[obblekk]

The votes are strong majorities of both houses - great to see a functional democratic government act on such an important issue.

They specifically don’t prescribe any particular age verification methods. This would be a great time to follow up with legislation that updates their national IDs to be able to provide cryptographically secure proofs of age without leaking identity.

Absent that, I’m sure many of the comments to come will worry about the privacy implications. It really would be great to see the government act with expertise to solve the problem in a way compatible with a free and open society.

[vermilingua]

> great to see the government act with expertise

I’ve seen the Australian government accused of many things, but that’s certainly a first. This is the same country whose prime minister once said “The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia”.

[globalnode]

That was back in 2017 when the govts were all up in arms over encryption. Apparently they don't mind it too much now, which means it all must be back door'able for them.

[vermilingua]

Has been backdoor(ed|able) for FVEY (via Australia) since 2018.

https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about-us/our-portfolios/natio...

[globalnode]

5y in jail if you refuse to give a password and power to covertly access devices and conceal that fact if they desire. Yikes, they don't mess around.

[Der_Einzige]

By far the most bootlicking country in the Anglo world. Disgusting, and their political system should be shattered into the wind

[HPsquared]

Nature or nurture? Australia did start off as a penal colony in the early days.

And the USA started, in large part, as a destination for religious extremists. Funny how these things keep coming up again and again!

[ruthmarx]

The problem is Australians are fine with it. They might be the population with the most people saying "if you've done nothing wrong you have nothing to worry about" in the world, by a large margin.

[kreetx]

> over 95 per cent of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation’s (ASIO) most dangerous counter-terrorism targets use encrypted communications

Some humorous sentences in there :).

[llm_trw]

This government also agrees on the topic.

[ShinTakuya]

This came from the less competent conservative government to be fair, although the current one is still very flawed.

[linuxandrew]

> They specifically don’t prescribe any particular age verification methods. This would be a great time to follow up with legislation that updates their national IDs to be able to provide cryptographically secure proofs of age without leaking identity.

Hard disagree. We do not need an internet driver's license. Australians are supposed to have a right to interact with organisations with privacy protections under the Privacy Act 1988, like APP2 which allows individuals to deal with organisations anonymously or pseudonymously.

Social media companies are doing a great deal of harm to society, but banning under-16s is tackling the symptom, not the problem. All people should have more rights and protections, like opting out (or better, opting in) to infinite scroll and algorithmic content suggestions as opposed to subscribed content. Algorithmic content today is akin to spam in the early 2000s which governments regulated and has had some impact on bad behaviour by local companies (of course I am not under any pretense that spam will ever really be solved). Social media users should be able to opt in or out of content categories which AI could potentially help with that categorisation, ideally in an uber-transparent way.

I'm young enough that "modern" social media was just starting up when I was a teenager. It's not clear that banning under 16s from modern digital communication would provide any benefits (which, by the way, social media is very loosely defined under the amendment).

> Absent that, I’m sure many of the comments to come will worry about the privacy implications.

The big issue is that we are importing the UK model which will see identity outsourcing to companies like Yoti and AU10TIX, the latter which was hacked in 2021 and led to some pretty serious implications for affected users.

Of course the reality is that Meta is already doing age and identity verification on users who use privacy-protecting technologies like Firefox Container Tabs, at least in Australia, and has been for a number of years. This usually leads to an account being blocked until the user provides their ID via a photo. This will become formalised so that accounts that are detected as possibly being U16 (via various techniques like profiling and data matching against external sources) will be requested ID, and Yoti will likely be used to actually perform that verification.

Another big concern will be that this is forced onto smaller operators like Australian Mastodon sites, internet forums, mailing lists and others.

[ehnto]

They can opt out, by not participating with the site. No one is mandated to use social media. But I would also want to see things go the other direction anyway, default to non-algorithmic feeds. Those with the awareness to opt-out are not the people at highest risk.

I agree with basically everything else you said, and I think social media is generally a blight on society. But we can opt-out already, if you are on social media platforms with algo feeds, you are signalling that this works for you. You need to accept that responsibility in the same way it's up to ourselves not to drink 40 beers a day at home.

[Springtime]

Reddit is among the range of sites deemed 'social media' per the article. Reddit is practically a glorified forum where users directly influence which submissions rise above others via personal voting and self-curation of communities to follow. There's no voodoo there forcing non-subscribed things in one's feed unless one is logged out (ie: non-participating anyway).

Given the timeframe to come up with how it's meant to be practically implemented it's not hard to imagine on various services all users of all ages from the region would be required to submit standard ID rather than an idealized age verification the GP suggests that prevents either storing or leaking identity (in either direction). If it went that way it'd be a major blow to user privacy and data security concerns.

Looking at criticism of the legislation there were a range of organizations pointing out such issues, including UNICEF.

[rebuilder]

Isn’t this kind of like saying the solution to robocalls is not having a phone?

[ehnto]

I am not sure, phones are a device on a network, and robocalls are an abuse of the network to get to your device. It's an intrusion made by someone else. Social media seems to think it's a network, but it's more like a bar or club with a TV in it. You choose to show up each day and watch the TV.

[nxpnsv]

It works though

[linuxandrew]

> They can opt out, by not participating with the site

The definition of social media under the legislation is essentially any form of digital communication that allows two or more people to communicate, as decided by the minister.

> No one is mandated to use social media

OK, I'll bite. What if you want to join an interest group (crafts, technical, political etc) that organises meetings digitally on a social media site? Sure, you have the choice to not use a social media website, and if you do, in all likelihood not join your choice of interest group. The point is that Meta long used unfair and anti-competitive means to corner the market, and obviously not to interoperate so that it is difficult for people to leave. This might surprise you but the relationship between platforms and users is usually coerced and not really consensual. If you do not find yourself in this position, good for you. I'm a very firm believer that anti-competitive social media companies should be regulated in positive ways, like forcing interoperability and forcing companies to making algorithmic content opt-in.

> if you are on social media platforms with algo feeds, you are signalling that this works for you

Yeah except people are usually on those platforms for many reasons, like access to group chats and messages, as the platforms have a wide reach. A lot of people become outcasts by quitting social media, myself included, because our friends choose to continue to use it.

[ehnto]

I don't think we disagree, perhaps even on the point of responsibility for how we got here. I do certainly blame the social media companies for the software they built. I guess my only point is that the personal responsibility shouldn't be understated, as we all have agency over the issue, but it is too tough to rip the bandaid off for most which I understand.

I will say there are many ways to mitigate without leaving entirely, but it will be up to one's own discipline to disengage from the platform and manage your own behaviour while you visit.

[liammclennan]

Did you see the "without leaking identity" part? Your comment seems to ignore that.

[wqaatwt]

Only for now. After requiring an ID to sign up is normalized governments will inevitably try to eliminate any anonymity to “protect children”/catch criminals/censorship/etc.

[XorNot]

Case in point: COVID tracing was immediately ruined by the contact database being used by police for surveillance.

As a nation we have utterly terrible organizational firewalls for the public interest.

[pixxel]

You must be a child, yourself. Incredibly naïve.

[gloosx]

>the government act with expertise to solve the problem

Do you have an idea which problem did they solve? Did banning certain psychoactive drugs solved the problem of drug abuse? Maybe banning alcohol removed it from the streets during great depression? Banning gambling? Kids will find a way to get into their social media accounts anyway, and then these democrats will tell you they need to ban every VPN service and set-up Deep Packet Inspection devices for every ISP, make their own govt CA, and trust me all of it will be done in the name of people and child safety.

Sad to see a dysfunctional govt. which bans and calls it a solution to the problem. When I will be in the office I would ban the whole concept of banning itself once and forever, and any politician who proposed a single ban in his life would be banned from service. I will of course step out for proposing this ban immediately.

[gloosx]

For all the proponents of the ban here – I will just tell you what works – for your education. It is endorsing and subsidising healthy and active lifestyle, supporting and promoting strong family wellbeing as well as upholding public psychological and physiological health. Only doing these instead of issuing bans would really contribute to kids choosing virtues of real life over screen time, but unfortunately addressing root causes takes more effort and time than issuing a ban.

[thrixton]

That's great for those that can implement that, many cant (don't have the time, education, willpower, etc...), maybe the majority.

Given the challenges of rebuilding a proper society, maybe this is a step in the right direction (maybe).

We don't allow kids to have other addictive substances, there's definitely an argument (and the co's agree, with 13 yo minimums?) for restricting an addictive medium.

[123124dfasd]

Just because the War on Drugs failed does not mean the argument extend on to every other fields.

[gloosx]

Social media is similar to a drug because it is dopaminergic, and banning it is very similar to War on Drugs scenario, just a knee-jerk reaction, not an expertise-driven policy

[Timwi]

And yet, the argument does extend. It applied to Prohibition, too.

[123124dfasd]

And ban drunk driving works, banning gun works ? I'm not for these kind of policies either but people need more substantiate argument than that.

[gloosx]

Of course it all works. The world now has no drunk drivers, and it is impossible to buy a gun. Thanks to the loving government and caring politicians who had employed best experts, most brilliant minds they could find, to ban the bad things. bad things no-no. We're living in ponyland already just look out of the window!

[oblio]

Banning smoking in many places plus banning advertising it plus banning selling it to kids reduced smoking by unfathomable amounts.

[gloosx]

Do you have data do back it up? From quickly looking at historical records online, I can't see any unfathomable amounts reduction, It's levelled on 20-30% of smokers among kids, and it remains a core challenge for child and adolescent health to the current day (according to 2020 WHO report[0]), plus they started to smoke vapes. So did the bans you sampled really work, or do they just smoke more discreetly and use tricks to buy cigarettes now, making the whole thing more inaccessible and desirable for an average child?

[0] https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/05-06-2020-smoking-stil...

[somishere]

Well, in Australia at least, the number of smokers in the 18-54 age cohort has almost halved in the decade upto 2022 (older smokers still tend to smoke), and more than halved in the 15-24 category.

A "national tobacco strategy" was introduced in 2011/2012 that brought plain packaging, increased taxation and a bunch of other measures.

Official data is here if you're interested: https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/insights-australian-smokers-...

There's also Wikipedia and any number of other resources that go into more detail on the history of decline: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoking_in_Australia

[oblio]

Smoking used to be at much higher levels (50%+) and absolutely everywhere.

Also vaping is probably better than smoking, and don't worry, vaping is next on the ban list. It just takes time to build the case.

[Timwi]

I might be wrong but I read the OP’s comment as sarcastic.

[oblio]

You are wrong. Banning smoking worked.

[refurb]

How do you know?

At least in the US, smoking rates dropped substantially by the 1980's, long before many anti-smoking laws were in effect (you could still smoke on planes in the 80's!).

https://www.statista.com/statistics/184418/percentage-of-cig...

[gloosx]

Only worked for Australian politicians to pat themselves on the head. They are still getting money from tobacco companies, and they know where it is coming from. Kids in Australia still smoke a lot, exploring other ways of inhaling addictive substance, and no ban can really solve this problem

[ruthmarx]

People were already moving away from smoking. The aggressive policies don't deserve all the credit.

[null0pointer]

They mean the root of this comment tree, not your parent comment.

[Aeolun]

The very graphic lessons at school showing what a smokers’ lung looks like after a life spent smoking didn’t hurt either.

[mianos]

I highly doubt they have the expertise to implement anything remotely 'cryptographic.' Their level of competence seems stuck in the 1950s, stamping paper forms, while anything more complex is handed off to consultants in Australia. These consultants appear far more interested in lining their pockets than in understanding technology or math.

The far more likely scenario is they piss a couple of hundred billion away on the first company that shows up with a slick-sounding, half-baked platform, claiming it can magically solve all their problems with just a few "minor" tweaks.

I'm an interested party, I have a 13 year old daughter who would benefit from a little less time on social media. But that's my problem, and my belief that these idiots in our government could help me with that is zero percent. I am probably in the .1% of households where dads know more than kids.

(If photometric id comes in, I want to be in the fake moustache business).

[turbojet1321]

There is myID (formerly myGovID) which would be the logical vehicle for a government provided age verification service. I've heard (but can't find a source) that it's build on OIDC/OAuth, so extending it to be an IdP exposing only specific claims (ie, age) shouldn't be a huge leap.

[linuxandrew]

myID as it stands is a bit of a farce. It uses OIDC under the hood, but it only supports end users that download the myID app on their smartphone via the Google Play Store or Apple App Store. Security is effectively outsourced to Google and Apple as the user's identity is "pinned" to their smartphone.

Take myGov in contrast which is web-capable and supports users to use a Yubikey or Passkey/Webauthn-capable device to authenticate.

Under the Australian Digital ID scheme myGov will likely be usurped by myID, which is, in my view, an inferior scheme which blatantly ignores basic standards.

[mianos]

I was too right, they already selected a slick sounding half baked platform: https://accscheme.com/

[Terr_]

> national IDs to be able to provide cryptographically secure proofs of age

Nah, this is an antipattern we've seen before. A veritable Pandora's Box whispering to be opened. There is a much simpler and safer solution:

1. A disclosure law, which requires sites to somehow (e.g. HTTP headers) show their nature as a social media site, porn site, etc.

2. Parents can choose to purchase devices/software for their children with a parental-lock, set those filters and permissions to match their own locality or personal preferences, and whitelist any necessary exceptions.

This way the implementation costs of the shifting, complex, never-ending demands will fall onto the groups that actually want to use it, instead of all sites in the world being potential legal jeopardy for failing to implement all the censorship rules of every possible visitor.

It also means that most enforcement (and exceptions) move out into a physical realm which parents are at least able to see and control.

> without leaking identity

Leaking identity to the site is only half the problem, the other is leaking activity to the government. I'd ratehr not have a Government Internet Decency Office with an easy list of every single site I ever tried to view or register-for, without any kind of warrant or other due-process.

[kumarvvr]

The problem with this approach is that you will have two groups of children, the ones who have access and the ones who don't have access.

This is a worse problem than allowing it for all.

Its another vector of temptation, distraction, in-equality, etc.

[Terr_]

> in-equality

If your concern is that some parents will be able to afford to give their children their own devices, but not afford any parental-control software with them... Well, that's better-addressed with an explicit "Digital Tools For Needy Parents" program.

If you mean some parents will choose to give their kids more autonomy... Well, isn't it proper for that to be their decision? I have little sympathy for neighbors who use the logic of: "You are banned from giving your child $thing, because I'm tired of hearing my kids whine that they want it too."

[RichEO]

I don’t think the concern is economic equity, it’s social harm.

Kids whose parents choose to restrict will suffer social consequences vs parents who don’t.

The whole point of the law is to reduce the social harm caused by social media.

[oblio]

I'd say the next steps is that you also force institutions for kids to ban it, regardless of parent choice.

Parents must present proof of disabling said websites for their children. Or their kids can just not have those devices with them.

Do this for schools, activity clubs, restaurants, fast for food places, etc, and you've basically hit 80% of places where kids are all the time.

[hcfman]

But not a worse problem than blocking it for everyone

[ENGNR]

We’re a nanny state, the government is just going to use it to track us

[pimeys]

Nanny state is a term coined by tobacco industry in their lobbying against tobacco laws. Is it really a term you want to use here?

https://www.tobaccotactics.org/article/countering-industry-a...

[ruthmarx]

> Nanny state is a term coined by tobacco industry in their lobbying against tobacco laws. Is it really a term you want to use here?

Sure, because most people h ave no idea where the term originates from and it now has a life of its own. It's the standard term for this sort of thing.

[bigstrat2003]

Who cares? Whether or not it applies in this particular case, it's a useful term. Rejecting ideas because of who they come from is the very antithesis of intellectual maturity.

[refurb]

Just because an "evil" group used, or even coined, a term doesn't mean it's not a useful term.

[tirant]

Why not? It is about treating people as adults or children.

[threeseed]

ASIO has been able to track you for decades since they have real-time metadata feeds from Telstra, Optus, NBN etc.

They have access to your location estimate, URLs of sites you've visited, people you talk via email/phone etc. And we know that this dataset is shared to the Five Eyes.

So if you are concerned about being tracked I would strongly recommend leaving Australia.

[null0pointer]

It’s more about who has access to the data and how easily. Plus the potential of creating a massive target for hackers.

[ENGNR]

And now they’ll be able to see the groups you go to within pages, read comments, see what we write, etc etc. It also goes from being a defence capability to used for all sorts of things and eventually leaked.

It’s not bad enough to leave, better to engage with the politics and try to get some rights before it spreads further outwards

[RichEO]

This is conspiracy theory thinking, why on earth would age verification give them access to all of this additional information?

[71bw]

In what way do you think they'll be able to verify your age reliably without you having to, yourself, "willingly", hand over your PII?

[Pedro_Ribeiro]

Aren't videogames where you consume drugs for gameplay boosts banned there? I always found that weird for a first world country.

[ponco]

For a time, we did not have an “R” rating for video games and this sort of content called for this rating, which legislation said could not be given. Fortunately saner heads prevailed and they created an “R” rating for video games and this oddity went away.

[Der_Einzige]

Forced voting is proof of it. Australia is by far the least free Anglo nation. I will never step foot on that god forsaken island.

They have no culture, and that’s the opinion of Australians: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lucky_Country

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Australian_Ugliness

[linuxandrew]

Ha! We have compulsory voting but unlike many Anglo countries we don't require voter ID, vote registration etc. In fact you do not need to provide any ID to vote, because voting fraud is so statistically low (see https://www.rmit.edu.au/news/factlab-meta/voting-fraud-negli...). We simply provide a name and address and fill out the ballot.

We have so many issues, but compulsory voting is not one of them, in my opinion. If you feel so strongly to not vote you can abstain by an informal vote like roughly 5% of the country does on any given election (https://www.aec.gov.au/Voting/Informal_Voting/) or simply pay the AU$20 (roughly US$13) fine like apparently around 5-10% of Australians do on any given election (https://www.aec.gov.au/Elections/non-voters.htm).

In my view, and in the view of many Australians, people encouraging further "freedom" to not vote are attempting to suppress votes, a major issue in the United States and other countries with optional voting.

[scripturial]

In Australia they ask to see your ID but you can say you don’t have it on you. I think they mostly just ask for ID so it’s easier to look up your name with the correct spelling.

[bobnamob]

Counter anecdote, I’ve never been asked for id when voting in South Australia or NSW in my 20 year voting history

[linuxandrew]

Me neither, in Qld.

[jiggawatts]

They don't. Source: Australian citizen that has voted many times.

[rob74]

...in the same election? Seriously, if they don't ask for any id, how do they prevent fraud?

[pyuser583]

The state I live in has an average of about 4 elections a year. Sometimes as many as 8.

Being required to vote in all of them would be a large burden.

[ruthmarx]

Stopping people suppressing votes should not be solved by taking away freedoms.

[stubish]

You won't win any arguments with Australians on forced voting. The major parties would love to kill it, but it is something the (forced) voters will refuse to give up. It may not be 'free', but it helps keep things free.

If you are going to cite sources about 1960's Australian culture, back in the oppressive dark ages of 'White Australia', make sure you compare it with other 1960's cultures. Or try some sources from this millennium that have come to terms with not being part of the British Empire.

[Hawxy]

> Forced voting is proof of it.

Forced voting is a net benefit, the biggest being that it forces parties to the center rather than having to say/promise stupid stuff to appeal to the fringes that have firm political positions (see: USA). Mandatory voting + preferential voting, alongside a well-run independent election commission has resulted in very high trust in our democratic process.

[ern]

Compulsory voting means that a large part of the electorate that doesn’t pay attention to politics is easily frightened by scare campaigns.

An example of this is that Australia is sorely in need of tax reform, but any party that pushes for it at state or federal level is damaged at the polls, often fatally.

[jiggawatts]

Then how did John Howard get the GST passed?

[ern]

He lost a lot of seats in the 1998 election and suffered a big swing against him.

[turbojet1321]

You have to remember, Australia as a nation is young, and has an interesting history - forced migration of convicts, high levels of immigration (IIRC 25% of the population are 1st or 2nd generation immigrants), and of course the difficulty of dealing with colonial treatment of the Aboriginal population. "No culture" is patently absurd; everywhere with people has a culture.

And on mandatory voting: yes, in one way, that's a curtailment of freedom, but in another way, it's enshrining freedom.

[threeseed]

Australia is one of the freest countries in the world:

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/freest-co...

Higher than UK and the US.

[throwawaythekey]

In day to day life we are fairly free but for example we have much weaker freedom of speech/opinion than the USA. For example if you raise your arm at a particular angle you can now be sent to jail [1].

We also had some of the longest/harshet COVID lockdowns in the world in my state.

[1] - https://www.dw.com/en/australia-man-convicted-for-performing...

[threeseed]

> if you raise your arm at a particular angle you can now be sent to jail

Also known as doing a Nazi salute.

[wqaatwt]

> Higher than UK

Not according to https://rsf.org/en/index or https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Press_Freedom_Index

I assume that other indices that show “data” that fits whatever narrative one wants are easy to find…

Which makes things like this meaningless in isolation.

[liammclennan]

Compulsory voting seems to push against the current trend of political polarization. Also, not sure Australia is, or wants to be, an "Anglo nation".

[ern]

It’s not polarised, but it is quite sclerotic.

[lmm]

This is the opposite of democracy - a group imposing rules "for their own good" on people it doesn't represent who have no recourse. If they had any integrity they'd be banning it for adults not children.

[trial3]

this is what a seven-year-old would sound like if they were writing a persuasive essay about how they shouldn’t have a bedtime

[refurb]

Save your breath, Australians don't have the same views on government or individual rights as America (or even Canada!).

I lived in Singapore for a while and it's a "flawed democracy" where the government has stacked the deck against any opposition party to a degree that's breathtaking.

But a poll in Singapore showed that 70% felt that "social harmony is more important than democracy". Even if Singaporeans knew how undemocratic the government was, they wouldn't care.

[kumarvvr]

How can you protect children from the absolute devastating effects of social media on children, by banning it for adults?

[voidfunc]

Demonizing social media is this generations version of demonizing rock and roll.

It's so tiring.

[usr1106]

The harm of social media is closer to alcohol or tobacco. Addiction, even though with milder physical conseques. Nothing to do with demonizing.

[poilcn]

Is it? You can see the actual harm caused by web sites.

Doomscrolling in all age groups. Going to bed very late at night.

Girls having body dysmorphia cause of instagram.

Young men having porn addition and having no ambition to interact with real women

[Aerroon]

None of these sound like they are a very big problem compared to many alternative things people do. People talk about social media as though it's lead paint.

I particularly liked that one Facebook study that is usually taken out of context.

[eimrine]

The latter is the scariest but the least binded to a social media (except of underground ones which will never have age verification anyway).

[throwthrow4567]

> young men having porn addition and having no ambition to interact with real women

this made me lol so much. porn addition is not the cause, but the consequence.

do you have any idea how hard it is for males to find a willing mate nowadays? most females have men fighting over them, while most men must always do the fighting to get even one low-quality female in their entire life.

[ryan-c]

I wish you could see your comment as most people see it.

When you refer to "males" and "females", and especially use terms like "low-quality female" you sound absolutely unhinged.

[GeoAtreides]

just because thing A was (unjustly) demonized doesn't mean demonizing thing B is without merit, even more so when thing A and thing B are completely unrelated.

[Timwi]

I agree with the OP that the ban is woefully undemocratic, and that banning it for children only is a grave misstep.

I think what they should ban instead is recommendation algorithms. If I subscribe to a source, and explicitly unsubscribe from another, it should be illegal to withhold some of the first’s postings and shove the second’s in my face. This should be a no-brainer and has nothing to do with the age of the user; but it's easier to just ban the people who, as OP correctly noted, have no representation and no recourse.

[labster]

I mean there has been at least one genocide planned on social media. Maybe adults were the real danger after all.

[eimrine]

Does Ukrainian's Revolution of Dignity counts?

[krisoft]

Does your reasoning also apply for laws which ban underage smoking or underage alcohol consumption? Do you feel the same way about those prohibitions too?

[lmm]

> Does your reasoning also apply for laws which ban underage smoking or underage alcohol consumption?

Up to a point, but AIUI there is credible medical evidence for those being disproportionately harmful (in physical, objectively verifiable ways) to the young. I think setting the same standard of harm and applying it to all ages is reasonable; maybe this law is based on some claim that social media harms children in a way it doesn't harm adults, but bluntly given how much the topic is biased and politicised I just don't trust today's social science establishment enough to justify this kind of law.

[Der_Einzige]

Correct. Children deserve rights, representation, and bodily autonomy. Today they have none of this

[threeseed]

We need to turn down the volume here.

Not being exposed to social networks for a few years is no way comparable to depriving them of bodily autonomy.

[BrawnyBadger53]

They are already mostly segmented off from their friends after school hours. They have killed off one of the final mediums for interaction and are preventing interaction with the rest of their generation's culture. They're also narrowing their world view to be more controlled by the state.

[doxick]

Hasn't that been the case for thousands of years? It's not like they can't see each other after school hours... I know i used to. And i still see my friends after my workday. I have much deeper connections with the 20 people i see in real life than the 1000 people on my linkedin profile.

Do people thrive more in their mental health when they are supposedly 24/7 accessible? Is it necessary? Is it wanted?

[lmm]

> It's not like they can't see each other after school hours... I know i used to.

Things have gotten much worse since then. These days children get reported if they're out and about unsupervised.

[thombles]

Actually this is a separate problem. If you look at the work of Jon Haidt who promotes the kinds of measures we're talking about here, it's only half the story. The other half is that we have become ridiculously overprotective in parenting in recent decades. Kids need independence and the ability to hang out and play with their peers away from direct adult supervision. The goal isn't to take away the internet and leave kids with nothing, it's to bring back the real-world contact and relationship-building.

[lmm]

> The goal isn't to take away the internet and leave kids with nothing, it's to bring back the real-world contact and relationship-building.

Ok but what's the betting on which of those the actual effect of the law is going to be?

[Der_Einzige]

No, we need to turn it WAY up. We circumcise AKA male genital mutilation to hundreds of millions of male children all across the world, including much of the USA and Australian populations.

That’s just one tiny example, and no one is calling for circumcison bans simultaneously.

Letting the mutilated children have some social media is the least the state can do for them. Australia is a tyrannical hellscape.

[doctorpangloss]

Yes, but then how could they find audience for political ads, if not in social media?

[turbojet1321]

Um, that's exactly what a democracy is - a tyranny of the majority.

[Timwi]

You missed the point. Tyranny of the majority is one thing if the minority can at least vote and participate in the political process. Shutting the minority out entirely is quite different.

[gonzo41]

We do have recourse. What you'll see is more independent candidates get voted in to overturn the law. Once the government of the day starts badly implementing it the conservatives who voted with the center left party will split off and start attacking for it's repeal. It's a nothing burger law designed to look tough and do nothing.

[larrysalibra]

under 16 year olds cannot vote, are not represented and have no recourse.

when one group votes to make rules for another group that cannot vote, it can be called many things, but "democracy" is not one of them.

[bluefirebrand]

When adults make decisions for children it's called "parenting"

Acting like we should be seriously treating children and teens as an equal political group is a joke

[Timwi]

> When adults make decisions for children it's called "parenting"

Is it? Last time I checked I thought that was only when parents or legal guardians do it to a small number of children in their care, not when politicians do it to all children in an entire country.

But even if I accept your premise, your comment makes me wonder if you've never heard of people who are bad at parenting, or who are downright abusive to the children in their care.

[bluefirebrand]

Let me ask you something: Do you support removing liquor laws banning underage people from being sold alcohol? Or removing laws that ban the sale of cigarettes to children? How about gambling or buying lotto tickets for childrenm

I think it's clear that as a society we have already decided that government has a role in establishing legal protections to prevent children from falling afoul of systems that are designed to be predatory

This is just another layer of that

Which also establishes a social norm that letting children drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes, or gamble is not a good thing, so people who are bad parents know at least some baseline of what they should not be doing

[casey2]

Who defines what a child is? Who defines what a elderly person is? Are these questions also jokes to you? You seem pretty flippant about deciding which groups shouldn't have political power.

Many countries already tried using objective criteria to decide who gets to vote, and this always results in policy that screws nonvoters at the benefit of voters. Do you think the housing crisis all around the western world is an accident? It's not. The electorate chose this because it benefits them. Is it an accident that the last 2 US presidents are pedophiles? Probably, but that would be much less likely with a younger electorate.

A decision was made about how children's lives should function without their input. Right now do you believe that the class of parent voters votes as representatives of the interests of their children and their future? Or do you believe that all persons under 16 have no concept of time or political interests and couldn't even understand if a politician was making them a good deal through a political ad?

Children understand brand new toys better than anyone; by high school, pretty much all of them understand that they get better teachers if you pay more. Are students not interested in getting better grades for "free"?

The government is not anyone's parent, it doesn't give a lick if your kid dies tomorrow, cause kids don't vote.

[amatecha]

Hey, didn't you get the memo that teenagers know everything, have the simple & straightforward solutions to all of life's problems, and are never wrong?? ;)

[pizza]

I'm not sure what's worse: giving parental responsibility to politicians or equating craven paternalism to benevolent parenting.

[eimrine]

> When adults make decisions for children it's called "parenting"

Children issue is just the excuse for government to get people obey. Sadly but "kids protecting" propaganda is one of two the most effective ones, works great and there are lots of alternatively gifted persons that do not get the real attitude.

[photonthug]

> Acting like we should be seriously treating children and teens as an equal political group is a joke

Yeah this thread is wild, maybe because those speaking “on behalf” of children here are actually all children?

Age restrictions for social media are as logical and necessary as they are for driving, drinking, etc. It isn’t just a concern about self-harm. The general public has a stake in this too in the long run, and it’s a safety and security issue for them as well. (If you don’t believe this is true, just think about how much power Facebook already has over elections, and how much more they will have if literally everyone alive grows up on Facebook and doesn’t think that power is worth questioning)

Years from now we’ll all be surprised we didn’t arrive at this conclusion sooner.

[threeseed]

> are not represented

Young Greens/Labor/Liberal allow members as young as 14.

And these groups have significant and direct input into political policy.

So simply not true to say that have no representation.

[matt_trentini]

You're far more optimistic than I about our government being able to implement a secure, reasonable solution for age verification.

COVIDSafe was the last technical undertaking and it was expensive and a completely inept implementation. The MyGov website is another failed attempt at keeping personal data secure.

Further, it seems likely that social media companies are likely to come out of this with even more information about us.

Government and tech do not mix well (at least in Australia).

[russelg]

People are far more worried about the government knowing that you're using a social media site, than they are about the social media site knowing who you are.

I don't see a way this could be implemented where the govt doesn't know what site is requesting the verification. I'm assuming it'll be an openid type flow where the social media sites will have to register client IDs with the govt myID, in which case the govt will directly be able to tie a person to what social media they use. It won't tell them what account it links to on the social media side, but depending on what data is returned, they can easily just ask the social media company for this info later on.

[hcfman]

I suspect that it is technically possible to make an anonymous identification service because the result to the social media site just had to be yes or no.

In the Netherlands you have a government identification service that identifies people to other government sites. And a bank service that uses the banks identification service also roll to identify to other sites.

Technically it would be possible to delete any trace afterwards.

However. I have never ever in my life seen any government choose not to take advantage of an opportunity to exert more control over their citizens if the possibility exists.

Plus rather than force it on everyone it should be a choice of the parents. Clearly not doing this is better but in the absence of that parents deciding is better for the others.

[tzs]

> I don't see a way this could be implemented where the govt doesn't know what site is requesting the verification

Blind signatures. Briefly, a blind signature is a way for a party to sign a document without seeing the contents of the document. The cryptographic forms of this, at a high level, work like this:

1. You do a keyed reversible transformation on document D that produces a transformed document D'. This is called "blinding" the document.

2. They sign D' with signature S'.

3. You apply the reverse transformation to S', which gives you a signature S from them for D. This is "unblinding".

Use a random key each time you need to get something blind signed and throw away the key afterwards.

Even if they later see D and S they can't match them up with any D' and S' because they don't know the key.

For age verification D would be some kind of token you obtain from the social media company during age verification. You'd then have the government blind sign that with a signature that is only used when the government has verified you are at least 16. You'd unblind the signature and give that back to the social media company.

There are also protocols to do this using zero knowledge proofs.

[greggsy]

The proposed digital ID solution is designed to protect the individual from this type of information disclosure.

[chris_wot]

lol - hardly! Submissions were announced on the 22nd, this closed on the 23rd, the Committee was so blindsided they literally requested submissions should 1-2 pages long, the bill was introduced to the House on the 26th and passed on the 29th.

That’s some really well reviewed legislation. Parliament sitting days close on the 31st.

[kaladin-jasnah]

It's going to be interesting to see how one can use cryptography to do this privately. I wonder if the cost and complexity of such a thing would result in big companies simply requiring some kind of "take a picture of your ID" style verification.

Estonia's ID card https://www.id.ee/en/ could certainly be a model; still not sure how to do age verification. My best guess would be some sort of cryptographic signing that refuses to sign if you are below a certain age.

[isaacremuant]

Or, you know, don't keep going into this path of authoritarianism.

Your comment is absolutely disingenuous pretending that this Draconian move can be implemented with open society or transparency. This is the same nation that went absolutely bonkers with their COVID policies and their inhumane treatment of anyone who desired freedom or bodily autonomy.

[lobochrome]

Dear god, no. This doesn't need more technology.

The whole purpose of this is only to give parents a reason to say no. Often, a single kid in a class with an unrestricted iPhone is enough to poison the well. Now it's much, much simpler. Kids understand when you say it's against the law.

[71bw]

>Kids understand when you say it's against the law.

Jesus, were you born 40? I don't know a single person who didn't willingly pirate media, games and break other laws (usual suspects like trespassing, underage + public drinking...) as kids and teens. They will not care about the law if they want to do something it limits.

[lobochrome]

I’m not called Jesus and I age normally.

Do you have children?

[bongodongobob]

Just stop. You're being incredibly naive.

[magnetowasright]

> functional democratic government

Wait, where? Not in my Australia. Saying our govt has any competency is also gobsmacking.

Yep, it's better here than other places (for certain groups) but when the notorious hate rag daily mail condemns (literal) neo-nazis marching and saluting in support of transphobe Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull you've really got to question what kind of functional democratic government or expertise leads and legislates this country. Literally the daily mail thinks our neo-nazi problem is a bit much. I genuinely can't wrap my head around that. The daily effing mail. That's the state of this country; what a healthy democracy that literal neo-nazi groups are free to demonstrate against human rights while the police force people doing nothing more for human rights than holding the pathetic signs back from the streets so the frog marching idiots can continue unimpeded. Utterly disgraceful state of affairs. It's so embarrassing.

This legislation isn't going to stop kids accessing social media or prevent any of the related social harms, unfortunately. It's just going to give licence to erode privacy even further. All our pollies are so dangerously incompetent, especially when it comes to anything relating to computers, it's just enraging. It's a disgrace. Our governments don't give a single shit about human rights or the welfare of the people in our country. This law is no different, but it sure is a great distraction.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11879737/Neo-Nazis-...

[throwawaythekey]

Call me oldschool but to me a functioning democracy is where anyone can express their opinions. Neo nazis, zionists, anti zionists, jews, palestinians, socialists, globalists, communists, libertarians etc.

[magnetowasright]

Yes, a functional democracy means neonazis advocating for genociding are protected from the vicious sign holders by the police. Yes, that is definitely a functional democracy. The state defending neonazis from people holding signs is absolutely the free marketplace of ideas in action. Genocide is acceptable if enough people vote for it. Wow, what a great idea!

I one day hope to be so privileged to actually think like that. Give me half a billion dollars and a lobotomy and that's as close as I'll get; I'm not sure it'll be enough.

[est]

you must be joking, that's exactly how communist government works.

Given strict laws but "don’t prescribe any particular ... methods" so one day law enforcements can extort a large sum of fine from companies as needed.

The only difference is Commie leaders invent bullshit "laws" by themselves and no voting.