lived in America?
When they spelt neighborhood, when the kids rode around the block.
When they said they live in a country where a police force follows kids on bikes
The clues were all there.
The success so far is really just political, which has largely been shutting down debate and dismissing calls for some kind of cost analysis of what we risk losing in enforcing this.
Whenever someone brings up this stuff, the politicians take the tone that "we won't let anyone get in the way of protecting children", and this is in response to people who in good faith think this can be done better. Media oligopolist love it because it regulates big tech, so they've been happy to platform supporters of the policy as well.
Third spaces won't reappear because the planning system in most cities shuts anything down the moment someone files a compliant. They get regulated out of existence the moment police express concern young people might gather there. The planning system (which in NSW/Sydney is the worse) has only gotten worse since the 80s after the green bans. It was largely put in place to allow for community say in how cities are shape, which sounds nice but it's mostly old people with free time participating who don't value 3rd spaces, even if they might end up liking them. They just want to keep things the same and avoid parking from getting overly complicated (and this is a stone throw away from train stations and the CBD).
Third places can be fixed by reforming planning which is slowly gaining momentum via YIMBY movements, but this social media ban is just not a serious contribution to changing that. If anything Social media phenomenon like Pokemon GO contributed more to these third places lighting up.
Governance in Australia is very paternalistic, it's a more high functioning version of the UK in that sense. I think it might be in part due to the voting system being a winner takes all single seat electorate preferential voting system which has a median voter bias for least controversial candidates.
As a kid I always felt being in Australia you missed out on a lot of things people got to do in America, that has slowly changed as media and technology has become less bound by borders but looks like that being undone.
>well, hey, they actually did it.
They passed legislation, its not clear at all that they succeeded.
They actually did the experiment. While we're over here thinking social media is probably bad for kids and wondering what would happen if they weren't allowed to use it., Australia actually did that. Soon we'll actually know what happens when kids aren't allowed to use social media.
I know! Let's hang out a THE MALL!
The Seventies are BACK!
Given that “social media” is in fact not banned and all this does is impact a select (and frankly logically inconsistent) list of services, this seems very unlikely. Children are still free to be groomed and gamble on Roblox and join servers belonging to The Com on Discord. To be clear I don’t think those services should be regulated by this obscene law either but this isn’t going to bring back any kind of halcyon era for kids. It will expand the surveillance of and shame around young people’s internet use, however.
Roblox blocked communication between adults and kids. I can't chat with my own children in app even though we don't live in Australia.
That's for the better, as far as I see it, I can just shout :p
I still prefer my kids to play roblox over being on X or tiktok much.
It is still more ok then most of what any other todays tech provides. No matter how much geeks on HN hate it.
And it can inspire them to learn programming with Lua(u).
How so? It has been implemented so that age verification is a token only, a yes/no authorisation. The age verification service doesnt get browsing details, and the site providing content doesnt get any additional user details beyond what they would likely already have, including those subject to PII legislation.
This is false. Like all the age restricting laws being passed around the world, the implementation is not being specified and is being left to the individual platforms, which are using some combination of photo ID and video selfie in order to validate people's ages. Each platform is implementing it differently, and on different timelines. For example, X has failed to even respond for a while, but it's finally said they'll comply.
> Companies have told Canberra they will deploy a mix of age inference - estimating a user's age from their behaviour - and age estimation based on a selfie, alongside checks that could include uploaded identification documents.
> It has been implemented so that age verification is a token only, a yes/no authorisation.
This is misinformation. The legislation does not specify a single particular implementation for age-based verification and there's absolutely no single "age verification service" that platforms are legislated to use. Instead they're required to verify users' ages based on several recommended methods, including age inference. https://digitalrightswatch.org.au/2025/12/03/what-you-need-t...
Further, the Communications Minister herself regarding whether she's concerned about people bypassing authentication-based age verification checks: "If you’re an adult - you probably won’t need to do anything extra to prove your age, because like I said before, these platforms have plenty of data to infer your age." https://minister.infrastructure.gov.au/wells/speech/address-...
It will also massively expand the surveillance of adults: if a platform introduces face scanning or checking government IDs for "age verification", then they don't just scan the underage users.
The mental health trends are real, but pinning them exclusively on social media risks missing a lot of context
Those rates will drop even lower if they start trying to use LLMs to fill the gap.
Not just mental health: ability to concentrate + engagement with people around us.
There is no evidence that social media use shortens attention spans or reduces social engagement offline. This is a meme, and a false one.
What you’re implicitly saying here is that we should wait until there is empirical evidence. That could take multiple decades, and even then will be tenuous at best because you’re dealing with a soft science. At that point the damage will have been done and much harder to address.
If you don’t think attention spans are on the downtrend & that social media has something to do with that, I don’t know what to tell you. I think it’s pretty clear.
Except that there are studies linking social media use with reduced attention spans. Here is one: https://www.dialoguesreview.com/index.php/2/article/view/930
There are at least other two that I could find
Dialogue Social Science Review with a single undergraduate author and no descriptive statistics given on effect size?
Thinking about this this will of course fail. Because teens will do what they did before online: make their own social networks. But by necessity these will be small.
I hope that's what will happen. That this is only really a problem for FANG, for the tech industry and doesn't actually prevent social media.
Funny, but I (and I believe many who support this law) would say that's a good thing. The problem is not (and never was) social interaction online, it is large corporations designing their algorithms to be as addictive as possible to tie kids as early as possible to their services.
I have had to recently get back to using Facebook (after creating the account ~15 years ago and leaving it dormant for >10 years), due to several sports clubs using it as their only means of communication. It's scary how good these algorithms have become, I often only want to look up something related to the club and end up being roped into 1h of doomscrolling. And I'm an adult with significant better impulse control than most teenagers.
While FAANG undoubtedly have chosen profit over safety I'm not yet convinced non-FAANG social media is significantly safer, in terms of mental health, antisocial behaviour or predation.
At the very least, I appreciate that this test should help us determine the causal impact of social media. I don't know if rolling out to the whole country is justified just for the test data, but I feel it will give a pretty conclusive result one way or the other.
Teens will learn to bypass all this within the week. Then, whatever the new way of doing social media will be, it could easily reach consensus within the year.
Even if it achieves only a small reduction in usage (say 10%), i would expect that should have a measurable effect on happiness if the hypothesis of [social media causes unhappiness] is true. If no increase in happiness is observed, i think we could say that social media does not cause unhappiness.
Not so sure. The government has placed a A$50M incentive per violation discovered, I heard. That sounds like a powerful incentive on the companies to outsmart the kids.
If a kid uses a pseudonymous account and fraudulently bypasses an age verification system, I have a hard time believing that the company would be fined $50M.
I would guess that this massive fine is more for situations like if a company can be shown to have wilfully allowed a violation or else has been grossly negligent. (But I have not read the law!)
violation would be: not making a reasonable effort,
violation would not be: a kid bypassing their reasonable effort.
Is this around the same time we started over diagnosing mental health disorders?
'Life being stressful is not an illness' – GPs on mental health over-diagnosis
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2pvxdn9v4o
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46172682
The next step is to outlaw social media in general, and maybe the world will become a bit better.
Edit: in case someone decides to disagree with me, here is a non-exhaustive list of issues that social media has created: isolation from the real world, unrealistic expectations in terms of looks/status/success, dehumanization by turning people into likes-dislikes, dehumanizations by creating influencers whose sole purpose it to pump cheap crap to their "followers", a vessel for state actors to spread the current flavor of propaganda/racism supported by "the algorithm" that creates echo chambers rather than promoting diversity of opinions, dopamine producing machines that glue us to the screens.
There is nothing social in social media, in-fact, it should be called the "anti-social media".
I would start by outlawing the algorithmic feed. Force them to show a chronological timeline of who you follow with no influence from likes, no For You feed, basically no algorithmic recommendation engine.
You probably solve most of the problems with 10% of the legal/social/implementation difficulty.
And no ads.
I agree that would go a long long way.
When it becomes a place to share photos with your friends, like the OG Instagram, a lot of the harmful effects go away.
This must be the modern version of Fahrenheit 451.
Books are bad because „list of bad things“, let’s not weigh in if people like it or not… just burn the books.
I truly don't understand how people can make such comparisons, and in general defend social media. Is this some sort of Stockholm syndrome?
Social media has ruined my mental health, when I fell into a deep hole of propaganda. It took me a year to recover, and I'm still not fully recovered, and I'm still trying to separate between what I truly think, and what social media "made" me think. People underestimate the power of echo chambers created by the algorithm.
I saw how friends and family got radicalized thanks to social media. Social media is currently fueling at least one war and multiple regional conflicts, where people who know nothing about the events, get "educated" by social media. Social media is fueling hatred and bigotry, further diving already fragile societies. Social media disinformation campaigns were behind Brexit. And social media is used as a tool by government to spread misinformation or influence social opinions. All these in addition to everyone being an influencer and showing their phone into the faces of people in public places, while selling crap from AliExpress for 500% markup, as if you drink electrolytes, put a nose tape, and clean your face every day -- your life will become ten folds better.
I can't name one good thing that came out of social media. None. And even if there are things, and I'm sure someone will name them out, they are minor comparing to the negative sides, or could be achieved in a more sustainable way.
You do know that HN in in the category of social media right?
No, it’s not. It’s a link aggregator and a discussion platform, it is not centered around social aspects like user profiles and followers.
Hacker News is almost indistinguishable in spirit from a well-run subreddit. Reddit is not centered on user profiles and followers and yet, Reddit is included in the Australia's social media ban.
It is clear from the ruling that by including YouTube, Reddit and Facebook, they take a broad definition of what social media is, essentially anything with user interaction and Hacker News definitely fits the bill.
And if your criteria includes "social aspects like user profiles and followers", then GitHub would fit too: it has user profiles, followers / stars, and allows for discussion. It is even included in the "social media" list for ESTA and visa applications for the US. We could even include StackOverflow, I mean, it used to be common practice to build a profile, chasing a reputation score so that you could show off to recruiters.
So Reddit isn't social media either?
Originally it wasn't. It was more similar to hackernews, just more general. Lately it's going all in on wanting to be a social media platform full of dark design patterns to keep people hooked. Hackernews has barely changed from its beginning. I don't feel overwhelmed browsing it. Five minutes of reddit and I fall into a dopamine hole that can be hard to get out of. It's no longer part of my daily routine for that reason.
Your profile here is https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=skwee357 and your Social Credit Score, as of this posting, is 927.
HN is social media.
No, it's not.
You can't follow people or have followers. There's no notification system when someone "likes" your comment. It doesn't lend itself towards pulling you back with the latest comment or post. There is the front page algorithm, but you can always just go to /latest or /active. It's about the content, not the users.
Critically, there's no ads or monetization (which is where all that garbage comes in).
HN is an anti-social media. It is not inclusive. If you are not a tech geek or cannot articulate well you are not welcome here, and will be ignored.
You cannot follow or be followed. There is no attention drawn to your username or profile. Everything about HN is designed for you to just read a comment and move on, not caring much about the human behind it.
There is nothing that social media provides that a private group chat with your closest people doesn't fulfill.
It could be banned with nothing of value lost.
The whole world seems to be hooked on TikTok, reels and shorts for entertainment.
Reversing that would take some doing.
It's quite dystopian. Seeing people in your family, and friends, just mindlessly consume that shit, for hours upon hours - and many of them are completely oblivious to the fact that these reels and shorts are engineered to keep them engaged.
Using ML/Data to keep people hooked on content - I'd be embarrassed to be an engineer at any of these companies actively destroying our society.
TV had the same effect before the internet. It just had to use less effective Nielsen instead of AI/ML. People make this complaint about all new media when it appears, including books even (well, that kids and adults would spend their time reading trashy novels rather than study the Bible), and later serial articles (which were designed to keep readers hooked with literary cliff hangers so they would buy the next issue).
"The dose makes the poison."
Comparing modern algorithmic/addictive social media to print articles with cliffhangers isn't a serious argument.
There will definitely be hellish withdrawal symptoms.
???? We're on social media right now.
Come on, you know what is meant by "social media" in this context. An algorithmic feed with tuning to be as addictive as possible.
No one outside of someone trying to be obtuse would put HN and Tiktok in the same category.
HN literally has an algorithmic feed and the karma system is the most addictive system used on forums. It's why Reddit is so addictive.
Either HN is part of the evil social media club or the rule for what separates the good ones from the bad ones needs updated. HN and TikTok are different and I think being able to articulate what actually makes them meaningfully different is the first step toward useful legislation.
> No one outside of someone trying to be obtuse would put HN and Tiktok in the same category.
Definitely not the ones enforcing it, when it serves their purpose.
It’s worth calling this by its other name: the taking away of anonymity and pseudonymity.
To date, proving you are old enough is almost always (over-)implemented by having to reveal your legal identity and the exact date you were born.
If the whole world goes down the route of AV / age-bans then I hope we at least get some kind of escrow service where you visit an official office, prove your age to a disinterested public official, and then pick a random proof-of-age token out of a big bucket. The bucket’s randomness is itself generated when it was filled up with tokens at the Department of Tokens, and maintained by a chain of custody.
You could do it on polling day: ballot boxes get sent out to polling stations filled with tokens and get sent back filled with ballot papers, with the whole process watched by election monitors. Now everyone has (a) voted (b) picked up a proof of age/citizenship token. It would improve turnout, though I believe that’s already mandatory in Australia.
We already have digital IDs in Australia, and it seems like a natural fit for this. The digital ID doesn't need to share much information with social media companies, it just needs to confirm your age. And then we don't need new 3rd-parties holding our personal information.
Also yes, voting is mandatory in Australia. You get a small fine if you don't vote.
It's a very good system. $20 is the right number to get you off the couch, but not so much as to cripple you. There are exceptions if you have a valid reason for not voting. The maximum fine is ~$180 so you can't simply ignore the Elections Commission and hope it goes away.
Another proposal to achieve anonymity, similar to yours: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46223051
A paragraph from an email Reddit sent me presumably because I created my account in Australia:
> Users confirmed to be under 16 will have their accounts suspended under the new Australian minimum age law. While we disagree with the Government's assessment of Reddit as being within the scope of the law, we need to take steps to comply. This means anyone in Australia with a Reddit account confirmed to be under 16 will be blocked from accessing their account or creating a new one. Note that as an open platform, Reddit is still available to browse without an account.
“Confirmed to be under 16” sounds like they’re not trying very hard to identify them. But maybe I’m just spared any attempt at checking since my account is 12 years old.
I wonder if allowing browsing without an account is compliant with the letter or the spirit of the law—an account is not required for at least some forms of damage. But I’ve paid no attention to this law since I live in India now.
> I wonder if allowing browsing without an account is compliant with the letter or the spirit of the law
Haven't read the law, but I don't think they considered this, since the most popular social media sites make it very hard or impossible to browse without an account. I guess with adult content bans they do consider this, since people don't tend to make an account there.
And a very similar fun fact: You can't browse facebook marketplace if you're logged into an under 18 account, but can without an account (at least here in Hungary).
Somehow, things are going to work better when you're not logged in...
If you gave them an email address, it's possible they were able to verify you with 3rd party data brokers without your knowledge.
To be honest, I wouldn't mind they'd ban it for adults too, would help me from wasting time on them.
In all seriousness though, I'm curious what counts as social media, can they not play MMORPGs anymore for example? Are niche forums included ? What about chat apps like Whatsapp? Phone texting? Email?
I'm also curious if say TikTok and YouTubed simply deactivated their social features? No comments, DMs, and so on for example? Would they be allowed again?
Had the same thought. Growing up in a small town (couple of hundred inhabitants), internet access early 2000's was a gift for teenage me. I joined web forums and discovered new interests (=web development which lead to my career), chatted with friends on msn, later played runescape and wow and met friends I later traveled countries to meet.
Of course, these things were different than the beasts today. Everything was more personal, smaller. No algorithms.
So not sure what I feel. Social media as we know it today is obviously bad (not just for teenagers). But maybe I'm just nostalgic for how it was.
But what about hn?
Are you describing the difference between a social network and social media?
I don't know, what would be what?
Hn and reddit are kinda the same concept, it's just the scale of them making it different, or?
HN and Reddit are both social media. Both sites are largely populated by lurkers.
I'm not sure there's a good example of a social network site left.
Even sites and services that can be used for social networking are designed to make that difficult. For example, on Instagram you can choose to follow and interact with only people you actually know and keep your profile private. That would be social networking IMHO because it's mostly one-to-one or at least one-to-not very many. But Instagram insists on showing suggested posts. You can turn that off, but after 30 days they turn it back on.
> YouTubed simply deactivated their social features? No comments
Youtube already decides to mark some videos as "for kids" which disables a quite a few features such as comments (I guess that makes sense), the ability to add the video to a playlist (what???), notifications (why???)
I don't know about Australia, but there's a page here detailing some of the sites that got shut down because of the OSA in the UK: https://onlinesafetyact.co.uk/in_memoriam/
> I'm also curious if say TikTok and YouTubed simply deactivated their social features? No comments, DMs, and so on for example? Would they be allowed again?
The YouTube Kids apps and services are not included in the ban for this very reason, only the "adult" YouTube app and service. I imagine Google absolutely could create a YouTube "aussie edition" that could avoid the ban for the main service.
It looks like for now the ban is just limited to 10 apps. There's quite a few which are arguably worse that received an exception.
Fortnite?
Communication over a distance between people who don't know each other or one that doesn't have pre-approved format for it, like customer service... is a disaster in general.
Kids being banned from social media is just one side of the coin. _Everyone_ else being forced to KYC with random websites is the other. I can’t help but wonder, which of the two outcomes is the actual goal here.
It's wet dream of politicians that think the key to reducing crime is invigilation. So, that goal
I don't think there is all that many politicians gullible enough to think that kind of massive breach of privacy is a worthy tradeoff
So far I haven't been KYCd by anything.
Aside from YouTube I don't particularly engage with any of these often, but my Google, Facebook, Discord, Twitter, Bluesky, (current) Reddit, Slack, Telegram accounts all seem to be BAU without new requirements.
If the 80% of us currently holding unambiguously-over-16 accounts are exempt, and it only affects future over-16 users as they're onboarded, then it is a very blunt and very slow form of data harvesting which won't yield useful results until years/decades after all of the relevant decision-makers have moved on, retired and/or died. So this seems unlikely?
Nobody is forcing you to use facebook
You're right, but Social Media was one of the last places one could be critical of the Government whilst also being anonymous or pesudo-anonymous.
I enjoy participating in wildly diverse online communities and I hate censorship.
I have seen the way heavy social media use changes some peoples personalities. it's scary. these platforms don't just home communities: they're engines, with tendencies. including numerous ways in which these platforms are implicated in youth suicide.
I am absolutely convinced that children should be discouraged from these engines just as they should be discouraged from alcohol.
I totally recognise that if that means these platforms demand proof of ID, that changes their privacy profile and some people will choose to stop participating.
perhaps this can offer some stimulus for other ways of online community forming. Thanks everyone here: I've participated in a few online conversations about the topic this week, and this is the only interesting one :)
Alternative to archive.md, archive.ph
Text-only:
https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1S3fVC...
https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1S2nVb...
Morehttps://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1S5G8h...
https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1S5sYp...
Your script broke.
I grew up without television. We had a TV until I was 7, but it was never left on, and I was rarely allowed to watch it.
When I was 9 we had a cheap TV for about 3 months and it broke. Family decided we didn't need one.
At 36 I got a TV for a couple years. My kids watched Blue's Clues, etc.
At 38, I again got a TV for a couple years. Then decided dumb late night shows were not helping the insomnia, so cancelled cable, but started streaming HBO.
Since then, I have enjoyed high quality streaming series on occasion. But no live TV, no TV "news", and strictly avoid anything with ads.
When I see a live TV on, with the strange voices and non-logic of ads, and the bizarre posturing they call "news", I get a little sick. Even "nature" and "history" shows have strange pacing and repetition. The transparent sucking sound of ads needing tamed attention-providers warps everything.
I think being sheltered from regular TV, TV ads, and TV news, has been tremendously positive for my mind and life.
Not being exposed to "social" media sites, which are often not actually social, and often unhealthy when they are, is a great win. Quality can sometimes survive in rare small social-conversation sites, not driven by ads or agenda.
> I think being sheltered from regular TV, TV ads, and TV news, has been tremendously positive for my mind and life. Not being exposed to "social" media sites, which are often not actually social, and often unhealthy when they are, is a great win.
Incredibly, you were able to do that without the government's help! I suppose people just aren't built the same these days, so we need laws instead of letting people decide on their own.
Without commenting specifically on Australia's approach, I think it does make sense to have some laws for children.
But I would prefer that surveillance-manipulation based practices be made illegal first. That would remove a lot of the means, and a lot of profits, from manipulating people via feeds, warped searches, and a host of other ways and uses for digging into, and leveraging, people's idiosyncrasies and vulnerabilities against them.
Dossier's on children, resulting in manipulative feeds for them are bad. But it is a bad practice for everyone. One of those deceptive business practices, that gets claimed to be not deceptive, because the deception is "out in the open".
Fraud doesn't have an "everyone is doing it" defense. Neither should surveillance-manipulation practices.
It isn't just a case of individuals, who need to be "saved from themselves". Our society, as permeated with surveillance and manipulation, has become permeated with "personalized" media driven dysfunction. We all have to put up with the bullshit it creates, and divisiveness it magnifies. Dystopian.
AI slop would be less effective, and less promoted, if there wasn't a surveillance dossier to customize who saw what. People don't like it now. Getting non-"personalized" slop? That would create exactly the intense pushback that is needed.
--
My ad free life, and ad-funded media free life, has left me utterly disgusted with manipulative social media. When people mount a defense of keeping it legal, it makes me very sad for their quite visibly slowly boiling brains. The practices are clearly both highly unethical and toxic.
(I am all for social media as a service/resource. I don't even mind ads (too much), when they are placed to match content, not the consumer. Just not when both are irreversibly compromised by massive tech scaled conflicts of interest.)
To ostracise means literally to be outed from society.
Most people I know want to keep their kids off social media, but do not want them to be ostracised.
Given that law, it might now be possible to keep your kids off the networks.
In my experience, at least for younger teens, it’s a small subset of kids enabled by their parents that push everybody else into the mouth of the kraken.
Example from my life:
Kid A has an Instagram account curated by her mum, who is more than happy to set up all kinds of communities, etc., for the kids in the class to cite: “finally be able to better communicate and stay in touch”.
Sure, you can keep your kid out, but social isolation is not easy for teens. Given that law, you could get Insta-mom banned.
To all the parents defending this: you are responsible for your children and what they do.
Passing laws that affect all of us because you are too lazy and ineffectual to raise your children properly is unacceptable.
The topic is very nuanced. Social media is bad but so are the authoritarian actors wanting more and more control over everything. The government control aspect is a huge concern of mine too but it's already well covered here so I want to go over the reasons it might be a good idea.
Yes this is true parents are responsible for their kids but it's also true that the village a kid lives in actually influences the kid more than their parents. So it's up to the parents to choose a good village. If every village has the same global social media apps then obviously that's more difficult and not a pit of success. Keep in mind most parents also have a shitload of other stuff to do especially with inflation requiring two incomes to operate a household.
Individualist types don't seem to get the whole village thing at all. It's hyper-individualism with no acknowledgement that we DO affect other people with our actions. Pollute as much as you like, fly noisy planes, drive oversized killer-SUVs. Let every company do what it wants because free market competition and better technology, or something. We're actually social animals and our happiness has a lot to do with how we stack up socially. Hence if just one kid has a device the other kids get jealous and want to keep up; The obvious answer is to enforce a culture of no-phones. But that would take a some agreement so a individualists don't like it.
I disagree. It’s easy to say this from your armchair, but when your kid is the one kid not on social media because you’re such an righteous parent, and that kid is getting bullied by all the other kids for not knowing what’s going on in TikTok or Insta, you start seeing this as a problem that requires the coordination of large numbers of people who you may or may not know, many of whom are kids who lack executive function.
If you just disdain children in general, you can go ahead and say that instead.
Maybe you should move to a community that shares your values rather than getting the state to impose those values on everyone.
In fact the majority of the electorate in Australia supports this, so that is exactly where you’d go to be in a community that shares your values. Social media has an addictive and infectious nature, even people who hate it end up using it because of the crippling network effects.
>the majority of the electorate in Australia supports this
because they don't know the consequences and the question that was asked was literally "should kids be banned from social media?". You can bet the opinion will shift when more and more sites demand age verification and sending government IDs to random websites. It will also be widened to more than just the big social media sites, let's not kid ourselves.
I look forward to the Great Australian firewall, maybe they can contain themselves without infecting the rest of the world.
Agreed. Individualists don't understand how people actually don't have much free will and decisions are mostly influenced by culture. Having an anything goes culture is a massive head wind.
> influenced by culture
And by prisoner's dilemma / double bind type phenomenon, such as being forced to choose between being a social outcast, or to be on social media. That double bind would not exist if you nuke the whole thing. The libertarian theory of the world does not have such phenomenon within its descriptive aperture.
This completely negates the nuance and social pressures and sounds like you just want to be edgy. The network affects are huge and others like teachers and clubs are pushing these services as a means of communication instead of using, other, safer services. There is no choice if one wants to be a part of society currently.
> To all the parents defending this: you are responsible for your children and what they do.
Stop delegating action to the individual.
Me and missus are full time employees, I do not have oversight to what my kid is doom-scrolling on his lunch break.
> Passing laws that affect all of us because you are too lazy and ineffectual to raise your children properly is unacceptable.
How does it affect you? Unless you are a corporate mouthpiece this does not affect you at all.
I do not want my kid to watch any degenerate pornography on his formative years just because some lobbyist wants to shove freemarketeering ideologies down our throats.
I'm all for keeping kids away from social media. My main concern is how we verify that they are under 16 [0].
> showing my ID [in person] was a simple, controlled transaction: one person looked at it for three seconds, handed it back, and forgot about it. The information never left that moment. But online, that same verification process transforms into something far more risky. A digital journey through countless servers, databases, and third-party services, each one a potential point of failure.
> What appears to be the same simple request "please verify your identity", becomes fundamentally different when mediated by technology. The question isn't whether these digital systems will be compromised, but when. And unlike that movie theater clerk who can't perfectly recall my birthdate minutes after seeing it, computers have perfect memory. They store, copy, backup, and transmit our most sensitive information through networks we don't control, to companies we've never heard of, under policies we'll never read.
[0]: https://idiallo.com/blog/your-id-online-and-offline
I suspect kids just find their way around things.
And then they're on platforms with zero protections because nobody knows they're a teen... end result is worse.
Exactly, this policy is from a government that taxed tobacco products so much that cigarettes are now cheaper than they have ever been in ~15 years because the black market stepped in and have nearly completely taken over the market.
This is a pretty common cycle.
Government steps in to "fix" a "problem" and then:
Solve nothing.
Create problems with their "solutions."
Implore the populous to reelect them to fix all the problems.
Rince. Repeat.
There is a pattern of government using moral panics to exert greater control. Australia and New Zealand seem to be used as a testbed for projects which are introduced elsewhere.
The UK government wishes to police social media more heavily, and has been using internet porn and illegal immigration (two unrelated issues) to push through digital ID. The exact same mentality - controversy, panic, dubious solution...
In this case, we have a genuine issue and a dubious solution.
The answer: meet in person. Talk to people offline.
The offline-socializing point is good, but it's also a cultural shift that won't magically happen because a law is passed. If anything, the hard part is rebuilding the offline spaces and social norms that used to make that easy.
Kids are in these spaces because there is no place for them to be. People call the police on unaccompanied kids outside. Teens are banned from malls. Where are teens supposed to be where they won't be harassed. When I was a kid we used to just wander around and chat. There used to be a whole event on Friday evenings where high schoolers would decent on this mall across the street from two movie theaters. We went to the skating ring. There were teen clubs. More. Right now, I can't think of a single place a teen could just hang out besides at each other houses which is mostly what I watch them do. It makes sense why they end up in virtual spaces. They can socialize privately that way.
I agree. I had to coax people out after lockdown and it took years.
We do need offline spaces. I've been out for a Christmas lunch today. Much more meaningful than meeting on Zoom or whatever. I don't hate technology but I think we have to use it widely.
What do you think is happening in New Zealand with regards to "moral panic" projects?
Australias eSafety office only occurred because of the Christchurch shooting. The Australian government wanted a sniff of that moral panic, and said it needed the right to remove videos of the shooting from the internet. Thats the office that has been pushing for this law. You can draw a direct line from Christchurch to this event.
The Kiwis tightened their gun laws after the incident, despite having done pretty well with what they had until that year.
In both events, both governments paraded around saying shit like "Leading the world" such as Australia is once again doing here. Its much like Godwins favourite dictator going abroad to spruik his fantastic free holiday / political retraining resort. "World Leading" is the absence of any other quality terminology.
For Australias case, during the 00s and early 10s we actually had a really huge internet freedom movement. Previous attacks on the internet had bee repelled quite gracefully. It took such a moral panic to finally put Australia in its place, and now we are looking at a further consequence of that moral failure.
I'm not sure what you think is happening in New Zealand still. Your one example is a tightening of gun laws following a mass shooting. Something that virtually all Kiwis are in favour of.
The real news is that age verification will be required to use a search engine from the 27th. This has flown completely under the radar because of the social media ban.
Initially, it will only be required if you're logged in. Obviously that won't be effective, so the next logical step would be to require that everyone logs in to use a search engine.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-11/age-verification-sear...
That's your reading of the situation, and far from logical to everyone else.
I support this greatly. But I think instead of debating whether this makes sense or not, or speculating, let's consider that it is already in effect and consider it an experiment. Let's see how Australia is doing in 10 or 15 years, will those kids be resentful or regret the ban when they're 30?
Extremes are bad on either end. unrestricted internet access, even to those who can't defend themselves against harmful content is an extreme, some balance is long due. Since most other western countries chose to risk their kids in the name of liberty, let's wait and see whose trade off works out for the best instead of speculating what will or won't happen.
I wish more countries would experiment like this, and even more countries would learn.
You can't argue for UBI or drug decriminalization because some country experimented and succeeded and then oppose this sort of stuff. In the US, states are supposed to experiment with laws like this, but they don't have enough power to regulate interstate communication or commerce.
These platforms are heavy censored with a direct line to governments. This will push kids to other platforms with less censorship. That's a major benefit.
As we go down this road platforms will need to be banned for everyone. For example VK wasn't on the list and they won't implement age checks. They and many other sites will need to be banned until you are left with a white list of acceptance sites. Add in age verification on those sites for everyone.
Kids will learn how to overcome the ban. VPNs will become the standard.
Kids will learn how to overcome the ban. VPNs will become the standard.
This gives governments an excuse to ban VPNs in the name of 'thinking of the children'. That might be the point though.
Historically consumer access to security/privacy tools has always been something the govt has wanted to restrict or prevent entirely.
> This gives governments an excuse to ban VPNs in the name of 'thinking of the children'. That might be the point though.
...then the rest of the world will see what the people of China and Russia already know: bans on VPNs cause them to explode in popularity and development pace.
There's a reason that the most sophisticated VPNs and tunneling tech are built to evade the GFW.
I recently visited a remote part of Siberia, and I was amazed at the ubiquity of VPNs. Grandmothers who grew up in shamanic traditions knew how to get around apparent traffic shaping (even on youtube!) to listen to their traditional music. It was quite inspiring.
I'm not saying bans are a good idea - I'd much rather the adults in the room read the writing on the wall and bring about peaceful dismantling of legacy states in favor of a censorship-resistant internet.
But it is coming either way.
"in favor of a censorship-resistant internet"
At least that's a good incentive to build censorship-resistant internet.
They already started moving to different platforms. No VPNs needed. At some point they'll stray off the Internet (because gov.au of course barks at every platform except discord, mysteriously).
And, of course, as usual, this law, like all it's others in the rest of the world, will do absolutely nothing in protecting kids. It will instead only create a huge national security hacker paradise because everyone will use these so-called "age verification" services, which aren't exactly known for their security.
Discord and Roblox exempted. This is a joke.
To include discord you have to extend it to messaging services. To include Roblox it should be all online games with chat.
When I was a kid, online games with chat were a no-no. Most of the ones designed for kids specifically avoided having a chat feature aside from preset phrases, like Toon Town.
Then of course by teens, most boys were in the notorious MW2 lobbies.
Ok that's fine. These two platforms are where kids are being groomed.
Absolutely, Roblox should not exist given the problems it caused.
Goes well beyond scamming kids to work for scrip. =3
Despite how little they pay their game devs, offering like 20% I think, Roblox itself continues to make a loss so there case that they are scamming their devlopers isn't the strongest
Roblox is making a loss? How is this possible? I've always thought it was perfectly maximined.
Most their users are don’t pay, their services are all hosted by themselves, development of tooling for games and the platform itself is costly, legal issues, etc.
Must be awkward discussing how "AI" is supposed to solve the Roblox "problems".
GTFO, no kid under 16 should be on that platform unsupervised.
The feds should have section 7 that firm years ago. =3
Roblox is hiring unlike other companies trying to replace everyone with ai.
You didn't understand why "problems" was in quotes.
I refuse to explain that to you, as you are likely still a kid. =3
I am not a kid and have a job =3
Just say what you mean already. It’s not somehow better discussion when you hide your point behind layers of misdirection.
"A chapter 7 bankruptcy terminates the company's operations and takes the company completely out of business."
It is essentially a judges forced death-sentence for a corporation.
An appropriate solution given Roblox manipulative behavior targeting kids, and a pattern of administrative negligence on the platform. Spend 5 minutes searching, and the history of the platform "problems" is trivially exposed.
Kids <16 should not be on there unsupervised, and there are lots of other better-quality games around people can play that offer far less "problems". =3
> This only protects 90% (made up number) of children so it's a joke.
To suggest this protects children at all is the real joke.
Are you saying there is no harm to children, especially girls using social media or are you saying it will not protect enough of them?
Correct, in fact I strongly assert the benefit of being able to communicate with a global audience and participate early in the information economy far outweighs any alleged and poorly-articulated harm from the same.
'participate early in the information economy' is one way of putting it
Exempting what in my experience are the places where children are the most likely to interact with strangers make it a joke.
Discord is voluntarily doing age checks to access NSFW servers now.
A bunch of people in local LGBT community Discord servers that marked themselves as NSFW have been locked out of those servers and now need to prove their age to get back in.
These communities already had active mods that would remove anyone underage that they found, so it doesn't really make sense in this case that Discord is now requiring them to prove their ages.
Meanwhile kids are finding ways around the ban. Kids are asking their older looking friends to pass facial scans for them.
The infovacuuming phase of social networks is complete. Training datasets grabbed, social graphs built, biometry compiled.
Now it's very logical to spin that expensive infrastructure down, removing free communication channels which can dangerously synchronize people against the state, and leaving only channels of control: digital ID, CDBC and a white list of governmental "services", all else outlawed.
People of 2010s uploaded their personal data into the cloud because they thought that was cool, people of 2030s will do because their telescreens demand them so.
Everyone who thinks this will stop at "think about the children" is beyond all repair.
Your sci-fi distopia flash fiction is compelling, but not actually on topic in this discussion.
"Think of the children" is weaponized for censorious purposes, but also the harms of social media are well documented (unlike many of the other moral panics fuelled by this phrase). Communication channels are becoming managed spaces, but by private companies not accountable to the electorate, not by the state.
I'm not sure a blanket under-16s ban on all social media is the right answer, but there are really good reasons why people support this that you need to engage with to have a useful discussion here.
> Your sci-fi distopia
> to have a useful discussion here
Typical dismissive tactics of a devil's advocate;
> by private companies not accountable to the electorate, not by the state
This tale about corporations being separate entities from the state doesn't entertain anymore.
I am so glad a country finally took action. Can't wait to see data on its effects. At this point in time I lost interest in nuanced discussions about the details here. We are in one big experiment and it might end in catastrophy. We need counter experiments and hard data fast.
Besides this being ineffective for the motivated, it might have a subtle antitrust effect.
As kids find alternative platforms, perhaps they will be vendor locked to them instead of the Meta empire.
I think you're 180° backwards on that.
How many alternative platforms are there really going to be that can afford to develope and operate the legally-mandated age-detection ML-models?
Especially after the bureaucrats see that the law isn't working and start looking for scapegoats without massive lawyer teams to make an example of
Why would they do that? There are plenty of platforms that simply won't care, and there's stuff like Mastodon et al.
The law tends to be pretty good at caring about you when you don't care about it.
[dead]
We really need the age verification standards to catch up. I think there was stuff in the works, but something like OAuth that doesn't require the two third parties to know about each other and the browser/client is in the middle.
The age check push isn’t about checking ages it’s about linking IRL identity to account.
Yes and no, it depends. But that the standards/services don't exist is more an issue as it prevents doing it correctly and safely. Most websites that will/already need to verify someones age are not capable of doing so safely.
Yes and yes, look at the rollout, within weeks it's got through in multiple countries across continents. There is nothing organic about this, it's being pushed and bribed into existence.
This is great. Even if it doesn’t actually keep teens off, it sends the message that social media is bad for you. Just like smoking and drinking.
If all the kids start pretending to be grownups, they end up escaping all the protections put in place to protect kids in the first place.
In football we call this an own goal
I'm fairly confident that's not how it works, but am happy to be proven wrong?
Not really, it gives them justification to more thoroughly remove privacy and anonymity in order to make sure the age and identity of the user are more confidently known.
Just what we need, even more government censorship.
I'm Australian and just had to age verify on X/Twitter. They used some app called "selfie" and took a pic and said I was verified. That was it.
This social media ban is not so much about banning kids from social media.
It's more about banning social media apps/companies from accessing kids.
The SM apps are entirely about exploitation of their audiences via algorithms to push advertising and political positions. That needs to be stopped.
This is a start.
It's a bit like the bans on under 18 (Australia) drinking without supervision. We know that the bans aren't "perfect", but they work for the majority of the time for the majority of the kids.
Ban kids, implement identity verification checks, remove ban on kids, keep identity verification checks.
> Ban kids
yep, done
> implement identity verification checks
nope, not done so what's your point?
How are kids banned without an ID check?
>>> Companies have told Canberra they will deploy a mix of age inference - estimating a user's age from their behaviour - and age estimation based on a selfie, alongside checks that could include uploaded identification documents.
An algorithmic bouncer guesses your age and if he isn't happy you have to feed him proof until he is happy.
That sounds like ID is going to be required, at least eventually. Either that or kids are not actually banned.
Check out the article.
Oh, I was reading it and stopped at a full-page ad I thought was the end. Looking again, it goes on to mention enforcement, but it's still vague.
not yet
My belief is that late stage capitalism pushes democracies to fascism and the overton window requires politicians to break-up unpopular changes into a smaller changes. I am prognosticating why politicians would pretend to care about the mental health of children.
"Late stage capitalism" is a term used by socialists to describe the period immediately before N̵o̵s̵t̵r̵a̵d̵.. er Marx's glorious socialist revolution.
Predicting it will lead to fascism instead is... humorous.
Its crazy how the AusGov has just tried to turn this into some kind of nationalistic celebration. Passing laws isolating children isnt to be celebrated by lighting up national monuments.
Do you have kids ? Do you see kids in your day to day life ? I do, every day, and even <10 years old already have permanent neck damage from scrolling as soon as they haves 5 seconds of free time. I see groups of friends walking back from schools, they're side by side, scrolling on their phone, not talking, not even looking in front of them. I walk by 3 schools multiple times every single day and that's all I see as soon as they're outside of the playground (because they're not allowed while inside). Locking up kids inside social media echo chambers is much more isolation than kicking them out of them imho
I do have a son. I plan to tell my kiddo not to engage with those platforms and set boundaries. I dont plan to force every kid in every scenario into the same pattern.
>Locking up kids inside social media echo chambers is much more isolation than kicking them out of them imho
"Locking" Why not instead ban the social graph, or certain engagement techniques. Theres a whole other arm here, where the AusGov has pulled back entirely from promised gambling restrictions. Its easy to see a path where dark patterns in both industries are outlawed instead of banning half.
Not to mention that 4chan and youtube are unaffected, so I doubt those kids with the broken backs or whatever are going to be "free".
i doubt 4chan will be unaffected by this
4chan has, at best, 5-10% of the traffic of tiktok
They already excluded many popular and addictive services that are used for grooming
This will enhance surveillance and state control of content, but not address the problems you’ve mentioned
Isolating children from what? If anything, this will make they spend more time with their friends and family
Absolutely second this, and I am part of the younger generation. Technology is isolating. Social media feeds superficial relationships. The anxiety it creates is so worrying.
>Isolating children from what?
We already have reports of disabled kids experiencing suicidal ideation as they are cut off from their only non familial social experience.
What about the kids who are bullied and isolated at school? What about those who have an abusive family?
What about the kids who are bullied on social media?
One of the good things about the Internet is that you can leave such sites and find people who don't do that.
Most kids don't really have such a choice when it comes to school or their family.
Online abuse works the exact same way. Most kids don’t choose to be abused online either.
Yes. What I'm saying is that people can choose to leave online spaces that are abusive, as opposed to abuse at school or home, which are much harder (usually impossible) for children to escape.
They should simply stop using social media. Why ban everyone else?
Ah yes brilliant. Instead of trying to address these issues at their source let’s just let kids form immaterial connections online and guarantee they never learn how to form any sort of in person communication skills!
I'm sorry what does a gay kid do about parents that think they are fundamentally immoral? What does any kind of abused kid do? Because my parents were abusive, but not in the way that left marks and the internet was the only thing keeping me sane. I lived in a neighborhood with no kids my age and across town from my school, so even the friends I made there lived nowhere near me. The internet was not a place I made immaterial connections. It's where I maintained what I had until the rare occasions I could see them outside of school. It was where I got to interact with people who gave me the motivation to keep going until I could escape. What does a kid like me do without the internet? No one was going to step in because my parents isolated me and where a bit mean (from their POV, not mine). Not when I was clean, had food and clothing, and was a straight A student, be real.
You are framing this as if you had no in person social connections due to your circumstances. By your OWN admission elsewhere in this thread, this is untrue:
> Kids are in these spaces because there is no place for them to be. People call the police on unaccompanied kids outside. Teens are banned from malls. Where are teens supposed to be where they won't be harassed. When I was a kid we used to just wander around and chat. There used to be a whole event on Friday evenings where high schoolers would decent on this mall across the street from two movie theaters. We went to the skating ring. There were teen clubs. More. Right now, I can't think of a single place a teen could just hang out besides at each other houses which is mostly what I watch them do. It makes sense why they end up in virtual spaces. They can socialize privately that way.
What I am saying is that we should work toward bringing those ^ spaces BACK, rather than allowing kids to wallow in digital space. The more we are online, the more difficult that becomes. The more time we spend in digital space, the more we lose control over our physical spaces.
That's the spirit. Gotta get that ad revenue.
Ah yes brilliant. Let's keep trying to solve these issues that we've been trying to solve for centuries. That's clearly going well. Instead, let's put a bandaid on it so we don't have to look at the issue for a little bit.
Alternatively, letting some kids who struggle to form connections IRL learn to form them online might give some the confidence and self-assuredness to form connections IRL when they want to.
Anyway I'm not sure why you think that I'm suggesting we don't try to address bullying and family abuse. Did I say we should only do one or the other?
We very clearly are making progress on these century long issues, unless you somehow think kids now are growing up in more hostile physical environments than they were 100 years ago.
This ban does not prevent kids from using IM platforms like WhatsApp, Messenger, Discord so your argument that this somehow restricts the ability for online communication is false.
What you are arguing against is the restriction of access to apps like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X, Snapchat —- all of which are filled with predatory algorithms that have shown to have negative affect on the mental health of teens, young adults, AND adults.
> What you are arguing against is the restriction of access to apps like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X, Snapchat —- all of which are filled with predatory algorithms that have shown to have negative affect on the mental health of teens, young adults, AND adults.
Actually, what I'm arguing against is the restriction of whatever apps a government chooses to apply their very loose definition to. What happens when the kids congregate on another platform? Presumably they'll just add that to the list too, right? Does a cat and mouse game seem productive? To say nothing of the precedent set being used for political ends.
What I'm arguing for is stuff that may actually solve the underlying issues - like, for example, addressing those predatory algorithms you refer to.
Isolating children? They’re schoolchildren! They see their peers at school every day.
We already have reports about disabled kids experiencing suicidal ideation due to losing their only non family social connections.
Not to mention that Australias youth are quite politically engaged, we have a news network entirely run by teenagers that just had their service gutted.
Isolated from ads sold by the social media companies lol
And the UK is pushing for age checks on VPNs
https://bills.parliament.uk/publications/63901/documents/746...
>regulations which prohibit the provision to UK children of a Relevant VPN Service (the “child VPN prohibition”).
That’s a list of random possible amendments which haven’t been agreed.
That's why I said "pushing for" not "enacted"...
I think a better approach might be to require that any algorithm used to suggest content to users must be made open source so that people whose world views are being shaped by the content you're feeding them can analyse how you're deciding what to show them.
I feel like there's definitely a problem here with social media and its effect on society, but our first approach should be to increase transparency and accountability, rather than to start banning things by force of law.
RIP freedom of speech, freedom of association and freedom of the press.
The real danger isn't the ban itself... it's the precedent that could be built on top of it if governments decide they like controlling digital participation
Texas SB2420 requires age verification to download apps. Now, both the government and corporations have a new lever to identify exactly who you are, where you are, what you're doing, and can selectively cut you off from everything. Government-endorsed technofeudalism with inverted totalitarian features normalizing deviancy to become shameless, traditional totalitarianism.
-> Scenario
Want to use cash for lunch or parking? Sorry, no, you must be banked, and have an app.
Want to use a bank? You must use an app.
How do you get an app? You must have a phone and an ID.
Want to buy a phone? Whoops, conundrum encountered.
(And don't even think of wanting to get an ID.)
-> In summary
This further disenfranchises the extremely poor, and takes power and freedom away from everyone who isn't a billionaire.
If you're in Australia, you never had any of that.
How so?
Since when is slop-producing ad-machine social media the only access to speech, press and association?
Since about 10 years ago, online platforms are a major part of how many people speak, publish, and associate.
> since when is speech I don't like speech?!
The only way to enforce it is basically a very dangerous game and will normalize gov control of the internet down to the individual level.
Just online, which has been a bad idea from day one due to the evertrending centralization of the Internet, the primary catalyst thereof being people's laziness. Offline, it still exists.
I’m not against teens communicating with each other online, but I’m very much against the algorithm-driven dopamine addiction factories that are social media today.
Imagine a whole generation of teens with attention spans longer than 15 seconds…they might actually realize their incredible potential!
If you ever worked with people who fully grew up with modern social media and just entered the workforce you know we're already doomed, there is no recovery from this, that's why governments are starting to act
alarmist nonsense
By all means tell us why
younger generation is earning more in the workforce than past generations, clearly they haven't been too cooked by phones.
even though i'm in the younger generation and have less experience in the world, i can recognize pearl clutching and moral panics when I see them.
> younger generation is earning more in the workforce than past generations
Inflation adjusted wages and purchasing power is flat for, at least, the past 50 years... and even if it wasn't it wouldn't mean anything regarding new workers capabilities/attention span/&c.
https://i0.wp.com/economicsfromthetopdown.com/wp-content/upl...
https://assets.weforum.org/editor/Xkzpnpz_lnI-0WbTH1LJVUdu3J...
The propaganda is so good people who have it worse than their parents and grand parents think they're living in the greatest times ever.
those charts are different from the point that i am making, which can be seen here:
https://i0.wp.com/www.edwardconard.com/wp-content/uploads/20...
https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/has-intergenerat...
the “propaganda is so good” and yet anyone on the internet has seen the charts you’re linking dozens of times. fwiw, your chart makes a lot of assumptions by subsetting to hourly, excluding benefits, and using a different inflation adjustment for income vs. productivity (the last one is 100% a chart crime). every time they make the choice that will make the gap most striking, https://www.piie.com/sites/default/files/realtime/files/2015...
Please explain me anybody, why not to ban any software which is not FOSS? It will lead to the world I want to live in. Banning just social media just for kids makes the Government to do too much for us - D E C I D I N G who is a kid and what is a social media.
It is similar to the tax approach - it is not bad that we are paying taxes, what is bad that the Government implies how to count the taxes.
My wife did a lot of conversations with kids in Australia. They all said they hate social media and regularly get harassed by Asian criminal gangs trying to blackmail them. They support the law cause they were only there cause they felt they had to be. We freed these children . The Australian internet is far more dangerous than the USA
How are they going to verify it's not some kid telling he's 18 with a fake picture? Demand a photo of driver's license? Got one here, right out borrowed from dad's pocket. The article also mentions inferring age from the usage which sounds as vague as it is.
The counter point is that doesn't this basically mean everyone, including adults, now has to identify in order to use social media? Without a national electronic ID where personal data never leaves government's systems (they've already got it) and the social network just receives a yes/no bit when they ask "is this person old enough?" this would mean a huge amounts of identification data would be willingly and voluntarily "leaked" to foreign private services. Scan your passport and send it to China in order to use TikTok?
This mass identification process could either make also large groups of adult people leave social media sites or condition people to upload their ID data to whatever site happens to ask for it.
I am not protecting non-FOSS practices but you can not register on crypto cx by just showing some papers with not showing your fare. That answers the fake picture case.
How does a country effectively enforce this? Below is how they propose doing this. If you don't have any form of verification of your actual age, it's seems like they are just going on what the user says ( self reports). How can a company be found liable if a used lies about their age?
>the days leading to the ban, some teenagers said that they were prompted to verify their ages using a facial analysis feature, but that it gave inaccurate estimates. The law also states that companies cannot ask users to provide government-issued identification as the only way to prove their age because of privacy concerns.
> How can a company be found liable if a used lies about their age?
You make them bleed money when you find they are in violation. They either figure it out or they go under as a company. There isn't a natural law saying companies have a right to exist.
Or they leave the country, which would then be very unpopular for the governing parties involved.
More akin to their data centre electricity costs. They pay it and move on.
Go and read the actual report of what the eSafety commissioner is requiring.
The company can't be found liable if they have put in reasonable age verification technology, particularly if the user lied about their age or found a way to circumvent the restrictions.
They clearly aren't going by just what the user says as the companies have implemented age verification tools that try to do that detection.
How can seatbelts be enforced? This is preposterous and imbecilic- if there isn't a policeman inside every car checking every minute how will we make sure that people are wearing them. Clearly there is no point in trying!
Not wearing seatbelts is preposterous.
There is seatbelt cameras in Australia.
They are everywhere, they can also be mobile and placed almost anywhere. These camera are mounted high so they can view down in through the windscreen.
They automatically issue a $1,251 for not wearing one to the license holder.
Huh, interesting. Australia keeps surprising me.
https://www.carexpert.com.au/car-news/which-australian-state...
That's about $5 in USD if anyone is wondering
So far from my experience this has been kind of low impact for adult users with existing accounts. Social media companies obviously have extremely good demographic data on their existing users as targeted marketing and influence is their core business.
Unfortunately this legislation hasn't addressed any of my real concerns with social media (it's the algorithms and engagement farming) and it is creating new problems.
I was in college when this really cool idea came out: a social network database which only college students could join, regulating access to students@*.edu emails, only [obviously: TheFaceBook]. When distant relatives began sending `friend request`s, just a few years later, I left that platform forever.
Seems like local school districts could reintroduce such a platform (perhaps one already exists) for class discussions to continue outside of the classroom... but without the temptations of the outside world [which these u16 bans rightfully seek to limit]. Hyper-walled gardens, actual community-based social spaces, sans predation.
As always, I imagine with the unlimited timelessness of childhood multiple clever work-arounds will persist, regardless of any law. May the cat-and-mouse be merry.
It's interesting that, in almost every proposed solution, there is a degree of moderation involved. There simply is no way around it.
>there is a degree of moderation involved
Life in moderation, even with tech.
I've used an outbound-only landline, for going on two years; the previous two decades I always carried a work cell phone. It's incredible that even years later, if I happen to hear my former ringtone (used by other people), or hear that familiar `buzzing` sound: I still get anxious feeling like I must respond to these ficticious nobodies...
The portability of the cell phone is IMHO what made it so addictive / disruptive. Back when most computers didn't fit into our pockets society had clearly delineated spaces between online/offline — now everything is connect so nothing is...
I kind of get it, except youtube... which has much more educational, news, and long form content. Also also forcing face/age verification sounds ripe with issues.
It has some educational content, most of it is brain rot like everywhere else though. Open a brand new youtube account and check out what's being pushed by default, you either get room temperature IQ political analysts or "shorts" with softcore porn thumbnails to bait people for a click
Open a new YT account then feed it with [1] for few hours at least then you will unleash the full power of Youtube... unless you missclick even once into some popular blog typically they very clearly aimed at low-IQ people which accidentably might be your kid or somebody else like you know who I mean. But to prevent that slippery slope at least partly, just increase the feeding time of your YT account with the best requests possible which are carefully stacked at [1].
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=youtube.com
Sure, but then again that's not how most people use youtube in real life. You can trick it into temporarily not being a slop provider but it's a constant battle, and not one a 10-15 years old will engage in, which is to be expected, kids are kids and can't fight multi billion dollar companies hiring the top behavioural scientist of our era to create the most addictive ad delivery mechanism possible
FYI the article is from back in December of this year and there's already been articles about teen circumventing the process of verification:
https://www.wionews.com/trending/australian-teens-defy-under...
most content can be viewed without an account
It feels like there is more bot activity then ever before. Reddit is now filled with fresh accounts, suspended accounts and bunch of content that suddenly gets deleted. It doesn't even feel like you are interacting with people anymore.
The "social" part is severely decaying.
New accounts should be limited to read-only for at least a month.
So Australian teens will finally learn how they computers and home wifi works.
That is one positive!
I like this article more: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyp9d3ddqyo
It goes through numbers, potential ways it's gonna be implemented, and also which other platforms are affected.
For example:
> Dating websites are excluded along with gaming platforms, as are AI chatbots, which have recently made headlines for allegedly encouraging children to kill themselves and for having "sensual" conversations with minors.
It wasn't enough the online pedo or weirdos trying to get your kids through chats or games.
It wasn't enough the instagram meat grinder that leads to depression, social anxiety, etc.
Now we even have to worry about chatbots leading kids to suicide.
What a hell of a world are we building - no wonder people don't want to make kids anymore.
Excessive social media is detrimental (to everyone). Age restrictions are not a good solution, it effectively categorises it as an adult activity, and glorifies it further.
Kids are very good at identifying hypocritical behaviour and scare tactics. It'll end up counterproductive like the D.A.R.E. program.
If the kids are forced out, the adults should be too.
Is the mechanism of the ban actually going to work, or is it just going to train more kids how to use fake IDs and VPNs?
Not sure it matters.
It's a relatively uncontroversial ban, with public support in Aus because of mental health concerns, and key social media sites complying.
VPN's come with their own minimum age 18 T&C's. As do the credit and debit that are usually required somewhere along the line to pay for the services.
Historically, if it's awkward to circumvent most people tend to comply; which means in turn that minority that can figure out a way around it are unlikely to find many of their friends present. While for majority there's unlikely to be much of a draw or peer group pressure to circumvent.
I'm sure Aus gov will monitor, media will highlight problems etc, but would be surprised if it was not actually quit effective.
It doesn't have to be that effective. The point was to get the law passed. Now that it's in effect, there will be iterative steps to make it effective. I think it will eventually lead to all social media users in Australia having to authenticate with their Digital ID, which will be made available to private sector integrators in the 2nd half of 2026.
It's not ID based so why would they need fake ID?
Although I think that social media causes issues with underdeveloped brains, If this is about confirming age at the point of login, then this is really about identifying everyone and not protecting children. If this is the case, you know they are going to use this data to target people for speech related things.
Absolute joke, most Australian parents will just ID for the kids, if the kids don't figure out how to get around it themselves, especially the typical ipad-kids and their parents.
The average Australian punter is getting absolutely screwed by our current government and all involved parties.
I have kids and I like this but as we know, prohibition only makes the drink stronger and the thirst deeper.
It's funny because Facebook and these social networks are always testing in Australia and New Zealand because it's a whole English-speaking society but it's a bit isolated and far away.
Here is an overview of related restrictions in other countries [1]. Actually, in many European countries, Google does not grant access to Gemini for people under 16yo [2,3].
[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/articles/clyd1dvrll1o
[2] https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/1350409
[3] https://support.google.com/gemini/answer/16109150
This feels like one of those policies that sounds great at a podium but is going to age horribly
Look. As gen z person who basically grew up with tech and social media and had it since I was ~12, there is no way that any ban that is not direct id verification will work, this will instead make the forbidden fruit more tasty and teens more tech literate since they will look for ways around the ban. It feels like a lot of older people are more detached to the times when they first got access to Internet and social media and assume that its all dopamine hits and brain rot, while in reality its curiosity for a bigger world beyond school and limited things that you can do while being underage, cheap entertainment, knowledge.
I actually feel that teens shouldn't be on social media at all. But I also don't think I should be able to lord that opinion over other people via fiat.
Sugar is pretty bad for teens as well but I don't think banning that will solve health issues anymore than this will help teens.
Personal decisions > a government trying to be mom
Governments always end up doing the most damage when their control is "for the good of their constituents."
This might seem like a good thing while they're parenting for you on things you agree with, however, there will likely come a time when they do something you don't and by then it will be too late.
I agree with you when I believe a choice can be freely made. But peer pressure as a child is extremely intense, and if you're the one weirdo you know whose parents don't allow them on Snapchat, it can cause lots of strife and probably be ineffective anyway.
So I'm assuming weed laws have put an end to the "peer pressure" of teens getting other teens to smoke it?
Life always comes down to personal choices and it's always the hard ones that are the most important. No law will ever change that.
Not saying that laws are the reason, but there isn't much childhood peer pressure to smoke weed. There is peer pressure around iMessage in some countries just cause of Apple, rather than kids finding the obvious workarounds.
If it's bad for teens it's bad for everyone. Banning for only teens makes little sense
The banned websites have negatives, but they also have positives too. I hate to think of the young geeks banned from YouTube’s Kahn Academy, Veritasium, Smarter Everyday, …, and all the DIY tutorials.
Future generation of hackers.
i agree there are a lot of concerns with allowing teens / children to use social media as it is today without any sort of way to help them benefit from these tools instead of being harmed by them (which is sadly far too common).
but my concern is that will lead to a less educated population. there is positive, life changing learning that can happen on social media. kids finding their tribe by connecting with people like them in other parts of the country / world. kids discovering skills / crafts they become passionate about. heck, even learning how to communicate effectively with others. i think social media is a treasure when it is used correctly.
ofc, i agree with the concerns and ofc the right "solution" is one that enables the positives and minimizes (and ideally eliminates) the negatives. and having social media as a closed, proprietary, centralized product that can't be tweaked (e.g, choose your own custom algorithm, or filter out a "type" of content that you don't want to see, etc.) is the core problem here. a decentralized social media would allow even regulators to apply much more fine-grained controls so that they don't have to remove access entirely.
but sadly bec. we don't have a good way to apply fine grained controls to how we use social media, it seems blanket banning entirely for an entire group of people is the best approach. like, i get why it may be necessary (it seems like most / many australians are currently on board), but i really hope this inspires people to build better social platforms that give more control to users.
This is what happens when there's a lack of robust options for parents to deal with the issue themselves. As a technical person I can prevent my kids from accessing these apps on any of their devices, regardless of whether they're at home or not. But if you're a parent who is not you're pretty much limited to the flawed offerings from Apple and Google, who are financially incentivized to make it as hard and as full of holes as possible.
Anything done "for the kids" is always a scam. When you get asked to use KYC to get on hacker news, just remember you fell for it if you supported this.
Father of four here.
I will do everything in my power to keep my kids' connected to their social networks. I have a strongly opposing view: social media is one of the best inventions and there is no way or need to protect people from participating.
With all the negative effects they bring the society has to learn how to live with it instead of pretend fighting.
Send your children to Gaza.
Why?
I could have sworn china did something like this a decade ago, but sure World first LOL
Controlling access to any substance is a long process, and the motives aren’t always clear at the beginning.
I’m not sure why Australian policymakers chose to take this step now, but regardless of the motive, it feels like a meaningful starting point. Social media’s engagement-driven echo chamber model has contributed to a deeply divided world, and governments stepping in can at least make parents’ jobs a little easier.
I've not seen any mention of how this affect families.
A lot of my family growing up lived in different cities. We kept in touch via social media. PSTN was expensive and impractical. Postal mail was obviously less practical.
Does this new ban move kids to using email to keep in touch with friends and family? Are they now completely isolated from the rest of the world?
> Does this new ban move kids to using email to keep in touch with friends and family?
You had social media but no ability to send DMs?
In an attempt to not deliberately misinterpret you, next to zero of my current ability to keep in touch with anyone in my life via the internet, distant or otherwise, depends on social media, so forgive me if this seems like a strange take. Kids need access to YouTube in order to talk to their family?
> Are they now completely isolated from the rest of the world?
It's only in extremely recent history that anyone, especially kids, had access to the rest of the world in any meaningful way, or at the resolution available now. I don't think it's remotely healthy for adults to concern themselves with the hourly regional issues wherever they're occuring in the world; it costs society a great deal more than it earns imo (but it's very profitable for the companies on this list)
> In an attempt to not deliberately misinterpret you, […] Kids need access to YouTube in order to talk to their family?
Your attempt has failed; obviously I’m not taking about YouTube, but about things like WhatsApp, Telegram, WeChat, Instagram, and other social media which families actually use to talk to each other on a dialy basis.
Perhaps you don’t use these, but most of the world population uses some of these (or something similar) to keep in touch with family and friends.
Heck, even when I was a teen (before smartphones) I kept in touch with friends over social media. We’d even organise meeting up through it.
Out of all of those, only Instagram is on the list (or I have heard has complied despite not being on it).
You seem to be confusing messaging software and social media ?
Do (the others than Instagram) have an algorithmic feed, or (effectively) do not work without making an account ?
I guess that there's also Discord (that isn't on the list but has still complied) that is in an awkward in-between ?
(IMHO both Instagram and Discord ought to be banned anyway, for everyone, because they're deep web platforms that are owned by Meta/Tencent, and are therefore a threat to the open web and liberal democracy.)
Seems like you're conflating chat with social media. If we throw out the posts and dopamine abuse I don't think we lose much.
This would be a nonstarter in the US. SCOTUS has ruled "minors are entitled to a significant measure of First Amendment protection." (Erznoznik v. City of Jacksonville, 422 U.S. 205 (1975)) This sort of blanket ban would collide with that.
I'm not sure if you've been following, but the current SCOTUS hasn't seemed to as concerned about upholding precedents as previous courts have.
While I'm not sure about this ban, _something_ is causing normally nice, peaceful Australia to be somewhere I don't feel safe anymore. My relatives in Melbourne have left, after being physically attacked and had their property vandalized by mostly young "activist" types who, no doubt, get all their news from social media.
Honestly, this feels like another case where the headline sounds bold, but the real impact will be minimal. Any age-based restriction ends up in the same place: platforms are forced to collect more data just to “prove” someone’s age. When the target group is teenagers, that’s basically a privacy disaster waiting to happen.
From a technical perspective, this is impossible to enforce cleanly. Anyone with even basic internet literacy can bypass it with a VPN + fresh account + throwaway email. And of course, the teens most determined to get around it will be the ones the policy is supposedly protecting. The bigger issue is the false sense of security. Parents and politicians get to feel like something has been “done,” while the actual online risks don’t disappear — they just move somewhere less visible. If the goal is genuinely improving teen mental health, digital literacy and real support systems work far better than regulations that will inevitably leak.
Please don't do this here.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46208058
What, because they used a single em—dash?
Got it, thanks for pointing it out.
Discord isn’t banned, but Twitch is? Interesting.
Surely Discord harbours more bullying than Twitch (where image sharing isn’t even a feature).
I’m concerned this will drive teens to dodgy apps and services that have lax data security and no oversight.
I wonder how many of the people who are against it have young teens. It's easy to rail against the ban, or paint it as some plot to get everyone's IDs, when you're not personally affected by it. As a parent of young teens, I 100% support it.
When I was a teenager I responded to bans by trying to get around them like warning stickers on music.
Talking about the dangers of D&D or the Satanic Panic seemed idiotic to me and still do.
But when people explained why something was bad I would listen. Did their concerns seem legitimate?
I'm 50 and I've never smoked a cigarette. In the movies it looked cool. But I saw older people with horrible health issues and also the smoke smelled horrible and made their breath stink. Those people were not lying to me about the danger of tobacco.
So are people lying about the dangers of social media? But if you think it is bad for teenagers then how do you convince them that it is? I would rather have commercials with teenagers talking about how they were depressed or developed eating disorders or whatever from looking at social media. Then they stopped and now they are happier with more real life interactions.
I can tell you that I deleted my facebook account in 2016 (didn't use it much) and haven't been on instagram in 5 years. I don't miss it at all. All facebook ever did was annoy and anger me.
HackerNews used to be full of moderately smart people. This is basically Reddit level comments.
Think for a moment instead of just accepting whatever the media is telling you to think.
How many social networks are there?
Are some of those decentralised?
Will kids move to unmoderated underground ones in response to this?
Will the government expand these laws now that it achieved a foothold?
Parenting and teaching your kids to think and understand how the world works is how you really solve the problems. Not building weak fences and encouraging government over-reach. Raising and guiding your kids is YOUR responsibility, not the governments.
All this came about because some absolute slog of a parent had their kid kill themselves and blamed social media. Where the hell was he while their kid struggled?!
Obviously you have no kids or live in a remote cabin isolated from society.
Banning social media in principle is like banning the sales of alcohol and other drugs to underage people. Those bans are good for society irrespective of your parenting ability. It helps that those negative things are less accessible to the vulnerable.
Now, how the social media ban is effected in practice is a different point. And people here are rightfully skeptical of ID verification and such things, since that opens the door for way more surveillance outside social media.
I do have kids and they are well adjusted individuals. I spent time parenting them and showing them how the world works.
Turns out the social media drug loses all it's power if you reveal whats behind the curtain. Just like real drugs, dont be scared to show your kids what the consequences are.
I wasn't aware that banning alchohol and drugs to minors had any positive effect tbh. If anything that in itself made them more desirable and sought after.
Including youtube is where it became stupid, even teachers pushed back against that
I "endured" the same simply by virtue of my upbringing: our parents de facto banned not only social media but even just mobile phones until our mid teens.
Can't say I mourn it, quite the opposite.
So, good move by our Aussie friends.
The ban isn't the worst part.
I'm in favor of banning all social media for under 18s.
I'm heavily against any form of mandatory form of identification for using non-government online-services.
Is it even possible to do the former without doing the later?
One purpose of laws us that they clearly state: this is good and this is bad. Many such barriers are cultural, but sometimes they do not work or are actively attacked, so they may be backed with a law.
Age verification, digital IDs and no more anonimity... coming soon to your country too!
Fake Ids and undergrounds sites coming right after.
why are they not going for the true root cause of the problem?
stop dilution our attention - shorts, infinite scrolls, predatory algorithms - this needs to be controlled really
and yeah of course scams and pedos etc - surely Big Tech can crack down on that also
again why a good behaving majority needs to suffer, because of minority crap + bad incentives of ads driven platforms?
Putting "teens" in the title is misleading. The ban is for ages 15 and below.
Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.
It's half of the "teens" someone experiences before hitting the age of majority. I think it's fine to say "teen" in the title.
TIL English teenager isn't necessarily the translation of Dutch tiener. Wikipedia at least says 10–19 for us and 13–19 for English. In German the word teenager is also used and the page gives both definitions on the same page without realising it's self-contradictory
Idk that anyone takes this so literally (as that you're only a teenager if your cardinal age ends in the literal word teen and so twelve is definitely not a teenager), I've always understood it as "in their tens" but that may be my origin
Where I am, "teens" is 13-19 because they are all suffixed with "teen". Ten, eleven, and twelve are generally called "pre-teens", if anything.
It technically means that, but teen is often synonymous with young adult which is 13-18. The newly an adult period is a year, not two years. 19 year olds are considered to be too old as a default in many teen spaces. https://www.ala.org/yalsa/guidelines/whitepapers/teenspaces
Not very useful without saying where that would be :P
Well, it's useful for explaining my first comment, at least.
But North America, for the curious.
> But North America, for the curious.
Just say canada. I don't understand why canadians always do this.
I'm in Michigan. Is that Canadian now? Will have to update my passport asap.
Then say michigan or america. You may be "in michigan" but are you "from michigan". Why would you say north america unless you have ties to canada.
>You may be "in michigan" but are you "from michigan".
I have literally 0 reason to answer this, it has absolutely nothing to do with the conversation, but to placate whatever weird obsession you have, yes. I was born in Michigan.
>Why would you say north america unless you have ties to canada.
Why do you care? Is North America offensive now or something?
I said "North America" because, for the purposes of this specific conversation, it doesn't matter at all. Except to you, apparently. For some unknown reason.
I try not to be super US-centric on international forums. First time someone's ever started questioning me about it, though.
> Is North America offensive now or something?
North america encompasses the US, Canada AND MEXICO. Not sure what the age range for "teen" is in canada. If you are not canadian, why are you speaking for canadians. Don't think they even use "teen" in mexico as they speak spanish in mexico.
> I try not to be super US-centric on international forums.
HN is an american forum. You can be US-centric if you want. I give you permission.
This has to be one of the most meaningless, pedantic, strangest string of comments I've had the misfortune of participating in.
I cannot possibly muster up enough energy to care about this anywhere near as much as you do.
Good luck, fellow North American.
The ban is also for anyone who refuses to submit their private data (face scan or government ID) to an unrelated 3rd party company which will invariably store that data with insufficient security.
The ban does not specify how companies are supposed to do it.
Eg Snapchat is not requiring ID (which the average Australian 15yo wouldn't have anyway), they're trying to determine age with the user's camera, and this is trivially spoofed using video played back on another device.
i think eventually they'll say 'these methods are not working' and enforce digital id
This bit a community discord server of mine where I am a mod last night since we have a large oceanic contingent, somehow NZ got swept up in it too and we scrambled a bit to change our onboarding and other general policies.
Next election is in 2028, so 15 an 16 y.o. will be able to vote. I expect a strong preference in that group, but IIUC Australia has single seat per district, so I'm not sure if that changes the result.
I feel like just making kids lie about our age was pretty effective back in the day. Those of us who lied knew we were going into adult spaces, hid our irl identities, and learned how to behave.
Then Facebook convinced people social media was supposed to be about your "real" identity, which made us sitting ducks for scammers and propaganda. Now we have governments demanding we provide our identity papers before we are allowed to participate.
I wonder how teens who already use social media will be affected compared with kids who won’t have accounts until age 16.
Awesome. I hope they do the same in Europe. Children should not be addicted to TikTok.
Forget the children, no one should be subjected to the brainrot that is TikTok. Or any form of vertical short videos for that matter.
I'm not sure that "vertical videos" are any worse than horizontal ones, round ones, pentagonal ones, or any other layout.
I am not sure. If you classified usefulness of video by aspect ratio it might be a good correlation with landscape. With 4 by 3 being the best.
True.
Could not have said it better. The harm these apps are doing is so immense. Why form any hobby at all when you can scroll four hours of tik tok a day?
Did they publish a list of what they consider social media sites? If you are 15 and active on GitHub is this now considered against the law?
Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, X, YouTube, Reddit, Twitch and Kick.
GitHub is not included, nor is Discord.
This is a good start to protect kids! Let's hope it helps families and makes the internet a better place for everyone.
Frankly, I would have been pissed if this were the case when I was a teen and I got a lot of healthy & useful value out of social media.
That said, some of the subcommunities I've seen created, particularly among young women, seem obviously unhealthy/toxic and regulation is probably needed there. I'm thinking of things like '#edtwt'.
But I also think we need to avoid ruining things for smart, responsible kids by focusing on the worst.
It is exactly like smoking. They use age verification, instead of banning it.
Because they are deeply involved.
It is not about protecting. It never was.
I don't like censorship.
I also don't like antisocial media.
Still, I dislike censorship more than that antisocial media.
An absurd decision with dangerous second order effects, many of which lead to VPNs and other privacy tools being next, just look at UK hyping and building that up right now. I hope they will vote accordingly when they're of age, not forgetting what liberties were taken away from them in the name of very dubious benefits, easily circumvented, and prone to exposing them to greater danger going through unofficial channels. Trying to really address the issues younger generations are facing is clearly too difficult for the geriatric, decrepit ruling class that just won't let go, and this helps them further every government's ambitions of increasingly regulating the means of communication between people. Actually, it's not that it's difficult, they simply don't care.
It will be interesting to see how this pans out. I think many in tech are afraid that this will lead to a positive outcome.
I'm afraid that this will lead to no change to the issues it purports to fix, and then we'll... do nothing with that information.
Really, I think most people in tech generally believe that getting teens of social media will be a positive thing. The question is how to go about it.
It's understandable, to some extend, that people will protest government interference, but it's also an industry that have repeatedly show itself to be incapable of regulation itself. I don't really see the big surprise, most government are relatively hands of, until you prove that you're incapable of regulating yourself. Most regulation happens after the damage is done.
I do think that 16 is a bit low, I'd like to have seen it be 18, or a complete ban on algorithmically generated feeds (I believe the latter would be the better option).
If they scare teens of Instagram the danger is some of them will go to places like 4Chan.
i assume 4chan would fall in the age restricted social media category
Hacker News is social media, isn't it?
Makes one wonder if/how quickly they will come for closed WhatsApp groups and Telegram channels next.
Everyone supporting this in the comments deserves to live under CCP style internet censorship.
I have seen a swift uptick in "Australians" negatively posting on social media networks about the new restriction.
Notably the central theme presented by these same "Australians" was that there should be no changes, limits or restrictions to the types of information collected by social media companies, or how they handle such personal information, rather that everything should be exactly as it was... how very convenient.
Some were even so incensed about their personal privacy that they wrote how much they disagree with having to share their SSN with online platforms.
As many of you would already know, mentioning a "SSN" is a give away that the "Australians" are not genuine people. These accounts are perpetuating the lie that Australians must provide a government identity to access these services. While an ID can be used, it's not mandatory and is actually one of the less convenient options, in comparison to 3rd party verification or a face photo.
Seems a bit of a disingenuous argument to complain about taking a photo of one's face for verification, but having no qualms about using the social media network to post photos of oneself for public viewing.
I don’t know why they don’t just ban or restrict the hardware. It’ll be easier to enforce.
Social media is cigarettes. There are lots of studies showing the negative impacts to say that limiting their reach is probably good for society and individuals.
Just about all arguments against this are the same arguments that would stop governments limiting booze or tabaco
It will be interesting to see how this pans out.
About as well as the anti-pirate site blocking. Were the world leaders in piracy.
I really hope other nations, including the United States, copy this. Australia proved that it is possible. I think the results will be so overwhelmingly positive that others will take notice. Good job Australia!
Reading "Anxious Generation" is a must for all parents in this day and age.
Isn't it a little early to declare success? I think the bigger worry with the US though is not whether it is technically possible, but whether anyone in power cares to actually help kids versus using this it as an excuse to implement Orwellian surveillance upon citizens.
Alcohol, tobacco and many other products have age restrictions, so do cars and many other products of the modern society. Social media can and should have age restrictions.
This is a nonsense take that gets perpetuated over and over. For some reason.
Purchasing alcohol or buying a car is not the same as verifying your age on an internet property. They aren't even comparable. This is just as dumb as saying "well you have to verify your age to go into a bar". Sure, but does the bartender or salesman who sells you the alcohol completely remember every pixel of your photo or video selfy, permanently? Or do they just remember your face more generally?
The problem with these age verification laws is that they harm everybody, adults and kids. They don't do anything to protect kids and their sole purpose is a way for governments to suppress things they don't like. Any age verification technology (be it age estimation or similar) has a permanent record of the photo ID or video selfies (or whatever you use to prove your age) that you give it. Forever. If these systems didn't have those records, the result would be you having to verify your age every time you visit the website. There is a massive, massive difference between getting alcohol at a bar, or going to a strip club or similar, and providing your photo ID to a bouncer or bartender, who probably won't remember your ID after 5 minutes, versus a computer which permanently remembers it. That is the differentiator.
Surveillance could be part of it, if you let it be. Improved mental health, education, and social outcomes for each generation is also pretty darned important.
> Reading "Anxious Generation" is a must for all parents in this day and age.
Great, another Oprah's book club book that assures parents that there's just one easy trick to saving your children.
I hope it won’t, because the whole thing is just a medium to enable digital ID using fears as a justification, in this time it’s kids.
The whole ‘anxious generation’ isn’t because of social media, it’s because the new generations are hopeless and helpless (incl genz and millennials too), wherever you look in any domain, it’s bleak times waiting ahead for them, boomers fucked them up severely and now want to suppress them with laws and bills and control them because they know for a fact something will snap at this current rate.
While I am definitely in favor of the US causing itself more damage, its actually quite sickening to see people spruiking this legislation.
First of all, Australia has proven nothing, kids are stepping politely over this barrier without issue.
Second we are already hearing from disabled teens losing their only social lifeline.
Congratulations, you have isolated and disenfranchised a bunch of kids.
The changes are not even 12 hours old for most of Australia and people are declaring failure. Far out.
For people in an industry that is _built_ on A/B testing, HN sure expects governments to get everything perfect first go with no edge cases or externalities doesn’t it!
I dont like it when government tests in production. I dont think anyone should be happy with governments testing in production, especially when they have already claimed victory, and are doing a world tour to sell the concept to other countries.
In case you hadn’t noticed there is no test instance and prod is filled with malware and black hats.
The test isnt a few days old, and the Australian government has already been to the EU and UN to sell it as a success.
The Australian government consists of malware and black hats.
push it to prod!
Of course it is possible, why would it not? I'm glad this is happening and I'm sure it'll follow in other countries, probably not the in the US though. Frankly I really hope most people just get off social media's grip and start interacting the way we used to.
I've said this before, but if countries want to mandate compliance, they should be required to provide the mechanism for compliance.
The rollout of this has been pretty rough all things considered, much of it because the mechanism for compliance is flawed. Anthony Albanese's latest instgram posts are full of comments from teens saying things like, "how am i still on instagram if you banned us". The primary reason for this is most providers are leveraging age-estimation techniques, because the law specifically states:
In an effort to prevent identity theft, the bill as originally written(1) was updated(2) to forbid platforms from collecting government IDs as a proof of age. Even if you support the intent of the bill, the design-by-committee approach made the requirements so easy to circumvent that it's effectively security theater.(1) Original bill: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/bi...
(2) Bill that passed after rewrites: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/bi...
So how does someone locked out wrongfully prove their age? Some people just look kinda young
The platforms all seem to have a fallback "support a ticket with your government ID, and we pinky promise to delete the ID after verifying you".
But thats what this law does not allow according to the head of this chain, specifically government ids are not allowed to prove age, even if you delete them unless I read it wrong
Just telling you the options I was presented with, having to go through the process. I'm not sure what the alternative is for false positive identifaction as a minor.
it is theater. they acknowledge as much.
not to exert absolute control, just enough to give the clear message: not for kids.
That wasn't world first, the world first is China
Should have been done 20 years ago, all the millions of miseries that could have been prevented, if politicians hadn't fallen for the Zuckerberg/Sandberg narrative.
Been seeing ads all over NYC for a teen edition of Instagram.
Tech people imagining their own preferential boogeyman harms that might flow from any action intended to reduce the harms of their products. Again.
Many of us grew up without social media and turned out to be fine!
Anyone arguing against this ban is delusional what social media does to undeveloped brains. There are plenty of studies to support this as well.
Social media is harmful to children. We are talking about 10 yo having access to non-stop stream of inappropriate content for their age. You can blame the parents but social media is now fact of life that cannot be so easily escaped.
Like buying alcohol, gambling, driving, voting and other similar things which are restricted under particular age, the discussion should be about at what age is safe for children to participate in the public discourse.
I really hope similar controls are implemented across EU.
Modern social media is worse for our mental health than cigarettes are for our physical health. This should be a no-brainer.
how Corporate/Gov knows who is Teen on these account???? isn't this is just precursor to digital ID ?????
The only appropriate comment here would be invoking Goodwin Law. Everything else is too mild to describe the journey of former democracies to totalitarian regimes.
Let's not go overboard. While I don't agree with this law, it's not much different from other underage laws that are commonplace: alcohol, tobacco, driving... I don't think it's an indicator of totalitarianism, it's just the same-old lawmaking philosophy updating to new developments.
It has to be read in sequence with other changes in Australia.
The government has been working tirelessly for more than a decade to prevent growing dissent from sweeping the major parties from power.
The government has wrapped itself in the dual flags of nationalism and protecting kids to shield themselves from an enormous volume of rational criticism on this topic.
Changing a law, in and of itself, isnt worrying. Its that minor parties these kids could have supported are facing a triple whammy, kids will be less likely to engage with them online, they have a steeper threshold to pass when accessing the senate, and they have had a large funding changes that disadvantage them.
Godwinning is perfectly appropriate imho.
It's not about underage protection. It's about requiring an ID from adults and keeping information about their identity while using social media.
But, I suppose you don't care because you don't have something to hide, don't you :)
My personal favourite analogy is gambling. The constant microdosing of dopamine to get you to hang around and spend just a little more ~money~ attention.
The aussies are huge fans of big brother
I thought Meta was "the Party".
Every concern about "teens" is explicitly mirrored by a concern about low-capacity adults, which is why Australia et al are so concerned about "disinformation" and the need to control speech of all kinds. This effort should be seen in that light.
Full support.
unlike me, these young people might even be able to travel to the United States one day...
So-called social media is proven to be just a huge scam operation and manipulation mechanism for the ultra-rich robber barons at Silicon Valley. Denying it from kids is same as denying tobacco or alcohol companies sell amd advertise to them. Hopefully future generations have spend their childhood reading, studying and socialising with other kids, not living fake lives and being hunted by slimy adult men. Hopefully they take a one look at this shot and go ”nope, not for me” and do something with their lives.
Good for you Australia. I hope EU follows suit soon.
Society is like poorly written software with lots of patches, new features are added (social media) and then stuff randomly breaks. A fix is eventually deployed, sometimes the fix works; sometimes the fix causes more bugs.
And so we move forward, like Gordon Freeman in unforeseen consequences.
Nobody said nothing as social media and the attention economy took over the world.
"Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” — Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park
Just a reminder that the Australian government has chosen to not ban sports betting advertisements including live odds and crosses to betting companies inside sports broadcasts
that kids watch
And parents have asked the gov to ban
But they won't because tax revenue
So don't try and tell me this government is all about the kids
This is a good thing!
"It's just kind of pointless, we're just going to create new ways to get on these platforms, so what's the point," said 14-year-old Claire Ni.
Claire Ni concluded it best. They are just going to find new ways. Imagine a kid stopping using something because of the law or government ban. Those lawmakers are just delusional if they think they can pass a law and the kids will stop using social media.
That’s like saying we should let children smoke because as a fifteen year old I was able to acquire cigarettes.
I might have taken up smoking (to be fair I took it up when homeless from being around older homeless people who smoked) but a large cohort of my generation didn’t.
It can still be worth making a law even if some people find a way around it. Some teens will stop using social media as a result. That's enough.
If it has no effect, why complain?
this is an egregious violation of their civil rights.
the law of unintended consequences looms large.
Australia does not have a bill of rights. Our freedoms are guaranteed by our participation in the electoral process which is very high. This government governs with a large majority and the social media legislation is broadly popular with parents and older people.
The law of unintended consequences will apply. The legislation has been written in such a way that there is some flexibility in the application and there are some safeguards but its not directly addressing some of the biggest social harms. It's primary purpose (despite the conspiracies) seems to be populism and being seen to do do something for the kiddies.
The much bigger social problem is gambling which is out of control here. The second, related problem, is the use of techniques and studies by the gambling industry in games and social media to increase engagement which is what is messing with peoples heads. The government does not dare to touch the gambling industry or stop algorithmic placement of content. This would cause immense damage to company profits and create lobbying pressure.
Like what?
Kids not being able to do particular things until they're of age? That's much of an egregious violation of their civil rights.
I think you could argue teenagers have a right to discuss political issues in the public forum. That's basically the definition of good citizenship, and (for better or worse) social media is the public forum of the day. Kids don't go from zero rights at 17 to full rights at 18; minors' rights are limited, but they do have rights.
I dunno if that'd fly in Australian courts though.
Well kids can discuss political issues across other discussion boards just not those on the social media sites impacted by the ban. They can also continue to do it say, in person in public.
I think the discussion of political issues in a sensible way on platforms like instagram, tiktok, X, Reddit etc for those ages is perhaps a lower priority than the mental health impacts that those platforms in general provide.
What other discussion boards? They've all been subsumed by Reddit.
I was on Reddit a lot as a teenager. I was the kind of argumentative kid who likes to iron out the wrinkles in their beliefs by defending them, and the internet offers and endless stream of people willing to discuss niche subjects. It had a positive impact on me.
What mental health impacts? We haven't really established that social media has any, writ large. Jonathan Haidt's The Anxious Generation has been very influential in teen social media ban discourse (in fact, I'm not sure the Australian ban would have happened without it), but Haidt never manages to establish a link between social media and depression or anxiety [1]. People just assume social media is really bad for teens, but the extent to which this is true, the proportion of the population for which it is true, and the extent to which social media may actually be valuable to some teens (e.g. to gay kids in conservative towns who are looking for community) is just not established.
I have a real problem with policy that seeks to cut teenagers off from communities they're part of without any interest in establishing the value provided by or the harm caused by those communities.
[1]: Haidt notes that teen hospitalizations related to mental illness have risen since the early 2000s, discounts the recession and climate change as possible explanations, and then just assumes that social media is the only other explanation (it isn't; for instance, teens started getting hospitalized way more after Obamacare lowered the cost of hospital stays). Elsewhere, he's cited a self-report survey indicating that social media use had a high mental health impact on teens, but the indicated impact of social media was greater than the impact of binge drinking, which was greater than the impact of eating fruit, which was greater than the impact of having survived sexual assault (https://bsky.app/profile/michaelhobbes.bsky.social/post/3kxs...). So, that survey is not reliable. Basically, Haidt doesn't actually have any evidence of how bad social media is for teens. He relies on his audience already believing this intuitively.
Kids not being informed about the war crimes of their state, and other states.
They can go and watch the news on the TV, they an also go and visit other news websites.
Pretending that ‘news’ is an effective means of informing oneself is how we got into the mess of Western atrocities in the first place.
> Kids not being informed about the war crimes
Interesting to frame this as a bad thing. As a parent, I would take that as a feature, not a bug. To me this is very suspicious why there seem to be so many people here, who I am assuming are mostly adults, advocating so strongly strongly for <16 olds told be on social media, as if it was something they need.
You sound like a Russian government official.
Haha or a person who's been around lots of children of all ages.
An under 16 year old not seeing the social media version of war crimes is a good thing. And that's the upper limit of the age range of this ban.
The “social media version of war crimes” is just .. war crimes.
15 - 16 year olds will grow up to inherit the war crimes of their state. The liabilities of the state are the responsibility of every single citizen.
And, let us not forget, that a government is always and only ever held accountable to its citizens if those citizens are well informed.
“Protecting children” is one thing. But a state that feels the need to defend itself from children - by mass murdering them at scale - is another thing entirely. Let us also not forget that the Australian government is a wholesale violator of human rights, and has committed genocide and participated in heinous war crimes with impunity, pretty much since its inception. This is a nation which was still practicing forced sterilization of cultures its ruling classes deemed inferior, well into the 1980’s. This is a nation that literally got away with the modern worlds’ first genocide.
That state of affairs is never going to change if there are a generation of bootlickers, raised by the state, to never question the state.
There will be a generation of Australians, in 3 or 4 years time, who will either strongly resist the totalitarian-authoritarian actions of their state - or they’ll participate in them.
any kid who cant figure out how to slide right by a government hack is a looser, and while we should feel a little bad for both of them, presumambly someone will take pity and fix there phones up , and let them know that there is sex and everything on the net
I don't necessarily think this as it is will "work" but I'm all for someone at least trying to do something. Yes, there are a bunch of externalities and potential second order effects that don't sit well with me but, at this stage, I'd rather some attempt at trying to regulate than throwing up hands and saying its all too hard.
Also, dont buy the this is the slippery slope to more authoritarianism etc. as an argument against it because if they're going to go down that path they would anyway whether they did this or not frankly
Anyway, it might not work 100% of the time, hell maybe even <10% but any additional friction to knock this kind of social media from being so ubiquitous is a small victory in my eyes
If you just want to try something that doesn't work, why not legislate touching grass every morning without all the downsides of a dumb blanket ban?
Yes, excellent idea. Let’s do that too
No, not too, but instead. What's your argument for doing dumb harmful stuff instead of dumb harmless stuff?
"I don't necessarily think this as it is will work" != "harmful" or "dumb"
Like do warnings on cigarettes work? I definitely saw a guy move cigs to older pack he had from china because he didn't like ugly warning picture on the new pack. Do mandatory id checks work? If I saw some kids get their hands on smokes does it mean "it doesn't work" and therefore there should be no limits on big tobacco?
is a start
Grass allergies tho?
I like to win another poster said about addiction to cigarettes other things. The world drugs was an absolute failure. I think that is how this is going to go, lots of regulation and expenditure for something that's going to ultimately fail. Can't really work unless it's a little authoritarian, such as permitting Websites to only allow youth who have a permit. But I am in agreement, we need to do more, and we can't really depend on the parents anymore. So I think in a way, we have to make it costly for children to do things they're not supposed to be doing, but without disadvantaging certain groups.
Regulating dark patterns and recommendation algorithms would benefit everyone. Banning social media until age 16 and then suddenly allowing teenagers into the toxic social media world feels half-baked and somewhat misses the point to me.
All animals are equal but some are more equal than others.
I support it.
Australia compliance etc etc...
....
But then also global measures?
> Teen account holders under 18 everywhere will get a version of Reddit with more protective safety features built in, including stricter chat settings, no ads personalization or sensitive ads, and no access to NSFW or mature content.
Starting Jan 1, 2026, Texas SB2420 is also requiring ID verification for all app stores. It's not about "think of the children", it's lazy parents who chose unAmerican totalitarianism and billionaires weaponizing government to eliminate privacy and make data brokers rich.
https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=btkirlj8
This is a brilliant idea!
I'll take on the low status role of not knowing if this is a good idea.
I've seen the data showing teen sanity nose diving concurrently with social media penetration. I'm also a borderline kook libertarian.
So I appreciate the arguments in both directions, and I think the only way to find out if it works is to try it out. Preferably on a remote isolated island without nuclear weapons, in case things go badly :)
I sense a great disturbance in the force - millions of teens muttering "for fuck's sake" and tossing their phones onto the sofa.
The force is the sunlight that will shine upon their skin when they go outside!
Well it's Australia, this is just one more drop in an ocean of anti-youth policy...
Is this dystopian enough yet?
Dystopian is hijacking your mind using recommendation algorithms.
Wake me up, when September ends.
This has nothing to do with protecting kids...This is the classic "OH WONT SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!" meme that governments fall back on to terrorize and coerce the herd. There's an obvious push by neo-liberals to implement a digital application (ID) that they can use to "authorize". What the UK and Australia and the US homeland security really want is the ability to see a troublemaker and to toggle a switch on their digital certificate\token to dissociate them from the internet. No doubt they've got legions of Keycloak systems stood up and ready.
Now, all we have to do is mandate that you pass a psychiatric test in order to use social media or LLMs. In this way, we can protect the mentally disabled. People are killing themselves after going on sites like Reddit. It's too dangerous to the mentally disabled.
now do the rest of the world
Yay for the Aussie government. Hope the sociopath tech bros take notice and clean up their toxic products. And the little tech bros protesting here.
The Aussies passed strict gun control laws in 1996 .. suicides and homicides decreased significantly. Another field where we Leaders of the Free world (or not) can learn from the "World down under"!
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Saw a screenshot last night of someone who can't get into JIRA (or some other Atlassian product) until they either submit two forms of government ID or record a face scan. Seems like a great and effective initiative /s
Text of the screen:
"Your Atlassian account is not age verified.
Laws in your country require us to verify your age before accessing some products, including Jira and Confluence. This process takes 5-10 minutes. This can be done using two pieces of government ID or by performing a face scan."
No Atlassian products are included in the ban. I think you have seen a joke.
Yeah turns out that is the case, it was a joke image but the person didn't say it was a joke and posted it as if it was real :\
Social media ...
Welcome to the internet!
You can view your own tickets but the scrum board and comment sections dont work.
Sounds like a great excuse to not have to partake in office BS.
I think if we are going to ban people under 16 from social media, we should also ban people over 70 from social media.
At least as much mental and societal damage is done by elderly falling for bigoted, scammy, manipulative nonsense online than by teenagers having their self-esteem lowered.
As recent holiday gatherings have shown us, the young handle social media far better then the elderly.
/s
HN: social media is as bad as smoking
AUS: we agree, and like smoking, won't be letting our kids do it
NH: but freeze peach!
HN is not one person.
Nice! Soon enough they'll be forbidden to be outside during the day too, to avoid taking any risk crossing these "adults" thing probably.
Because so many children are going outside instead of wasting their life on TikTok Twitch etc.
The amount of human hours spent watching others play video games / gamble / creating parasocial relationships: https://twitchtracker.com/statistics/watch-time
Curfew laws are quite common aren't they?
And cigarettes! What next booze!?
Libertarianism really does hit a wall when it comes to kids, in so many ways, doesn't it?
Not really, we just say the parents are more attuned to their child then the national government. I love the dystopian argument that without age laws parents would be out buying cigarettes and booze.