Australia has just passed a law that will ban kids from social media online. How exactly? Well, through the amazing power of… shoosh.
They also banned adults from big social media who don’t want to comply with what ever data harvesting / govt spying mandate that will be implemented.
👆This
From the country that brought you the ASSact and “The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia” comes another fine example of tech law innovation /s.
How are we going to implement it ? We have the concept of a plan… But our approval from boomers just went up 2 points, so who cares?
I love how the boomers are super fond and happy about this. Wonder if that will last when it’s implemented and they need to upload their ID to get on the Facebook, before it’s inevitably leaked and they end up thousands in debt
Also, given that they’re targetting kids who are probably fairly happy with their social medias, I reckon with a couple of carefully crafted liberal ads (if they figure out how to stop being dinosaurs long enough to do it, that is), all the people who’ll be able to vote in the election after next could have quite negative implications for labour. They’ve definitely made sure they won’t be branded as “cool” any time soon
Theres no line for the Liberals to win a young constituency of voters on this. They voted in line with Labor and waved it through Parliament.
Part of me knows this is a populist strategy, but there is the chance that the Parliament has been privy to information the public isn’t.
Three things make me wonder if theres some urgent-ish security concern raised in regards radicalisation of young people driving this,
- Both Partys generally line up on National Security matters.
- They cut debate, and oversight. Maybe to save time, maybe because they are allowed to specify the real reason.
- The Big Social media companies haven’t wet the bed and begun a campaign against it.
If this is related to security, then theres probably other clues. It’d be interesting to see if theres a difference in different country’s Social Medias reactions, say tiktok’s reaction as opposed youtube’s? There could be a clue there. We’re not far off the Aus election, but we have also just witnessed a fairly hot election in the USA, maybe we should be looking back at that, instead of forward.
Or i’m wrong and its just a populist election move that the Liberals weren’t going to let Labor capture the narrative on.
Social media pushes people towards fringe beliefs and breeds anti-establishment sentiment. It is definitely in the best interests of the established, centrist (relatively speaking) major parties to attempt to curb any radicalisation occurring in the populace. And I don’t mean that in a cynical sense - I am sure politicians in Canberra have been thinking a lot about where society is headed at the moment.
It’s ridiculous really… my kids see things online and ask me anything regarding what it means, I use it as a teaching moment and we talk about it. Why and how is someone like Andrew Tate popular with boys of a certain age, for example. How does Instagram affect how girls view their bodies and affect their self esteem? How did something like tiktok change the shape of social media in general and what does it mean? I enjoy these conversations with my kids as they arise. Acknowledgement of something as harmful, without any debate about how, is, in itself, harmful. And insulting to young people. And also ultimately useless because kids know their way around VPNs etc. It’s only ultimately going to inconvenience me and compromise my own desire for anonymity and privacy. What 3rd party application will be entrusted with my age checking and how? Ugh.
It won’t be a 3rd Party application. It won’t be the authentication provided by the device manufacturer either.
This is what myID and myGov is designed for, and is perfectly capable of. Knowing how the Shit Party and Shit Lite Party work, it will probably originally be some half-baked, easily circumvented 3rd party web service, created by a mate of a mate in exchange for “Political Contributions”.
They have legally banned them but they have not practically blocked them. They will still have the same amount of access they had previously, until Internet adapts to the new laws, and considering how small Australia is on the world stage. Compared with the EU with GDPR and the US with the DMCA, no-one is going to give a shit about the new laws.
What does mean that any local Internet providers will be held accountable, which means that the government has successfully destroyed any remaining chance for Australia to have any local technology industry.
They haven’t been banned yet.
The law doesn’t come into effect until the end of next year after the govt determines how the ban will be enforced.
I was about to suggest that this should only apply to people hosting web services with a social aspects like comment threads or multiplayer games, but I wonder if the definition might be loose enough to be applied to an ISP, or even a parent who is providing access to an ISP.
@Lodespawn @Salvo The definition is currently loose enough to apply to iMessage. That’ll be a fun discussion with Apple’s lawyers.
I’ll likely be setting my kids and their mates up some sort of server overseas, maybe a Mastodon instance. I want them to learn to be social online, with some education and moderation.Yeah education is really where this effort should have gone, classic nanny state Australia. Sadly the law is coming from a generation who’s formative years was moulded by social interactions that were limited to post, rotary telephones, newspapers and school yard whispers. All of those things existed when they were born and were replaced by social media post midlife crisis. They have no concept of how to deal with something like social media. All they see is their friends getting scammed online and their newspapers talking about online child pornography. You’d think they’d realise from cigarettes, alcohol, drugs and old timey porn magazines that outright banning it does almost nothing to stop teenagers accessing it.
“Hey here’s an evolving disruptive technology that is becoming more integrated with our society than the newspaper or telephone ever could have dreamt. Quick let’s ban our kids from it until they are effectively adults so they only have as much understanding of it as me and maybe end up doing something dangerous with it because they have to treat it like a taboo”
IANAL, do you think it could be stretched to include SMS, MMS or RCS ? That would make Telstra, Optus and Vodafone liable too.
@Salvo Worth a read of their current def https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislation/bd/bd2425/25bd39
But yeah, those would seem to come under "the sole purpose, or a significant purpose, of the service is to enable online social interaction between 2 or more end-users[2]the service allows end-users to link to, or interact with, some or all of the other end-users
the service allows end-users to post material on the service
such other conditions (if any) as are set out in the legislative rules."
There’s also the possibility that faced with such steep fines and limited ability to enforce it these platforms could just block access for all Australian users.
Pornhub blocked access to users in multiple US states rather than deal with the whole age verification that came in for that.
Guessing vpns are about to get popular regardless
Arguably they only banned kids from Australia (or 5eyes) hosted social media
This is the kicker they don’t seem to understand. Kids just going to sign up to vKontakte or Weibo or Pedro’s stamps collecting forum in Spain. Or any overseas Mastodon etc
The best way to promote VPNs and the dark web to your population!
