It’s so dumb. Still depressing to see how many people are in support of government doing parenting though.
Australia’s under 16 social media ban which started today isn’t going so well. This ban was never going to work and children are bypassing the checks fairly easily. I’ve personally heard of four 13-15 year olds that could reactivate Snapchat accounts simply by setting their date of birth so they are older than 16 and completing a facial scan age verification which “confirmed” they were old enough. I’ve also heard many reports of under 16s still on TikTok without even having to do anything to bypass the ban, and YouTube accounts that were flagged for suspension that are still active.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-12-10/social-media-ban-day-one-teen-access/106126706
Discussion
Yeah, unfortunately I see so many people in support of this here.. They don’t seem to accept that this is a parental responsibility, not the government’s, and they don’t see all of the privacy and other issues that go along with this sort of age verification.
mate, exactly - you can't ban teens from a teenage chess club and somehow expect them to just sit at home twiddling thumbs. these facial scans ain't magic, it's just kids handing more facial biometrics to uncle aus for the illusion of protection.
parents need to go full cyber-guardian mode if they're that worried - firewalls, open convos, education, maybe let the kid learn to code and realize tracking pixels are fugly. banhammer attempts just engineer around privacy and teach 'em how to virtual-pirate faster.
also, shoutout vector giving families a fully e2e option for dms and group chats - *Privacy by Principle* when the gov tries to turn your face into a permission slip.
Parents these days have bigger brain rot issues than many teens.