As usual, the problem with this is that it assumes a way to perfectly identify somebody on the internet, which in turns mean a way to perfectly identify, in real time, somebody carrying permanently a tracking device with GPS, microphone and camera.
It's crazy that all the things we considered the worst of dystopia in the 80's, thinking nobody would be stupid enough to do and that those society in SF books were only a distant fiction, are things we are actively seeking now.
Things like "Find my" and "air tags" are already beloved my millions, people use it to track loved ones and they swear by it. Even very intelligent, educated people.
There is such a cognitive dissonance between people swearing the last election meant a likely dictatorship and the same people setting up a tech rope around their necks in case a dictatorship does happen.
My now-dead Jewish grandfather met my grandmother during the French occupation because she was making fake papers. He would be horrified if he knew what we are doing right now with our data.
My German ex was born in East Germany, 11 years before the fall of the Berlin Wall. She thinks people are mad to believe that tracking is not going to be abused.
Good, but not enough if you ask me. Mainstream social media make money out of angering people and the addiction it creates, and it affects everyone, not just kids: had a few grown ups among friends and other people, even over 60 and older, completely ruined by that crap. I don't see any reason why corporations that don't obey any moral obligation should be motivated to change their business model anytime soon, unless forced from above.
This is awesome. I have been telling that social media is like smoking. When cigarettes came, even doctors were advertising the benefits of cigarettes. Now we know the harmful effects. Same is the case with social media. We just dont know they harmful effects completely yet.
Ban this. I am addicted and can't stop. Or put a warning on social media apps like they do on cigarette packets. Using this app maybe harmful for your mental health.
I would remind everyone that the ban of porn below 18 is not enforced, but it is enough to ensure it is not consumed openly or at school. That is how this will play out too.
Not sure what kind of maniac would "consume" porn openly at school. In contrast, I doubt most kids will have any such misgivings about social media, especially if not enforced.
I wonder how can you implement such a law without forcing people to identify online ? Will they enforce a digital ID that you need to use to access the web or social media ?
I don't think lawmakers should describe HOW things are done necessarily. Here it's enough to say that "unless you can be 100% sure your user is above age X, then you can't provide them service Y or feature Z".
It might not even be the desired outcome to have identification, the better outcome could be to have feature Z stripped for all users (for example video feeds based on past watching behavior).
No comment on the implementation, but I wonder if there's some value in just allowing parents to be able to point to this and say "No, little Fred, you're not allowed to have an Instagram account until you're 16. It's the actual rule."
Yep, the "everyone else has BLAH" argument is a strong one. If we collectively take action through government to set a standard it is MUCH easier to shut down those self-fulfilling claims.
What? Why would parents need permission from their government to forbid their kid from having an Instagram account? They're parents, so they can engage in parenting.
I have three kids. They have access to devices they use primarily for reading and language/music lessons. They don't use social media and would likely pay a decent level of attention if (in addition to us having explained concerns about social media for children) we indicated that there was government advice/ruling around this.
The government currently tendering for providers of different systems. See here [1] and here [2]:
Tender documents released on Monday show the technical trial is slated to begin “on or around 28 October”, with the provider also expected to assess the “effectiveness, maturity, and readiness” of technologies in Australia.
Biometric age estimation, email verification processes, account confirmation processes, device or operating-level interventions are among the technologies that will be assessed for social media (13-16 years age band).
In the context of age-restricted online content (18 years or over), the Communication department has asked that double-blind tokenised attribution exchange models, as per the age verification roadmap, and hard identifiers such as credit cards be considered.
They note that existing age verification setups largely either rely on providing ID, or on a combination of manual and automated behavior profiling (face recognition, text classification, reports from other users), both of which have obvious privacy and/or accuracy issues. The "double-blind tokens" point to a summary by LINC explaining how they _could_ be implemented with zero-knowledge proofs, but I could not find an article or a practical implementation (could just be a mistake on my part, admittedly)
At _best_ you end up with a solution in the vein of Privacy Pass - https://petsymposium.org/popets/2018/popets-2018-0026.pdf - but that requires a browser extension, a functioning digital ID solution you can build on top of, and buy-in from the websites. Personally, I also suspect the strongest sign a company is going to screw up the cryptographic side of it is if they agree to implement it...
It's a bit wild that instead of parents just being responsible and teaching their children properly, we'll resort to neutering privacy and freedom on the Internet.
Request the social media platform to implement the restriction.
The large social media platform have billions $ cash , so if that "really want to implement it" it should not be a problem.
However, I expect social media companies to "drag out every reason , why they can ot implement it..." - since it does not benefit the social media company. ... and would reduce its user base ...
Making it illegal could make it taboo, kids are less likely to talk about it in fear of "getting caught" and less talking means less usage.
This is not like porn which is a solitary activity: on social media you have to be social and let everyone know… at least for traditional actually-social media, not content-consuming apps like TikTok.
It's similar to alcohol usage: you can't stop it completely, but also you don't have 50% of kids bringing it to school.
A drop down list of birth dates/years "works" for most age restricted sites - I guess the logic is that if a user is lying about their age, it's not the sites problem.
Article states that sites must demonstrate they are taking reasonable measures to enforce this though - a lot will come down as to how courts interpret that. If they go to the extremes of the KYC laws in australia I imagine a significant fraction of adults will not want to verify their age.
> I guess the logic is that if a user is lying about their age, it's not the sites problem.
If the law is to have any teeth at all, it should be the problem of the service provider.
Say for example that a banned feature for minors is having media feeds based on past watching behavior. Lacking a reliable age verification it's simple for social media companies to remove the feature entirely for all users, if it's unreasonable or impossible for them to implement age verification.
I’m not sure how unusual it is internationally but KYC laws in Australia will generally require 100 points of identification, usually satisfied by showing your passport and drivers license. Other options include recent utility bills, your birth certificate, medicare card etc.
The system wasn’t really designed for the internet era and I think a lot of people would not be happy about handing all the personal info over to TikTok or Facebook
That's exactly what they're aspiring to here, following on from a well-established pedigree of Australian lawmakers and their dysfunctional relationship with the Internet.
Well, funny you should mention that - the AU government ID system (used to access govt services like medicare and tax), has very recently been rebranded from MyGovID to MyID. Most states have already got digital drivers' licences.
You don't necessarily need to actually attempt to globally enforce it. It's like speeding, right? Everybody knows the law, and a lot of people choose to break it. We can't check everybody's speed all the time, so instead we selectively enforce.
The real change though comes from parent's perceptions. Right now there's age limits of 14-years-old on most social media platforms, however most parents just see this as a ToS thing, and nobody cares about actually violating it. Once it becomes law, the parents are suddenly responsible (and liable) for ensuring their children are not breaking the law by accessing social media. It's not going to stop everybody, but it'll certainly move the needle on a lot of people who are currently apathetic to the ToS of social media platforms.
The government is being deliberately non-prescriptive about that, as they are about what qualifies as 'social media' (statement of fact - no comment on the approach itself). Ideally the legislation is accompanied by a government digital service that allows 3rd parties to verify age _without_ divulging full identity, but I don't see that side of things being discussed anywhere down here :(
Not sure that is the best example as many states have exceptions to allow parents to legally give their children alcohol so that scenario you devised could be completely legal.
Hell of a time to run a VPN or a blackmail service... Porn site profiles with activity history + real traceable identities will make the Ashley Madison leak look quaint.
They're probably referring to the scope. Very few people were directly impacted by Ashley Madison (though there was at least one reported suicide due to the leaks), but lots of people watch porn and most of those people would not be too keen on their browsing history being leaked even if it's relatively tame, and especially if it's not.
The funny thing these days is that all porn is tailored to appear as far from "tame" as imaginable.
The average PornHub user's history will be full of weird incest shit at the very least, not because of any specific interest in the genre but because so much generic heterosexual porn is labeled as such. Looks really bad for you if it makes the newspaper.
So even "tame" leakage is 100x more embarrassing than it ought to be, and thus snooping on bf/husband's devices to humiliate them over their porn usage is normalized on relationship subreddits. Same goes for them plugging your email address into the password reset form to try to verify whether you have an account on any given site.
How long are VPN services for consumers like that going to be viable? All the 5 eyes countries are trending in the same direction and they US isn't shy to press other countries to follow their regulations with the threat of being sanctioned.
It's crazy that human beings with the new fandangled ability to communicate in ever easier ways have created this problem. This is your enemy. Social media, government rules are not the enemy. Nor the saviour you think it might be.
Last I checked if you're over 60 then you're an Adult and can do adult things. You have long since stopped growing into your body by then. Children are not finished yet, and continue to have their brains mature and grow into the early 20s
So as a compromise only allow people between 30 and 60 to vote?
(Which would be hilarious, as it means, allmost no one voted in office would be allowed to vote themself anymore, unless of course that would change, too)
On the flip side, it seems evident that younger people tend to vote for the betterment of all, while older people tend to shift toward voting for «themselves».
Not true; young, childless people don't think about the next generation, because why would they? It's game-theory optimal for them to maximize laws which benefit them personally, as they don't have to worry about their children growing up with the consequences.
Frankly, society would be a lot better if the childless couldn't vote; leave voting to people who have a stake in society's future!
(And yes, adoption counts, doesn't need to be biological -- not excluding anyone here.)
>Frankly, society would be a lot better if the childless couldn't vote; leave voting to people who have a stake in society's future!
Whoa now. Just because I am childless doesn’t mean I don’t care about future generations. I still have friends and family that do have children and I vote with that in mind.
> There's nothing keeping you here on a social media website
There’s nothing keeping you here in a casino, gambling your wages away.
There’s nothing keeping you here in a bar drinking yourself to oblivion.
There’s nothing keeping you here smoking three packs a day until you’re shitting tar.
The age old advice to “just stop” doesn’t quite work for those most at risk. Harm minimisation is a reasonable thing. We don’t think it’s a good idea for young kids to smoke, drink, drive, vote or have sex. Since we know that social media can be specifically harmful to the youngest demographic, why wouldn’t we want to regulate it based on age?
It doesn't matter because the 35 year old isn't using his brain to vote anyway. He's just going by what social media, the news, and peer pressure leads him to. If anything, an older person has better established understanding of the world even if they're not better at working things out.
Banning those over 60 is a funny jab against an older generation who are susceptible to conspiracy theories and who are not media smart. They have lots of trouble differentiating sound and noise. I doubt this person was serious. Nevertheless, it was funny.
If at “over 60 you can do adult things”, why do we take their drivers licenses away from and make them sit a drivers test every year unlike adults under 60?
That's obviously a biased statement. I happen to share your bias toward the election outcome, but I'm afraid analysis shows that GenZ has moved towards Republican in comparison with similar aged voters 4 and 8 years ago, while people over 60 have moved towards Dems. So your assumptions are not correct, apart from the fact that they're not even relevant to the discussion about the influence of social media (and mobile phones) on young people.
Yes, after years and years, we only recently have solid studies showing that social media harms individual children. I expect it’ll take a bit longer to finalize studies showing the harm to society.
And maybe once they exist it'll make sense to impose additional limitations on social media.
The overriding drive should be to make policy decisions based on strong evidence, not on sentiment. If that means we wait a bit longer then we wait a bit longer.
Voting rights should be proportional to remaining quality-adjusted life years remaining based on life expectancy.
I am joking of course, but there is something to ponder about the growing number of childless people over 40 voting with little concern for the long term.
It's hard to stay polite in discussions where people use the guise of irony to say things they know they shouldn't. You have no evidence for your proposal, and I bet you can't even argue why it would be a net positive, without resorting to prejudice.
In case you couldn't quite parse that, I mean: fuck your comment.
As a childless person over 40, wtf are you talking about?
People don't all vote purely on self-interest, some of us vote on how we think human society should be run, and what we think is genuinely best for everyone. Not just for our own immediate bottom line.
This whole ageist line of reasoning is pretty offensive.
It’s not ageism so much as they are prejudiced against people not raising children.
We childless folk have had a quiet 25ish years and now the pendulum seems to be swinging back the other direction. I’ve noticed quite an uptick in memes about childless people being selfish monsters and taking away our voting rights is right in line with that.
And it still doesn't come close to justifying taking away someone's input to democracy. I find all these discussions massively distasteful.
Also short-sighted because they tend to assume that the age cohort making the claim have more stake in the future, are all of one mind, are thinking long term themselves, or are generally going to do things better. None of these things hold up to much scrutiny AFAICT.
I've always been a supporter of those, my view on democracy is not to be mature enough, but to be a part of society with needs and ideas, school students neee to be represented because they're part of a society
I put in a submission to the committee for this issue[1]. The big issues from my point of view are widespread ID validation and the security and privacy consequences of that, definition of social media, lack of controls provided by social media websites, and further risks to centralisation (like ID providers requiring an app that can only run on an iOS or Google Play device).
Many of the ID verification services that have spun up over recent years like AU10TIX are private companies that don't have their users' interests at heart. It wouldn't surprise me if they become more involved with the so-called data economy (data broker ecosystem)—if they aren't already.
Meta itself causes harm to users of all ages with their algorithms (like suggested content on the feed) which can't really be turned off, and fueled the misinformation crisis which really took off a few years ago. The social media companies have done a good job of convincing the Australian government to overlook these harms.
While I dislike social media, this ban is as stupid as Australia's laws enforcing bicycle helmets.
Will this mean I will have to register as my real name on Hacker News? Not a chance
How is a bicycle helmet a bad idea? Many countries have that for minors. And obviously most(?) western countries have seatbelt laws and motorcycle helmet laws.
It's also a natural effect of having publicly funded healthcare I guess.
> Will this mean I will have to register as my real name on Hacker News?
First of all, age verification shouldn't mean the social media provider gets true identities. They shouldn't be trusted with that info. There needs to be services that allows verifying your age against one service, and the media service just getting the receipt of that verification. Whether such a service exists already or not shouldn't matter. The law should be written so that social media companies are restricted in what they can do when they can be sure someone isn't a minor, and when they are sure. For extra safety, perhaps it should say they can't be allowed to see for example physical ID:s. Because otherwise you'd risk privacy issues.
Second, I think it's better to formulate these laws the way the new york draft did: that specific features are restricted for minors. Such as: enless media feeds based on past behavior (such as any video "shorts" feeds in all the major platforms today).
As sibling comments seem to have missed the point: laws mandating helmets reduce the general rates of cycling, as people without helmets don't cycle at all. Cycling is so good for your health that the risks associated with not cycling are actually greater than those that go along with cycling without a helmet.
Enforcing bicycle helmets is a good idea. It's about protecting your health and reducing the burden on the public health system.
I've fallen off a bike before and my helmet definitely saved me from a serious head injury. Would I have worn one if it was not compulsory and drilled into me as a child that's what you do when you ride one? Maybe not.
It saved me that day and I expect it saves many people in this country every day too.
> Would I have worn one if it was not compulsory and drilled into me as a child that's what you do when you ride one?
Yes. Because this is a false dichotomy. The latter does not depend upon the former. I can say that with certainty because I received the message growing up in a country with a cycling proficiency programme in schools instead of mandatory helmet laws.
Everyone should wear a helmet when riding, but criminalising noncompliance is an inefficient, reductive, expensive, heavy-handed, unnecessarily punitive, and ultimately counter-productive approach to achieving it.
Such a shame of a news, sad to see the level of Australian govt when they are trying to ban for "safety" in the year 2024. Good thing one smart Digital Industry Group representative already told them they are not thinking straight. Of course giving young people something better and more exciting thing to do is not in their plans.
In their dreams is to BAN, take ID VERIFICATIONS and FINE private companies for the rest of their days, any Australian should be ashamed of such dull and unsophisticated policies, and BRAVO to Sunita Bose.
And this is why we try our best to have minority governments.
The bills being put forward lately are really concerning and I have no idea how to get a party in that would kill the eSafety Commissioner and put in strong freedom of speech laws.
I'm pretty content seeing the web destroy their website blocking measures. Thank you DoH and ECH!
Also note that the government is attacking social media on a second front.
Last night they took advantage of the population being distracted by the US election by having an extended parliamentary session to push forward with a second reading of the controversial misinformation bill.
The government and state media apparatus are of course both immune from any penalty under the bill.
Part of the concerted effort against social media is the (sudden?) loss of ability to control the narrative by the established power base. Politics and Print / Television Media used to have the last word on "facts", but now every man and his dog can create their own narrative.
Methinks they're, again, using "think of the children" as a bulwark against the inevitability of their own waning power. The more things change...
Can we also prevent under 16s from being exposed to religious teachings?
What even counts as social media? Is Hackernews social media? Is my future platform where people can talk to each other social media?
It's all pure desperation, they could instead force social media companies to only promote useful educational, pro-science, pro-fitness, documentaries, family style content and then social media would be helpful. Forming communities around learning, robotics, science? What could possibly be better for children who look for purpose in life? It would be fantastic. But of course half the grifters on social media are also already hiding in those tags and serving the most shallow, useless, fake content about e.g ancient pyramid aliens or discussions about how veganism will help your body. As you can tell by my last little insertion here, half the problem is that even all the adults can't come to a shared understanding of what is "good" or true.
I think the way the EU approached this with their "digital gatekeepers" is smart. Recognize that policing the entire internet isn't possible or even desirable. Focus on those few companies with the largest capacity for harm. Different criteria might be appropriate when focusing on potential harm for children (e.g. Roblox rather than Twitter) but besides a few changes you'll probably end up with roughly the same list.
I'm not sure I'd support an outright ban, but rather very strict monitoring and requirements around moderation, in app purchasing, gambling mechanics, and so on.
In a way it shouldn't be tied to size either, it should be tied to results. If a social company is clearly only interested in profit to the exclusion of societal benefits then they deserve to be regulated.
Australia takes a different approach and says (in their Basic Online Safety Expectations 2024) that every online account must be linked to a phone number.
This is the same country that brought you "the laws of mathematics are very commendable but they don't apply in Australia".
I foresee a two- or three-tier Internet in the future, and Australia will probably be the first "western" country to block Tor.
> Australia will probably be the first "western" country to block Tor.
The Australian way would be to "ban" tor without any particular concern for enforceability or technical feasibility. Any actual blocking would be pushed onto industry somehow, which would then proceed to half-ass it, doing the absolute minimum possible to demonstrate they are complying with regulation.
I like Australia a lot, but a lot of the time it feels like political priority is to "make it look like something is being done". No one would actually care if the blocking worked or not unless the media made a big song and dance about it.
I also wonder how much of this ban is about "punishing" X and Meta in particular - Meta for it's refusal to pay for news and X because they didn't jump to immediately remove stuff the government wanted taken down.
> What even counts as social media?
Anything the government needs more leverage over or wants to shake down for money.
I would say anything with algorithmic personalized feed is a social media, and that's I would stop kids having access to.
I think the main danger is in the engagement maximisation done through these algorithmic feeds.
Mandate that the home/landing page of social media sites is a chronological display of people/artists/whatevers you've legitimately chosen to follow rather than maximization algorithm force feeding. For all users. The have to click to get to the algorithm zone. Problem solved.
I don't think that's really solved. Facebook had lots of engagement pre-feed. Reddit has lots of engagement even without personalisation. It's still going to be problematic for lots of people.
> What could possibly be better for children who look for purpose in life?
They sort of naturally do that if you have the appropriate challenges and opportunities around them.
> ancient pyramid aliens or discussions about how veganism will help your body.
There used to be a tabloid called "News of the Weird." This stuff just exists. You'll find it anywhere people gather. We're story tellers. When we don't have a compelling story we just make stuff up. It's identical to the point above.
> even all the adults can't come to a shared understanding of what is "good" or true.
It's not possible. If the children are intended to inherit the future then this is a flawed and reductive strategy. You will not achieve what you seek through parochial means.
Really.. I think your biggest problem should be advertising. It should be nowhere near children. Ban _that_ but keep the social media.
I think the proposal is fundamentally flawed because of this reason.
Facebook, Instagram and X/Twitter are probably what's intended here, but what about Tumblr, DeviantArt or Discord? What about Reddit or a generic forum? What about VRChat or Webfishing?
If this is about protecting children from harmful depictions of body image or misogynistic content, then why not instead propose a law that states online services that allow children to join need to appropriately moderate the content that is shown to children or could face massive fines. I don't necessarily agree with that approach, but at least it would make sense with what their stated objectives are.
The main reason for this ban, like the attempted TikTok ban in the US, is the overwhelmingly anti-zionist views of the younger generation due to repeated social media exposure to the genocide in Gaza. Fundamentally social media facilitates the faster and broader spread of information than ever before in human history, which is a threat to the gatekeepers who for decades have tightly controlled what information the people of Australia have access to.
All of these <16s will be voting in a few years, and Australia has compulsory voting. I hope they remember this on their first visit to the ballot box.
Kids in schools which forbid phone use for everyone are often happy with the result. Banning social networks for everyone may be popular with them by the time they vote.
What about the 14-15 year olds who happily use who happily use various apps to keep in touch with their family and friends (outside school hours), who will now be prohibited from doing so?
This will be wholly supported by both parties of our primarily two-party system. There's no alternative but a protest vote to one of those fringe parties that will never get any real power anyway.
A protest vote is still free in Australia due to a reasonable voting system. And quite a few independents still get in. Is not terrible and actually can make a difference.
As usual, the problem with this is that it assumes a way to perfectly identify somebody on the internet, which in turns mean a way to perfectly identify, in real time, somebody carrying permanently a tracking device with GPS, microphone and camera.
It's crazy that all the things we considered the worst of dystopia in the 80's, thinking nobody would be stupid enough to do and that those society in SF books were only a distant fiction, are things we are actively seeking now.
Things like "Find my" and "air tags" are already beloved my millions, people use it to track loved ones and they swear by it. Even very intelligent, educated people.
There is such a cognitive dissonance between people swearing the last election meant a likely dictatorship and the same people setting up a tech rope around their necks in case a dictatorship does happen.
My now-dead Jewish grandfather met my grandmother during the French occupation because she was making fake papers. He would be horrified if he knew what we are doing right now with our data.
My German ex was born in East Germany, 11 years before the fall of the Berlin Wall. She thinks people are mad to believe that tracking is not going to be abused.
What the hell is going on?
Good, but not enough if you ask me. Mainstream social media make money out of angering people and the addiction it creates, and it affects everyone, not just kids: had a few grown ups among friends and other people, even over 60 and older, completely ruined by that crap. I don't see any reason why corporations that don't obey any moral obligation should be motivated to change their business model anytime soon, unless forced from above.
This is awesome. I have been telling that social media is like smoking. When cigarettes came, even doctors were advertising the benefits of cigarettes. Now we know the harmful effects. Same is the case with social media. We just dont know they harmful effects completely yet.
Ban this. I am addicted and can't stop. Or put a warning on social media apps like they do on cigarette packets. Using this app maybe harmful for your mental health.
You know this is a form of social media too.
Which are the going to block and how will they pick?
Morons.
They'll pick the biggest ones. They won't block them. It'll be up to the platforms themselves to prevent access to children under 16.
Weak minds love government intervention over parental responsibility. It’s awesome! Get your IDs out, everyone, think of the children. JFC.
This is an attack on freedom.
I don't know what to tell you... Minors are supposed to lack freedom compared to adults in a society.
Wow, that's deep. I can tell you have given this at least 15 seconds of your thoughts. You could be the next priminister of Australia.
I would remind everyone that the ban of porn below 18 is not enforced, but it is enough to ensure it is not consumed openly or at school. That is how this will play out too.
Not sure what kind of maniac would "consume" porn openly at school. In contrast, I doubt most kids will have any such misgivings about social media, especially if not enforced.
I wonder how can you implement such a law without forcing people to identify online ? Will they enforce a digital ID that you need to use to access the web or social media ?
I don't think lawmakers should describe HOW things are done necessarily. Here it's enough to say that "unless you can be 100% sure your user is above age X, then you can't provide them service Y or feature Z".
It might not even be the desired outcome to have identification, the better outcome could be to have feature Z stripped for all users (for example video feeds based on past watching behavior).
No comment on the implementation, but I wonder if there's some value in just allowing parents to be able to point to this and say "No, little Fred, you're not allowed to have an Instagram account until you're 16. It's the actual rule."
Yep, the "everyone else has BLAH" argument is a strong one. If we collectively take action through government to set a standard it is MUCH easier to shut down those self-fulfilling claims.
> allowing parents
What? Why would parents need permission from their government to forbid their kid from having an Instagram account? They're parents, so they can engage in parenting.
Allowing as in “enabling”, obviously.
I'm listening to Australian radio right now and a group of mothers just made this exact point.
I’m guessing you don’t have kids
I have three kids. They have access to devices they use primarily for reading and language/music lessons. They don't use social media and would likely pay a decent level of attention if (in addition to us having explained concerns about social media for children) we indicated that there was government advice/ruling around this.
The government currently tendering for providers of different systems. See here [1] and here [2]:
Tender documents released on Monday show the technical trial is slated to begin “on or around 28 October”, with the provider also expected to assess the “effectiveness, maturity, and readiness” of technologies in Australia.
Biometric age estimation, email verification processes, account confirmation processes, device or operating-level interventions are among the technologies that will be assessed for social media (13-16 years age band).
In the context of age-restricted online content (18 years or over), the Communication department has asked that double-blind tokenised attribution exchange models, as per the age verification roadmap, and hard identifiers such as credit cards be considered.
[1] https://www.innovationaus.com/govt-readies-age-verification-...
[2] https://www.biometricupdate.com/202409/australia-launches-te...
The source for "double-blind tokenised attribution exchange models" is this report from July 2024, from the Australian eSafety Commissioner: https://www.esafety.gov.au/sites/default/files/2024-07/Age-A...
They note that existing age verification setups largely either rely on providing ID, or on a combination of manual and automated behavior profiling (face recognition, text classification, reports from other users), both of which have obvious privacy and/or accuracy issues. The "double-blind tokens" point to a summary by LINC explaining how they _could_ be implemented with zero-knowledge proofs, but I could not find an article or a practical implementation (could just be a mistake on my part, admittedly)
At _best_ you end up with a solution in the vein of Privacy Pass - https://petsymposium.org/popets/2018/popets-2018-0026.pdf - but that requires a browser extension, a functioning digital ID solution you can build on top of, and buy-in from the websites. Personally, I also suspect the strongest sign a company is going to screw up the cryptographic side of it is if they agree to implement it...
> "a functioning digital ID solution"
A functioning digital ID solutions seems like table stakes for anything in 2024.
Sales of stick on mustaches will skyrocket
It's a bit wild that instead of parents just being responsible and teaching their children properly, we'll resort to neutering privacy and freedom on the Internet.
RE ".....how can you implement such a law..."
Request the social media platform to implement the restriction. The large social media platform have billions $ cash , so if that "really want to implement it" it should not be a problem.
However, I expect social media companies to "drag out every reason , why they can ot implement it..." - since it does not benefit the social media company. ... and would reduce its user base ...
Making it illegal could make it taboo, kids are less likely to talk about it in fear of "getting caught" and less talking means less usage.
This is not like porn which is a solitary activity: on social media you have to be social and let everyone know… at least for traditional actually-social media, not content-consuming apps like TikTok.
It's similar to alcohol usage: you can't stop it completely, but also you don't have 50% of kids bringing it to school.
A drop down list of birth dates/years "works" for most age restricted sites - I guess the logic is that if a user is lying about their age, it's not the sites problem.
Article states that sites must demonstrate they are taking reasonable measures to enforce this though - a lot will come down as to how courts interpret that. If they go to the extremes of the KYC laws in australia I imagine a significant fraction of adults will not want to verify their age.
> I guess the logic is that if a user is lying about their age, it's not the sites problem.
If the law is to have any teeth at all, it should be the problem of the service provider.
Say for example that a banned feature for minors is having media feeds based on past watching behavior. Lacking a reliable age verification it's simple for social media companies to remove the feature entirely for all users, if it's unreasonable or impossible for them to implement age verification.
I’m not sure how unusual it is internationally but KYC laws in Australia will generally require 100 points of identification, usually satisfied by showing your passport and drivers license. Other options include recent utility bills, your birth certificate, medicare card etc.
The system wasn’t really designed for the internet era and I think a lot of people would not be happy about handing all the personal info over to TikTok or Facebook
You don't!
That's exactly what they're aspiring to here, following on from a well-established pedigree of Australian lawmakers and their dysfunctional relationship with the Internet.
You do! It already happens - just not for everyone.
Example:
https://m.facebook.com/help/582999911881572
Well, funny you should mention that - the AU government ID system (used to access govt services like medicare and tax), has very recently been rebranded from MyGovID to MyID. Most states have already got digital drivers' licences.
You don't necessarily need to actually attempt to globally enforce it. It's like speeding, right? Everybody knows the law, and a lot of people choose to break it. We can't check everybody's speed all the time, so instead we selectively enforce.
The real change though comes from parent's perceptions. Right now there's age limits of 14-years-old on most social media platforms, however most parents just see this as a ToS thing, and nobody cares about actually violating it. Once it becomes law, the parents are suddenly responsible (and liable) for ensuring their children are not breaking the law by accessing social media. It's not going to stop everybody, but it'll certainly move the needle on a lot of people who are currently apathetic to the ToS of social media platforms.
Not true. Only the social media companies will be liable. It’s an important part of the legislation.
The government is being deliberately non-prescriptive about that, as they are about what qualifies as 'social media' (statement of fact - no comment on the approach itself). Ideally the legislation is accompanied by a government digital service that allows 3rd parties to verify age _without_ divulging full identity, but I don't see that side of things being discussed anywhere down here :(
They seem pretty clear [1] about what social media is:
Social networks, public media sharing networks, discussion forums, consumer review networks.
[1] https://www.esafety.gov.au/sites/default/files/2023-12/Phase...
They haven't got the competence to implement it even if they wanted to.
Same as alcohol. If you supply your kids with alcohol, or even have it at home and they get drunk without your knowledge, you'll be in trouble.
Not sure that is the best example as many states have exceptions to allow parents to legally give their children alcohol so that scenario you devised could be completely legal.
It’s happening on porn sites in some states in the US right now. When you visit the site, they ask you to validate with your ID.
Hell of a time to run a VPN or a blackmail service... Porn site profiles with activity history + real traceable identities will make the Ashley Madison leak look quaint.
How so? Ashley Madison was a service for cheating. This would be for people watching porn - how is that worse?
The history is extremely unlikely to be available to the id validator (beyond the domain at most). VPNs can't see the actual history either.
They're probably referring to the scope. Very few people were directly impacted by Ashley Madison (though there was at least one reported suicide due to the leaks), but lots of people watch porn and most of those people would not be too keen on their browsing history being leaked even if it's relatively tame, and especially if it's not.
The funny thing these days is that all porn is tailored to appear as far from "tame" as imaginable.
The average PornHub user's history will be full of weird incest shit at the very least, not because of any specific interest in the genre but because so much generic heterosexual porn is labeled as such. Looks really bad for you if it makes the newspaper.
So even "tame" leakage is 100x more embarrassing than it ought to be, and thus snooping on bf/husband's devices to humiliate them over their porn usage is normalized on relationship subreddits. Same goes for them plugging your email address into the password reset form to try to verify whether you have an account on any given site.
Would be interesting to ask the rabbi who owns Pornhub why he is pushing so much incest porn.
Some antisemites claim that jews have a weird relationship with incest, but that's obviously an unfounded conspiracy theory.
"The domain at most" can be quite sufficient for blackmail
How long are VPN services for consumers like that going to be viable? All the 5 eyes countries are trending in the same direction and they US isn't shy to press other countries to follow their regulations with the threat of being sanctioned.
It's crazy that human beings with the new fandangled ability to communicate in ever easier ways have created this problem. This is your enemy. Social media, government rules are not the enemy. Nor the saviour you think it might be.
How about over 60? That's more likely to have a positive effect on society
Last I checked if you're over 60 then you're an Adult and can do adult things. You have long since stopped growing into your body by then. Children are not finished yet, and continue to have their brains mature and grow into the early 20s
Banning <16 year olds from social media is for their protection. Banning >60 from social media (and I’d add voting) is for everyone else’s protection.
I think there is a better argument for banning anyone under the age of 30 from voting than there is for anything as low as a limit of 60 for voting.
So as a compromise only allow people between 30 and 60 to vote?
(Which would be hilarious, as it means, allmost no one voted in office would be allowed to vote themself anymore, unless of course that would change, too)
On the flip side, it seems evident that younger people tend to vote for the betterment of all, while older people tend to shift toward voting for «themselves».
Why is that evident? Any evidence for it?
Not true; young, childless people don't think about the next generation, because why would they? It's game-theory optimal for them to maximize laws which benefit them personally, as they don't have to worry about their children growing up with the consequences.
Frankly, society would be a lot better if the childless couldn't vote; leave voting to people who have a stake in society's future!
(And yes, adoption counts, doesn't need to be biological -- not excluding anyone here.)
>Frankly, society would be a lot better if the childless couldn't vote; leave voting to people who have a stake in society's future!
Whoa now. Just because I am childless doesn’t mean I don’t care about future generations. I still have friends and family that do have children and I vote with that in mind.
>I think there is a better argument for banning anyone under the age of 30 from voting
Please expand on this.
Damn ageism. There’s some amazing 60yo assembly devs out there.
And society wants them dev'ing amazingly in assembly, not doomscrolling!
I could say that for all ages. Having known the world pre-social media I really do wish we could go back.
There's nothing keeping you here on a social media website. Dunno why you wanna control what others do with their time
> There's nothing keeping you here on a social media website
There’s nothing keeping you here in a casino, gambling your wages away.
There’s nothing keeping you here in a bar drinking yourself to oblivion.
There’s nothing keeping you here smoking three packs a day until you’re shitting tar.
The age old advice to “just stop” doesn’t quite work for those most at risk. Harm minimisation is a reasonable thing. We don’t think it’s a good idea for young kids to smoke, drink, drive, vote or have sex. Since we know that social media can be specifically harmful to the youngest demographic, why wouldn’t we want to regulate it based on age?
"There's nothing keeping you here on a social media website."
The people for instance, when everyone is on social media, you won't find people in the streets anymore, except for the homeless and junkies.
(but luckily it is still possible to find people in the real world, but it did became hard to find real undistracted people)
Seems like a strawman, I can think of plenty of reasons people want to control others' time. It's the literal job of every CEO for starters.
What happened to Liberty?
The CEO is not controlling their time, he's buying it and they're selling it.
What other reasons do you have?
This is akin to speed limits. Doing 50 km/h on a 20 km/h street isn't going to kill you, but can kill people outside your vehicle.
and in advanced age there is cognitive decline
the median seventy-five year old’s brain is not in the same condition as the median thirty year old’s
It doesn't matter because the 35 year old isn't using his brain to vote anyway. He's just going by what social media, the news, and peer pressure leads him to. If anything, an older person has better established understanding of the world even if they're not better at working things out.
75 and 60 are vastly different.
Banning those over 60 is a funny jab against an older generation who are susceptible to conspiracy theories and who are not media smart. They have lots of trouble differentiating sound and noise. I doubt this person was serious. Nevertheless, it was funny.
The young are also susceptible to conspiracy theories. You don't get "media smart" by browsing Tiktok and Instagram, which is all they know how to do.
If at “over 60 you can do adult things”, why do we take their drivers licenses away from and make them sit a drivers test every year unlike adults under 60?
They don’t take their license away, they just test more frequently to watch for deterioration of vision, etc.
Also, people under 60 still need to test and qualify for a license. So I’m not sure why you went down this comparison route.
Because it's in society's best interest not to have impaired people driving; whether it's due to substances taken, illness or age.
Stupid, snarky comment intended to create division, that belongs in a trash heap like Reddit or Twitter, not here.
We have evidence that social media harms children. As in, studies.
We don't have any studies showing that old people harm society using social media or whatever this vaguely ageist snark is saying.
> We don't have any studies showing that old people harm society using social media
an an american who just watched the recent election go down, I have to strongly disaagree with this.
That's obviously a biased statement. I happen to share your bias toward the election outcome, but I'm afraid analysis shows that GenZ has moved towards Republican in comparison with similar aged voters 4 and 8 years ago, while people over 60 have moved towards Dems. So your assumptions are not correct, apart from the fact that they're not even relevant to the discussion about the influence of social media (and mobile phones) on young people.
Yes, after years and years, we only recently have solid studies showing that social media harms individual children. I expect it’ll take a bit longer to finalize studies showing the harm to society.
And maybe once they exist it'll make sense to impose additional limitations on social media.
The overriding drive should be to make policy decisions based on strong evidence, not on sentiment. If that means we wait a bit longer then we wait a bit longer.
> Older adults are relatively more susceptible to impulsive social influence than young adults
https://www.nature.com/articles/s44271-024-00134-0
The number of test subjects is small, but hopefully this will lead to more funding for larger projects.
>Stupid, snarky comment intended to create division, that belongs in a trash heap like Reddit or Twitter, not here.
This also doesn’t belong here.
Hot take: most reddit discussions are every bit as good as HN comments. There is no need to make HN "not Reddit".
Countries around the world need to bite the bullet and implement that for voting too.
Voting rights should be proportional to remaining quality-adjusted life years remaining based on life expectancy.
I am joking of course, but there is something to ponder about the growing number of childless people over 40 voting with little concern for the long term.
It's hard to stay polite in discussions where people use the guise of irony to say things they know they shouldn't. You have no evidence for your proposal, and I bet you can't even argue why it would be a net positive, without resorting to prejudice.
In case you couldn't quite parse that, I mean: fuck your comment.
Old people with children vote for policies that favor their specific children.
Old people without children vote for policies that favor the next generation.
As a childless person over 40, wtf are you talking about?
People don't all vote purely on self-interest, some of us vote on how we think human society should be run, and what we think is genuinely best for everyone. Not just for our own immediate bottom line.
This whole ageist line of reasoning is pretty offensive.
It’s not ageism so much as they are prejudiced against people not raising children.
We childless folk have had a quiet 25ish years and now the pendulum seems to be swinging back the other direction. I’ve noticed quite an uptick in memes about childless people being selfish monsters and taking away our voting rights is right in line with that.
Doesn’t really matter when the percentage of childless adults is growing every year. I just scoff and move on.
Exceptio probat regulam.
No, I don't believe I am particularly an exception, I believe you're just exhibiting prejudice.
Yes, not a snowflake for sure, but as you say "people don't all vote purely on self-interest" but most do.
I'm not sure that's particularly true.
And it still doesn't come close to justifying taking away someone's input to democracy. I find all these discussions massively distasteful.
Also short-sighted because they tend to assume that the age cohort making the claim have more stake in the future, are all of one mind, are thinking long term themselves, or are generally going to do things better. None of these things hold up to much scrutiny AFAICT.
How's that?
How about we only allow those who have our same ideas? That's great for democracy, true democratic values
Even better, how about <16 to >16?
I've always been a supporter of those, my view on democracy is not to be mature enough, but to be a part of society with needs and ideas, school students neee to be represented because they're part of a society
Start with 16. Increment it every year.
Tasmania tried doing that with smoking and it kind of didn't go through due to technicalities.
https://www.smokefreetasmania.com/new-law/
New Zealand also tried it. But then we elected a government full of [ex] tobacco lobbyists
And make the home page an ugly green with disgusting pictures of health problems?
Love this!
I put in a submission to the committee for this issue[1]. The big issues from my point of view are widespread ID validation and the security and privacy consequences of that, definition of social media, lack of controls provided by social media websites, and further risks to centralisation (like ID providers requiring an app that can only run on an iOS or Google Play device).
Many of the ID verification services that have spun up over recent years like AU10TIX are private companies that don't have their users' interests at heart. It wouldn't surprise me if they become more involved with the so-called data economy (data broker ecosystem)—if they aren't already.
Meta itself causes harm to users of all ages with their algorithms (like suggested content on the feed) which can't really be turned off, and fueled the misinformation crisis which really took off a few years ago. The social media companies have done a good job of convincing the Australian government to overlook these harms.
1: https://roffey.au/static/submission-social-media-2024.pdf
While I dislike social media, this ban is as stupid as Australia's laws enforcing bicycle helmets. Will this mean I will have to register as my real name on Hacker News? Not a chance
How is a bicycle helmet a bad idea? Many countries have that for minors. And obviously most(?) western countries have seatbelt laws and motorcycle helmet laws. It's also a natural effect of having publicly funded healthcare I guess.
> Will this mean I will have to register as my real name on Hacker News?
First of all, age verification shouldn't mean the social media provider gets true identities. They shouldn't be trusted with that info. There needs to be services that allows verifying your age against one service, and the media service just getting the receipt of that verification. Whether such a service exists already or not shouldn't matter. The law should be written so that social media companies are restricted in what they can do when they can be sure someone isn't a minor, and when they are sure. For extra safety, perhaps it should say they can't be allowed to see for example physical ID:s. Because otherwise you'd risk privacy issues.
Second, I think it's better to formulate these laws the way the new york draft did: that specific features are restricted for minors. Such as: enless media feeds based on past behavior (such as any video "shorts" feeds in all the major platforms today).
Don’t many US states have laws requiring bicycle helmets for minors?
https://www.iihs.org/topics/pedestrians-and-bicyclists/bicyc...
As sibling comments seem to have missed the point: laws mandating helmets reduce the general rates of cycling, as people without helmets don't cycle at all. Cycling is so good for your health that the risks associated with not cycling are actually greater than those that go along with cycling without a helmet.
Enforcing bicycle helmets is a good idea. It's about protecting your health and reducing the burden on the public health system.
I've fallen off a bike before and my helmet definitely saved me from a serious head injury. Would I have worn one if it was not compulsory and drilled into me as a child that's what you do when you ride one? Maybe not.
It saved me that day and I expect it saves many people in this country every day too.
> Would I have worn one if it was not compulsory and drilled into me as a child that's what you do when you ride one?
Yes. Because this is a false dichotomy. The latter does not depend upon the former. I can say that with certainty because I received the message growing up in a country with a cycling proficiency programme in schools instead of mandatory helmet laws.
Everyone should wear a helmet when riding, but criminalising noncompliance is an inefficient, reductive, expensive, heavy-handed, unnecessarily punitive, and ultimately counter-productive approach to achieving it.
Yeah I’m not against it. Please EU follow suit.
What really needs to happen is tough regulators digging through the algorithms. Why are boys on YouTube getting served so much manosphere crap? Etc.
We have enough studies about what these algorithms are trying to do to people to keep them engaged. It’s not healthy for society.
Such a shame of a news, sad to see the level of Australian govt when they are trying to ban for "safety" in the year 2024. Good thing one smart Digital Industry Group representative already told them they are not thinking straight. Of course giving young people something better and more exciting thing to do is not in their plans.
In their dreams is to BAN, take ID VERIFICATIONS and FINE private companies for the rest of their days, any Australian should be ashamed of such dull and unsophisticated policies, and BRAVO to Sunita Bose.
Why about Sky News?
And this is why we try our best to have minority governments.
The bills being put forward lately are really concerning and I have no idea how to get a party in that would kill the eSafety Commissioner and put in strong freedom of speech laws.
I'm pretty content seeing the web destroy their website blocking measures. Thank you DoH and ECH!
Also note that the government is attacking social media on a second front.
Last night they took advantage of the population being distracted by the US election by having an extended parliamentary session to push forward with a second reading of the controversial misinformation bill.
The government and state media apparatus are of course both immune from any penalty under the bill.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-11/acma-crackdown-social...
Part of the concerted effort against social media is the (sudden?) loss of ability to control the narrative by the established power base. Politics and Print / Television Media used to have the last word on "facts", but now every man and his dog can create their own narrative.
Methinks they're, again, using "think of the children" as a bulwark against the inevitability of their own waning power. The more things change...
Can we also prevent under 16s from being exposed to religious teachings?
They’re protecting the children.
They're taking steps to control freedom of speech.
Little steps, get them young.
You should see the misinformation bill they are trying to pass.
What even counts as social media? Is Hackernews social media? Is my future platform where people can talk to each other social media? It's all pure desperation, they could instead force social media companies to only promote useful educational, pro-science, pro-fitness, documentaries, family style content and then social media would be helpful. Forming communities around learning, robotics, science? What could possibly be better for children who look for purpose in life? It would be fantastic. But of course half the grifters on social media are also already hiding in those tags and serving the most shallow, useless, fake content about e.g ancient pyramid aliens or discussions about how veganism will help your body. As you can tell by my last little insertion here, half the problem is that even all the adults can't come to a shared understanding of what is "good" or true.
> What even counts as social media?
I think the way the EU approached this with their "digital gatekeepers" is smart. Recognize that policing the entire internet isn't possible or even desirable. Focus on those few companies with the largest capacity for harm. Different criteria might be appropriate when focusing on potential harm for children (e.g. Roblox rather than Twitter) but besides a few changes you'll probably end up with roughly the same list.
I'm not sure I'd support an outright ban, but rather very strict monitoring and requirements around moderation, in app purchasing, gambling mechanics, and so on.
In a way it shouldn't be tied to size either, it should be tied to results. If a social company is clearly only interested in profit to the exclusion of societal benefits then they deserve to be regulated.
Australia takes a different approach and says (in their Basic Online Safety Expectations 2024) that every online account must be linked to a phone number.
This is the same country that brought you "the laws of mathematics are very commendable but they don't apply in Australia".
I foresee a two- or three-tier Internet in the future, and Australia will probably be the first "western" country to block Tor.
> Australia will probably be the first "western" country to block Tor.
The Australian way would be to "ban" tor without any particular concern for enforceability or technical feasibility. Any actual blocking would be pushed onto industry somehow, which would then proceed to half-ass it, doing the absolute minimum possible to demonstrate they are complying with regulation.
I like Australia a lot, but a lot of the time it feels like political priority is to "make it look like something is being done". No one would actually care if the blocking worked or not unless the media made a big song and dance about it.
I also wonder how much of this ban is about "punishing" X and Meta in particular - Meta for it's refusal to pay for news and X because they didn't jump to immediately remove stuff the government wanted taken down.
> What even counts as social media?
Anything the government needs more leverage over or wants to shake down for money.
Where in that document [1] [2] does it mention every online account must be linked to a phone number.
Because it mentions that an account must be linked to an email address or phone number.
Which would be the standard for almost every online service.
[1] https://www.legislation.gov.au/F2022L00062/latest/text
[2] https://www.esafety.gov.au/sites/default/files/2024-07/Basic...
> every online account must be linked to a phone number
They seem to be learning a lot from the Chinese.
South Koreans have needed an id to get online for more than a decade
Edit: actually never mind it was only active between the years 2007-2012
I would say anything with algorithmic personalized feed is a social media, and that's I would stop kids having access to. I think the main danger is in the engagement maximisation done through these algorithmic feeds.
Mandate that the home/landing page of social media sites is a chronological display of people/artists/whatevers you've legitimately chosen to follow rather than maximization algorithm force feeding. For all users. The have to click to get to the algorithm zone. Problem solved.
I don't think that's really solved. Facebook had lots of engagement pre-feed. Reddit has lots of engagement even without personalisation. It's still going to be problematic for lots of people.
> What could possibly be better for children who look for purpose in life?
They sort of naturally do that if you have the appropriate challenges and opportunities around them.
> ancient pyramid aliens or discussions about how veganism will help your body.
There used to be a tabloid called "News of the Weird." This stuff just exists. You'll find it anywhere people gather. We're story tellers. When we don't have a compelling story we just make stuff up. It's identical to the point above.
> even all the adults can't come to a shared understanding of what is "good" or true.
It's not possible. If the children are intended to inherit the future then this is a flawed and reductive strategy. You will not achieve what you seek through parochial means.
Really.. I think your biggest problem should be advertising. It should be nowhere near children. Ban _that_ but keep the social media.
I think the proposal is fundamentally flawed because of this reason.
Facebook, Instagram and X/Twitter are probably what's intended here, but what about Tumblr, DeviantArt or Discord? What about Reddit or a generic forum? What about VRChat or Webfishing?
If this is about protecting children from harmful depictions of body image or misogynistic content, then why not instead propose a law that states online services that allow children to join need to appropriately moderate the content that is shown to children or could face massive fines. I don't necessarily agree with that approach, but at least it would make sense with what their stated objectives are.
Yes. Does Roblox count? What about Minecraft?
Start with the big 4 or 5 and add more in there as and when they become problematic. Who decides which one? Some agency.
I think the real solution is banning under 18s from having smart phones period.
lol, probably because they have a propaganda leak.
The main reason for this ban, like the attempted TikTok ban in the US, is the overwhelmingly anti-zionist views of the younger generation due to repeated social media exposure to the genocide in Gaza. Fundamentally social media facilitates the faster and broader spread of information than ever before in human history, which is a threat to the gatekeepers who for decades have tightly controlled what information the people of Australia have access to.
It's so sad seeing how many people think its on the government to raise kids.
Completely unenforceable
All of these <16s will be voting in a few years, and Australia has compulsory voting. I hope they remember this on their first visit to the ballot box.
Kids in schools which forbid phone use for everyone are often happy with the result. Banning social networks for everyone may be popular with them by the time they vote.
What about the 14-15 year olds who happily use who happily use various apps to keep in touch with their family and friends (outside school hours), who will now be prohibited from doing so?
This will be wholly supported by both parties of our primarily two-party system. There's no alternative but a protest vote to one of those fringe parties that will never get any real power anyway.
A protest vote is still free in Australia due to a reasonable voting system. And quite a few independents still get in. Is not terrible and actually can make a difference.