How will Australia's under-16 social media ban work? We asked the law's enforcer (2024)

https://www.npr.org/2024/12/19/nx-s1-5231020/australia-top-regulator-kids-social-media-ban

by segasaturn • 1 year ago

41 47 1 year ago

XorNot3• 1 year ago

In short: they have no idea.

They had no idea when it was passed, and this article confirms the same because "there's been promising research you do it by <thing>".

chris_wot• 1 year ago

They won’t. They can’t. It’s baked into the legislation!

WarOnPrivacy6• 1 year ago

From top AU banning official:

     all [age verification methods] have privacy implications. There was big concern with providing government ID. But there are digital identity providers...

This is the point where Gov officials shift from talking about privacy concerns to pretending.

In this case, she's predictably offloading responsibility to a 3rd party provider. I will guess the official is minimally aware that leaks are nearly inevitable (partially due to lax laws) and all of that ID data will be leaked eventually. Probably by a 3rd party to the 3rd party.

Why deceive the reporter and readers on privacy? Because addressing privacy is hard. It takes time, effort, integrity and thoughtfulness.

Because every Gov is loaded with depts that exploit privacy failings to their own advantage.

Because elections are funded by lobbyists that use our data against us.

Add those up and there is so much pushback against respecting privacy - you could launch a spacecraft with it.

Dylan168072• 1 year ago

I guess it depends on what the ID data is? If it's just a couple pictures and maybe not even your name then there's not much impact in a leak.

WarOnPrivacy6• 1 year ago

I guess it depends on what the ID data is?

At the minimimum it will be

    Everything on a Gov ID
    All info demanded during the original collection process + demands that get added v2, v3 ...
    All possible metadata
    Data from other sources, added downstream to make it more valuable to govs/corps

The ages of leak victims:

    16 and 17 yo
    Under 16 because many will try
    Everyone else

x0x0• 1 year ago

There is a separate article https://www.npr.org/2024/11/28/g-s1-36142/australia-social-m... linked in the post. It says:

amendments [...] bolster privacy protections. Platforms would not be allowed to compel users to provide government-issued identity documents including passports or driver's licenses, nor could they demand digital identification through a government system.

So I guess facial recognition it is. Or my personal guess, a government data feed on birth dates.

Any other solution is too stupid to discuss -- I would be stunned if it's possible to use facial recognition to differentiate a 15 y/o from a 16 y/o in anything approaching a reliable way.

WarOnPrivacy6• 1 year ago

Platforms would not be allowed to compel users to provide government-issued identity documents including passports or driver's licenses, nor could they demand digital identification through a government system.

This leaves a lot of room for bad acting. The data collector need not compel. They can have 3 methods available but have 2 be a hot mess of unreliability.

FacRec has unreliability baked in - increasingly so, the further from white ones skin is.

segasaturn• 1 year ago

I agree with everything you're saying about how hard the privacy issue is, but would also like to add that the social media companies are incentivized to act like they have no idea how to implement a solution, because they want teens using their apps. The Facebook Files make it abundantly clear that social companies see teen users are their most valuable asset, since the rest of the culture tends to follow where teens go. When the social companies, who are collectively worth tens of trillions of dollars, say they don't know how to implement the law without convoluted, privacy-destroying, digital government IDs I just don't buy it.

like_any_other• 1 year ago

The government passed the law, and funds lots of universities with CS and cryptography programs. If there was a privacy-preserving solution, they could have proposed it themselves. Just because someone is motivated to say something, doesn't mean they're wrong.

notTooFarGone• 1 year ago

What I don't get is why not use the fucking ID card?

The government can build a service to verify ones identity and age and social media apps don't have to save IDs.

The whole privacy shit is just weaseling out of responsibility.

XorNot3• 1 year ago

There's no national ID card in Australia, and the law specifically (because there was a large outcry against it) disallows providers from only allowing the use of official ID to verify age.

Because the reality of course is, if you absolutely had to determine how old someone is...you'd ask for their ID. That's how pubs do it, and someone somewhere has had the galaxy-brain idea of going "well, sometimes bouncers just know so like, can't a computer do that?" without really thinking through the constraints of the problem (or that an absolute ton of underage people still get through).

EDIT: It's worth adding - ID cards don't work for this either. The most obvious thing to do is just photoshop the ID you send whoever. But that of course creates a real problem for the "protecting the kids" people. Modern AI would let you run a client-side web-app which would fake an ID for you, but legally the issue with fake ID is that it's considered "forging official documents" which is a crime on the part of the person doing it not the person being fooled by it.

Which in turn means that your "protect the kids" policy is actually a "prosecute the kids policy" if you setup a situation where a bunch of people are pretty likely to think (without knowing the ramifications) that they should just send a fake ID image.

genidoi2• 1 year ago

The privacy concerns and “ID everyone” are the boring, standard dystopian parts of this, perfectly in line with the government-by-nannying that Canberra types enjoy.

The better question is what counts as social media? Is HN social media that under 16yo Australians need to be kept away from?

hsuduebc2• 1 year ago

I'm not sure that there is a proven link between hacker news use and elevated probability of depression and anxiety in children and adolescents.

So I guess it's aimed at sites that are supposed to cause these problems?

WarOnPrivacy6• 1 year ago

I'm not sure that there is a proven link between hacker news use and elevated probability of depression and anxiety in children and adolescents.

We can extend that thought further than just HN. The reporter (surprisingly!) brings up something we've known for a while but has been slow getting traction. That the relation between noted harms and SM is far from clear.

     There really is not a super clear causal link between greater use of social media and upticks in anxiety and depression among teens.

More detail: https://www.techdirt.com/2023/12/18/yet-another-massive-stud...

Regarding youth mental health, there are strong causal competitors (to SM) that aren't well examined. Like the elimination of free roaming areas (from sq mi to sq ft), attacks on child independence (false stranger danger messaging) and car culture + trespassing culture (traded endless walkable areas for narrow death zones).

I argue that since mid-1900s, we've eradicated most of what kids needed to learn complex problem solving, develop ambition and earn self-esteem.

If I wanted to erode youth mental health, I'd do exactly what we've done. I'd get rid of irreplaceable environments where youth experienced critical growth.

genidoi2• 1 year ago

The issue here is regardless of implementation details (all the privacy/ID stuff falls in this bucket), the remedy being proposed here seems obviously much worse than the ailment.

kennysoona4• 1 year ago

It can't work. Teens will just jump to mastodon instances. I can even see it being the case where running an instance become like being able to make fake ids or sell some weed or something, one person will do it and be cool have friends because of that. Parents won't know about it and it won't raise any flags in logs if done well.

Not to mention just using a VPN or something.

4ad• 1 year ago

The system will work just fine. You seem to be under the impression that the purpose of the system is to prevent teenagers from accessing some websites. That is not the purpose of the system, that's just the pretext for implementing it.

kennysoona4• 1 year ago

You're saying the system is to get everyone to submit their ID so their social media can be tracked? That too will be mitigated by increased adoption of decentralized services.

somanyphotons• 1 year ago

It can't work

Depends on what 'work' means.

Pre-internet Australia had pretty strong media censorship.

I view this a quiet attempt to disentangle Australia from any foreign company that isn't willing to jump through longer-term censorship hoops.

reshlo2• 1 year ago

There’s also that law allowing the Australian government to compel any tech employee in Australia to covertly insert a backdoor into the encrypted communication systems that their employer builds, which feels very similar.

The founder of an encrypted messaging app who left Australia for Switzerland after police unexpectedly visited an employee’s home says he had left because of Australia’s “hostile” stance against developers building privacy-focused apps…
Linton also pointed to the expected arrival of age assurance for social media, as well as a new code coming into effect in December on cloud and encrypted messaging providers from the eSafety commissioner, as other evidence of the hostile environment for privacy-focused apps.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/nov/05/sessi...

aaplok• 1 year ago

There are many things that are illegal to minors around the world, and that teenagers do anyway. That's what (healthy) teenagers do: disobey.

The purpose of these laws is to make it illegal for adults to encourage those behaviours.

dyauspitr• 1 year ago

Who cares? It’s not one unified place they can all congregate.

averageRoyalty3• 1 year ago

The vast majority of teens don't have the skillset to cover their tracks like that. Although the vast majority of parents don't know how to check logs.

The issue here (as always) is a parenting one. If you are supervising your children (as is your responsibility) then these issues can't happen. I hear from people all the time that supervision is unrealistic and not feasible, from the same people who have 12+ hours of screen time reports on their phones...

No government policy or technical solution will cover for people being shitty, disconnected parents.

kennysoona4• 1 year ago

The vast majority of teens don't have the skillset to cover their tracks like that.

Every class has a classmate, or sibling or friend of a classmate who would have the skills, and you only need one such kid for a few hundred people.

The issue here (as always) is a parenting one. If you are supervising your children (as is your responsibility) then these issues can't happen.

I would say teens shouldn't be supervised to this extent and pushback against such tight supervision is natural and IMO justified.

teaearlgraycold• 1 year ago

They should just ban social media for everyone and see what happens.

asdefghyk• 1 year ago

Yes if social media companies can not implement for under 16, just ban them in complete country. If they do not do it, put owners in jail.

mianos2• 1 year ago

As an Australian parent of a 14-year-old, I find social media to be a significant hassle. Yet, I know delivery drivers who are far more technologically proficient than many government leaders. I had expected that, even if the public face was somewhat just a pretty face and a good talker, there would be a knowledgeable team working behind the scenes. However, this ban has convinced me that there isn’t a single informed voice involved in the process.

reshlo2• 1 year ago

And if you weren’t already convinced, along comes the article to drive that point home…

“I think the genesis of this movement has been Jonathan Haidt, author of the book The Anxious Generation, and he even admits some of the research is mixed. And it's true that it is not necessarily causal.”

mianos2• 1 year ago

I am pretty sure that even without social media, I would face similar challenges in other aspects of life. Growing up in an era without the internet did not prevent my brother from engaging in all sorts of outrageous, and even illegal, antics. The defining characteristic of social media, however, is its unparalleled provision of convenient access to anxiety.

WarOnPrivacy6• 1 year ago

For anyone looking for info on Jonathan Haidt, Techdirt has covered him for a while.

https://www.techdirt.com/tag/jonathan-haidt/

JH is the poster child for SM->Youth MH alarmism. His flawed premise have directed society down a wrong road.

ggm• 1 year ago

Homomorphic encryption and trusted third parties. It's what the Australian Privacy Commission, and the CSIRO (government funded (commonwealth) scientific industrial research organisation) said would probably work.

proxynoproxy2• 1 year ago

Nah, that kid of math is illegal in Australia.

“The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia”

jakub_g• 1 year ago

84% of 8- to 12-year-olds are already on social media. And interestingly, we asked, "Were your parents or any adults aware that you were setting up these social media accounts early?" And 80% of them said yes. And in 90% of cases, it was parents that helped them set up their accounts

What's preventing the parents to do the account creation verification for the kids, and then kids just taking over the account? (Unless there's constant re-verification daily, which no apps do)

The only thing is that the ban gives parents some way to say "no" but given enough nagging...

Or, you know, they can find someone a few years elder, just like when buying booze and cigarettes.

mcdeltat• 1 year ago

84% of 8 year olds? What the heck? What is an 8 year old even doing on social media? I knew many teenagers use social media, but kids under 10? Sure there's no way social media is a meaningful/useful experience at that stage of brain and social development.

noselasd• 1 year ago

8 year olds can watch TikTok videos for hours

averageRoyalty3• 1 year ago

The only thing is that the ban gives parents some way to say "no"

They can already say no. You know how? "No."

I think the concept of autonomy we teach to children has a lot of positives, but combined with an entire generation who want to be friends with - not parents to - their kids, it's causing a lot of problems.

You are the adult. If the kid says they want a phone, you can say no. If they want social media, you can say no. You can take away their things as punishment. You are a parent and you have a responsibility to sometimes be an arsehole when you don't want to be, for their sake.

Yes, there are consequnces to choices you make for your kids - from food to where you live to the role model you present to if they have social media. I highly doubt most normal parents have sat down and done a cost/benefit to their kids having access to this crap.

snoxy• 1 year ago

Forget what the privacy commissioner says, it’ll be whatever the government’s flavour of the month consultancy tells them to do. As per usual.

Hizonner• 1 year ago

And medical research has shown based on your hand movement, it can identify your age.

She may not be lying. She may just be a big enough fucking idiot to believe the AV industry's lies.

But my guess is that they're both knowingly lying.

Calamityjanitor• 1 year ago

Poor Grant in this article was always against the law but now has to talk as if it's a good idea.

I looked into who was pushing for this law; a personality on a Murdoch owned radio station, along with Murdoch's News corp, a TV advertising company owner, and Jonathan Haidt as mentioned in the article, who is an anti-woke anti-academia hack https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2024/07/why-academics-...

Feels weird and gross to me that legacy media / advertising companies are crying over kids's mental health when they've been targeting teenagers with impossible standards and negatively influencing their self image for decades.

My personal conspiracy theory is that it was done to avoid scrutiny of advertising practices. A few months before academics started publishing findings on how problematic social media ads are; unhealthy foods, gambling, alcohol, and just plain scams. https://www.admscentre.org.au/adobservatory/

With 'kids' removed from social media, advertisers can better get away with less savoury stuff.

XorNot3• 1 year ago

Well, it's also because apparently the gambling lobby donates a ton of money to whoever is in government and there's just absolutely no possible way we could stop every vacant TV spot, bus side and radio station being wall to wall sports betting advertising.

Roll out Matt Damon to talk about the potential of it!

numpad0• 1 year ago

  ...But there are digital identity providers, like one called Yoti, that can estimate someone's age using facial recognition technology.

  But we do want to make sure there is not discrimination, or bias, and some of these technologies are less accurate depending on the kind of face being scanned. I met with an age assurance provider last week in Washington, D.C., who is using an AI-based system that looks at hand movements and has a 99% success rate.

Both of these are interesting: first part implies that face -> age is considered no-go even with NN and even outside academia. And the second part, does that mean one can potentially ask a person to show a hand, or even feed a video stream of hand(s) moving, and make algorithmically generated remarks about the person or the group?

proxynoproxy2• 1 year ago

Grand Censor Fascist Julie Inman Grant, Cyber Karen of Australia, will get her wish - excommunication of the Australian people.

Social media will block Australian users of all ages. Australian users were really not that valuable anyway, and this just isn’t worth the trouble.

antisol• 1 year ago

How will Australia's under-16 social media ban work?

Ooh! Ooh! I know this one!

It won't.

There are a couple of ways I see it going.

1) Let's just say there are 300 days left before the ban takes effect. Option 1 is that in 298 days, after every tech person in the world telling them how stupid and ineffective the idea is, and when the dumb populace realises "wait now everybody is going to have to verify their id to use social media?", the law gets repealed. This will happen quietly and without any media circus, because Australia has no independent media, OR:

2) The ban goes into effect. On the same day, teens abandon social media en-masse. Nobody knows where they've gone. Weirdly, these events correlate with a spike in VPN subscriptions encrypted traffic to decentralised services.

I'm hoping for the second one - a more security aware next-generation would be a good thing.

How will Australia's under-16 social media ban work? We asked the law's enforcer (2024)

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