Australian government attacks their own children. The worlds worst nanny state is at it again. How about letting parents decide these things?
https://www.reuters.com/technology/australia-passes-social-media-ban-children-under-16-2024-11-28/
Discussion
> Child rights groups opposed the law, parent groups supported it
What is this bizarre coalition of extraordinary lazy parents who want the government to do their job? Maybe mandate social media companies to change diapers too?
Don"t give them more great ideas š
You should read āAnxious Generationā before you pass āfreedomā judgements on this. This is definitely a step in the right direction.
May be a government overstep, but itās a start to the conversation. Itās a battle I see parents have all the time, wanting to do the right thing, but now they have a backing to it?
I'm not going to read anything. This harms me and I could care less about children.
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Itās never about the kids. This is a step towards total KYC on the web. This way everyone knows they canāt openly criticize their government or woke ideology or they may just disappear.
No sane person should support this.
Or even unwoke policy, "protect the children" is just as popular an excuse of far right governments.
Yep, a great excuse.
Totally correct.
If I lacked empathy, I would even enjoy the prospect of a sudden change in political power in places like Australia, from the current "consensus" to a far right faction, just for the sake of letting them feel the consequences of the system they're building, in the hands of the people they don't like.
To a certain extent that's what's happening in the US with the current regime, which is the left-sided mirror image of what the Evangelical nuts tried to institute in the period between Reagan and Dubya.
If you read the article, it says "A last-minute change to the bill specified that platforms must offer an alternative to making users upload identification documents." Sounds like there will just be sonething like an age gate like one rated M games on steam. Its still worth opposing for privacy reasons. I'm with you but its not a doomsday scenario yet.
The alternatives I saw in the Dutch news article were face or fingerprint recognition which is even worse. In general they're leaving it to Facebook to figure out how to comply, and they will be more than happy to absorb as much user data as possible - now that have a legal basis as an excuse.
It's a very similar dynamic to #chatcontrol: regulators using fancy language to pretend it's not a massive privacy invasion, but maybe there's some fancy alternative. But they leave the implementation to the private sector, only fine companies if they don't comply and look the other way if privacy doesn't work out.
I think this is not about the ban, but about them wanting to add kyc to all social media.
I'm fine with assuming for now that there's nothing more behind it than just regular mass hysteria about child safety from [satanic cults, metal music, social media, insert trend].
The danger is the same.
Maybe this helps to get some background and scientific data on the discussion:
https://jonathanhaidt.com/anxious-generation/
TL;DR: The data shows that the constant availability of social media on smart devices has significantly decreased mental health and does significantly hinder the social and emotional development of children.
I know social media is bad for adults, and worse for children. That does not justify a ban. Parents can choose to not give devices to their kids, or lock them out of specific apps. Yes, the kids can circumvent that, just like they can circumvent this law with a VPN. So it's useless.
But it's worse than useless, it's harmful to adults and to the rest of the planet, because the only way to enforce this is KYC. And the cat and mouse game that follows will make that KYC ever stricter. We've seen this movie before.
Maybe a ban on a national level is a bit drastic, and I certainly do see the points you're raising about enforceability. However, I hope this starts an even wider discussion so the general message settles in and teachers, parents and other caretakers get the help they need to fight this epidemic.
Unfortunately I think the net effect of this overreach is that any such discussion will be overwhelmed by noise.
The Netherlands banned phones in classroom. Opsec concerns aside, that seems more reasonable, doesn't bother adults or anyone outside the country.
A school-based ban does indeed seem like the best option, even though it doesn't fully address the problem.
Putting this on parents alone might not be the right approach, individual parents can't fight a billion dollar industry that specifically designs their applications with armies of specialists to get children addicted to devices and applications. (Which of course doesn't relieve the parents of their responsibilities either.)
It's probably a way to push the digital ID rollout: https://my.gov.au/en/about/help/digital-id
How do they even identify "social media"? I don't think there is an exact definition anywhere. Let's skip the obvious ones. What about YouTube? WhatsApp? Discord?
The definition is overly broad and they have clarified that yes it includes YouTube. They seem to be completely blind to the fallout on this.
the government has only the best intentions isnāt it š¤ probably they think parents canāt take care of their own kids so the big eye will do it all for them instead š¤®