Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/australia-social-media-ban-takes-effect-world-first-2025-12-09/

by chirau • 8 months ago

960 1504 8 months ago

reuters.com

https://archive.md/i0VxX

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cwy54q80gy9t

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/world/asia/australia-soci... (https://archive.ph/Ba2JR)

JSR_FDED2• 8 months ago

I’m not against teens communicating with each other online, but I’m very much against the algorithm-driven dopamine addiction factories that are social media today.

Imagine a whole generation of teens with attention spans longer than 15 seconds…they might actually realize their incredible potential!

lm284696• 7 months ago

If you ever worked with people who fully grew up with modern social media and just entered the workforce you know we're already doomed, there is no recovery from this, that's why governments are starting to act

whimsicalism22• 7 months ago

alarmist nonsense

Erikun• 8 months ago

It will be interesting to see how this pans out.

jaimex26• 7 months ago

About as well as the anti-pirate site blocking. Were the world leaders in piracy.

ChrisArchitect• 8 months ago

Australia compliance etc etc...

....

But then also global measures?

Teen account holders under 18 everywhere will get a version of Reddit with more protective safety features built in, including stricter chat settings, no ads personalization or sensitive ads, and no access to NSFW or mature content.

kevin0612• 8 months ago

Awesome. I hope they do the same in Europe. Children should not be addicted to TikTok.

d3Xt3r• 7 months ago

Forget the children, no one should be subjected to the brainrot that is TikTok. Or any form of vertical short videos for that matter.

kevin0612• 7 months ago

True.

AndrewDucker• 7 months ago

I'm not sure that "vertical videos" are any worse than horizontal ones, round ones, pentagonal ones, or any other layout.

about3fitty• 8 months ago

Besides this being ineffective for the motivated, it might have a subtle antitrust effect.

As kids find alternative platforms, perhaps they will be vendor locked to them instead of the Meta empire.

Bratmon2• 7 months ago

I think you're 180° backwards on that.

How many alternative platforms are there really going to be that can afford to develope and operate the legally-mandated age-detection ML-models?

Especially after the bureaucrats see that the law isn't working and start looking for scapegoats without massive lawyer teams to make an example of

samdoesnothing3• 7 months ago

Why would they do that? There are plenty of platforms that simply won't care, and there's stuff like Mastodon et al.

N_Lens• 7 months ago

Quite a decisive move by the Australian government. I don't know if it's a move in the right direction or not but the research clearly shows that around the time social media became mainstream, teens' and preteens' mental health took a nosedive (Especially girls).

hallole• 7 months ago

Hugely decisive! Feels more like a policy for idyllic hypotheticals. "Suppose we could ban social media..." well, hey, they actually did it.

I'm very interested to see how their socializing evolves in response to such a shock. Do the social behaviors of pre-internet times re-emerge? "Third spaces" reappear overnight? We shall see!

protocolture20• 7 months ago

well, hey, they actually did it.

They passed legislation, its not clear at all that they succeeded.

rainonmoon3• 7 months ago

Given that “social media” is in fact not banned and all this does is impact a select (and frankly logically inconsistent) list of services, this seems very unlikely. Children are still free to be groomed and gamble on Roblox and join servers belonging to The Com on Discord. To be clear I don’t think those services should be regulated by this obscene law either but this isn’t going to bring back any kind of halcyon era for kids. It will expand the surveillance of and shame around young people’s internet use, however.

akst• 7 months ago

The success so far is really just political, which has largely been shutting down debate and dismissing calls for some kind of cost analysis of what we risk losing in enforcing this.

Whenever someone brings up this stuff, the politicians take the tone that "we won't let anyone get in the way of protecting children", and this is in response to people who in good faith think this can be done better. Media oligopolist love it because it regulates big tech, so they've been happy to platform supporters of the policy as well.

Third spaces won't reappear because the planning system in most cities shuts anything down the moment someone files a compliant. They get regulated out of existence the moment police express concern young people might gather there. The planning system (which in NSW/Sydney is the worse) has only gotten worse since the 80s after the green bans. It was largely put in place to allow for community say in how cities are shape, which sounds nice but it's mostly old people with free time participating who don't value 3rd spaces, even if they might end up liking them. They just want to keep things the same and avoid parking from getting overly complicated (and this is a stone throw away from train stations and the CBD).

Third places can be fixed by reforming planning which is slowly gaining momentum via YIMBY movements, but this social media ban is just not a serious contribution to changing that. If anything Social media phenomenon like Pokemon GO contributed more to these third places lighting up.

Governance in Australia is very paternalistic, it's a more high functioning version of the UK in that sense. I think it might be in part due to the voting system being a winner takes all single seat electorate preferential voting system which has a median voter bias for least controversial candidates.

As a kid I always felt being in Australia you missed out on a lot of things people got to do in America, that has slowly changed as media and technology has become less bound by borders but looks like that being undone.

euroderf• 7 months ago

I know! Let's hang out a THE MALL!

The Seventies are BACK!

WorldPeas4• 7 months ago

I think one must also re-evaluate how in modern times a parent can be charged (by a perfect stranger) for the crime of neglecting their child when allowing them to rove unrestricted outside (within reason). I've heard of this happening in both the US and Australia, the HOA mindset really needs to die.

spwa4• 7 months ago

Thinking about this this will of course fail. Because teens will do what they did before online: make their own social networks. But by necessity these will be small.

I hope that's what will happen. That this is only really a problem for FANG, for the tech industry and doesn't actually prevent social media.

jamesbelchamber• 7 months ago

While FAANG undoubtedly have chosen profit over safety I'm not yet convinced non-FAANG social media is significantly safer, in terms of mental health, antisocial behaviour or predation.

cycomanic• 7 months ago

Funny, but I (and I believe many who support this law) would say that's a good thing. The problem is not (and never was) social interaction online, it is large corporations designing their algorithms to be as addictive as possible to tie kids as early as possible to their services.

I have had to recently get back to using Facebook (after creating the account ~15 years ago and leaving it dormant for >10 years), due to several sports clubs using it as their only means of communication. It's scary how good these algorithms have become, I often only want to look up something related to the club and end up being roped into 1h of doomscrolling. And I'm an adult with significant better impulse control than most teenagers.

nxor10• 7 months ago

Not just mental health: ability to concentrate + engagement with people around us.

sneak• 7 months ago

There is no evidence that social media use shortens attention spans or reduces social engagement offline. This is a meme, and a false one.

heathrow838292• 7 months ago

maybe it's a step in the right direction but you can't regulate away ALL parenting. I know kids in the 5th grade getting brand new Iphone 17s! i've even seen one kid at the age of 7, getting their own Ipad. some parents even force their kids to use play on their iphone, just so they don't have to keep an eye on their kid anymore. My jaw really dropped to the floor on that one.

at some point, you just have to say that parents need to start parenting again. i'm a parent, and i can tell you it's not that bad.

How are you going to prevent kids and teens from joining everything that's bad for them online??? I think regulation is just band-aid.

the ideal solution would be to have parents say "No screens" until a certain age, unless it's supervised, or on a managed device that just lets them get their homework done.

japhyr• 7 months ago

you can't regulate away ALL parenting

This is absolutely true. However, when you do away with the kind of regulation a healthy society needs, you can't then blame everything on parents.

Regulation has been presented as a bad thing for a long time now, even though it's what cleaned up our rivers that used to catch on fire. Just like taxes have been presented as a bad thing, even though they paid for all the public infrastructure we use every day.

As a society, we've lost a vision for the middle ground. It sure feels like we need to find it again, and the sooner the better.

adamesque• 7 months ago

i'm geniunely curious about how you made the jump from "here's a single regulation" all the way down the slippery slope to "can't regulate away ALL parenting". does this one regulation cross that threshold? how'd you get there?

in an ideal world, parents would also prevent their kids from smoking, but the fact that in many places minors aren't allowed to purchase tobacco sends a social signal and actually does seem to put a speed bump in place deterring casual use.

is it not _also_ ideal to have some of these regulations in place? does it not help parents make the case to their kids?

didibus3• 7 months ago

The challenge is that once they are teens, there's a pressure from others and an inclusion aspect, or access through friends and all that.

If you're the only parent putting so many rules on your kids it exclude them from what all their friends are doing and so on. That too can have a negative impact.

The balancing act becomes tricky. If they all can't use social media, it doesn't create that impact of being excluded, they all need to adapt to socialize without.

The way I see it, it's a combination, society shouldn't create a difficult environment for kids and parents to navigate as that increases the burden on parents which will likely fail. And parents need to also make sure they appropriately regulate their kids as otherwise that increases the burden on society which will also likely fail.

If both play their part though, we can raise better kids to grow into more apt adults later in life to the benefit of everyone.

Gigachad14• 7 months ago

We have had 10+ years of asking parents to solve the problem and the situation has only gotten worse. "Just parent better" is good advice at an individual level but it doesn't solve problems at a society level.

mvdtnz3• 7 months ago

Is this around the same time we started over diagnosing mental health disorders?

'Life being stressful is not an illness' – GPs on mental health over-diagnosis

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2pvxdn9v4o

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46172682

pinkmuffinere2• 7 months ago

At the very least, I appreciate that this test should help us determine the causal impact of social media. I don't know if rolling out to the whole country is justified just for the test data, but I feel it will give a pretty conclusive result one way or the other.

hephaes7us2• 7 months ago

Teens will learn to bypass all this within the week. Then, whatever the new way of doing social media will be, it could easily reach consensus within the year.

TimByte5• 7 months ago

The mental health trends are real, but pinning them exclusively on social media risks missing a lot of context

cube00• 7 months ago

Those rates will drop even lower if they start trying to use LLMs to fill the gap.

creata2• 7 months ago

I can't see this as decisive.

* The ban only targets ten services.

* The ban applies only to actually logging into the service - everything can still be viewed when logged out. Users are still being tracked while logged out.

* Reddit (and possibly other services) are complying simply by using heuristics to detect under-16 users - they're not even employing any reliable verification measures.

Nursie7• 7 months ago

The ban only targets ten services.

This is considered a startup phase AFAICT, with others being looked at as necessary.

The ban applies only to actually logging into the service - everything can still be viewed when logged out. Users are still being tracked while logged out.

Sure, but it stops kids bullying each other, and a service you can't fully interact with is not very interesting, stops kids putting their pics/videos/whatever online.

Reddit (and possibly other services) are complying simply by using heuristics to detect under-16 users - they're not even employing any reliable verification measures.

They are using heuristics and then an external verification service if the heuristics set off an alarm. It's not perfect at present, sure, but I don't think it has to be.

We'll see how effective it is over time I guess.

bob_theslob646• 7 months ago

How does a country effectively enforce this? Below is how they propose doing this. If you don't have any form of verification of your actual age, it's seems like they are just going on what the user says ( self reports). How can a company be found liable if a used lies about their age?

the days leading to the ban, some teenagers said that they were prompted to verify their ages using a facial analysis feature, but that it gave inaccurate estimates. The law also states that companies cannot ask users to provide government-issued identification as the only way to prove their age because of privacy concerns.

Avicebron• 7 months ago

How can a company be found liable if a used lies about their age?

You make them bleed money when you find they are in violation. They either figure it out or they go under as a company. There isn't a natural law saying companies have a right to exist.

samdoesnothing3• 7 months ago

Or they leave the country, which would then be very unpopular for the governing parties involved.

nrhrjrjrjtntbt6• 7 months ago

More akin to their data centre electricity costs. They pay it and move on.

t0lo2• 7 months ago

How can seatbelts be enforced? This is preposterous and imbecilic- if there isn't a policeman inside every car checking every minute how will we make sure that people are wearing them. Clearly there is no point in trying!

wiredpancake2• 7 months ago

There is seatbelt cameras in Australia.

They are everywhere, they can also be mobile and placed almost anywhere. These camera are mounted high so they can view down in through the windscreen.

They automatically issue a $1,251 for not wearing one to the license holder.

fpauser3• 7 months ago

Not wearing seatbelts is preposterous.

NoPicklez8• 7 months ago

Go and read the actual report of what the eSafety commissioner is requiring.

The company can't be found liable if they have put in reasonable age verification technology, particularly if the user lied about their age or found a way to circumvent the restrictions.

They clearly aren't going by just what the user says as the companies have implemented age verification tools that try to do that detection.

nacozarina• 7 months ago

this is an egregious violation of their civil rights.

the law of unintended consequences looms large.

NoPicklez8• 7 months ago

Like what?

Kids not being able to do particular things until they're of age? That's much of an egregious violation of their civil rights.

bccdee2• 7 months ago

I think you could argue teenagers have a right to discuss political issues in the public forum. That's basically the definition of good citizenship, and (for better or worse) social media is the public forum of the day. Kids don't go from zero rights at 17 to full rights at 18; minors' rights are limited, but they do have rights.

I dunno if that'd fly in Australian courts though.

MomsAVoxell3• 7 months ago

Kids not being informed about the war crimes of their state, and other states.

shirro2• 7 months ago

Australia does not have a bill of rights. Our freedoms are guaranteed by our participation in the electoral process which is very high. This government governs with a large majority and the social media legislation is broadly popular with parents and older people.

The law of unintended consequences will apply. The legislation has been written in such a way that there is some flexibility in the application and there are some safeguards but its not directly addressing some of the biggest social harms. It's primary purpose (despite the conspiracies) seems to be populism and being seen to do do something for the kiddies.

The much bigger social problem is gambling which is out of control here. The second, related problem, is the use of techniques and studies by the gambling industry in games and social media to increase engagement which is what is messing with peoples heads. The government does not dare to touch the gambling industry or stop algorithmic placement of content. This would cause immense damage to company profits and create lobbying pressure.

demarq• 7 months ago

If all the kids start pretending to be grownups, they end up escaping all the protections put in place to protect kids in the first place.

In football we call this an own goal

add-sub-mul-div• 7 months ago

Not really, it gives them justification to more thoroughly remove privacy and anonymity in order to make sure the age and identity of the user are more confidently known.

squigz14• 7 months ago

I'm fairly confident that's not how it works, but am happy to be proven wrong?

deminature2• 7 months ago

As an Australian experiencing this first hand and considerably older than 16, absolutely nothing has changed. It seems like all the social networks are doing age estimation of accounts and only taking action on those that fail and are detected as underage. The change is otherwise completely invisible if you're an adult user. Obviously I'm only a sample size of 1, but I've not heard of any other adults being adversely affected by this, so it seems the estimation is accurate.

Pretty well executed - I'm impressed. Given how seamlessly this occurred, it will undoubtedly be rolled out in Europe next year, as the EU has expressed an interest in doing so, but was waiting to see how the implementation went in Australia.

NoPicklez8• 7 months ago

Pretty much aligns with how I have felt it here in Aus as well

bigfatkitten3• 7 months ago

Nothing has changed for my 15 year old either. It’s business as usual today for her.

She says only one of her friends has been challenged by a platform so far, and that was by Snapchat. That friend got another 14 year old friend to pass the facial age detection check on her behalf.

rkagerer• 7 months ago

pass the facial age detection

Are you kidding me? So the answer is let's let some random vendors used by said corporation scan her face? This feels like using DNA sequencing to confirm you're tall enough to ride the rollercoaster.

eviks3• 7 months ago

Interesting, was she unable to pass the test just didn't even risk it, thinking the algo is good and can reliably detect reality?

morshu90018• 7 months ago

It'd be funny if suddenly a lot of adult Asian women could no longer use social media

protocolture20• 7 months ago

Pretty well executed - I'm impressed.

It seems like a handful of sites havent even switched over. Most are just estimating. Theres no clear indication that the execution has been anything but botched, unless convenience for older people was the only metric.

rainonmoon3• 7 months ago

The government have previously stated they won’t pursue breaches unless they’re particularly egregious anyway so this is basically shameless political theatre.

hashmap• 7 months ago

The execution didn't finish; it started. Big policy changes typically take time to solidify, and it'll probably take a bit to get a reliable read on its trajectory. But there is international momentum on this, so making predictions based on whatever percentage of people that were supposed to have their accounts deactivated actually did the day of (if we even have that data, and I doubt that we do), is probably not going to be useful.

vintermann• 7 months ago

Apropos social media and age, I have some relatives with the last name of Aam. (Åm or Aam is an old farm in the Volda area of Sunnmøre, Norway).

If you try searching them in Facebook, you get a message telling you your search has been stopped and you should seek help you sicko, searching for... "Age abuse material" maybe? I don't know why it freaks out on those three letters, but it does.

This was in the news a year ago, and they still haven't changed it. Go and try if you want.

So allow me to doubt that the implementation is going to be smooth. For you maybe. If you instead end up in some algorithmic Kafka nightmare, don't count on your social media friends to notice.

abirch• 7 months ago

You have to see if it's in a corporation's interest for false positives or false negatives. For you and AAM, it costs Facebook almost nothing for a false positive on "age abuse material" so I would expect them to continue to flag your family name as a false positive.

With snap and others, I would expect them to focus on reducing false negatives and give the benefit of the doubt to the kid who is under 16. Worst case, you say "Mea Culpa" and update your algorithm accordingly to any cases that you missed but the state has found.

subscribed4• 7 months ago

I'm an adult, not living in Australia, and yet my backup Roblox account has been barred from using any form of in-app chat unless I send my face and ID to some third party service.

All of my (adult) friends living in AU had to perform various forms of age checks on almost all platforms they used, which seems to be very far from invisible.

I'd much prefer anonymous, safe, reliable age checks (that can be done!) that don't require me to spray my personal data at the dozens of companies either in the weird jurisdictions or with dubious privacy commitments records (like Bluesky using Epic Games services, famously fined over half of billion dollars for violating children's privacy laws and deceptive practices). Yeah, that's doable. No, won't happen because it's a out the control.

taejavu2• 7 months ago

Can you give examples of what your friends had to do for each platform? No one I know has been affected, so it does seem “invisible” to me. However I’ve also been an adult for quite some time now. If you don’t mind me asking, are your friends young adults?

someNameIG• 7 months ago

As an Australian the only platforms I have that asked for an age check were Discord and Bluesky. Which is funny as neither came under this legislation, they're implementing this because they chose to.

Nothing from Reddit or any of the Meta platforms which have to comply with this legislation.

theshackleford2• 7 months ago

but I've not heard of any other adults being adversely affected by this

I’m a 40 year old man and I’ve been impacted. A huge circle of people I know have been impacted. A number of companies now want to scan my license or my face, which will be fantastic when they keep it (despite saying they don’t) and then get breached in 6 months.

zmmmmm6• 7 months ago

Pretty well executed

There's a long way still to go on this. It's one of those changes where positive effects are experienced early but many if not most of the negative effects will surface over weeks, months or years.

falaki2• 7 months ago

I really hope other nations, including the United States, copy this. Australia proved that it is possible. I think the results will be so overwhelmingly positive that others will take notice. Good job Australia!

Reading "Anxious Generation" is a must for all parents in this day and age.

tartoran• 7 months ago

Of course it is possible, why would it not? I'm glad this is happening and I'm sure it'll follow in other countries, probably not the in the US though. Frankly I really hope most people just get off social media's grip and start interacting the way we used to.

AngryData• 7 months ago

Isn't it a little early to declare success? I think the bigger worry with the US though is not whether it is technically possible, but whether anyone in power cares to actually help kids versus using this it as an excuse to implement Orwellian surveillance upon citizens.

anakaine6• 7 months ago

Surveillance could be part of it, if you let it be. Improved mental health, education, and social outcomes for each generation is also pretty darned important.

falaki2• 7 months ago

Alcohol, tobacco and many other products have age restrictions, so do cars and many other products of the modern society. Social media can and should have age restrictions.

Cpoll• 7 months ago

Reading "Anxious Generation" is a must for all parents in this day and age.

Great, another Oprah's book club book that assures parents that there's just one easy trick to saving your children.

protocolture20• 7 months ago

While I am definitely in favor of the US causing itself more damage, its actually quite sickening to see people spruiking this legislation.

First of all, Australia has proven nothing, kids are stepping politely over this barrier without issue.

Second we are already hearing from disabled teens losing their only social lifeline.

Congratulations, you have isolated and disenfranchised a bunch of kids.

anakaine6• 7 months ago

The changes are not even 12 hours old for most of Australia and people are declaring failure. Far out.

tamimio• 7 months ago

I hope it won’t, because the whole thing is just a medium to enable digital ID using fears as a justification, in this time it’s kids.

The whole ‘anxious generation’ isn’t because of social media, it’s because the new generations are hopeless and helpless (incl genz and millennials too), wherever you look in any domain, it’s bleak times waiting ahead for them, boomers fucked them up severely and now want to suppress them with laws and bills and control them because they know for a fact something will snap at this current rate.

protocolture20• 7 months ago

Its crazy how the AusGov has just tried to turn this into some kind of nationalistic celebration. Passing laws isolating children isnt to be celebrated by lighting up national monuments.

batiudrami• 7 months ago

Isolating children? They’re schoolchildren! They see their peers at school every day.

deadbolt2• 7 months ago

Isolated from ads sold by the social media companies lol

protocolture20• 7 months ago

We already have reports about disabled kids experiencing suicidal ideation due to losing their only non family social connections.

Not to mention that Australias youth are quite politically engaged, we have a news network entirely run by teenagers that just had their service gutted.

emulatedmedia• 7 months ago

Isolating children from what? If anything, this will make they spend more time with their friends and family

squigz14• 7 months ago

What about the kids who are bullied and isolated at school? What about those who have an abusive family?

nxor10• 7 months ago

Absolutely second this, and I am part of the younger generation. Technology is isolating. Social media feeds superficial relationships. The anxiety it creates is so worrying.

protocolture20• 7 months ago

Isolating children from what?

We already have reports of disabled kids experiencing suicidal ideation as they are cut off from their only non familial social experience.

lm284696• 7 months ago

Do you have kids ? Do you see kids in your day to day life ? I do, every day, and even <10 years old already have permanent neck damage from scrolling as soon as they haves 5 seconds of free time. I see groups of friends walking back from schools, they're side by side, scrolling on their phone, not talking, not even looking in front of them. I walk by 3 schools multiple times every single day and that's all I see as soon as they're outside of the playground (because they're not allowed while inside). Locking up kids inside social media echo chambers is much more isolation than kicking them out of them imho

wahnfrieden2• 7 months ago

They already excluded many popular and addictive services that are used for grooming

This will enhance surveillance and state control of content, but not address the problems you’ve mentioned

protocolture20• 7 months ago

I do have a son. I plan to tell my kiddo not to engage with those platforms and set boundaries. I dont plan to force every kid in every scenario into the same pattern.

Locking up kids inside social media echo chambers is much more isolation than kicking them out of them imho

"Locking" Why not instead ban the social graph, or certain engagement techniques. Theres a whole other arm here, where the AusGov has pulled back entirely from promised gambling restrictions. Its easy to see a path where dark patterns in both industries are outlawed instead of banning half.

Not to mention that 4chan and youtube are unaffected, so I doubt those kids with the broken backs or whatever are going to be "free".

cal_dent2• 7 months ago

I don't necessarily think this as it is will "work" but I'm all for someone at least trying to do something. Yes, there are a bunch of externalities and potential second order effects that don't sit well with me but, at this stage, I'd rather some attempt at trying to regulate than throwing up hands and saying its all too hard.

Also, dont buy the this is the slippery slope to more authoritarianism etc. as an argument against it because if they're going to go down that path they would anyway whether they did this or not frankly

Anyway, it might not work 100% of the time, hell maybe even <10% but any additional friction to knock this kind of social media from being so ubiquitous is a small victory in my eyes

eviks3• 7 months ago

If you just want to try something that doesn't work, why not legislate touching grass every morning without all the downsides of a dumb blanket ban?

cal_dent2• 7 months ago

Yes, excellent idea. Let’s do that too

Simulacra3• 7 months ago

I like to win another poster said about addiction to cigarettes other things. The world drugs was an absolute failure. I think that is how this is going to go, lots of regulation and expenditure for something that's going to ultimately fail. Can't really work unless it's a little authoritarian, such as permitting Websites to only allow youth who have a permit. But I am in agreement, we need to do more, and we can't really depend on the parents anymore. So I think in a way, we have to make it costly for children to do things they're not supposed to be doing, but without disadvantaging certain groups.

taylorius• 7 months ago

I sense a great disturbance in the force - millions of teens muttering "for fuck's sake" and tossing their phones onto the sofa.

Simulacra3• 7 months ago

The force is the sunlight that will shine upon their skin when they go outside!

pmsh• 7 months ago

Well it's Australia, this is just one more drop in an ocean of anti-youth policy...

ed_mercer• 7 months ago

This is great. Even if it doesn’t actually keep teens off, it sends the message that social media is bad for you. Just like smoking and drinking.

metalman• 7 months ago

any kid who cant figure out how to slide right by a government hack is a looser, and while we should feel a little bad for both of them, presumambly someone will take pity and fix there phones up , and let them know that there is sex and everything on the net

nephihaha2• 7 months ago

There is a pattern of government using moral panics to exert greater control. Australia and New Zealand seem to be used as a testbed for projects which are introduced elsewhere.

The UK government wishes to police social media more heavily, and has been using internet porn and illegal immigration (two unrelated issues) to push through digital ID. The exact same mentality - controversy, panic, dubious solution...

In this case, we have a genuine issue and a dubious solution.

The answer: meet in person. Talk to people offline.

TimByte5• 7 months ago

The offline-socializing point is good, but it's also a cultural shift that won't magically happen because a law is passed. If anything, the hard part is rebuilding the offline spaces and social norms that used to make that easy.

nephihaha2• 7 months ago

I agree. I had to coax people out after lockdown and it took years.

We do need offline spaces. I've been out for a Christmas lunch today. Much more meaningful than meeting on Zoom or whatever. I don't hate technology but I think we have to use it widely.

iteria2• 7 months ago

Kids are in these spaces because there is no place for them to be. People call the police on unaccompanied kids outside. Teens are banned from malls. Where are teens supposed to be where they won't be harassed. When I was a kid we used to just wander around and chat. There used to be a whole event on Friday evenings where high schoolers would decent on this mall across the street from two movie theaters. We went to the skating ring. There were teen clubs. More. Right now, I can't think of a single place a teen could just hang out besides at each other houses which is mostly what I watch them do. It makes sense why they end up in virtual spaces. They can socialize privately that way.

mvdtnz3• 7 months ago

What do you think is happening in New Zealand with regards to "moral panic" projects?

protocolture20• 7 months ago

Australias eSafety office only occurred because of the Christchurch shooting. The Australian government wanted a sniff of that moral panic, and said it needed the right to remove videos of the shooting from the internet. Thats the office that has been pushing for this law. You can draw a direct line from Christchurch to this event.

The Kiwis tightened their gun laws after the incident, despite having done pretty well with what they had until that year.

In both events, both governments paraded around saying shit like "Leading the world" such as Australia is once again doing here. Its much like Godwins favourite dictator going abroad to spruik his fantastic free holiday / political retraining resort. "World Leading" is the absence of any other quality terminology.

For Australias case, during the 00s and early 10s we actually had a really huge internet freedom movement. Previous attacks on the internet had bee repelled quite gracefully. It took such a moral panic to finally put Australia in its place, and now we are looking at a further consequence of that moral failure.

mullingitover7• 7 months ago

Florida passed a similar law, and a bunch of other states are attempting to but are blocked by federal courts. Will be interesting to see if the tech industry allows it, or decides to break up the federal government before it becomes too powerful.

chistev• 7 months ago

Break up the federal government?

gentooflux• 7 months ago

I believe they're implying that there's an unhealthy amount of regulatory capture in favor of big tech

estimator7292• 7 months ago

We're already on the fast track to becoming an authoritarian state. It's not too much of a stretch to imagine the next step is dissolving congress and installing a new constitution. Or just throwing it out entirely and defining the law of the land on the whims of a senile man

rusk2• 7 months ago

It was a clever riff on the current situation where business tells government

kube-system• 7 months ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawn%27s_Early_Light:_Taking_B...

That is basically what the Heritage Foundation wants to do.

mullingitover7• 7 months ago

In an effort to curtail the organization’s outsized influence, Facebook announced Monday that it would be implementing new steps to ensure the breakup of the U.S. government before it becomes too powerful. [1]

I'm old enough to remember when The Onion didn't just report the news.

[1] https://theonion.com/facebook-announces-plan-to-break-up-u-s...

betteryet4• 7 months ago

How about we break up the tech industry instead?

This muskian "I am above laws so I'll break up the USA/EU" is asinine and societies should come down on it like a ton of bricks.

eddythompson802• 7 months ago

Is the assumption that non "tech industry" communities (e.g: voat, parler, ovaries, gab, truth, lemmy, mastodon, 4chan, 8chan, etc) are less likely to be a problem or to negatively impact teens than the mainstream "big tech" ones (e.g: facebook, twitter, youtube, tiktok, reddit, etc)?

atmosx5• 7 months ago

I agree. It’s just there has not been a pro-EU vote in any form or capacity by any EU population. So the stopped doing referendums but the EU grew only even more unpopular- and lately with VDL and KK, its as if its a cruel joke we all expect for it to end soon.

RobotToaster• 7 months ago

Why not both?

stronglikedan• 7 months ago

It's not going to happen, at least not in the land of crony capitalism.

eikenberry2• 7 months ago

Because Fedgov stopped any real anti-trust regulation over a century ago and have shown they have no will nor ability to change that since.

hearsathought4• 7 months ago

Florida passed a similar law, and a bunch of other states are attempting to but are blocked by federal courts.

When much of government ( federal, state, local ) communication is done via social meda, would it be legal to ban anyone from accessing it?

Or are official government social media sites required to be accessible to everyone?

jedberg• 7 months ago

People under 18 don't have the same rights.

stevage3• 7 months ago

The Australian ban doesn't block anyone from accessing content.

rcMgD2BwE72F• 7 months ago

Why ban social media when ad-supported media is the culprit? Remove the incentive (to get users to doom scroll, to polarize, to impulse buy…) and you change the behavior.

I remember when social media was sane 15+ years ago. The problem is the business model, not socializing. It's crazy to ban it when being a teen is the beginning of socializing!

killingtime74• 7 months ago

Socialising != Social media. Teens can still use messenger, WhatsApp, phonecalls, text or even....face to face!

baby• 7 months ago

That's true. I'll say this though: my social life skyrocketed thanks to Facebook when I was ~18. Not sure what kind of impact it would have had earlier, I was def. more of a kid and social medias were not a thing anyway. Makes sense to me to have an age limit considering cyber bullying and teen suicides and all.

barbazoo8• 7 months ago

How come ad supported TV existed for decades without destroying children's mental health?

The algorithms create the engagement, the engagement lures in the ads, not the other way around, at least that's what I think right now.

yifanl• 7 months ago

Well arguably TV did destroy people's brains, just a lot slower and less efficiently.

And in fairness, dosage is the difference between a painkiller an a heroin addiction.

ch2026• 7 months ago

We had the same fear mongering in the 80’s and early 90’s about TV. And in the 20’s and 30’s about radio programs.

Same shit, new generation.

jfindper11• 7 months ago

How come ad supported TV existed for decades without destroying children's mental health?

Well, there's at least a few reasons this is different than the current situation.

1) It's expensive to make a TV show, it's free to do a fortnite dance or eat a tide pod and post it to several websites. The amount of low-effort, low-quality, probably-harmful content on TikTok or whatever is exponentially more than low-effort, low-quality, probably-harmful TV shows/ads.

2) The availability is on completely different scales. TVs are (basically) fixed in a specific place. Phones are, for most people, within arms reach 24/7.

3) What can be shown on TV is significantly more regulated in most parts of the world, and control mechanisms by governments are more robust (pull a broadcast license, etc.). It's harder to take a website (or TikTok, whatever) offline than it is to pull a harmful show/advert off of HGTV or whatever your favorite channel is.

4) TV is not specifically tailored to the viewer to produce the most amount of happy chemical.

testing223212• 7 months ago

In Australia TV is very commonly referred to as “the idiot box”.

Australians are very aware that it destroys people’s brains.

kentm• 7 months ago

How come ad supported TV existed for decades without destroying children's mental health?

I would argue that it did, we just did a poor job of measuring it.

Anecdotally, during my childhood I moved from a place that had very little TV advertising to a place with a normal amount and it had a noticeable impact.

micromacrofoot• 7 months ago

TV programming has to broadly appeal to society generally... you can't really go down a niche algorithm that progressively feeds you more specific content until you're radicalized any certain way (it can sorta, see conservative media, but there are some guardrails). Social media can with much less restriction.

safety1st2• 7 months ago

I don't think it's just the ads, I mean we had magazines, TV, and the web, they all had advertising, and no population-level impact on child & teen mental health impact was observed as these were adopted.

Then we got the one-two punch of social media apps on phones, and everywhere we saw these get adopted, we saw depression and anxiety increase en masse.

My own theory is that if you have to pick one thing it's the phone, because screen time/attention skyrockets when you get one of those, and they can have you freaking out about whatever clickbait they're feeding you pretty much 24/7. When I grew up there was just a computer in the den and when I wasn't in the den, whatever I'd viewed on it was out of sight, mostly out of mind.

Xelbair• 7 months ago

The previous static ads of the past are completely different beast compared to targeted advertising and attention driven design(leading to doomscrolling etc).

fainpul• 7 months ago

we had magazines, TV, and the web, they all had advertising, and no population-level impact on child & teen mental health impact was observed as these were adopted

That is not true. Distorted body perception, anorexia etc. due to omnipresent photoshopped models in magazines and poster ads where a thing decades ago.

Things escalated with social media, but there were issues long before that.

squigz14• 7 months ago

My own theory is that kids are rightfully anxious and depressed as they can now easily see the state of the world and the direction it's going. This is the world they have to enter soon, and they can do almost nothing to change it, so of course they're more anxious/depressed.

wat100002• 7 months ago

It's the combination of ads, analytics, personalization, and scale.

Ads mean that you want to keep the user on your platform as long as possible. They are incentivized to make it addictive at the most fundamental level. A company selling movies doesn't care how often you watch the movies you buy, they just want to convince you to buy them. A company that makes money for each minute you spend watching a movie would put out very different products.

Analytics mean they can precisely see the effect of any given change to figure out what makes the product more addictive.

Personalization means they can tailor your experience to be addictive to you, personally, rather than just generally addictive to people.

And scale means they can afford to pay enormous amounts of money to a lot of smart people and have them work full time on the problem of making the product more addictive.

I don't know what you do about it.

Simulacra3• 7 months ago

I remember when Facebook required a university address. That made it..unique to me. Perhaps there are ways to have a permitting process for kids through their parents and guardians that only access sites with that permit. Idk. South Korea has those internet license which I chaff at but.. It's a hard problem.

nick238• 7 months ago

Decades ago, there was less competition for eyeballs, much more high-quality content (vs. slop), and investors were a bit willing to just build an audience without seeking immediate returns. Early social media was aspirin: a useful drug, but not addictive. Now it's super-cocaine and hyper-meth trying to keep the user high.

Also, what's an 'ad' is an extreme spectrum nowadays with free stuff given out in exchange for a post, people trying to act like paid influencers to fake it until they make it, paid influencers, and listicle affiliate link slop.

TimByte5• 7 months ago

Yeah, ad-driven feeds definitely pushed platforms into the doom-scrolling feedback loop. But for better or worse, governments don't really know how to regulate "the business model" without blowing up the whole internet economy

awillowingmind6• 7 months ago

I despise ads. I take any chance I can to pay for my content rather than support ad-based revenue.

But you can’t solve that issue with policy. It’s a cultural issue. People are not willing to pay for the content they consume (with money).

Not to mention you would collapse the US economy (I’m not sure if you’re US based, just speaking from my perspective), and likely others, if you applied a blanket ban on ad-supported media.

riversflow• 7 months ago

I long thought this way, but I’ve realized ad-supported social media/internet is an objectively egalitarian funding path that has allowed the open web to thrive and flourish. If you have a way of funding the internet that doesn’t shut out literally Billions because they cant afford it, I’m all ears.

Complaining about ads is kinda like complaining about homeless people. You are just servicing your own annoyance without actually engaging in critical thought. It is selfish behavior.

naravara2• 7 months ago

I think 70-80% of it is the business model, but the other 20-30% might just be baked into how it is.

Jonathan Haidt talks about how once social media usage became ubiquitous among teenagers around 2015 mental health problems began to skyrocket. And a big part of this was the algorithm serving up content designed to make people feel bad, but another part around feelings of being bullied turned out to largely be kids seeing their friends hanging out with each other without inviting them and this provoking feelings of alienation. That’s inevitable, I felt bad when I found out about parties or hang-outs I didn’t get invited to at that age as well. But I didn’t even know about 90% of them, and those I did I heard about through passing references rather than a stream of pictures and albums about how much fun everyone was having without me.

I think some level of a sense of isolation is inevitable under those circumstances, though I’m not sure that by itself would rise to the level of banning it outright. At least not before trying other interventions like addressing Meta’s “19 strikes before banning you for CSAM” rule. Kids are just the canaries in the coal mine here. Whatever these services are doing that is cooking developing brains is still turning up the heat on adult brains too, we can’t try to pretend we can be psychologically healthy engaging with something that we know is spiking depression and anxiety in our kids.

The culture of interacting just changed as more people got online and more tools became available to expand access to things. You used to just be able to have an unsecured comment section where anyone could come to your website and directly modify the page’s HTML and most of the time nothing would happen. You ought to have sanitized your inputs but there just wasn’t this background miasma that was going to flood your comment section full of spam, scans, and injecting malware into the page if you left an open text-entry box on the internet. Once it hit a certain scale and there was a certain amount of money in it then a lot of mess came with them.

ethin3• 7 months ago

Jonathan Haidt is someone who nobody should take seriously. Pretty much all of the data he cites is cherry-picked and the vast majority of people in trust and safety and similar will tell you that he is probably one of the least reliable authorities on this subject. He's aiming to sell fear, not to actually solve the problem.

amrocha• 7 months ago

Oh, alright, I guess we just need to overthrow capitalism and install a different economic system

Alright Australian lawmakers, you heard the man, chop chop!

amarant• 7 months ago

I'm not sure social media was ever sane. I distinctly remember thinking it wasn't back in my highschool days, so around 2007-2009, which was pretty much when Facebook completely took over the market in Sweden where I lived.

Before then I used to use lunarstorm. Was that the sane period of social media? Maybe, my memory is fuzzy: it's been a while.

Wojtkie2• 7 months ago

Yeah it wasn't ever sane. It was just harder to onboard and you were still interacting mostly with people you knew. Now it's worse because you'll hardly ever interact with people you know.

swiftcoder5• 7 months ago

At least with early Facebook one was mostly interacting with one's pretty close peers. Back when I joined, you still needed a .edu email address to signup, and there was no real discovery mechanism, so you mostly only friended people who you had met IRL.

snarf21• 7 months ago

The ad supported is just the reason to make it addictive. Get rid of all likes/thumbs/follower(counts)/notifications and it loses the endorphins and stops being the problem it is today.

kahmeal2• 7 months ago

You're not wrong. Even simple "page hit counters" became a target of manipulation once they were common. Human nature is tough at scale.

halapro• 7 months ago

You might not have opened any social media app lately. You need 10 seconds before you're sucked into the feed. Likes are a thing of the past, they just gather your interests by your reaction time on any content they show you.

Hey you spent 500ms looking at this pretty girl dancing, how about some ass now?

I get straight up PORN ads on Facebook too. Twitter at some point showed me porn as well, even if I had specifically curated it to show JavaScript content.

andrewinardeer• 7 months ago

It's crazy that social media is banned but kids are still subject to gambling ads prior to or after watching the footy on free to air TV.

immibis18• 7 months ago

Can they gamble?

insane_dreamer5• 7 months ago

I do agree that banning advertising would be good (though not the only problem). However, you don't need social media to socialize online (text messaging, messaging groups, etc. all still exist).

random97498324• 7 months ago

A lot of exploitation is not even about money. Some of these platforms don't even make profit. It is about politics.

csense• 7 months ago

RIP freedom of speech, freedom of association and freedom of the press.

RiverCrochet• 7 months ago

Just online, which has been a bad idea from day one due to the evertrending centralization of the Internet, the primary catalyst thereof being people's laziness. Offline, it still exists.

anticrymactic• 7 months ago

How so?

Since when is slop-producing ad-machine social media the only access to speech, press and association?

quailfarmer• 7 months ago

Since about 10 years ago, online platforms are a major part of how many people speak, publish, and associate.

dmix• 7 months ago

The only way to enforce it is basically a very dangerous game and will normalize gov control of the internet down to the individual level.

akersten5• 7 months ago

since when is speech I don't like speech?!

TimByte5• 7 months ago

The real danger isn't the ban itself... it's the precedent that could be built on top of it if governments decide they like controlling digital participation

burnt-resistor2• 7 months ago

Texas SB2420 requires age verification to download apps. Now, both the government and corporations have a new lever to identify exactly who you are, where you are, what you're doing, and can selectively cut you off from everything. Government-endorsed technofeudalism with inverted totalitarian features normalizing deviancy to become shameless, traditional totalitarianism.

-> Scenario

Want to use cash for lunch or parking? Sorry, no, you must be banked, and have an app.

Want to use a bank? You must use an app.

How do you get an app? You must have a phone and an ID.

Want to buy a phone? Whoops, conundrum encountered.

(And don't even think of wanting to get an ID.)

-> In summary

This further disenfranchises the extremely poor, and takes power and freedom away from everyone who isn't a billionaire.

pessimizer3• 7 months ago

If you're in Australia, you never had any of that.

hollow-moe• 7 months ago

Nice! Soon enough they'll be forbidden to be outside during the day too, to avoid taking any risk crossing these "adults" thing probably.

youngNed4• 7 months ago

And cigarettes! What next booze!?

Libertarianism really does hit a wall when it comes to kids, in so many ways, doesn't it?

dizlexic3• 7 months ago

Not really, we just say the parents are more attuned to their child then the national government. I love the dystopian argument that without age laws parents would be out buying cigarettes and booze.

didibus3• 7 months ago

Curfew laws are quite common aren't they?

random97498324• 7 months ago

Because so many children are going outside instead of wasting their life on TikTok Twitch etc.

The amount of human hours spent watching others play video games / gamble / creating parasocial relationships: https://twitchtracker.com/statistics/watch-time

TimByte5• 7 months ago

This feels like one of those policies that sounds great at a podium but is going to age horribly

winddude• 7 months ago

I kind of get it, except youtube... which has much more educational, news, and long form content. Also also forcing face/age verification sounds ripe with issues.

burningChrome• 7 months ago

FYI the article is from back in December of this year and there's already been articles about teen circumventing the process of verification:

https://www.wionews.com/trending/australian-teens-defy-under...

lm284696• 7 months ago

It has some educational content, most of it is brain rot like everywhere else though. Open a brand new youtube account and check out what's being pushed by default, you either get room temperature IQ political analysts or "shorts" with softcore porn thumbnails to bait people for a click

eimrine11• 7 months ago

Open a new YT account then feed it with [1] for few hours at least then you will unleash the full power of Youtube... unless you missclick even once into some popular blog typically they very clearly aimed at low-IQ people which accidentably might be your kid or somebody else like you know who I mean. But to prevent that slippery slope at least partly, just increase the feeding time of your YT account with the best requests possible which are carefully stacked at [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=youtube.com

stOneskull4• 7 months ago

most content can be viewed without an account

jl6• 7 months ago

Is the mechanism of the ban actually going to work, or is it just going to train more kids how to use fake IDs and VPNs?

lonelyasacloud• 7 months ago

Not sure it matters.

It's a relatively uncontroversial ban, with public support in Aus because of mental health concerns, and key social media sites complying.

VPN's come with their own minimum age 18 T&C's. As do the credit and debit that are usually required somewhere along the line to pay for the services.

Historically, if it's awkward to circumvent most people tend to comply; which means in turn that minority that can figure out a way around it are unlikely to find many of their friends present. While for majority there's unlikely to be much of a draw or peer group pressure to circumvent.

I'm sure Aus gov will monitor, media will highlight problems etc, but would be surprised if it was not actually quit effective.

barbazoo8• 7 months ago

It's not ID based so why would they need fake ID?

steve_taylor4• 7 months ago

It doesn't have to be that effective. The point was to get the law passed. Now that it's in effect, there will be iterative steps to make it effective. I think it will eventually lead to all social media users in Australia having to authenticate with their Digital ID, which will be made available to private sector integrators in the 2nd half of 2026.

paxys2• 7 months ago

Putting "teens" in the title is misleading. The ban is for ages 15 and below.

jfindper11• 7 months ago

Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.

It's half of the "teens" someone experiences before hitting the age of majority. I think it's fine to say "teen" in the title.

Aachen2• 7 months ago

TIL English teenager isn't necessarily the translation of Dutch tiener. Wikipedia at least says 10–19 for us and 13–19 for English. In German the word teenager is also used and the page gives both definitions on the same page without realising it's self-contradictory

Idk that anyone takes this so literally (as that you're only a teenager if your cardinal age ends in the literal word teen and so twelve is definitely not a teenager), I've always understood it as "in their tens" but that may be my origin

amatecha3• 7 months ago

The ban is also for anyone who refuses to submit their private data (face scan or government ID) to an unrelated 3rd party company which will invariably store that data with insufficient security.

decimalenough• 7 months ago

The ban does not specify how companies are supposed to do it.

Eg Snapchat is not requiring ID (which the average Australian 15yo wouldn't have anyway), they're trying to determine age with the user's camera, and this is trivially spoofed using video played back on another device.

trinsic2• 7 months ago

Although I think that social media causes issues with underdeveloped brains, If this is about confirming age at the point of login, then this is really about identifying everyone and not protecting children. If this is the case, you know they are going to use this data to target people for speech related things.

renewiltord• 7 months ago

Now, all we have to do is mandate that you pass a psychiatric test in order to use social media or LLMs. In this way, we can protect the mentally disabled. People are killing themselves after going on sites like Reddit. It's too dangerous to the mentally disabled.

ipaddr• 7 months ago

These platforms are heavy censored with a direct line to governments. This will push kids to other platforms with less censorship. That's a major benefit.

As we go down this road platforms will need to be banned for everyone. For example VK wasn't on the list and they won't implement age checks. They and many other sites will need to be banned until you are left with a white list of acceptance sites. Add in age verification on those sites for everyone.

Kids will learn how to overcome the ban. VPNs will become the standard.

onion2k• 7 months ago

Kids will learn how to overcome the ban. VPNs will become the standard.

This gives governments an excuse to ban VPNs in the name of 'thinking of the children'. That might be the point though.

Wojtkie2• 7 months ago

Historically consumer access to security/privacy tools has always been something the govt has wanted to restrict or prevent entirely.

jMyles8• 7 months ago

This gives governments an excuse to ban VPNs in the name of 'thinking of the children'. That might be the point though.

...then the rest of the world will see what the people of China and Russia already know: bans on VPNs cause them to explode in popularity and development pace.

There's a reason that the most sophisticated VPNs and tunneling tech are built to evade the GFW.

I recently visited a remote part of Siberia, and I was amazed at the ubiquity of VPNs. Grandmothers who grew up in shamanic traditions knew how to get around apparent traffic shaping (even on youtube!) to listen to their traditional music. It was quite inspiring.

I'm not saying bans are a good idea - I'd much rather the adults in the room read the writing on the wall and bring about peaceful dismantling of legacy states in favor of a censorship-resistant internet.

But it is coming either way.

subscribed4• 7 months ago

They already started moving to different platforms. No VPNs needed. At some point they'll stray off the Internet (because gov.au of course barks at every platform except discord, mysteriously).

burnt-resistor2• 7 months ago

Starting Jan 1, 2026, Texas SB2420 is also requiring ID verification for all app stores. It's not about "think of the children", it's lazy parents who chose unAmerican totalitarianism and billionaires weaponizing government to eliminate privacy and make data brokers rich.

https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=btkirlj8

chrismorgan• 7 months ago

A paragraph from an email Reddit sent me presumably because I created my account in Australia:

Users confirmed to be under 16 will have their accounts suspended under the new Australian minimum age law. While we disagree with the Government's assessment of Reddit as being within the scope of the law, we need to take steps to comply. This means anyone in Australia with a Reddit account confirmed to be under 16 will be blocked from accessing their account or creating a new one. Note that as an open platform, Reddit is still available to browse without an account.

“Confirmed to be under 16” sounds like they’re not trying very hard to identify them. But maybe I’m just spared any attempt at checking since my account is 12 years old.

I wonder if allowing browsing without an account is compliant with the letter or the spirit of the law—an account is not required for at least some forms of damage. But I’ve paid no attention to this law since I live in India now.

stackskipton• 7 months ago

If you gave them an email address, it's possible they were able to verify you with 3rd party data brokers without your knowledge.

Elfener2• 7 months ago

I wonder if allowing browsing without an account is compliant with the letter or the spirit of the law

Haven't read the law, but I don't think they considered this, since the most popular social media sites make it very hard or impossible to browse without an account. I guess with adult content bans they do consider this, since people don't tend to make an account there.

And a very similar fun fact: You can't browse facebook marketplace if you're logged into an under 18 account, but can without an account (at least here in Hungary).

Somehow, things are going to work better when you're not logged in...

didibus3• 7 months ago

To be honest, I wouldn't mind they'd ban it for adults too, would help me from wasting time on them.

In all seriousness though, I'm curious what counts as social media, can they not play MMORPGs anymore for example? Are niche forums included ? What about chat apps like Whatsapp? Phone texting? Email?

I'm also curious if say TikTok and YouTubed simply deactivated their social features? No comments, DMs, and so on for example? Would they be allowed again?

nwhnwh• 7 months ago

Communication over a distance between people who don't know each other or one that doesn't have pre-approved format for it, like customer service... is a disaster in general.

Cyclone_• 7 months ago

It looks like for now the ban is just limited to 10 apps. There's quite a few which are arguably worse that received an exception.

Elfener2• 7 months ago

YouTubed simply deactivated their social features? No comments

Youtube already decides to mark some videos as "for kids" which disables a quite a few features such as comments (I guess that makes sense), the ability to add the video to a playlist (what???), notifications (why???)

matsemann2• 7 months ago

Had the same thought. Growing up in a small town (couple of hundred inhabitants), internet access early 2000's was a gift for teenage me. I joined web forums and discovered new interests (=web development which lead to my career), chatted with friends on msn, later played runescape and wow and met friends I later traveled countries to meet.

Of course, these things were different than the beasts today. Everything was more personal, smaller. No algorithms.

So not sure what I feel. Social media as we know it today is obviously bad (not just for teenagers). But maybe I'm just nostalgic for how it was.

But what about hn?

criddell2• 7 months ago

Are you describing the difference between a social network and social media?

giobox• 7 months ago

I'm also curious if say TikTok and YouTubed simply deactivated their social features? No comments, DMs, and so on for example? Would they be allowed again?

The YouTube Kids apps and services are not included in the ban for this very reason, only the "adult" YouTube app and service. I imagine Google absolutely could create a YouTube "aussie edition" that could avoid the ban for the main service.

256_4• 7 months ago

I don't know about Australia, but there's a page here detailing some of the sites that got shut down because of the OSA in the UK: https://onlinesafetyact.co.uk/in_memoriam/

philipwhiuk2• 7 months ago

Fortnite?

BurningFrog• 7 months ago

I'll take on the low status role of not knowing if this is a good idea.

I've seen the data showing teen sanity nose diving concurrently with social media penetration. I'm also a borderline kook libertarian.

So I appreciate the arguments in both directions, and I think the only way to find out if it works is to try it out. Preferably on a remote isolated island without nuclear weapons, in case things go badly :)

ethin3• 7 months ago

And, of course, as usual, this law, like all it's others in the rest of the world, will do absolutely nothing in protecting kids. It will instead only create a huge national security hacker paradise because everyone will use these so-called "age verification" services, which aren't exactly known for their security.

whimsicalism22• 7 months ago

Frankly, I would have been pissed if this were the case when I was a teen and I got a lot of healthy & useful value out of social media.

That said, some of the subcommunities I've seen created, particularly among young women, seem obviously unhealthy/toxic and regulation is probably needed there. I'm thinking of things like '#edtwt'.

But I also think we need to avoid ruining things for smart, responsible kids by focusing on the worst.

feb0120255• 7 months ago

I feel like everyone in this thread is assuming this is a good faith move by Australia to help kids in school and with socialization.

I think phones and social media are harmful, but I get the sense there's a political motive behind this. We've been hearing politicians complain for years that they're losing the youth when it comes to long-standing foreign policy positions, etc... And suddenly they ban social media. Rahm Emanuel is campaigning for the same thing in America.

I don't believe they're overly concerned with "helping the kids" unfortunately

whimsicalism22• 7 months ago

Scrollable video is killing the Dems in general, not just because of Israel. It's like all the worst of local news crime reporting on steroids.

feb0120255• 7 months ago

Each party is splitting into factions. I imagine the establishment of both parties think social media is a problem

henryfjordan• 7 months ago

Youtube really wants to send me down the alt-right pipeline. I watch a few WW2 history videos and suddenly I must identify with "Mr Mustache" as the kids say. TikTok wants to radicalize me the other way, and shows me every video of a cop abusing their power that they can find. It cuts both ways.

I think what's killing Dems is that they don't understand the medium. Mamdani did really well by making good social media posts. Him and Trump had a grand old time at the whitehouse because they have a competent grasp on social media in common. Newsom has been trolling lately and his approval ratings are only going up.

Dems being a million years old is killing the dems.

wahnfrieden2• 7 months ago

All popular grooming platforms were already excluded from this policy

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS2• 7 months ago

I thought that was curious as well. Roblox is allowed? Really?

jfindper11• 7 months ago

Agreed. I'm no fan of social media, and especially not a fan of TikTok and Instagram. But I really doubt this is about the kids more than it is about getting another foothold along the path of controlling internet access wholesale.

1121redblackgo4• 7 months ago

I actually do think people directly see the negative public health impact, its so visceral in so many parents lives, and that that is the driving force behind all of this.

I love being cynical, but I actually do buy these efforts as being purely "for the kids", kind of thing. Sure, there are knock-on effects, but I do buy the good faith-ness of phone bans in school and of these social media bans for kids.

jfindper11• 7 months ago

I think this might be true at the parent level, but less and less true as you climb up the government ladder.

The shitty part is that when the parents really do believe something is "for the kids", it becomes that much easier to push through laws that have awful side effects (intentional ones or not). Which is why "for the kids" is so common, of course.

jmathai• 7 months ago

It's very unfortunate. As a parent, I feel like it requires regulation at the national level because I can't win against Meta (FB, Insta), Google (Youtube), Snapchat and TikTok.

yfw4• 7 months ago

Its not good faith because its already broken by vpn. And its forcing kids with no credit cards to download free and malware ridden ones. How would you measure any level of success from this initiative? Doing something isnt a solution if it has tons of bad sideeffects

noosphr• 7 months ago

Banning the printing press in Europe would have stopped the 30 years war.

Somehow I don't think anyone here would approve of the long term consequences.

The end result of this will be that everyone needs to give their real name and address to view social media.

Anything you say or watch that the current government doesn't like will result in police coming for a chat.

treis• 7 months ago

It's not that the people don't genuinely believe what they're saying. It's that they've deluded themselves into thinking their ideological right is "for the kids".

There's always been Reefer Madness sorts of people. Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll, Video Games, DnD, Rap Music, Homosexuality, and on and on. Today it's half woke mind virus and half DEI (for lack of a better term). Most of the people that spout this stuff genuinely believe they're fighting for the kids.

cess11• 7 months ago

Whether intentional or not, one consequence of a success in this area would be to isolate older people from the views of young people and to stifle the younger generations influence on these communication media in the future.

Personally I suspect these elderly people in powerful political positions to be quite afraid of kids, it wouldn't be the first time in history, but it's likely the first time they're this old and as alienated from younger generations as they are.

Perhaps we're seeing patriarchal class societies mutate into primarily gerontocratical societies.

Lendal• 7 months ago

I chuckled when I read that, when over-16 is considered elderly.

What will we do when we no longer have the views of 14 year olds at our fingertips? Well, hopefully they will write their views down on notepaper, and in two years we'll hear all about it.

Barrin92• 7 months ago

We've been hearing politicians complain for years that they're losing the youth when it comes to long-standing foreign policy positions,

When Twitter added its location feature and it turned out that political accounts with millions of followers are run out of Pakistan or India you have to be crazy to still deny the scope of foreign influence that is exerted over social media.

You see it with the rise in anti-semitism or Russia's explicit promotion of influencers targeting Western youth. Why on earth would we let our kids be brainwashed by foreign intelligence agencies? There is no reason to assume this is some "hidden agenda", this is as big of a public issue as the mental health of teenagers. The United States used to have media rules that limited foreign ownership in companies with a broadcasting license, and now 14 year olds get their political lessons straight from Moscow, it's ridiculous.

feb0120255• 7 months ago

I would reject the notion that shifting public sentiment is a result of foreign influence campaigns, which is not to say it doesn't exist to an extent.

I've seen plenty of real information, from non-anonymous American journalists that I'm certain are the largest factor in any sea-change amongst Americans.

And despite the claim, I've yet to see solid evidence of large, pakistan-based accounts wielding massive influence on twitter. Most anonymous accounts that focus on current events tend to be located in America, Europe, or Canada from what I've seen.

MSFT_Edging• 7 months ago

To be fair, "anti-semitism" claims have been 90% bad faith. Gaza was the internet's Vietnam.

We got just as mad at the internet letting our citizens at home see the brutality as we did with Jane Fonda and calling her "Hanoi Jane" after she traveled to Vietnam to bring light to the conflict(not a war).

I don't think there's any merit in being upset at dead children being reported because it messes with our national security goals. If the goals don't have public support with truthful reporting, they're basically illegitimate.

realityloop3• 7 months ago

All the ban does is stop kids from having accounts, if the service allows anonymous usage then they can still find somewhere to doom scroll. My teen son has been blocked from Snapchat, and was this evening doom scrolling on Tik Tok until I blocked it on our home network.

Extropy_6• 7 months ago

I'm curious to understand why your approach to TikTok is banning it. Why do you think this is the right solution? Are you concerned at all about your son's ability to cope independently from oversight and control?

Sevrene18• 7 months ago

I don't think we should normalise children on platforms where the content contains political agitation, sexual and violent content, crypto and fintech scams, etc. Especially when this content is packaged up to them and commodified.

These platforms make more money than the ATO (Australian Tax Office) brings in a year. I think they have the moral obligation and means to create safer spaces- either inside or seperate from their adult platforms; they can reduce or prevent the types of harms when children are exposed to this type of content.

Whether this approach is the best one, or even worth it as it is written in law is definitely something you can argue, but the idea that there isn't a legitimate goal here (keeping children safe), just isn't true. I know not everyone that says this always has good intentions, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be preventing harm upon them.

If you look back at vox pops from when drink-driving laws were introduced, or when seatbelts became mandatory, or when ID requirements were tightened, the arguments for and against were eerily similar. We haven’t changed much in that regard, but now people wear seatbelts, children can’t buy cigarettes as easily as they used to, and drink-driving rates have fallen. I think these are noble goals.

jfindper11• 7 months ago

If you look back at vox pops from when drink-driving laws were introduced, or when seatbelts became mandatory, or when ID requirements were tightened, the arguments for and against were eerily similar.

If you think the arguments are eerily similar, I feel like you haven't really been listening to the arguments against these types of age-verification-for-websites laws.

I mean, there's some similarities, of course. But I think there are some very stark differences.

colordrops5• 7 months ago

I don't think we should normalise children on platforms where the content contains political agitation, sexual and violent content, crypto and fintech scams, etc. Especially when this content is packaged up to them and commodified.

This may be true but it has nothing to do with what the person you are replying to said.

yfw4• 7 months ago

If we are so concerned about the materials make the platforms moderate them like they used to do. Banning them reeks of favoring the murdoch outlets which are free to spread misinformation

Hizonner• 7 months ago

I don't think we should normalise children on platforms where the content contains political agitation, sexual and violent content, crypto and fintech scams, etc.

You mean like the outside world?

What happens when these hot house flowers of yours reach whatever magic age and get dumped into all of that, still with no clue, but with more responsibilities and more to lose?

I haven't noticed a whole lot of governments, or even very many parents, worrying about doing much to actually prepare anybody for adulthood. It's always about protection, never about helping them become competent, independent human beings. Probably because protection is set-and-forget, or at least they think it is... whereas preparation requires actually spending time, and paying attention, and thinking, and communicating. Maybe even having to answer hard questions about your own ideas.

... and since when are kids supposed to be protected from politics? We used to call that "civics class".

pizza2• 7 months ago

The platform operators have a responsibility to remove garbage from their site. I don’t see how it’s better if adults are the recipients of these alleged harms. And I definitely don’t see how the platform operators are going to clean up their act if — rather than being penalized — they can pretend that the problem has vanished into thin air because a specific category of vulnerable users is now de jure disappeared.

paganel• 7 months ago

I don't think we should normalise children on platforms where the content contains political agitation

Why not? Why won't you give political agency to young adults? I'm saying this as a kid who grew up in Romania, just after Ceausescu had been executed, so throughout the '90s, I do very well remember all the political news and commentary coming my way (I was a teen), but I can't say that it bothered, not at all, it made me more connected to the adult world and hence more prepared to tackle real life just a little bit later on.

I won't comment on the other stuff, because that would make me bring back memories of watching TV1000 (a Swedish TV satellite channel) late at night on Saturdays, also in the early '90s, I won't say for what but suffice is to say that I turned out ok.

plantain2• 7 months ago

These platforms make more money than the ATO (Australian Tax Office) brings in a year.

From their users in Australia? Clearly not.

jorblumesea• 7 months ago

yeah social media is proving itself to be a bad actor like big alcohol, big tobacco. No incentive to do the right thing or improve anything. ripping audiences away from them is the only way they'll understand.

xethos• 7 months ago

I don't think we should normalise children on platforms where the content contains political agitation, sexual and violent content, crypto and fintech scams, etc. Especially when this content is packaged up to them and commodified.

I hope we can agree that allowing every social media site to devolve into the above is the bigger problem. There can be some places that are adults-only; just like reality though, the world is better when open-by-default, with some places gated to adults-only.

Shifting focus to "Why are we letting some of the most profitable companies the world has ever seen get away with being a cesspit?" lets us keep kids safe by default, doesn't attack E2EE, and doesn't default to the internet becoming a surveillance state.

If we start by getting Facebook and Twitter (et al.) to clean up their acts, we can all work, yell, and vote together, instead of some yelling about their kids being shown unexpected pornography, and others yelling about the internet becoming a surveillance state.

Because both can be real concerns - but a starter solution can get the vast majority of voters on-board, and garner real progress, instead of giving Facebook more data and control, or governments a turn-key dictatorship.

protocolture20• 7 months ago

I don't think we should normalise children on platforms where the content contains political agitation, sexual and violent content, crypto and fintech scams, etc. Especially when this content is packaged up to them and commodified.

The law could instead prohibit scams and violence?

These platforms make more money than the ATO (Australian Tax Office) brings in a year.

Irrelevant.

but the idea that there isn't a legitimate goal here (keeping children safe)

Almost every other avenue, including doing nothing, has more merit than that which has been implemented.

If you look back at vox pops from when drink-driving laws were introduced, or when seatbelts became mandatory, or when ID requirements were tightened, the arguments for and against were eerily similar.

Theres some basic negative freedom implications from those, but they dont intend to ban a class of person from accessing a mundane element of human society.

whompyjaw• 7 months ago

Maybe. Do you forget that people use to not have phones or social media and they still had independent thought? Just because kids aren’t introduced to videos and comments about politics at a young age, doesn’t mean they’re going to be brainwashed by the ruling government. Societies operated just the same before social media.

Edit: Dont get me wrong, there could be ulterior motives, but kids will have other ways to educate themselves on the happenings of the world beside social media

mbix77• 7 months ago

Maybe they will use more common sense then getting manipulated by bot farms.

strangattractor4• 7 months ago

Meta == Phillip Morris - This is a public health issue and will likely need to be treated like tobacco. Kids can't vote so I don't see the political motivation.

josho• 7 months ago

Good analogy.

The solution, however, isn't prohibition or age restrictions; it's either regulating the algorithms or holding these companies responsible for the adverse outcomes their platforms contribute to. Safe harbor laws made sense when tech wasn't filtering/promoting content, now that they are influencing the material we see, these laws must no longer apply.

This may mean adopting a modern equivalent to libel laws. Something akin to: if an algorithm pushes false information, the company behind the algorithm can be sued for harm. Disallow terms of service that force arbitration or cap liability limits.

JohnMakin• 7 months ago

They'll vote eventually, and preferably won't be damaged in irreparable ways by then

lisbbb4• 7 months ago

I just can't get behind any of it, sorry. The puritanical moralizing feels so good until you cause a revolution or the species goes extinct.

cmxch• 7 months ago

Handwaving “public health” doesn’t make it so.

roguecoder19• 7 months ago

That makes me wonder, if only teenagers could vote would they ban adults from social media?

lawlessone• 7 months ago

Just my anecdote addled opinion but i seems like most of the people being mentally "cooked" by social media are in their 30's ,my generation, and up to maybe late 60's.

0xbadcafebee• 7 months ago

There's no motive other than "easy politicial win". The kids aren't gonna vote against you (they don't vote), parents will vote for you, you get to show people you protected children and passed legislation. Politicians support anything that keeps them in votes and campaign contributions.

protocolture20• 7 months ago

Kids dont vote, but when they do they tend to come in radicalised and swinging. Voter intention in Australia has shifted heavily towards minor parties over the last decade. While this is currently being captured by our preferential voting system, the tipping point is 1 - 2 elections away.

Isolating kids from current events and society can easily be seen as a potential extra bullwark against changing voter intentions, because Minor partiers tend to favour social media engagement against paying for expensive ads.

awesome_dude9• 7 months ago

A conspiracy theory? This time of the year? In New hampshire????

Apologies, you might be right, you might not, but unless you have some actual evidence you might as well be saying "The Moon landing was a Hoax"

gspencley• 7 months ago

In most legal jurisdictions that I know of, kids aren't legally allowed to be able to access to pornography either. How is that working out?

The only way to even attempt to enforce these things is with government mandated age verification. Few people want that as it represents a massive violation of privacy and effectively makes anonymity on the Internet impossible.

oblio2• 7 months ago

It could be designed to be anonymous.

Government runs authentication service that has your personal details.

User creates account on platform Y, platform Y asks government service if your age is >18, service says y/n. Platform never finds out your personal details.

OAuth for age verification.

thfuran2• 7 months ago

The only way to even attempt to enforce these things is with government mandated age verification

Yes, that's what they did.

lisbbb4• 7 months ago

I don't see the danger of pornography, tbh. Oh, much of it is sick, sure, but violent video games are far more harmful. Would it be better to depict loving, caring relationships? Hell, yes! But there are so few of those these days.

My teenage son struggles to have any meaningful dialog with any of the girls his age. It's like he doesn't exist. The few kids who are "dating" is basically the exact scenario that MGTOW depicts--girls only go for the elite jocks and ignore everyone else like they don't even exist. Everyone is miserable. Many will eventually grow out of it, but I don't think the females will ever view themselves as doing anything but "settling" because of the nonsense programmed into their heads. And yes, social media is largely responsible for how extreme the situation has become. In the 90s, girls were picky, but nothing like now. So all that young men have left is like AI chatbots and porn and it's better to not take that away from them, too.

triceratops4• 7 months ago

The insistence on perfect age verification requires ending anonymity. Age verification to the level of buying cigarettes or booze does not.

Flash a driver's license at a liquor store to buy a single-use token, good for one year, and access your favorite social media trash. Anonymity is maintained, and most kids are locked out.

In the same way that kids occasionally obtain cigs or beer despite safeguards, sometimes they may get their hands on a code. Prosecute anyone who knowingly sells or gives one to a minor.

b00ty4breakfast2• 7 months ago

It's also a massive propaganda channel. We can argue about whether any one particular state is involved in that or not but gut reaction is that if this were the real concern, their solution would be to regulate and censor what is posted online rather than kicking them off the platform and thus detaching them from the teat of (alleged) indoctrination. (that push for censorship also exists).

Maybe Australia and the US are not involved in any social media propaganda campaigns but, at least in the case of the US, there is most certainly an abundance of precedence.

I don't know the sincere feelings of these types wrt the safety and well-being of children but I don't think the goal is "getting them back" wrt policy or whatever.

ang_cire5• 7 months ago

It's also a massive propaganda channel.

The problem is that school curriculum is as well. I remember going to school in Texas and hearing the phrase "Northern War of Aggression" to describe the Civil War.

Censorship is never about cutting off information, it's only ever about cutting off information that the censors don't like. Given how openly hostile both AU and the US's governments are to progressive politics and worldviews, I am dubious that this isn't about controlling kids' access to a more open view of the world than their schools will give them.

papichulo4• 7 months ago

Why does the motivation matter so much? It’s not a global ban, it’s not a permanent ban, nobody is going to jail. It’s like seeing if moving the smoking age to 18 will improve health outcomes.

It’s ruining their lives as far as we can tell, and at the end of the day it’s just one country testing it out. It’ll be stastically significant, culturally close enough of a sample set for us to learn from.

I’m curious to see what the 1-2-3 year effects are. We need to let some real life experimentation happen, somewhere, instead of accepting what every conglomerate wants.

I get that “it’s easy to say” for me as someone completely unaffected by this law.

The study that was posted last week regarding at school banning of phones was enlightening. It improved scores within two years after a bit of resistance. Boom!

I want them to have a chance at being healthy and well-educated; we can’t stop teens from smoking altogether but we can sure limit their access by default.

bamboozled6• 7 months ago

Don’t you know this is the end of democracy as we know it because kids can’t easily look at toxic content online anymore ?

stevage3• 7 months ago

We've been hearing politicians complain for years that they're losing the youth when it comes to long-standing foreign policy positions

I have literally never heard this.

The ban doesn't stop teens consuming social media content like tik tok. Your argument seems like quite a stretch.

swiftcoder5• 7 months ago

The ban doesn't stop teens consuming social media content like tik tok.

That is exactly what the ban aims to do? TikTok is literally listed in the article as one of the platforms ordered to ban access by under-16s

feb0120255• 7 months ago

I'm very surprised you've never heard anything like this.

Here's Hillary Clinton onstage a week ago: https://x.com/prem_thakker/status/1995961131215847749

DavidPiper• 7 months ago

As another Australian, I have also never heard this.

There is a lot of Australian-American political confusion/conflation in this whole thread.

observationist2• 7 months ago

It's four horsemen of the infocalypse 101. Look at the platforms they allowed to continue - discord and roblox, the specific worst of all socials with the most predators, least effective countermeasures.

The purpose of a thing is what it does. Australia's policies do not protect children. They quite brazenly and blatantly leave children vulnerable and exploited. The question of what those actions accomplish has a simple answer - narrative control, censorship, and weaponization of public discourse against dissent.

The real solution to these problems are cultural. If you want the best outcomes for kids, then reinforce stable loving family environments, empower a culture of resilience and competence and capability, impose accountability for wrongdoing, negligence, and careless operation. If teachers and families are leaving kids vulnerable, the solution is better education and more information.

None of the policy Australia crafted does anything good. It's just another power grab using "won't you think of the children?!" as the excuse. Next year it will be terrorism or drugs or money laundering, and they'll keep constricting around civil liberties until they have absolute control.

They'll also put various racial and ethnic officials in prominent positions, so that you may not criticize anything lest you be deemed a racist or bigot (super effective social engineering.)

vablings2• 7 months ago

The real solution to these problems are cultural. If you want the best outcomes for kids, then reinforce stable loving family environments, empower a culture of resilience and competence and capability, impose accountability for wrongdoing, negligence, and careless operation. If teachers and families are leaving kids vulnerable, the solution is better education and more information.

This is just complete bullshit. Ah yes, my solution to this problem is just to require every single family to be infinitely better in every way imaginable. What is the proposal if that can't happen? We just execute people who don't meet the "stable loving family environment" No doubt in my mind you are from the generation of a stiff upper lip

chemotaxis• 7 months ago

I feel like everyone in this thread is assuming this is a good faith move by Australia to help kids in school and with socialization.

I mean... you can say that about most of things in life. Behind every social movement or policy, it's always a mix of good faith, cynical fearmongering, and opportunism by people or organizations who stand to gain something from it. Does it matter?

If you think that social media and smartphones are harmful to the youth, you (a) should probably be glad that someone is doing something decisive about it; and (b) you get a large-scale experiment that will hopefully prove or disprove that.

soulofmischief• 7 months ago

This is an extremely unethical experiment.

patrickmcnamara• 7 months ago

Non-American countries are also importing a lot of American politics. I'd rather that didn't happen and is alone worthy of curbing in my opinion.

dalemhurley• 7 months ago

Clearly this comment is propaganda. This bill had bipartisan support and the Labor government has a significant share of the young voters who are over 18.

bdangubic5• 7 months ago

unfortunately there is nothing we can do in any society without seeing comments like this… whatever “move” is done comments like this will be there with endless “analysis” about “motivation” for the move… it is what it is…

feb0120255• 7 months ago

The nature of democracy and open dialogue I suppose.

But really, when banning a large portion of the population from social media, political motives should absolutely be entertained. Politics is inextricably related to social media in 2025

clickety_clack• 7 months ago

I think adults are barely able to take reasoned political positions in today’s online environment, but at least an adult has the experience to make the attempt. Exposing kids to the type of online political persuasion we have today means that we are exposing them to something they have not got the tools to navigate. They just get swept up into whatever the popular idea of the day happens to be. To me, the argument that separating kids from social media separates them from today’s political onslaught is one of the best arguments in favor of it.

gary_02• 7 months ago

This worldwide push for online ID verification is absolutely not in good faith, and I'm shocked at how few people on "Hacker" News are seeing it for what it is. Imagine going on 1990's or 2000's Usenet and telling those folks they'd have to upload government ID to prove they weren't children and keep using the system. Virtually everyone would have shouted this Big Brother shit down until it was their dying breath.

serial_dev• 7 months ago

But think of the children! Or the terrorist! Or communists! Whichever makes you accept the surveillance state.

bamboozled6• 7 months ago

America had all the access to free information and voted in an authoritarian anyway so what’s it matter ?

I don’t care anymore about this emotive argument that you’re putting forward. The government knows everything about you because you pay for internet. Maybe you pretend to yourself you’re someone anonymous because you use a VPN but if they want to know who you are, they know.

At least maybe this ban will stop some of the idiocy bleeding into the next generation.

AnonymousPlanet• 7 months ago

Parts of Usenet actually mandated real names. The idea was to make discussions more civilised. It didn't. And on top of that people were now subject to stalking and doxxing. I remember a poster who had a link to a defamation site in his signature. The site was targeted at another frequent poster in that newsgroup, detailing his address and his alleged intellectual failings.

XorNot4• 7 months ago

The policy has like 70% popular support.

"What are they really doing?" is a stupid conspiracy brained question: trying to win the next election obviously and whatever you may think, representing the electorate.

(I hate the policy personally)

lo_zamoyski2• 7 months ago

Asking "cui bono?" is always a sound question to ask in a political or commercial context, but it should not be the only one. Don't fall prey to appeal to motive. Even if the motivation is self-serving, it need not be bad per se.

ricardobeat4• 7 months ago

Rahm Emanuel is campaigning for the same thing in America.

I get the sense this is supposed to signify something; don't know the name, but looking at their profile, great career, Obama's chief of staff. What's the implication?

roguecoder19• 7 months ago

He is a pro-authoritian-control Democrat, so it is unsurprising that he is more worried about control of information than he is the Constitution. His background is in finance and his political goal is generally management of the country by a monied elite without particular oversight.

He was paid by Goldman Sachs to help Clinton get elected by raising massive amounts of money. During Obama's term he structured the DNC to be about his personal power rather than supporting Democrats across the country, costing Democrats the midterms. As mayor of Chicago he covered up a murder committed by a police officer and refused to comply with transparency laws.

On the other hand, this particular position is probably just part of the Israeli campaign against TikTok: Emanuel volunteered for the IDF and has long been an anti-Palestinian activist.

solumunus• 7 months ago

I think not letting children get barraged with misinformation and foreign propaganda might help them.

pryce8• 7 months ago

The ingredients for this legislation trace back to an organisation called "Collective Shout"[1], by Melinda Tankard Reist, who readers may be aware of from their previous efforts to pressure Steam to restrict games with adult content

I happen to think there are plenty of valid points regarding harmful content on steam and valid arguments about the harms of social media, but I do not believe Collective Shout is a benevolent actor in combatting those harms or steering the solutions, as their proposals nearly always deliver harmful effects on LGBTQ people - and this fits with Reist's previous work[2], eg under Sen. Harradine

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_Shout

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melinda_Tankard_Reist

msuniverse2026• 7 months ago

That is just a thought-stopping reference. Why does this literal nobody who nobody has to listen to have the total backing of both major political parties? That is the real question and it obviously goes back to narrative control and the move from democracy to an authoritarian managerial state.

Nursie7• 7 months ago

My favourite micro pressure-group in Australia is the Pedestrian Council of Australia.

Whenever there's talk about car safety measures, e-scooters or anything else, the press goes to the official-sounding "Pedestrian Council of Australia" for comment. And obligingly, Harold Scruby who is the CEO, Chairman and entire membership of said council will hold forth.

He's been spectacularly successful at getting himself listened to, as if he represented something.

Collective shout are just as illegitimate.

immibis18• 7 months ago

¿Por que no los dos?

Current social media is terrible for children (and everyone, but we let adults drink and smoke) - this is known. They've been told many times they need to change or they'll get banned. They have not. This is known. It reminds me a little of when Australia banned Amazon because Amazon refused to charge GST (their version of VAT or sales tax).

The surveillance part is about adults having to upload their identity. This concern is entirely separate from the part where children are banned.

endgame• 7 months ago

Of course they aren't. If they were actually helping kids, they would be going after algorithmic feeds in general and the most predatory platforms like Roblox (especially given its recent scandals), doing something about kids being exposed to gambling advertising, etc.

The bill was put up for public comment for less than one business day before being rammed through Parliament. Australia is just sending out one of the horsemen of the infocalypse so that other countries have an excuse to follow suit. Like how our "Assistance And Access" Act was a test run of the UK's "snooper's charter".

This law will just lead to:

1. kids pretending to be adults so they sneak through these filters

2. platforms winding back their (meagre) child safety efforts since "children are banned anyway"

3. everyone being forced to prove their age via e.g. uploading ID (which will inevitably get leaked)

palata4• 7 months ago

kids pretending to be adults so they sneak through these filters

The real question is: how hard does it make it for them to pretend to be adults? We just need it to be hard enough that most kids won't do it.

platforms winding back their (meagre) child safety efforts since "children are banned anyway"

If the law forces the platforms to properly ban children, I don't see how they can do that. If you're thinking that the platforms will just say "it's illegal for children to join, so we don't have to do anything because they shouldn't come in the first place", then I don't think the law is made like this.

everyone being forced to prove their age via e.g. uploading ID (which will inevitably get leaked)

Some countries have been working on privacy-preserving age verification. I find it's a lot better than uploading an ID.

roguecoder19• 7 months ago

Kids pretending to be adults know they are doing something wrong. They are likely to practice acting like adults, don't pressure each other to join, and are harder for predators to find.

AuthAuth2• 7 months ago

going after algorithmic feeds

This is such an older person take. Users really like Algorithmic feeds and see the removal of such a feature to be platform destroying. Cronological feeds are still easy to game and abuse.

predatory platforms like Roblox

What makes roblox a predatory platform and what would you change to make it not a predatory platform? To me Roblox is a predatory platform because of the age group of people not because of the platform design.

raincole• 7 months ago

algorithmic feeds in general

Do you only use /new of HN...?

dmitrygr• 7 months ago

The enemy (AUS) of my enemy (social media's effect on kids) is my friend (this ban). Their motivation is only mildly interesting.

tiew9Vii• 7 months ago

Australia is a huge contradiction.

“Kids” are no longer old enough to use social media as they are “kids”. At the same time Australia states are updating laws believing “kids” are old enough to be treated as and tried as adults in a court of law.

girvo• 7 months ago

Indeed. We will stick them in prison, but they can’t use social media. It’s a farce.

NoPicklez8• 7 months ago

How is that a contradiction?

Its not uncommon for laws that allow for teenagers (14 or above) to be tried as adults for more serious crimes.

Should we prevent kids from doing things we think will harm them? Yes, should we give harsher penalties for kids who commit more serious crimes? Potentially.

nextstep• 7 months ago

I don’t think the US will ever enact a similar ban. The power to shape young minds is too great, even if these service also increase suicides in children to some degree.

The same algorithms that showed IDF war crimes compilations and turned a generation against Israel can be reshaped to push a different, right-wing narrative. The David Ellison’s of the world have too much power to allow regulation getting in the way of this.

jimbokun• 7 months ago

TikTok is not going to make kids better informed about foreign policy.

giancarlostoro• 7 months ago

I don't believe they're overly concerned with "helping the kids" unfortunately

We don't need laws for most things, and yet we've built ourselves a society where everything is a law.

jstummbillig• 7 months ago

I feel like everyone in this thread is assuming this is a good faith move by Australia to help kids in school and with socialization.

Really! My experience is quite the opposite. I see a lot of people explaining why it's a bad idea.

xedrac• 7 months ago

Both can be true. The question is, do the benefits outweigh the consequences? I'm of the opinion that parents need to help regulate teen exposure, not the government. It does feel a bit like censorship.

epolanski• 7 months ago

We've been hearing politicians complain for years that they're losing the youth when it comes to long-standing foreign policy positions, etc...

What's the alternative? Going back to TV lying that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and that in Libya there's a genuine rebellion against Gaddafi?

I'd rather have multiple actors fighting to push their views on social to be honest.

I also don't like how quick is social media to jump on labelling anybody with a different opinion as a troll or a bot. This is especially common on Reddit where basically every single subreddit is heavily biased in some direction, heavily moderated to push some views and some views only.

Instead, what we should teach in school is how to treat news (any news really, even your friend telling you he's got a Playstation 7 but he can't show it to you): questioning it, verifying the sources, questioning the possible motives and biases of the source.

I'll be frank: I didn't mind Russia pushing their own news through channels like Russia Today globally. I always thought it was very important to get the views of the other side.

But my view also requires my (normal to me) attitude: question, question, question, verify.

Problem is: it's hard, it's exhausting. Claiming something false takes 5 seconds, debunking it can take hours. Most people already got their problems, and just don't do any of it.

multiplegeorges4• 7 months ago

they're losing the youth when it comes to long-standing foreign policy positions

It's well known that foreign actors are all over social and that the west's foreign policy is (rightly so!) hostile to them.

aus_throwaway• 7 months ago

The Australian government didn’t do this because of any concern about children; it’s to punish (mainly) Meta for backing out of the Australian Social Media Bargaining Agreement [1]. Other social media companies are collateral damage.

News Corp wanted Meta et al to pay for the privilege of sharing links to News Corp articles (imo, ridiculous). Meta played along for a short period, but has now refused to engage, which has clearly upset News Corp (and their shrinking top line). It’s slowly changing, but it’s an unfortunate truth that News Corp still has incredible influence over Australian politicians, hence this had bipartisan support.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/nov/12/meta-coul...

stephen_g4• 7 months ago

Just in case anyone is sceptical, is quite literally paying for sharing links - the legslation [1] says in part 52B that

    For the purposes of this Part, a service makes content available if:
         (a) the content is reproduced on the service, or is otherwise placed on the service; or
         (b) a link to the content is provided on the service; or
         (c) an extract of the content is provided on the service.
     (2) Subsection (1) does not limit, for the purposes of this Part, the ways in which a service makes content available.

Part 52B (1) means that the code explicitly defines that a social media site publishing a user post containing a link to a news site as being considered exactly the same as the social media site ripping off and publishing a copy of a whole article!

The supporters of the bill then went around pretending that social media sites were ripping off whole articles and showing them on their sites with their own ads, when they are actually just linking and showing the title, thumbnail and sentence summary that the news site provides in its meta info!

In the end, the news media bargaining code is effectively just a shakedown to extract money for nothing from tech companies. Part 52B makes the whole thing indefensible.

1. https://www.legislation.gov.au/C2021A00021/latest/text

rstuart4133• 7 months ago

I feel like everyone in this thread is assuming this is a good faith move by Australia to help kids in school and with socialization.

Most Australian schools banned phones a while ago. Attempts were made to measure the outcome. For example, South Australia saw a 72% drop in phone-related issues and 80.5% fall in social media problems in early 2025 compared to 2023 [0]. Other states reported similar results. These early figures are a little rubbery, but overall look very good. The social media ban is in part a response to that success.

The only major concern I have is de-anonymization of the web. It's worse than just de-anonymization. They've opened the gate for organisations like Facebook to demand government ID, like say a photo of a drivers licence. It contains a whole pile of info these data vultures would like to get their hands on, like your actual date of birth and residential address.

The sad bit is I doubt de-anonymization was goal, in fact I doubt they put much thought into that aspect of all. If it was the goal there far more effective ways of going about given the corporations permission to "collect whatever data you need to make it work". They could have implemented a zero knowledge proof of age service. But given the track record of their other computer projects, a realistic assessment is it had near zero chance of being implemented at all, let alone on time and on budget.

But if they had of insisted the providers implemented some sort of ZKP themselves, I would have found it hard to argue against given the past experience in schools.

[0] https://ministers.education.gov.au/clare/school-behaviour-im...

makeitdouble10• 7 months ago

The report title

School behaviour improving after mobile phone ban and vaping reforms

Vaping !?

If we're discussing effect of phone bans at school, I think looking at a period where nicotine addiction was also strongly reduced makes the numbers pretty hard to interpret.

protocolture20• 7 months ago

Is that the same report that failed to mention they changed the testing methodology for the year after the phone ban, and that an improvement was expected in SA test scores regardless?

energy1234• 7 months ago

70-74% of voters in Australia and the UK want this. It's also a bipartisan legislation. It has nothing to do with a conspiracy among politicians.

It's not just about the kids either. People know those kids are going to grown up and impact them one day. An avalanche of broken people is not conducive to what I want on a purely selfish level as a non-parent.

stephen_g4• 7 months ago

Yes, specifically Australian Labor hate social media because while they are to the left of the overton window here, in reality they are a centre-right party pretending to be progressive. But social media is where the actual progressive people congregate.

This social media campaign though I believe actually came from a campaign by the newspaper The Daily Telegraph, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. Labor are always trying to placate News Corp media, and News Corp media still blatantly tell their readers not to vote for Labor. It hasn't worked for decades, but Labor seem to believe that one of these days it will be different (it won't).

So politically it ticks some boxes for them, helps them suck up to the newspapers that will always hate them, helps diminish social media spaces where their opponents (actual progressives) congregate, and generally demonising "big tech" does just play well politically here.

pokstad• 7 months ago

As someone with kids, I’m really surprised to hear this. I viciously keep my kids off social media. There’s no political connection. It’s a safety and mental health concern.

morshu90018• 7 months ago

Yep, ADL and others publicly supported the US TikTok forced-sale specifically because of Israel, including the bill sponsors.

protocolture20• 7 months ago

Seems like they were particularly angry with our 6 News Aus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6_News_Australia

Where kids were reporting on and educating each other about news and politics.

Nursie7• 7 months ago

What "they" want is secondary - it's a pretty popular move here in Australia, it's what people largely want.

Labor have been failing at giving people what they want recently, and are generally considered rather lacklustre and weak. But like the vaping ban (which was predicted to be and has now been confirmed to be a backward step), this is something parents are generally happy about.

No conspiracy needed.

t0lo2• 7 months ago

Congrats for arguing for... enabling child exploitation?

The esafety report stated it was not allowed for sites to screen all users ages, and that all services had to provide a non id method of age verification.

callamdelaney• 7 months ago

"I think drugs are harmful, but I get the sense there's a political motive behind this."

Social medial is a drug, it has serious effects on the brain function and mental health of children and adolescents. On top of this social media allows predators to freely interact with children.

If people are going to do drugs, which they probably will, they should be able to balance the pro's and cons.

DustinBrett• 7 months ago

Future generation of hackers.

macic• 7 months ago

Just what we need, even more government censorship.

amatecha3• 7 months ago

Saw a screenshot last night of someone who can't get into JIRA (or some other Atlassian product) until they either submit two forms of government ID or record a face scan. Seems like a great and effective initiative /s

Text of the screen:

"Your Atlassian account is not age verified.

Laws in your country require us to verify your age before accessing some products, including Jira and Confluence. This process takes 5-10 minutes. This can be done using two pieces of government ID or by performing a face scan."

systemtest• 7 months ago

Sounds like a great excuse to not have to partake in office BS.

plantain2• 7 months ago

No Atlassian products are included in the ban. I think you have seen a joke.

amatecha3• 7 months ago

Yeah turns out that is the case, it was a joke image but the person didn't say it was a joke and posted it as if it was real :\

nrhrjrjrjtntbt6• 7 months ago

You can view your own tickets but the scrum board and comment sections dont work.

thisisauserid• 7 months ago

Been seeing ads all over NYC for a teen edition of Instagram.

ajsnigrutin• 7 months ago

Age verification, digital IDs and no more anonimity... coming soon to your country too!

jaimex26• 7 months ago

Fake Ids and undergrounds sites coming right after.

artur442• 7 months ago

Honestly, this feels like another case where the headline sounds bold, but the real impact will be minimal. Any age-based restriction ends up in the same place: platforms are forced to collect more data just to “prove” someone’s age. When the target group is teenagers, that’s basically a privacy disaster waiting to happen.

From a technical perspective, this is impossible to enforce cleanly. Anyone with even basic internet literacy can bypass it with a VPN + fresh account + throwaway email. And of course, the teens most determined to get around it will be the ones the policy is supposedly protecting. The bigger issue is the false sense of security. Parents and politicians get to feel like something has been “done,” while the actual online risks don’t disappear — they just move somewhere less visible. If the goal is genuinely improving teen mental health, digital literacy and real support systems work far better than regulations that will inevitably leak.

gen6acd60af• 7 months ago

Please don't do this here.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46208058

taejavu2• 7 months ago

What, because they used a single em—dash?

artur442• 7 months ago

Got it, thanks for pointing it out.

miroljub2• 7 months ago

The only appropriate comment here would be invoking Goodwin Law. Everything else is too mild to describe the journey of former democracies to totalitarian regimes.

oersted• 7 months ago

Let's not go overboard. While I don't agree with this law, it's not much different from other underage laws that are commonplace: alcohol, tobacco, driving... I don't think it's an indicator of totalitarianism, it's just the same-old lawmaking philosophy updating to new developments.

themk2• 7 months ago

My personal favourite analogy is gambling. The constant microdosing of dopamine to get you to hang around and spend just a little more ~money~ attention.

protocolture20• 7 months ago

It has to be read in sequence with other changes in Australia.

The government has been working tirelessly for more than a decade to prevent growing dissent from sweeping the major parties from power.

The government has wrapped itself in the dual flags of nationalism and protecting kids to shield themselves from an enormous volume of rational criticism on this topic.

Changing a law, in and of itself, isnt worrying. Its that minor parties these kids could have supported are facing a triple whammy, kids will be less likely to engage with them online, they have a steeper threshold to pass when accessing the senate, and they have had a large funding changes that disadvantage them.

Godwinning is perfectly appropriate imho.

miroljub2• 7 months ago

It's not about underage protection. It's about requiring an ID from adults and keeping information about their identity while using social media.

But, I suppose you don't care because you don't have something to hide, don't you :)

nexawave-ai• 7 months ago

All animals are equal but some are more equal than others.

wnevets• 7 months ago

The aussies are huge fans of big brother

themk2• 7 months ago

I thought Meta was "the Party".

rpmisms2• 7 months ago

Discord and Roblox exempted. This is a joke.

robryan• 7 months ago

To include discord you have to extend it to messaging services. To include Roblox it should be all online games with chat.

morshu90018• 7 months ago

When I was a kid, online games with chat were a no-no. Most of the ones designed for kids specifically avoided having a chat feature aside from preset phrases, like Toon Town.

Then of course by teens, most boys were in the notorious MW2 lobbies.

rpmisms2• 7 months ago

Ok that's fine. These two platforms are where kids are being groomed.

Joel_Mckay4• 7 months ago

Absolutely, Roblox should not exist given the problems it caused.

Goes well beyond scamming kids to work for scrip. =3

daedrdev6• 7 months ago

Despite how little they pay their game devs, offering like 20% I think, Roblox itself continues to make a loss so there case that they are scamming their devlopers isn't the strongest

barbazoo8• 7 months ago

This only protects 90% (made up number) of children so it's a joke.

akersten5• 7 months ago

To suggest this protects children at all is the real joke.

bryanlarsen• 7 months ago

Exempting what in my experience are the places where children are the most likely to interact with strangers make it a joke.

Gigachad14• 7 months ago

Discord is voluntarily doing age checks to access NSFW servers now.

hedayet4• 7 months ago

Controlling access to any substance is a long process, and the motives aren’t always clear at the beginning.

I’m not sure why Australian policymakers chose to take this step now, but regardless of the motive, it feels like a meaningful starting point. Social media’s engagement-driven echo chamber model has contributed to a deeply divided world, and governments stepping in can at least make parents’ jobs a little easier.

flipbrad• 7 months ago

Hacker News is social media, isn't it?

ares6232• 7 months ago

I don’t know why they don’t just ban or restrict the hardware. It’ll be easier to enforce.

stackedinserter3• 7 months ago

So Australian teens will finally learn how they computers and home wifi works.

jaimex26• 7 months ago

That is one positive!

hermannj3143• 7 months ago

Ban kids, implement identity verification checks, remove ban on kids, keep identity verification checks.

barbazoo8• 7 months ago

Ban kids

yep, done

implement identity verification checks

nope, not done so what's your point?

morshu90018• 7 months ago

How are kids banned without an ID check?

hermannj3143• 7 months ago

My belief is that late stage capitalism pushes democracies to fascism and the overton window requires politicians to break-up unpopular changes into a smaller changes. I am prognosticating why politicians would pretend to care about the mental health of children.

stOneskull4• 7 months ago

not yet

jjcm• 7 months ago

I've said this before, but if countries want to mandate compliance, they should be required to provide the mechanism for compliance.

The rollout of this has been pretty rough all things considered, much of it because the mechanism for compliance is flawed. Anthony Albanese's latest instgram posts are full of comments from teens saying things like, "how am i still on instagram if you banned us". The primary reason for this is most providers are leveraging age-estimation techniques, because the law specifically states:

    > 63DB Use of certain identification material and services

    >   (1) A provider of an age-restricted social media platform must not:

    >     (a) collect government-issued identification material

In an effort to prevent identity theft, the bill as originally written(1) was updated(2) to forbid platforms from collecting government IDs as a proof of age. Even if you support the intent of the bill, the design-by-committee approach made the requirements so easy to circumvent that it's effectively security theater.

(1) Original bill: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/bi...

(2) Bill that passed after rewrites: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/bi...

daedrdev6• 7 months ago

So how does someone locked out wrongfully prove their age? Some people just look kinda young

jimmydorry2• 7 months ago

The platforms all seem to have a fallback "support a ticket with your government ID, and we pinky promise to delete the ID after verifying you".

justatdotin4• 7 months ago

it is theater. they acknowledge as much.

not to exert absolute control, just enough to give the clear message: not for kids.

gloosx• 7 months ago

"It's just kind of pointless, we're just going to create new ways to get on these platforms, so what's the point," said 14-year-old Claire Ni.

Claire Ni concluded it best. They are just going to find new ways. Imagine a kid stopping using something because of the law or government ban. Those lawmakers are just delusional if they think they can pass a law and the kids will stop using social media.

morshu90018• 7 months ago

If it has no effect, why complain?

stevage3• 7 months ago

It can still be worth making a law even if some people find a way around it. Some teens will stop using social media as a result. That's enough.

theshackleford2• 7 months ago

That’s like saying we should let children smoke because as a fifteen year old I was able to acquire cigarettes.

I might have taken up smoking (to be fair I took it up when homeless from being around older homeless people who smoked) but a large cohort of my generation didn’t.

guyomes• 7 months ago

Here is an overview of related restrictions in other countries [1]. Actually, in many European countries, Google does not grant access to Gemini for people under 16yo [2,3].

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/articles/clyd1dvrll1o

[2] https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/1350409

[3] https://support.google.com/gemini/answer/16109150

Californiasober• 7 months ago

Look. As gen z person who basically grew up with tech and social media and had it since I was ~12, there is no way that any ban that is not direct id verification will work, this will instead make the forbidden fruit more tasty and teens more tech literate since they will look for ways around the ban. It feels like a lot of older people are more detached to the times when they first got access to Internet and social media and assume that its all dopamine hits and brain rot, while in reality its curiosity for a bigger world beyond school and limited things that you can do while being underage, cheap entertainment, knowledge.

ianbutler• 7 months ago

This bit a community discord server of mine where I am a mod last night since we have a large oceanic contingent, somehow NZ got swept up in it too and we scrambled a bit to change our onboarding and other general policies.

dkobia• 7 months ago

I have kids and I like this but as we know, prohibition only makes the drink stronger and the thirst deeper.

duxup• 7 months ago

I suspect kids just find their way around things.

And then they're on platforms with zero protections because nobody knows they're a teen... end result is worse.

SunshineTheCat3• 7 months ago

This is a pretty common cycle.

Government steps in to "fix" a "problem" and then:

Solve nothing.

Create problems with their "solutions."

Implore the populous to reelect them to fix all the problems.

Rince. Repeat.

rajamaka• 7 months ago

Exactly, this policy is from a government that taxed tobacco products so much that cigarettes are now cheaper than they have ever been in ~15 years because the black market stepped in and have nearly completely taken over the market.

notnullorvoid• 7 months ago

Excessive social media is detrimental (to everyone). Age restrictions are not a good solution, it effectively categorises it as an adult activity, and glorifies it further.

Kids are very good at identifying hypocritical behaviour and scare tactics. It'll end up counterproductive like the D.A.R.E. program.

If the kids are forced out, the adults should be too.

SunshineTheCat3• 7 months ago

I actually feel that teens shouldn't be on social media at all. But I also don't think I should be able to lord that opinion over other people via fiat.

Sugar is pretty bad for teens as well but I don't think banning that will solve health issues anymore than this will help teens.

Personal decisions > a government trying to be mom

Governments always end up doing the most damage when their control is "for the good of their constituents."

This might seem like a good thing while they're parenting for you on things you agree with, however, there will likely come a time when they do something you don't and by then it will be too late.

singpolyma3• 7 months ago

If it's bad for teens it's bad for everyone. Banning for only teens makes little sense

bloppe• 7 months ago

I agree with you when I believe a choice can be freely made. But peer pressure as a child is extremely intense, and if you're the one weirdo you know whose parents don't allow them on Snapchat, it can cause lots of strife and probably be ineffective anyway.

SunshineTheCat3• 7 months ago

So I'm assuming weed laws have put an end to the "peer pressure" of teens getting other teens to smoke it?

Life always comes down to personal choices and it's always the hard ones that are the most important. No law will ever change that.

tonyhart7• 7 months ago

how Corporate/Gov knows who is Teen on these account???? isn't this is just precursor to digital ID ?????

fortran77• 7 months ago

While I'm not sure about this ban, _something_ is causing normally nice, peaceful Australia to be somewhere I don't feel safe anymore. My relatives in Melbourne have left, after being physically attacked and had their property vandalized by mostly young "activist" types who, no doubt, get all their news from social media.

jgilias• 7 months ago

Kids being banned from social media is just one side of the coin. _Everyone_ else being forced to KYC with random websites is the other. I can’t help but wonder, which of the two outcomes is the actual goal here.

PunchyHamster• 7 months ago

It's wet dream of politicians that think the key to reducing crime is invigilation. So, that goal

I don't think there is all that many politicians gullible enough to think that kind of massive breach of privacy is a worthy tradeoff

denkmoon• 7 months ago

Nobody is forcing you to use facebook

wiredpancake2• 7 months ago

You're right, but Social Media was one of the last places one could be critical of the Government whilst also being anonymous or pesudo-anonymous.

denismi3• 7 months ago

So far I haven't been KYCd by anything.

Aside from YouTube I don't particularly engage with any of these often, but my Google, Facebook, Discord, Twitter, Bluesky, (current) Reddit, Slack, Telegram accounts all seem to be BAU without new requirements.

If the 80% of us currently holding unambiguously-over-16 accounts are exempt, and it only affects future over-16 users as they're onboarded, then it is a very blunt and very slow form of data harvesting which won't yield useful results until years/decades after all of the relevant decision-makers have moved on, retired and/or died. So this seems unlikely?

zmmmmm6• 7 months ago

A lot of the criticism is based on the concept that it won't be technically watertight. But the key is that it doesn't have to be watertight to work. Social media is all about network effects. Once most kids are on there, everyone has to be on there. If you knock the percentage down far enough, you break the network effect to the point where those who don't want to don't feel pressured to. If that is all it does, it's a benefit.

My concerns about this are that it will lead to

(a) normalising people uploading identification documents and hence lead to people becoming victims of scams. This won't be just kids - scammers will be challenging all kinds of people including vulnerable elderly people saying "this is why we need your id". People are going to lose their entire life savings because of this law.

(b) a small fraction of kids branching off into fringe networks that are off the radar and will take them to very dark places very quickly.

Because it's politically unattractive, I don't think enough attention has been given to the harms that will flow from these laws.

spullara• 7 months ago

very few laws and law makers take into consideration secondary (and beyond) effects.

downsocialmedia• 7 months ago

b) This was always the case in past too, but I think this is handleable.

But most importantly, there's no expectation of kid to be on social media anymore, which is much more important than whether they are actually there or not.

basisword2• 7 months ago

Curious about your thoughts on (a). I understand privacy concerns but not your point about scams. How are people going to lose their life savings? A photo ID is useful because you can compare the photo on it to someone human. Passports contain mirochips. If losing your ID was so dangerous people would be in trouble all the time, because people lose them all the time.

zmmmmm6• 7 months ago

I guess it comes back to again not whether things are technically watertight, but how socially normalised something is. People are used to giving their ID out for significant transactions. This law says now that pretty much any random website has a good reason to ask you for ID documents. So when someone seeking to steal your identity already has two forms and is just trying to fill in that 3rd document to get over the line to where they can call up the bank to reset your password - the bar just got lowered. They no longer have to trick you into thinking it's a message from your bank or anything else significant. It can literally be "oh my cousin sent me pictures of their grand kids, let me just get my passport to upload so I can see them".

ivan_gammel• 7 months ago

a) normalising people uploading identification documents and hence lead to people becoming victims of scams

The reasonable approach to solve this problem is verification protocol that mandates integration with the apps chosen by users. You have your wallet with digital ID and you use only it on any website, sharing the bare minimum of details. No uploads of anything anywhere. Independent wallet providers ensure privacy and prevent state overreach.

(b) a small fraction of kids branching off into fringe networks that are off the radar and will take them to very dark places very quickly.

Unfortunately dark places existed in mainstream social media too. It’s something that should receive sufficient attention from law enforcement, nothing has changed here.

pajamasam• 7 months ago

sharing the bare minimum of details The reasonable approach, yes, but the approach most in the interest of the governments and corporate players driving these laws...?

wrxd2• 7 months ago

a) is solvable by a system that instead of collecting IDs reveals only the single bit of information required b) parents still need to do their job

Arguably parental control should have been enough to avoid all of this but the regulation still helps parents. It’s way more difficult to ask kids not to have social media when all of their friends have it.

I would have preferred stricter social media platform regulation for everyone forcing tech companies to take responsibility for what happens on their platforms. It’s not that they are dangerously only for kids

anon848736282• 7 months ago

In other words it solved the multi-agent coordination problem amongst parents, which otherwise would require the majority of them to be rational and good (a tall order).

yladiz2• 7 months ago

In the EU you don’t need to upload your ID anywhere, the service can use the government’s portal for ID verification. In the case of age verification they can get a yes/no response if the age is above some threshold. This is opaque to the service so they wouldn’t get any additional ID details.

petcat• 7 months ago

This is opaque to the service

The "service" is irrelevant. I think most people would trust Porno Hub to be discreet about their visits. That's in their business interest. But now they have to tell your government about all the times you're visiting Porno Hub.

And nobody should trust their government.

Also, keep in mind that western governments share with each other. There will come a time when Australians will try to enter USA but they'll get flagged at the border because the AUS government shared that this particular individual visited Porno Hub and a few other age-restricted websites 7,000 times in the last 30 days. Red Flag!

BoppreH• 7 months ago

That's a very good technical solution, but socially it can be foiled by an official-looking alert saying "failed to scan card, please do X instead".

And that's assuming the technical solution is deployed everywhere. I'm in the EU with one of those IDs, and I still had to upload photos of my passport and scan my face to open a bank account. The identification process even had its own app that I had to install.

drnick1• 7 months ago

In the EU you don’t need to upload your ID anywhere, the service can use the government’s portal for ID verification. In the case of age verification they can get a yes/no response

The issue is that now the government knows what you are doing online, and that should never be allowed to happen.

I grew up when the Internet was truly free, before Facebook even existed. People shared source code, videos, MP3s, games, regardless of "copyright" or "intellectual property." To some extent, it is still possible to do all of this, but these freedoms are being eroded every day by making the Internet less anonymous. The endgame is obviously to force people to pay for things whose "marginal cost" is zero in the language of economists. "Protecting the children" is just a convenient excuse.

hintymad• 7 months ago

I'd even go one step further: it does not have to be enforceable at all. This has to do with teen's psychology. For whatever reason, kids just fight their parents but listen to their schools and government a lot more. Of course, there are exceptions, but I'm talking about trend. The kids in my school district were generally angry towards their parents when they couldn't get a smartphone when their peers did. However, when my school district introduced the strict ban of electronic devices in school, the kids quieted down and even bought the same reasons that their parents were saying: attention is the most precious assets one should cherish. Kids complained that the problem sets by RSM (Russian School of Mathematics) are too hard and unnecessary (they are not by the standard of any Asian or East European country), yet they stopped complaining when the school teacher ramped up the difficulty of the homework.

So, when the government issues this ban, the kids would listen to their parents a lot more easily.

NoPicklez8• 7 months ago

That's exactly what its part of it.

So many people are looking at this from a technical stand point and how water tight or perfect its going to be.

But there is a large psychological part of this that helps parents and I know that part of it is what a number of parents I've spoken to like about it.

Its not just about the current generation, but the next wave of kids who have grown up under these laws, the psychology of it will have changed.

amelius• 7 months ago

Yes, there is a normative aspect to it.

This also works with other things such as alcohol and (old school) smoking (neither of which has watertight control, but the control is still very effective).

codebje3• 7 months ago

Absolutely this. We have limits in place for usage of a bunch of this sort of stuff, from not at all to up to an hour, and we'd be constantly tested and pushed on these limits. Constantly. "But my friends are..." is the usual start to it.

Government says you can't chat with just anyone in Roblox, and suddenly it's accepted that this is just what it is. Not only that, but limits and rules on how much and when you can watch YouTube and the like are also suddenly more acceptable.

So far what my kids are saying is that this is broadly true across their peer groups. The exceptions are just that, exceptions. The peer pressure to be in on it all is lessened. And in turn, that means less push-back on boundaries set by us, because it's less of a big deal.

(And I face less of a dilemma of how much to allow to balance out the harm of not being part of the zeitgeist vs. the harm of short form, mega-corporation curated content).

jen729w2• 7 months ago

normalising people uploading identification documents and hence lead to people becoming victims of scams

We've long lost this war.

I'm in Italy, staying at my 3rd Airbnb. I was surprised when the first asked me, casually, to drop a photograph of my passport in the chat. I checked with Claude: yep, that's the law.

(I'll remind you that Italy is in the EU.)

On checking into this place last week, the guy just took a photo of our passports on his phone. At this point I'm too weak to argue. And what's the point? That is no longer private data and if I pretend that it is, I'm the fool.

zmmmmm6• 7 months ago

Well, even there, you're doing a transaction worth hundreds to thousands of dollars probably.

This pretty much lowers the bar to any random website on the internet can ask for ID to do something as trivial as look at a photo.

In a world where social engineering is the last unsolvable security vector, this is significant even if it is just a matter of degree.

rtpg3• 7 months ago

I'm pretty sure in most places in the world if you are travelling from abroad you are asked to share your passport, and have been for a very very very very long time.

The difference between sending it over a chat and handing it over to a clerk (who then photocopies it or types in the data into the computer) feels almost academic. Though at least "Typing it into the computer" doesn't leave them with a picture, just most of the data.

roenxi• 7 months ago

Well, yes but the other problem is this is putting authoritarians in charge of more stuff. I had a comment comparing this to allowing people to eat too much food and that is literally where the logical outcome of this sort of thinking goes - it happens in practice, that isn't some sort of theoretical risk. The more the government decides what people can and can't want to do the worse the potential gets when they make mistakes. And this is further normalising the government making decisions about speech where they have every incentive and tendency to shut down people who tell inconvenient and important truths.

The risks are not worth the rewards of half-heatedly trying to stop kids communicating with other kids. They're still going to bully each other and what have you. They're still going to develop unrealistic expectations. They're probably even still going to use social media in practice.

bigfudge2• 7 months ago

The attempt is to remove the market do exploiting the attention of children for profit. This doesn’t have to be perfect to be worth it.

What’s more, the idea that this puts children at the mercy of authoritarians is laughable. The US tech industry has shown us beyond doubt that they are perfectly ok with genuine authoritarians in charge, provided the dollars keep rolling. Fuck them, and good on ya Australia.

delbronski• 7 months ago

Come on dude, you are on HN. You probably know that social media is no longer about free speech. It’s a targeted advertising machine that is extremely effective on kids and teenagers. It preys on them so, so efficiently. It’s a technical work of art. A young mind is extremely susceptible to the algorithms on those platforms. Much more than adults are, and adults are already really susceptible. This is what this ban is trying to shield kids from. Not from them talking to each other.

The Social media platforms of today are very clearly harmful to our youth. Just like alcohol and cigarettes are to a developing brain. Why can we ban those and not this?

hedayet4• 7 months ago

Still, even the most libertarian among us generally won't oppose restricting youth access to tobacco, or restricting recreational access to hard drugs.

phs318u• 7 months ago

The "stuff" is already in the hands of authoritarians. When huge swathes of the world's "social estate" lies in the hands of a very small number of individuals with overwhelming incentives to tweak the "stuff" for their own benefit (exerting their authority over the estate if you will), then you're already in that territory. At least with elected authoritarians you have some theoretical influence. Good luck getting a Facebook/X policy changed.

avereveard• 7 months ago

and the other other problem is that this does nothing to disincentivize toxic advertisement and predatory behaviors they will just follow where the target are.

kubb5• 7 months ago

Authoritarians use social networks to undermine democratic principles so not exposing kids to that takes power away from them. Or did I misunderstand something?

rapind• 7 months ago

These are government regulations regarding kids. Nothing new here, we’ve been regulating what you can market to kids for decades. I’m not buying a slippery slope argument.

As a parent myself, it definitely helps when you can collectively avoid having your kids on these platforms. I can’t express how much easier it is to restrict it and not seem like a kook when authorities are also on board.

mason_mpls3• 7 months ago

We regulate kids in all sorts of ways, this isn’t different. Kids don’t need social media to communicate.

johnwheeler• 7 months ago

Some of us don’t mind government regulation as much as your parents told you not to like it. I just say this because it’s usually those types of parents that instill this kind of stuff and their children not to trust the government but some of us actually do. We are pretty happy with the way things are. It’s not naïve either. It’s seriously a problem when people talk like the government is meant to be not trusted.

jrochkind1• 7 months ago

The government has laws saying people under 16 can't drive cars, do you think that's part of the slippery slope that has led to all of those happening-in-practice bad things?

manindahat• 7 months ago

That is an argument and worth monitoring, but IMO it's not a strong enough argument to stop this.

This sort of ban is the same as existing laws banning the sale and consumption of alcohol or driving until kids are of age they will (on average) have sufficient maturity to handle the responsibility. Something we accept.

Kids are not banned from digital communication. My daughter can still send text messages and make phone calls.

Kids are not banned from the consuming content on those platforms. They simply can't have an account to create their own content as it was too often abused. For example, my 12yo daughter was asked by a friend to message bomb and abuse a 12yo her friend had a crush on. That's mild compared to some of the stories I've heard from platforms like Facebook, and between about 10 - 16 many kids are just nasty.

I believe that the line in the sand over which platforms this applies to is the ones that leverage account history to supercharge the already addictive behaviours caused by UI designs optimised to manipulate your attention and direct your purchasing power towards whoever is paying them. Something kids are particularly vulnerable to. The algorithm doesn't care if it is pushing you towards radical content as long as you are watching it for as many hours in a day as possible.

nutanc• 7 months ago

The question here is, is social media addictive and is it harmful. If we have enough evidentiary proof, then yes, it should be banned just like we do for alcohol or cigarettes. We also ban porn for kids. And we don't need any ID proofs in implementing the ban. So we have a precedent. It's not perfect, but society knows it's bad, government, family, schools come together and implement the ban. No need for IDs etc and give more control to government.

cde-v• 7 months ago

Authoritarians were already in charge of social media. At least these new “authoritarians” are elected and have some duty to people and society rather than just a few rich shareholders.

hyperadvanced• 7 months ago

Now tell us what you think about drivers licenses

ares6232• 7 months ago

We wouldn’t have this problem if the tech companies can “self regulate” (lol). But us engineers just can’t help ourselves but find even more effective and efficient ways to harvest eyeballs and stoke hate.

And yes, I mean engineers. Just a few “inventions” off the top of my head that got us here:

- infinite scroll - Facebook’s shadow profiles - recommendation algorithms

Don’t pretend it’s not engineers that came up with these.

globular-toast2• 7 months ago

I had a comment comparing this to allowing people to eat too much food

We do that for drugs already. Of course, the correct way to do it is not to try to ban a substance or control supply but simply to ban advertising for addictive stuff. I don't think that works for social media, though, due to the viral nature of it.

petesergeant• 7 months ago

It’s Australia, it’s a nanny state and always has been, and much as the locals complain, they also love it, and keep voting for it.

The rest of the Anglo world is much less obsessed with government control than the US is; UK is absolutely fine with cameras everywhere, for example, and has almost no protection against parliament. Law enforcement is much more seen as by the people and for the people in these countries.

kraf• 7 months ago

This is not about stopping kids from communicating. The list of negative consequences of being on social media is long and real.

A government regulating something is also not authoritarian.

"Government bad" is not an argument by the way, and also not a given. It's just libertarian confusion.

jfjfnfjrh• 7 months ago

Why not compare it to smoking cigarettes or drinking alcohol? You need to be an adult to decide legally you can do that and that makes sense. Its the same thing here.

rb666• 7 months ago

You know we kids did perfectly fine before there was social media? The point is, arguably we did a lot better.

kelnos2• 7 months ago

I don't put much stock in slippery-slope style arguments. If you're going to make an argument like that, you need to support it with other instances where the same group/government has actually fallen down that slippery slope, to great detriment, in a similar enough situation for it to be likely to happen here.

Without that, it just comes off as hand-wavy anti-government fear-mongering. It's telling that you used the term "authoritarians", as if any law that's passed that can restrict what someone can do is necessarily authoritarian... which, well, as I said, it's telling.

I'm more concerned with the fact that these sorts of laws don't just affect kids: they require adults to supply government-issued identification in order to use these services, which I think is crap.

ActorNightly2• 7 months ago

And this is further normalising the government making decisions about speech where they have every incentive and tendency to shut down people who tell inconvenient and important truths.

You really should think about how idiotic this libertarian talking point is

It would be valid if you had a populace that was educated (implying that when people heard the inconvenient truths, they would be able to parse fact from fiction and not be ideologically driven), combined with a tyrannical government that would be in power and afraid of the general populace knowing that information and starting a revolt.

This situation is pretty much impossible. How can an educated populace elect that government in the first place? If the population was dumb and elected a fascist government (i.e USA), they would just ignore anyone speaking inconvenient truths (i.e how MAGA is blind to all the stuff that is going on).

Secondly, information dissemination is pretty much impossible to stop these days with everyone being on the internet all the time.

The only people who complain about government silencing them these days are racists who wanna push some racist or "anti-woke" narrative, or the brainrotted people like anti-vaxxers. Because in their mind, they live in this false reality where they believe that everyone is brainwashed by the evil government and they are the actually "woke" ones.

jmward01• 7 months ago

These are exactly my thoughts as well, both the positives (it doesn't need to be air-tight) and the negatives (providing documentation). I don't know that there is a great system here. The best I can think of is having independent third parties that people can register with and that can provide a 'proof of eligibility' token tied to an e-mail address or something similar with the explicit, backed by law, understanding that sharing more than that proof of eligibility with a third party is a criminal offense. The money side of things would be that FB and the like would pay the proof company a service fee so they make money and FB gets the proof without getting access to your documents. Just a thought.

freefaler• 7 months ago

Social networks aren't that social anymore. Around 65% of the facebook content is not shared/generated by your friends in your social graph. So they're all just a Tik-Tok clones basically. Short dopamine addiction info-snacks with more and more AI generated slop. (and some of the slop is interesting like Cold War military tech stories from books read and visualized by AI).

The network effects doesn't matter that much for the Tiktok's of the world.

chillfox2• 7 months ago

Australia has APIs that can be used to verify ID without uploading them, but American tech companies has always refused to use them.

NoPicklez8• 7 months ago

"the Social Media Minimum Age legislation specifically prohibits platforms from compelling Australians to provide a government-issued ID or use an Australian Government accredited digital ID service to prove their age.

Platforms may offer it as an option but must also offer a reasonable alternative, so no one who is 16 or older is prevented from having a social media account because they choose not to provide government ID. This includes situations where other age check methods return a result the user does not accept."

steve_taylor4• 7 months ago

Digital ID is optional by default. Service providers that integrate with the Digital ID can apply for an exemption to make it mandatory. Given the mandatory nature of age verification checks for social media, the fact that social media is typically free to use and ad-supported and the cost of age verification would be prohibitive for smaller apps without significant VC backing, an argument for exemption could be made on the basis that their legal obligation can't otherwise be fulfilled without a prohibitive upfront cost.

aetherspawn2• 7 months ago

Australia already has a government digital ID verification service, so this social media ban is just a first step towards legislators realising they can force people to just integrate and use that, then there is no user data changing hands.

Edit: > or use an Australian Government accredited digital ID service to prove their age

Here you go. If you’re concerned about your personal data, only use platforms that integrate and use this.

steve_taylor4• 7 months ago

There has only been one accredited Digital ID that sort of isn't government and that's Australia Post's Digital ID which they're now winding down in favour of the government's. While the Digital ID act does allow for these third-party accredited providers, I think we can realistically expect that the only one that will be in use will be the federal government's.

protocolture20• 7 months ago

Here you go. If you’re concerned about your personal data, only use platforms that integrate and use this.

The Australian Governments IT Security is a joke.

voxleone• 7 months ago

I’d say you made a good risk-benefit analysis, recognizing the potential upside of the ban (breaking the network effect, reducing social pressure) while raising important concerns about security, privacy, and a possible migration to more dangerous online spaces. That kind of debate is essential.

But I also think some of the consequences you fear (widespread scams, a mass shift to “dark” networks, extreme social isolation) are not guaranteed. They will depend heavily on how the law is implemented, how platforms handle age verification, and what healthy social alternatives (offline or moderated) are offered. I do believe it’s possible to design a safe system.

Personally, having seen many dire predictions fail to materialize in the past, I don’t view this as either a “clear net benefit” or an “inevitable disaster,” but rather as a social experiment with real potential for success as well as serious unintended consequences.

I support the Australian law and would like to see something similar in my own country. We can’t simply assume an invisible hand will resolve this issue for the better. Still, it’s worth watching closely and following the empirical data over the coming months.

energy1234• 7 months ago

Like anything it's a matter of magnitudes. My best guess is that any negative side effects are going to be of a trivial magnitude, cancelling out a small amount of the upside on net. At the very least it's an experiment worth running, and if successful, worth extending to further regulations for adults too, especially around mechanics (not the content itself) such as the algorithmic feed.

stephen_g4• 7 months ago

If you knock the percentage down far enough, you break the network effect to the point where those who don't want to don't feel pressured to.

I've seen this argument a lot, and I don't think it really matches reality - I very much expect that the problem users of social media who are teens will tend to be the ones that will want to get around the ban (and will easily be able to).

Kids who just have an account because they are "pressured" to probably aren't actually really using it much or problematically?

And the other problem is that everyone knows it's a silly law so I don't think there will be any less pressure to have accounts because enough kids will be evading it. The ban will only motivate many kids (if you know much about how teenagers think)

heavyset_go18• 7 months ago

(b) a small fraction of kids branching off into fringe networks that are off the radar and will take them to very dark places very quickly.

Congratulations, Australia, you just drove a ton of kids into the arms of psychopaths like 764.

If you think Instagram and even 4chan are bad, that's nothing compared to the groups that sadly, are usually kids that were groomed themselves, who goad other kids into self-harm, violence and suicide through extortion, love bombing and literal cult shit.

Instagram might make you feel sad, but it doesn't threaten to kill your family if you don't strangle your pet cat and carve CVLT into your chest for a bunch of organized pedophiles online.

boomlinde• 7 months ago

My understanding is that 764 are mostly active on mainstream social media platforms, where most "fringe networks that are off the radar and will take them to very dark places very quickly" tend to operate, contrary to GP's concern.

dclowd9901• 7 months ago

On your second point, that might be a little less of a concern. Granted there can be dark places anywhere, they're _so much easier_ to find online, and have to potential to be so much more reinforcing for problematic behavior.

lbrito• 7 months ago

(b) a small fraction of kids branching off into fringe networks that are off the radar and will take them to very dark places very quickly.

This already happens, and I don't see how a law like this would significantly change the volume of edgelords and incels funneling into imageboards

heavyset_go18• 7 months ago

There's internet culture precedent for this. 4chan itself has an early history of picking up leftovers from communities that were banned on other sites/forums/platforms.

4chan's origin itself fits that archetype, as well. It was created when a hentai subforum got banned on a larger forum, and the community moved over to the new imageboard.

It acts as sponge for more than just edgelords.

stein19462• 7 months ago

A lot of the criticism is based on the concept that it won't be technically watertight

Those who do that, are not interested in this ban working, they are the individualists assaulting the community.

a) normalising people uploading identification documents...

we have technical measures for which there is no need for the end user to upload anything. With oath you can basically have a simple age check; nothing more.

(b) a small fraction of kids branching off into fringe networks that are off the radar and will take them to very dark places very quickly.

You can always minimize the fraction, but you can never make it go away.

Because it's politically unattractive, I don't think enough attention has been given to the harms that will flow from these laws.

This was a politically bold move and there will be no harms that will come out of it; especially when compared to the status quo.

Those who feign concern about this usually have vested interests into stopping this bill; their "interest" is just another attempt in stopping it albeit with a more "nuanced" approach.

Nursie7• 7 months ago

normalising people uploading identification documents

This is dependent on implementation.

From what I have heard (from ConnectID), some sites are using services like ConnectID as a way to have your bank verify you are of age without releasing any ID or specific details.

But I don't think it's all of them, and I agree it's a risk.

de6u99er• 7 months ago

It's very simple. Parents can configure parental controls on their children's devices.

I personally think, Facebook and Twitter need to be taken down because Zuckerberg and Musk are using the ppatform to interfere with politics.

lencastre• 7 months ago

triggering thoughts…

it’s a difficult balancing act, and I tend to agree as blocks are put in place, there are very likely two groups of outcomes: the kid gives up and finds other alternatives which can be healthy or unhealthy, the kid perseveres and bypasses the block

both provide good learnings and shape development, but blocking isn’t the answer, communication, understanding, and moderation is

the alternative that one could flood the kid with unfettered access till the kid becomes nauseated and desensitised doesn’t really work either because it can be too risky

the best solution may be something in between, make it a hinderance more than an inconvenience, like the parent post, and go for the greatest impact on network effects, the evil genie in me would make all these platforms super unreliable, spotty at best

but hey, it’s a developmental milestone for the average generation member to rebel against the member’s previous generations

mk893• 7 months ago

(a) normalising people uploading identification documents

You might not know it or think too often about it, but most "real life" services we use require online identification, at least in Europe. Even on a simple rental agency portal in Germany it's recommended to "verify" your online identity to get more chances. Which means: just do it. Sure, you're free not to do it, as landlords are free not to care about your application at all.

Do you want to renew your car papers? E-ID is there (or whatever existing alternative).

Bank? The same.

In Germany the government[s] are pushing for Digitalization since years, which many laugh at as "ahah, what a joke, it's just filling an online module and sending a fax". It was true 5 years ago. Now I was super surprised because I recently had to do some bureaucratic BS and it's like any "normal" internet service that would require an identification (which is not just via a credit card or so). It's still not 100% accurate or "frictionless" but they're seriously getting there, which is super hard in a country where govt office A won't share data with govt office B. Compared to standing 1 hour in line to get just a stamp on a paper this is light years ahead.

The same will happen to these platforms, because that's the only solution we can think of, as of today. We all stand and watch Facebook making profits off our kids, making them depressed, etc. If you fine them, you're a communist, if you block them, you're a Nazi.

This is the most balanced alternative: you can still run your business here, people can still use social media, but let's not fuck up anymore our new generations, children, teenagers. They are the grownups of tomorrow.

Also, as some other comments mentioned elsewhere on HN: assume your data is already stolen or "publicly" available (maybe hidden somewhere).

somenameforme2• 7 months ago

a small fraction of kids branching off into fringe networks that are off the radar and will take them to very dark places very quickly.

I don't think this is much of an issue at all. The path of least resistance, by an overwhelmingly wide margin, is just using a proxy, TOR, or whatever else to bypass the filtering. Sites will be doing the bare minimum for legal compliance, and so it won't be particularly difficult.

Beyond that I'd also add that for those of us that were children during the early days of the internet, "we" were always one click away from just about anything you could imagine in newsgroups, IRC, and so on. It never really seems to have had much of any negative effect, let alone when contrasted against the overwhelmingly negative effect of social media.

I don't really know why that is, and I half suspect nobody really does. You can come up with lots of clever hypotheses that are all probably at least partially true, but on a fundamental level it's quite surprising how destructive 'everybody' communicating online turned out to be. And that obviously doesn't end just because somebody turns 18.

CalRobert2• 7 months ago

I think one difference from how we grew up (remember bbs’es?) is that it was something in your desktop, not an omnipresent force in your pocket

oxfordmale• 7 months ago

The real problem is social media. Their machine learning algorithms are optimised to boost toxic content, as they result in more engagement (time spent). This is a fundamental trait of humans. Even babies look at angry faces longer than happy faces.More time spent means more advertising revenue.

It means the current generation gets exposed to a lot of toxic content all in the name of driving advertising revenue. In the olden days you could get everything, but it wasn't forced down your throat, or rather your reels.

triwats• 7 months ago

a small fraction of kids branching off into fringe networks that are off the radar and will take them to very dark places very quickly.

I've been grappling with this all afternoon and I still cannot determine what my stance on this.

I grew up when the internet was a bit of a wildwest, and I've definitely seen things online that I wish I never had without my consent.

But there's also a bizarre thought that mayb exposure to this isn't such a bad thing because it keeps us human, and aware of privilidge and our safety - and why that is such an important thing to think about

I'd equate it at some level to seeing the inside of the production of food and being put of eating meat, or eating anything non-organic again.

I'm not sure I would like my own children to see it, but I'm hyper aware of what conflict and crime looks like as a result.

Comparatively to social media at least I was making a choice to click on something risky or that I would not like to see rather than having a algorithm choose for me. Not sure if I am just becoming a middle-aged tech dinosaur though.,

mgh2• 7 months ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkDAXsF4oXA

eigenspace• 7 months ago

normalising people uploading identification documents and hence lead to people becoming victims of scams.

This law in Australia explicitly prohibits companies from using ID document verification for their age gating specifically because of concerns like this

bigB5• 7 months ago

The criticism is not that it wont be watertight, its that it will be ineffective in achieving what they say the reasoning is.

1. Kids are already moving to platforms that are not included in the ban, groups of friends will choose their own apps to make their group home, including Russian and Chinese apps ( already happening now)

2. Some kids have found ways around the included platforms...not surprising

3. One of the reasons they are spruiking is to stop Cyberbullying. Its ironic then that a big problem in schools across the country is physical bullying in the school grounds, with the educational authorities doing nothing about it. I know this one to be fact and have multiple instances that I personally know of where it happens and no action is taken. Our Government doesnt want to know about this at all

4. The platforms that have been banned are mostly "Big Tech" something that our Government hates with a passion, while many others go untouched. Discord is not included nor Telegram (how are these not social media, they literally allow people to socialise). I feel this is more of a weakening jab at Big Tech by our government to "stick it to them"

5. Day 3 and its pretty ineffective so far. There are many under 16's still have accounts on the blocked socials, and within the Family circle the only one that has been banned is actually 17, having her Instagram blocked ??? so not an awesome start at all.

BlueTemplar8• 7 months ago

Discord might not be officially included, but they still complied.

«Big Tech» is a bad term to use IMHO, but if you do, why wouldn't it cover Discord(/Tencent) or even Telegram ?

scotty79• 7 months ago

normalising people uploading identification documents

It's also important uploading to where. To Facebook. And the bulk of advertisements Facebook runs are literal (with literal meaning of the word literal) scams. And they are powerless[1] to stop it.

[1] not incentivised

jjcob• 7 months ago

fringe networks that are off the radar and will take them to very dark places very quickly

Soo... we already have a problem with some youths running into extremist content on Facebook, TikTok, Telegram ... no "fringe" network needed.

SecretDreams2• 7 months ago

Because it's politically unattractive, I don't think enough attention has been given to the harms that will flow from these laws.

I ask if those harms are worse than what social media has done to a generation of young people?

I fully support this ban and even restricting online time marginally, tbh, until they're adults. The internet is not the place it once was. The primary focus of the internet today is to entrap you and monetize you at any cost. Social media is absolutely vile and ruinous for the development of young people (it's not helping adults either, mind you).

BlueTemplar8• 7 months ago

Normalizing ID and ID uploading (instead of banning it) is really what makes this bad.

A good law would just have completely banned these platforms from the country. (Even the Canadian Kik, because freeware, therefore closed source, therefore a platform.

EDIT : Looks like it's instead the Australian Kick, The Register had it wrong ? Same deal. (Especially with its owners having a gambling background.))

I wish the EU would be bold enough to do this, especially with Trump's bullying, but I have already been disappointed in the past, despite the situation clearly calling for strong actions like these...

retube• 7 months ago

Yeah I never understood the watertight arguments. Just about any law can be circumvented or violated, that doesn't invalid having the law.

superxpro123• 7 months ago

herd immunity, but for social media

shevy-java2• 7 months ago

But you have not addressed the problem that governments control the flow of information in this case here.

The antisocial media may be irrelevant, but I still fail to see why a government should be able to proxy-control the flow of information. So I am totally against this. I am also against antisocial media, but I don't see why a government actor should filter and censor information here.

j45• 7 months ago

Some fair points to consider.

Consistency at school means more and more parents and families are practicing their internet exposure the same way as well.

How this is being done might not be the greatest, and it might change how social media is used, or invite the next thing after social media. Most platforms have dreamt of being a users core identity service as well and that might be it.

The multiple independent studies that show the effect on children developing brains from scrolling and screens alone, let alone the content (be it social media etc) is something worth offering an approach to as well, parents can't be expected to be DIY and self-educate against the types of software that are so optimized to achieve their independent objective of the software - keep us using them.

nicolas_t• 7 months ago

My concern is very much those two concerns plus the fact that I value being able to be anonymous. We're increasingly losing that in the real world with CCTV and AI that would eventually allow people to be tracked (like in China), I do want to have one last bastion of privacy.

That said, I fully support laws that ban phones at school, I chose my kid's school because they do not allow any electronic devices on campus outside the computer lab where kids can go to to do research. Every day when I bring my kid to the school bus, I see that children say hello to each other and start chatting. There's another very well ranked school that picks up kids in front of my apartment and they allow phones. The kids all stare fixedly on their phones as soon as they sit on the bus. Having a country wide ban of mobile devices in all schools would I think serve most of the same purpose as the social media ban while having a lot less externalities.

indymike8• 7 months ago

Father of five here, and founder of a social media marketing company (exited). Our kids are up against problems we didn't have during the great expansion of social. The three big things:

1. State level actors and well funded not for profits are fighting an information war to influence our kids. And they are very good at it. Down to having troll farms to talk one on one. Every time something new happens in the world, my younger kids ask me about what they saw on Tik-Tok and their initial understanding is shaped by a well funded actor, and is often completely a false narrative. The solution is be open and talk about it with your kids.

2. Criminals are even better at social than state level actors. They are smooth. And they are on platforms you wouldn't expect - like games. And criminals aren't all about fraud. They sell drugs, they try to physically steal in real life from your kids,they'll try to get your kids to do something embarrasing and blackmail them with it, and even can be human traffickers. Again, the solution is be open and talk about it with your kids - and make sure they know it's ok to ask, and it's especially ok if you think I shouldn't share this with Dad or they person is saying not to show your parents.

3. Sexual predators are even better at social than the criminals. The difference is that the predators can't hide behind national borders so they are very careful. Same solution as $#2, but this one is really tough because when your kids come to you about it, they may have shared something with the predator that the predator is using to extort them into hooking up. Don't attack or blame your kid, focus on making sure the predator never gets to them

I do not believe for a minute that social media was good for my kids as they grew up, but I'm not sure that you can even begin to fix it the way AU is trying to - regulating speech, association using prohibition is dipping a colander in the river to filter the silt.

gertlex• 7 months ago

Am I wrong in feeling like the solution you outline is only applicable to an individual's kids? But at the societal level, it clearly seems we can't depend on enough parents to do what you talk about. Something else is needed.

I don't have answers to give. Certainly not a fan of the government approach of "everyone must prove their age online now", which I believe is how the AU law is done. (casual listening to Security Now podcast about this for a long while now)

indymike8• 7 months ago

"Everyone must prove their age online now" creates a trail of identity that kills anonymous speech dead. Anonymous speech is very important to maintaining freedoms... such as freedom of speech and freedom of association.

anon848736282• 7 months ago

Yes, this is one of those game theory traps like the prisoners dilemma, because it requires coordinated action across a large group of people. Unfortunately the lowest common denominator parenting is not able to handle the problem, because the parents don't understand the situation, are addicted to platforms themselves, and just generally don't have the necessary skills.

Government regulation is a ham fisted approach that risks unintended consequences / secondary effects, but it is generally good at breaking the game theory traps because it changes the playing field for everyone. That is fundamentally why we have government at all - to solve coordination problems.

makeitdouble10• 7 months ago

If you think we can't depend on parents for the kids education, school should handle it.

deminature2• 7 months ago

not a fan of the government approach of "everyone must prove their age online now", which I believe is how the AU law is done

This is not how the law is implemented. The vast majority of verification is being done by 'age inference', ie analysis of the content the user consumes or posts to infer likely age. Only accounts suspected to be children by the inference process are being required to verify or have the account disabled. In practice, the inference process means very few accounts are required to provide any proof of age. Personally, I haven't been asked to verify by even a single website.

The age inference process is described on this page under 'What is Age Assurance?' https://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy/your-privacy-rights/social-m...

basisword2• 7 months ago

> Our kids are up against problems we didn't have during the great expansion of social.

I'm not sure I agree with this. Our societies globally have become hugely polarised and are manipulated daily because of social media. The damage done by social media is 100x greater than any good that came from it and the lives of adults have been affected by on it a societal level at least as much as the danger to kids.

It isn't possible, but if social media was suddenly completely unavailable I think the world would get a lot better in a very short period of time.

lurk22• 7 months ago

Our societies globally have become hugely polarised and are manipulated daily because of social media.

Watching 18 year old kids getting drone striked every other day has done more for the anti-war movement than a hundred years of post-WW1 globalist utopianism. The only demographic of war hawks you find online anymore are psychotics and boomers, both being unfit for military service.

This is the fundamental reason why western countries are turning on social. The TikTok ban had less to do with Chinese influence campaigns and more to do with it being a platform where Israeli war crimes were openly discussed without being hindered by shadow algorithms.

You’re seeing Zionists like Larry Ellison make plays in the media space for the same reason; military-aged white men are going off the plantation, and Zionists feel threatened by it. That is literally all these bans are intended to remedy.

phantasmish6• 7 months ago

I'm not sure why a person would want to let their kids hang out any place where that stuff you report is common, if it's at all possible to avoid it. I'm gonna continue to run with "no social media", which has worked so far. They can message people they actually know IRL, somewhere without a feed full of crap from people they don't know. That's plenty.

Like I can't think of any analogous place in physical space I'd let my kids hang out unsupervised, and the amount of time I intend to spend watching (supervising) them scrolling Insta or TikTok on anything like a regular basis is zero, and the likelihood of their choosing that as a thing they want to do if I'm otherwise available to do something fun with them is also probably somewhere around zero, which means... no social, since it ain't happening supervised.

Like I also wouldn't take them to a bad part of town and leave them there for hours. Why would I do the digital equivalent? Even if we talk about it afterward... why? Maybe occasionally as a "here's how to spot shit" lesson but not enough that they'd need an account or anything.

indymike8• 7 months ago

I'm not sure why a person would want to let their kids hang out any place where that stuff you report is common,

A great percentage of serious crimes (from rape to fraud) are committed by family and friends of the victims. Should we not leave our children with our family alone?

The best move is to teach your children how to not be victimized. It is part of "being responsible for yourself". My parents taught me how to be safe in a bad neighborhood because sometimes you have to go there. They taught me how to pick good friends who wouldn't do bad things to me. They taught me how to spot the precursors to bad things. They let me hang out unsupervised. Because they taught me how to be responsible for myself. Why not teach your kids how to navigate the internet safely.

makeitdouble10• 7 months ago

let their kids hang out any place where that stuff you report is common, if it's at all possible to avoid it.

You're talking about cutting kids from all online services, including multiplayer games and community wikis.

It also means your kid has no experience of online interactions with strangers, basically no SNS literacy, which also sounds like a disaster waiting to happen to me.

ncruces3• 7 months ago

They can message people they actually know IRL, somewhere without a feed full of crap from people they don't know.

Just how do you think they get introduced to TikTok? What do you think gets posted in the school class WhatsApp group chat?

My kids' WhatsApp group chats are mostly a torrent of sharing idiotic TikToks, YouTube Shorts, and celebrity Instagrams.

Which my kids can't watch… until they're savvy enough to bypass my restrictions. Until then, they'll watch it in school, on their friends' phones - little consolation there.

And when that pauses, they just have stupid sticker wars, and the kind of impolite banter (often misogynist/homophobic in nature, definitely not age appropriate) that may well have been par for the course when I was their age, but that I would never have committed to in writing, in essentially a public space. Not to mention the almost bullying.

The mere suggestion by my kid (on my advice) that a separate space was created to discuss actually important stuff, like forgotten homework assignments, test dates, etc, was met with incredulity and laughter by peers (the almost bullying).

Kids teach their peers how to act. Peers have way more influence than their parents. We need a majority of kids to understand TikTok/etc are bad for them.

Gigachad14• 7 months ago

What I’m seeing in Australia is most parents know it’s bad, and want their kids off social media. But it’s a Herculean task when the social media companies have such a grip on their kids and when all the other kids have it.

It’s the same story with banning phones in schools. Everyone knows it’s the right thing to do but individual parents or teachers don’t have the power to do it alone.

zelphirkalt5• 7 months ago

The issue is, that many people think social media like TikTok and FB and so on are good and that they are letting their children "participate in modern life" or something like that. They are utterly uninformed about these things, or so media brainwashed themselves, that they will fight you to the teeth standing up for things like FB.

I had that happening. I explained to someone, that FB is a criminal company, that's spying on everyone and everything they do, and just had that 5 billion sum to pay for mishandling personal data. But do you think that that person would come to their senses? Nope, ofc not. They argued on and on about how it is a force of good and whatnot.

polalavik• 7 months ago

I really really hate the term "troll farm" it completely minimizes nation state level propaganda machines down to something that sounds like its just one big internet joke for gags.

The cutesy 'fun' language of 'troll farm' itself deflects accountability from what are coordinated psychological operations. It makes it sound like some rambunctious kids in basements having a little weekend fun.

Gigachad14• 7 months ago

It was very illuminating though obvious when recently Twitter started showing account country of origin and all of the MAGA political accounts pretending to be American get revealed as run out of Nigeria and Russia.

The scale of the operations is immense now.

jancsika2• 7 months ago

Every time something new happens in the world, my younger kids ask me about what they saw on Tik-Tok and their initial understanding is shaped by a well funded actor, and is often completely a false narrative.

As someone who remembers the near lack of anti-war voices on network/cable news in the lead-up to the Iraq War (Donahue on MSNBC being the lone example), I'd like to get more details on your strongest example here.

le-mark• 7 months ago

There wasn’t much but the mostly fabricated WMD narrative was questioned a lot. Now the current administration makes an endless stream of fantasies and lies which go almost entirely unchallenged.

mkoubaa• 7 months ago

The average adult has a carefully curated understanding of the world based on a completely false narrative but nobody clutches their pearls about that

concinds• 7 months ago

I'm guessing they mean Gaza, and that the author is pro-Israel. Which really undermines their point.

uplifter• 7 months ago

Is this really an attempt to regulate children's speech or association any more than denying kids entry to a pub?.

I don't think the framers of this law are even worried about what kids are saying or who they associate with, as long as it isn't the criminals, sexual predators and state actors you mention.

Frankly if kids were visiting a physical hang-out where they could expect to be attacked by such people, any and every responsible guardian would order them to never go there.

mxfh• 7 months ago

Seriously, the biggest and most prevalent danger to kids online, is unregulated marketing directed towards them building unhealthy habits and potential loss of self worth due to unreachable ideals potrayed in advertising.

Not any of the three points you bring up there.

Those superpredator bogeymans you make up here, have to actively seek you out and have a limited budget in comparison.

State actors are after everyone, not kids primarily. In the current state of thing I would have no qualms just shutting down X, Facebook, YouTube Shorts and TikTok live for starters for all.

eimrine11• 7 months ago

It is OK if your kids "and their initial understanding is shaped by a well funded actor, and is often completely a false narrative."

I bet that if I would meet you, I would unleash multiple similar cases to you personally for less than 1 hour. I am almost sure I can ask such kind of questions that would reveal your kids giving better (less brainwashed) result than you do.

skwee3573• 7 months ago

The next step is to outlaw social media in general, and maybe the world will become a bit better.

Edit: in case someone decides to disagree with me, here is a non-exhaustive list of issues that social media has created: isolation from the real world, unrealistic expectations in terms of looks/status/success, dehumanization by turning people into likes-dislikes, dehumanizations by creating influencers whose sole purpose it to pump cheap crap to their "followers", a vessel for state actors to spread the current flavor of propaganda/racism supported by "the algorithm" that creates echo chambers rather than promoting diversity of opinions, dopamine producing machines that glue us to the screens.

There is nothing social in social media, in-fact, it should be called the "anti-social media".

multiplegeorges4• 7 months ago

There is nothing that social media provides that a private group chat with your closest people doesn't fulfill.

It could be banned with nothing of value lost.

jonwinstanley• 7 months ago

The whole world seems to be hooked on TikTok, reels and shorts for entertainment.

Reversing that would take some doing.

Spivak2• 7 months ago

???? We're on social media right now.

crowbahr• 7 months ago

You do know that HN in in the category of social media right?

deadbabe• 7 months ago

HN is an anti-social media. It is not inclusive. If you are not a tech geek or cannot articulate well you are not welcome here, and will be ignored.

You cannot follow or be followed. There is no attention drawn to your username or profile. Everything about HN is designed for you to just read a comment and move on, not caring much about the human behind it.

skwee3573• 7 months ago

No, it’s not. It’s a link aggregator and a discussion platform, it is not centered around social aspects like user profiles and followers.

insane_dreamer5• 7 months ago

No, it's not.

You can't follow people or have followers. There's no notification system when someone "likes" your comment. It doesn't lend itself towards pulling you back with the latest comment or post. There is the front page algorithm, but you can always just go to /latest or /active. It's about the content, not the users.

Critically, there's no ads or monetization (which is where all that garbage comes in).

energy1234• 7 months ago

I would start by outlawing the algorithmic feed. Force them to show a chronological timeline of who you follow with no influence from likes, no For You feed, basically no algorithmic recommendation engine.

You probably solve most of the problems with 10% of the legal/social/implementation difficulty.

insane_dreamer5• 7 months ago

And no ads.

I agree that would go a long long way.

When it becomes a place to share photos with your friends, like the OG Instagram, a lot of the harmful effects go away.

i5heu• 7 months ago

This must be the modern version of Fahrenheit 451.

Books are bad because „list of bad things“, let’s not weigh in if people like it or not… just burn the books.

skwee3573• 7 months ago

I truly don't understand how people can make such comparisons, and in general defend social media. Is this some sort of Stockholm syndrome?

Social media has ruined my mental health, when I fell into a deep hole of propaganda. It took me a year to recover, and I'm still not fully recovered, and I'm still trying to separate between what I truly think, and what social media "made" me think. People underestimate the power of echo chambers created by the algorithm.

I saw how friends and family got radicalized thanks to social media. Social media is currently fueling at least one war and multiple regional conflicts, where people who know nothing about the events, get "educated" by social media. Social media is fueling hatred and bigotry, further diving already fragile societies. Social media disinformation campaigns were behind Brexit. And social media is used as a tool by government to spread misinformation or influence social opinions. All these in addition to everyone being an influencer and showing their phone into the faces of people in public places, while selling crap from AliExpress for 500% markup, as if you drink electrolytes, put a nose tape, and clean your face every day -- your life will become ten folds better.

I can't name one good thing that came out of social media. None. And even if there are things, and I'm sure someone will name them out, they are minor comparing to the negative sides, or could be achieved in a more sustainable way.

reassess_blind2• 7 months ago

Discord isn’t banned, but Twitch is? Interesting.

Surely Discord harbours more bullying than Twitch (where image sharing isn’t even a feature).

0x_rs• 7 months ago

An absurd decision with dangerous second order effects, many of which lead to VPNs and other privacy tools being next, just look at UK hyping and building that up right now. I hope they will vote accordingly when they're of age, not forgetting what liberties were taken away from them in the name of very dubious benefits, easily circumvented, and prone to exposing them to greater danger going through unofficial channels. Trying to really address the issues younger generations are facing is clearly too difficult for the geriatric, decrepit ruling class that just won't let go, and this helps them further every government's ambitions of increasingly regulating the means of communication between people. Actually, it's not that it's difficult, they simply don't care.

rarisma• 7 months ago

now do the rest of the world

aussieguy1234• 7 months ago

A bunch of people in local LGBT community Discord servers that marked themselves as NSFW have been locked out of those servers and now need to prove their age to get back in.

These communities already had active mods that would remove anyone underage that they found, so it doesn't really make sense in this case that Discord is now requiring them to prove their ages.

Meanwhile kids are finding ways around the ban. Kids are asking their older looking friends to pass facial scans for them.

1vuio0pswjnm7• 7 months ago

Alternative to archive.md, archive.ph

Text-only:

https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1S3fVC...

https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1S2nVb...

    echo url=https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/world/asia/australia-social-media-ban-under-16.html \
    |curl -K/dev/stdin -Agooglebot > 1.htm
    firefox ./1.htm
    links -dump 1.htm|sed -n '/Effect/,/region./p'

https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1S5G8h...

https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1S5sYp...

philipwhiuk2• 7 months ago

Your script broke.

   echo url=https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/world/asia/australia-social-media-ban-under-16.html \
    |curl -K/dev/stdin -Agooglebot > 1.htm
    firefox ./1.htm
    links -dump 1.htm|sed -n '/Effect/,/region./p'

roguecoder19• 7 months ago

I feel like just making kids lie about our age was pretty effective back in the day. Those of us who lied knew we were going into adult spaces, hid our irl identities, and learned how to behave.

Then Facebook convinced people social media was supposed to be about your "real" identity, which made us sitting ducks for scammers and propaganda. Now we have governments demanding we provide our identity papers before we are allowed to participate.

morgengold2• 7 months ago

I am so glad a country finally took action. Can't wait to see data on its effects. At this point in time I lost interest in nuanced discussions about the details here. We are in one big experiment and it might end in catastrophy. We need counter experiments and hard data fast.

notepad0x90• 7 months ago

I support this greatly. But I think instead of debating whether this makes sense or not, or speculating, let's consider that it is already in effect and consider it an experiment. Let's see how Australia is doing in 10 or 15 years, will those kids be resentful or regret the ban when they're 30?

Extremes are bad on either end. unrestricted internet access, even to those who can't defend themselves against harmful content is an extreme, some balance is long due. Since most other western countries chose to risk their kids in the name of liberty, let's wait and see whose trade off works out for the best instead of speculating what will or won't happen.

I wish more countries would experiment like this, and even more countries would learn.

You can't argue for UBI or drug decriminalization because some country experimented and succeeded and then oppose this sort of stuff. In the US, states are supposed to experiment with laws like this, but they don't have enough power to regulate interstate communication or commerce.

justatdotin4• 7 months ago

I enjoy participating in wildly diverse online communities and I hate censorship.

I have seen the way heavy social media use changes some peoples personalities. it's scary. these platforms don't just home communities: they're engines, with tendencies. including numerous ways in which these platforms are implicated in youth suicide.

I am absolutely convinced that children should be discouraged from these engines just as they should be discouraged from alcohol.

I totally recognise that if that means these platforms demand proof of ID, that changes their privacy profile and some people will choose to stop participating.

perhaps this can offer some stimulus for other ways of online community forming. Thanks everyone here: I've participated in a few online conversations about the topic this week, and this is the only interesting one :)

nish__• 7 months ago

I support it.

macleginn• 7 months ago

Makes one wonder if/how quickly they will come for closed WhatsApp groups and Telegram channels next.

Nevermark2• 7 months ago

I grew up without television. We had a TV until I was 7, but it was never left on, and I was rarely allowed to watch it.

When I was 9 we had a cheap TV for about 3 months and it broke. Family decided we didn't need one.

At 36 I got a TV for a couple years. My kids watched Blue's Clues, etc.

At 38, I again got a TV for a couple years. Then decided dumb late night shows were not helping the insomnia, so cancelled cable, but started streaming HBO.

Since then, I have enjoyed high quality streaming series on occasion. But no live TV, no TV "news", and strictly avoid anything with ads.

When I see a live TV on, with the strange voices and non-logic of ads, and the bizarre posturing they call "news", I get a little sick. Even "nature" and "history" shows have strange pacing and repetition. The transparent sucking sound of ads needing tamed attention-providers warps everything.

I think being sheltered from regular TV, TV ads, and TV news, has been tremendously positive for my mind and life.

Not being exposed to "social" media sites, which are often not actually social, and often unhealthy when they are, is a great win. Quality can sometimes survive in rare small social-conversation sites, not driven by ads or agenda.

akersten5• 7 months ago

I think being sheltered from regular TV, TV ads, and TV news, has been tremendously positive for my mind and life. Not being exposed to "social" media sites, which are often not actually social, and often unhealthy when they are, is a great win.

Incredibly, you were able to do that without the government's help! I suppose people just aren't built the same these days, so we need laws instead of letting people decide on their own.

Nevermark2• 7 months ago

Without commenting specifically on Australia's approach, I think it does make sense to have some laws for children.

But I would prefer that surveillance-manipulation based practices be made illegal first. That would remove a lot of the means, and a lot of profits, from manipulating people via feeds, warped searches, and a host of other ways and uses for digging into, and leveraging, people's idiosyncrasies and vulnerabilities against them.

Dossier's on children, resulting in manipulative feeds for them are bad. But it is a bad practice for everyone. One of those deceptive business practices, that gets claimed to be not deceptive, because the deception is "out in the open".

Fraud doesn't have an "everyone is doing it" defense. Neither should surveillance-manipulation practices.

It isn't just a case of individuals, who need to be "saved from themselves". Our society, as permeated with surveillance and manipulation, has become permeated with "personalized" media driven dysfunction. We all have to put up with the bullshit it creates, and divisiveness it magnifies. Dystopian.

AI slop would be less effective, and less promoted, if there wasn't a surveillance dossier to customize who saw what. People don't like it now. Getting non-"personalized" slop? That would create exactly the intense pushback that is needed.

My ad free life, and ad-funded media free life, has left me utterly disgusted with manipulative social media. When people mount a defense of keeping it legal, it makes me very sad for their quite visibly slowly boiling brains. The practices are clearly both highly unethical and toxic.

(I am all for social media as a service/resource. I don't even mind ads (too much), when they are placed to match content, not the consumer. Just not when both are irreversibly compromised by massive tech scaled conflicts of interest.)

timoth3y• 7 months ago

I think if we are going to ban people under 16 from social media, we should also ban people over 70 from social media.

At least as much mental and societal damage is done by elderly falling for bigoted, scammy, manipulative nonsense online than by teenagers having their self-esteem lowered.

As recent holiday gatherings have shown us, the young handle social media far better then the elderly.

delis-thumbs-7e• 7 months ago

So-called social media is proven to be just a huge scam operation and manipulation mechanism for the ultra-rich robber barons at Silicon Valley. Denying it from kids is same as denying tobacco or alcohol companies sell amd advertise to them. Hopefully future generations have spend their childhood reading, studying and socialising with other kids, not living fake lives and being hunted by slimy adult men. Hopefully they take a one look at this shot and go ”nope, not for me” and do something with their lives.

Good for you Australia. I hope EU follows suit soon.

cjpartridge• 7 months ago

Absolute joke, most Australian parents will just ID for the kids, if the kids don't figure out how to get around it themselves, especially the typical ipad-kids and their parents.

The average Australian punter is getting absolutely screwed by our current government and all involved parties.

shirro2• 7 months ago

So far from my experience this has been kind of low impact for adult users with existing accounts. Social media companies obviously have extremely good demographic data on their existing users as targeted marketing and influence is their core business.

Unfortunately this legislation hasn't addressed any of my real concerns with social media (it's the algorithms and engagement farming) and it is creating new problems.

poplarsol• 7 months ago

Every concern about "teens" is explicitly mirrored by a concern about low-capacity adults, which is why Australia et al are so concerned about "disinformation" and the need to control speech of all kinds. This effort should be seen in that light.

SpaceManNabs• 7 months ago

Anything done "for the kids" is always a scam. When you get asked to use KYC to get on hacker news, just remember you fell for it if you supported this.

steve_taylor4• 7 months ago

The real news is that age verification will be required to use a search engine from the 27th. This has flown completely under the radar because of the social media ban.

Initially, it will only be required if you're logged in. Obviously that won't be effective, so the next logical step would be to require that everyone logs in to use a search engine.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-11/age-verification-sear...

osculum• 7 months ago

That's your reading of the situation, and far from logical to everyone else.

gverrilla2• 7 months ago

Full support.

ropable2• 7 months ago

I fully support this legislation, and government regulation around this topic. Given the current (2025) state of the social media landscape, I believe that the positives of restricting access to them for teenagers well outweighs any potential harms.

As the parent of a teenager affected by this ban (plus one who has aged past it): I wish that it had been in place 8-10 years ago, before either of my kids got smartphones. We tried to be reasonably conservative in their introduction to devices and social media, on the rationale that it would do them no harm to delay using those for a couple of years through their early brain development. The real difficulty turned out to be the network effect of their peers having access to social media, which increased the social pressure (and corresponding social exclusion) to be online. Not having access to Snapchat/Discord/etc. at that point meant that they were effectively out-group, which is a Big Deal for a teenager.

We ended up allowing them onto social media platforms earlier than we'd have liked but imposed other controls (time and space restrictions, an expectation of parental audits, etc.) These controls were imperfect, and the usual issues occurred. My assessment is that it was a net negative for the mental health of one child and neutral for the other.

I realise that HN is primarily a US forum and skews small-government and free-speech-absolutist. I'm not interested in getting in a debate with anyone about this - my view is that most social media is a net negative with a disproportionate harm to the mental health of non-fully-developed teenage brains. This represents a powerful collective-action failure that is unrealistic to expect individuals to manage, so it's up to government to step in. All boundaries are arbitrary, so the age of 16 (plus this set of apps) seems like a reasonable set of restrictions to me. I am unmoved by the various "slippery slope" arguments I've read here: all rules are mutable, and if we see a problem/overreach later - we'll deal with it in the same way, by consensus and change.

akersten5• 7 months ago

So, you haven't identified any actual problems with them being on social media though. For example, were this lament that parenting is hard written 50 years ago:

As the parent of a teenager affected by this ban (plus one who has aged past it): I wish that it had been in place 8-10 years ago, before either of my kids got introduced to Rock n' Roll. We tried to be reasonably conservative in their introduction to music and lyrics, on the rationale that it would do them no harm to delay using those for a couple of years through their early brain development. The real difficulty turned out to be the network effect of their peers having access to Rock n' Roll, which increased the social pressure (and corresponding social exclusion) to be dealing with vinyl. Not having access to The Stones, AC/DC, etc. at that point meant that they were effectively out-group, which is a Big Deal for a teenager.
We ended up allowing them a radio earlier than we'd have liked but imposed other controls (time and space restrictions, an expectation of parental audits, etc.) These controls were imperfect, and the usual issues occurred. My assessment is that it was a net negative for the mental health of one child and neutral for the other.

I'm being a bit facetious here but my point is that everyone who is in support of this kind of Parenting-as-a-Service is not identifying any real issue the government should concern itself with. Just that kids are doing something new and sometimes scary and gosh it's just hard being a parent when they don't listen.

AuthAuth2• 7 months ago

Its not parenting as a service. Its not even in the same world as rock in roll. Do you think its ok to have smoking, gambling and sex ads shown on tv during the afterschool 3pm-5pm timeslot? Social media is effectively that x100 because TV ads followed advertising restrictions.

On social media kids will be subjected to undisclosed advertising for all kinds of products legal and illegal. They will be directly targeted and manipulated into real world harm situations and mental manipulation into harmful mindsets.

Most of this cannot be prevented by "being a watchful parent". If your kid watches andrew tate and you see and put a restriction youtube will recommend them a tate adjacent channel or one of the 1million alts that posts clips. Same for tiktok, X and Instagram.The only control you have is to ban them from using the platform which is a roundabout way of achieving the same thing.

ropable2• 7 months ago

Sigh, I'll bite (even though I know I shouldn't, and it's pointless).

So, you haven't identified any actual problems with them being on social media

Anonymous cyber bullying (multiple times), performative social exclusion (multiple times), anonymous death threats (twice), deepfake porn with their faces spliced in (twice).

Your straw-man example is absurd and TBH it comes across as patronising. I'm trying to avoid assumptions, but it reads like someone who hasn't needed to grapple with this issue personally as a primary carer. Apologies if that isn't the case; everyone has their own view for what parenting should be.

Somehow we've seen fit (as a society) to regulate the minimum age for sex & marriage, obtaining alcohol, acquiring a vehicle licence, etc. We (as a society) recognise that there are good & bad tradeoffs to these activities and have regulated freedoms around these (primarily via age). Somehow, our society hasn't spontaneously regressed into North Korea.

h4ny• 7 months ago

I'm being a bit facetious here...

Maybe just don't do that? It's never helpful in good-faith discussions and just indicates a lack of empathy and maybe a lack of understanding of the actual issue being discussed.

So, you haven't identified any actual problems with them being on social media though.

The problems GP raised seem pretty clear to me. Could gives us some examples of what you would consider to be "actual problems" in this context?

Just that kids are doing something new and sometimes scary...

Any sane parent wouldn't send their kids to learn to ride a bicycle on the open road and without any supervision. You'd find a park or an empty lot somewhere, let them test it out, assess their ability to deal with potential dangers and avoid harming others at the same time, and let them be on their own once they are able to give you enough confidence that they can handle themselves most of the time without your help.

The problem with today's social media for children is that that there is no direct supervision or moderation of any kind. Like many have pointed out, social media extends to things like online games as well, and the chance that you will see content that are implicitly or explicitly unsuitable for children is extremely high. Just try joining the Discord channels of guilds of any online game to see for yourself.

Not all things new and scary come with a moderate to high risk of irreparable harm.

fortydegrees• 7 months ago

Thanks for sharing your opinion.

I strongly disagree with this legislation and have found it hard to 'steelman' the other side, which your comment/opinion does well. I found it very informative so just wanted to share my appreciation for you posting it here.

grvdrm• 7 months ago

Did you also find the intro negative for your own mental health in the sense that you had to bother thinking at all about it?

Feels like a huge component to me as a parent. What do I now need to know and do and react to, and how does my behavior affect the mental health of my kids.

gus_massa• 7 months ago

Next election is in 2028, so 15 an 16 y.o. will be able to vote. I expect a strong preference in that group, but IIUC Australia has single seat per district, so I'm not sure if that changes the result.

kledru• 7 months ago

unlike me, these young people might even be able to travel to the United States one day...

macinjosh• 7 months ago

Wake me up, when September ends.

Bad_Initialism• 7 months ago

To all the parents defending this: you are responsible for your children and what they do.

Passing laws that affect all of us because you are too lazy and ineffectual to raise your children properly is unacceptable.

presentation2• 7 months ago

I disagree. It’s easy to say this from your armchair, but when your kid is the one kid not on social media because you’re such an righteous parent, and that kid is getting bullied by all the other kids for not knowing what’s going on in TikTok or Insta, you start seeing this as a problem that requires the coordination of large numbers of people who you may or may not know, many of whom are kids who lack executive function.

If you just disdain children in general, you can go ahead and say that instead.

brikym2• 7 months ago

Agreed. Individualists don't understand how people actually don't have much free will and decisions are mostly influenced by culture. Having an anything goes culture is a massive head wind.

rjdj377dhabsn2• 7 months ago

Maybe you should move to a community that shares your values rather than getting the state to impose those values on everyone.

brikym2• 7 months ago

The topic is very nuanced. Social media is bad but so are the authoritarian actors wanting more and more control over everything. The government control aspect is a huge concern of mine too but it's already well covered here so I want to go over the reasons it might be a good idea.

Yes this is true parents are responsible for their kids but it's also true that the village a kid lives in actually influences the kid more than their parents. So it's up to the parents to choose a good village. If every village has the same global social media apps then obviously that's more difficult and not a pit of success. Keep in mind most parents also have a shitload of other stuff to do especially with inflation requiring two incomes to operate a household.

Individualist types don't seem to get the whole village thing at all. It's hyper-individualism with no acknowledgement that we DO affect other people with our actions. Pollute as much as you like, fly noisy planes, drive oversized killer-SUVs. Let every company do what it wants because free market competition and better technology, or something. We're actually social animals and our happiness has a lot to do with how we stack up socially. Hence if just one kid has a device the other kids get jealous and want to keep up; The obvious answer is to enforce a culture of no-phones. But that would take a some agreement so a individualists don't like it.

beached_whale3• 7 months ago

This completely negates the nuance and social pressures and sounds like you just want to be edgy. The network affects are huge and others like teachers and clubs are pushing these services as a means of communication instead of using, other, safer services. There is no choice if one wants to be a part of society currently.

stein19462• 7 months ago

To all the parents defending this: you are responsible for your children and what they do.

Stop delegating action to the individual.

Me and missus are full time employees, I do not have oversight to what my kid is doom-scrolling on his lunch break.

Passing laws that affect all of us because you are too lazy and ineffectual to raise your children properly is unacceptable.

How does it affect you? Unless you are a corporate mouthpiece this does not affect you at all.

I do not want my kid to watch any degenerate pornography on his formative years just because some lobbyist wants to shove freemarketeering ideologies down our throats.

kybernetikos• 7 months ago

I think a better approach might be to require that any algorithm used to suggest content to users must be made open source so that people whose world views are being shaped by the content you're feeding them can analyse how you're deciding what to show them.

I feel like there's definitely a problem here with social media and its effect on society, but our first approach should be to increase transparency and accountability, rather than to start banning things by force of law.

beached_whale3• 7 months ago

We really need the age verification standards to catch up. I think there was stuff in the works, but something like OAuth that doesn't require the two third parties to know about each other and the browser/client is in the middle.

whywhywhywhy2• 7 months ago

The age check push isn’t about checking ages it’s about linking IRL identity to account.

beached_whale3• 7 months ago

Yes and no, it depends. But that the standards/services don't exist is more an issue as it prevents doing it correctly and safely. Most websites that will/already need to verify someones age are not capable of doing so safely.

2OEH8eoCRo0• 7 months ago

It will be interesting to see how this pans out. I think many in tech are afraid that this will lead to a positive outcome.

squigz14• 7 months ago

I'm afraid that this will lead to no change to the issues it purports to fix, and then we'll... do nothing with that information.

mrweasel• 7 months ago

Really, I think most people in tech generally believe that getting teens of social media will be a positive thing. The question is how to go about it.

It's understandable, to some extend, that people will protest government interference, but it's also an industry that have repeatedly show itself to be incapable of regulation itself. I don't really see the big surprise, most government are relatively hands of, until you prove that you're incapable of regulating yourself. Most regulation happens after the damage is done.

I do think that 16 is a bit low, I'd like to have seen it be 18, or a complete ban on algorithmically generated feeds (I believe the latter would be the better option).

koopuluri• 7 months ago

i agree there are a lot of concerns with allowing teens / children to use social media as it is today without any sort of way to help them benefit from these tools instead of being harmed by them (which is sadly far too common).

but my concern is that will lead to a less educated population. there is positive, life changing learning that can happen on social media. kids finding their tribe by connecting with people like them in other parts of the country / world. kids discovering skills / crafts they become passionate about. heck, even learning how to communicate effectively with others. i think social media is a treasure when it is used correctly.

ofc, i agree with the concerns and ofc the right "solution" is one that enables the positives and minimizes (and ideally eliminates) the negatives. and having social media as a closed, proprietary, centralized product that can't be tweaked (e.g, choose your own custom algorithm, or filter out a "type" of content that you don't want to see, etc.) is the core problem here. a decentralized social media would allow even regulators to apply much more fine-grained controls so that they don't have to remove access entirely.

but sadly bec. we don't have a good way to apply fine grained controls to how we use social media, it seems blanket banning entirely for an entire group of people is the best approach. like, i get why it may be necessary (it seems like most / many australians are currently on board), but i really hope this inspires people to build better social platforms that give more control to users.

stevefan1999• 7 months ago

That wasn't world first, the world first is China

jaimex26• 7 months ago

HackerNews used to be full of moderately smart people. This is basically Reddit level comments.

Think for a moment instead of just accepting whatever the media is telling you to think.

How many social networks are there?

Are some of those decentralised?

Will kids move to unmoderated underground ones in response to this?

Will the government expand these laws now that it achieved a foothold?

Parenting and teaching your kids to think and understand how the world works is how you really solve the problems. Not building weak fences and encouraging government over-reach. Raising and guiding your kids is YOUR responsibility, not the governments.

All this came about because some absolute slog of a parent had their kid kill themselves and blamed social media. Where the hell was he while their kid struggled?!

yunnpp• 7 months ago

Obviously you have no kids or live in a remote cabin isolated from society.

Banning social media in principle is like banning the sales of alcohol and other drugs to underage people. Those bans are good for society irrespective of your parenting ability. It helps that those negative things are less accessible to the vulnerable.

Now, how the social media ban is effected in practice is a different point. And people here are rightfully skeptical of ID verification and such things, since that opens the door for way more surveillance outside social media.

jaimex26• 7 months ago

I do have kids and they are well adjusted individuals. I spent time parenting them and showing them how the world works.

Turns out the social media drug loses all it's power if you reveal whats behind the curtain. Just like real drugs, dont be scared to show your kids what the consequences are.

I wasn't aware that banning alchohol and drugs to minors had any positive effect tbh. If anything that in itself made them more desirable and sought after.

CommenterPerson• 7 months ago

Yay for the Aussie government. Hope the sociopath tech bros take notice and clean up their toxic products. And the little tech bros protesting here.

The Aussies passed strict gun control laws in 1996 .. suicides and homicides decreased significantly. Another field where we Leaders of the Free world (or not) can learn from the "World down under"!

tjpnz• 7 months ago

This is what happens when there's a lack of robust options for parents to deal with the issue themselves. As a technical person I can prevent my kids from accessing these apps on any of their devices, regardless of whether they're at home or not. But if you're a parent who is not you're pretty much limited to the flawed offerings from Apple and Google, who are financially incentivized to make it as hard and as full of holes as possible.

reassess_blind2• 7 months ago

I’m concerned this will drive teens to dodgy apps and services that have lax data security and no oversight.

WhyNotHugo2• 7 months ago

I've not seen any mention of how this affect families.

A lot of my family growing up lived in different cities. We kept in touch via social media. PSTN was expensive and impractical. Postal mail was obviously less practical.

Does this new ban move kids to using email to keep in touch with friends and family? Are they now completely isolated from the rest of the world?

brailsafe3• 7 months ago

Does this new ban move kids to using email to keep in touch with friends and family?

You had social media but no ability to send DMs?

In an attempt to not deliberately misinterpret you, next to zero of my current ability to keep in touch with anyone in my life via the internet, distant or otherwise, depends on social media, so forgive me if this seems like a strange take. Kids need access to YouTube in order to talk to their family?

Are they now completely isolated from the rest of the world?

It's only in extremely recent history that anyone, especially kids, had access to the rest of the world in any meaningful way, or at the resolution available now. I don't think it's remotely healthy for adults to concern themselves with the hourly regional issues wherever they're occuring in the world; it costs society a great deal more than it earns imo (but it's very profitable for the companies on this list)

WhyNotHugo2• 7 months ago

In an attempt to not deliberately misinterpret you, […] Kids need access to YouTube in order to talk to their family?

Your attempt has failed; obviously I’m not taking about YouTube, but about things like WhatsApp, Telegram, WeChat, Instagram, and other social media which families actually use to talk to each other on a dialy basis.

Perhaps you don’t use these, but most of the world population uses some of these (or something similar) to keep in touch with family and friends.

Heck, even when I was a teen (before smartphones) I kept in touch with friends over social media. We’d even organise meeting up through it.

gorgoiler• 7 months ago

It’s worth calling this by its other name: the taking away of anonymity and pseudonymity.

To date, proving you are old enough is almost always (over-)implemented by having to reveal your legal identity and the exact date you were born.

If the whole world goes down the route of AV / age-bans then I hope we at least get some kind of escrow service where you visit an official office, prove your age to a disinterested public official, and then pick a random proof-of-age token out of a big bucket. The bucket’s randomness is itself generated when it was filled up with tokens at the Department of Tokens, and maintained by a chain of custody.

You could do it on polling day: ballot boxes get sent out to polling stations filled with tokens and get sent back filled with ballot papers, with the whole process watched by election monitors. Now everyone has (a) voted (b) picked up a proof of age/citizenship token. It would improve turnout, though I believe that’s already mandatory in Australia.

sothatsit• 7 months ago

We already have digital IDs in Australia, and it seems like a natural fit for this. The digital ID doesn't need to share much information with social media companies, it just needs to confirm your age. And then we don't need new 3rd-parties holding our personal information.

Also yes, voting is mandatory in Australia. You get a small fine if you don't vote.

ulrashida2• 7 months ago

It's a very good system. $20 is the right number to get you off the couch, but not so much as to cripple you. There are exceptions if you have a valid reason for not voting. The maximum fine is ~$180 so you can't simply ignore the Elections Commission and hope it goes away.

triceratops4• 7 months ago

Another proposal to achieve anonymity, similar to yours: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46223051

nromiun• 7 months ago

Everyone supporting this in the comments deserves to live under CCP style internet censorship.

nntwozz• 7 months ago

Society is like poorly written software with lots of patches, new features are added (social media) and then stuff randomly breaks. A fix is eventually deployed, sometimes the fix works; sometimes the fix causes more bugs.

And so we move forward, like Gordon Freeman in unforeseen consequences.

Nobody said nothing as social media and the attention economy took over the world.

"Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” — Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park

t1234s• 7 months ago

Did they publish a list of what they consider social media sites? If you are 15 and active on GitHub is this now considered against the law?

Duwensatzaj• 7 months ago

Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, X, YouTube, Reddit, Twitch and Kick.

GitHub is not included, nor is Discord.

Mikhail_Edoshin• 7 months ago

One purpose of laws us that they clearly state: this is good and this is bad. Many such barriers are cultural, but sometimes they do not work or are actively attacked, so they may be backed with a law.

chocoboaus33• 7 months ago

Including youtube is where it became stupid, even teachers pushed back against that

insane_dreamer5• 7 months ago

I wonder how many of the people who are against it have young teens. It's easy to rail against the ban, or paint it as some plot to get everyone's IDs, when you're not personally affected by it. As a parent of young teens, I 100% support it.

waterTanuki• 7 months ago

I'm in favor of banning all social media for under 18s.

I'm heavily against any form of mandatory form of identification for using non-government online-services.

Is it even possible to do the former without doing the later?

firefoxd• 7 months ago

I'm all for keeping kids away from social media. My main concern is how we verify that they are under 16 [0].

showing my ID [in person] was a simple, controlled transaction: one person looked at it for three seconds, handed it back, and forgot about it. The information never left that moment. But online, that same verification process transforms into something far more risky. A digital journey through countless servers, databases, and third-party services, each one a potential point of failure.
What appears to be the same simple request "please verify your identity", becomes fundamentally different when mediated by technology. The question isn't whether these digital systems will be compromised, but when. And unlike that movie theater clerk who can't perfectly recall my birthdate minutes after seeing it, computers have perfect memory. They store, copy, backup, and transmit our most sensitive information through networks we don't control, to companies we've never heard of, under policies we'll never read.

[0] https://idiallo.com/blog/your-id-online-and-offline

eimrine11• 7 months ago

Please explain me anybody, why not to ban any software which is not FOSS? It will lead to the world I want to live in. Banning just social media just for kids makes the Government to do too much for us - D E C I D I N G who is a kid and what is a social media.

It is similar to the tax approach - it is not bad that we are paying taxes, what is bad that the Government implies how to count the taxes.

yason• 7 months ago

How are they going to verify it's not some kid telling he's 18 with a fake picture? Demand a photo of driver's license? Got one here, right out borrowed from dad's pocket. The article also mentions inferring age from the usage which sounds as vague as it is.

The counter point is that doesn't this basically mean everyone, including adults, now has to identify in order to use social media? Without a national electronic ID where personal data never leaves government's systems (they've already got it) and the social network just receives a yes/no bit when they ask "is this person old enough?" this would mean a huge amounts of identification data would be willingly and voluntarily "leaked" to foreign private services. Scan your passport and send it to China in order to use TikTok?

This mass identification process could either make also large groups of adult people leave social media sites or condition people to upload their ID data to whatever site happens to ask for it.

eimrine11• 7 months ago

I am not protecting non-FOSS practices but you can not register on crypto cx by just showing some papers with not showing your fare. That answers the fake picture case.

verisimi• 7 months ago

Is this dystopian enough yet?

random97498324• 7 months ago

Dystopian is hijacking your mind using recommendation algorithms.

jdthedisciple• 7 months ago

I "endured" the same simply by virtue of my upbringing: our parents de facto banned not only social media but even just mobile phones until our mid teens.

Can't say I mourn it, quite the opposite.

So, good move by our Aussie friends.

timbit422• 7 months ago

The ban isn't the worst part.

grahar64• 7 months ago

Social media is cigarettes. There are lots of studies showing the negative impacts to say that limiting their reach is probably good for society and individuals.

Just about all arguments against this are the same arguments that would stop governments limiting booze or tabaco

mk893• 7 months ago

I like this article more: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyp9d3ddqyo

It goes through numbers, potential ways it's gonna be implemented, and also which other platforms are affected.

For example:

Dating websites are excluded along with gaming platforms, as are AI chatbots, which have recently made headlines for allegedly encouraging children to kill themselves and for having "sensual" conversations with minors.

It wasn't enough the online pedo or weirdos trying to get your kids through chats or games.

It wasn't enough the instagram meat grinder that leads to depression, social anxiety, etc.

Now we even have to worry about chatbots leading kids to suicide.

What a hell of a world are we building - no wonder people don't want to make kids anymore.

rswail• 7 months ago

I'm Australian and just had to age verify on X/Twitter. They used some app called "selfie" and took a pic and said I was verified. That was it.

This social media ban is not so much about banning kids from social media.

It's more about banning social media apps/companies from accessing kids.

The SM apps are entirely about exploitation of their audiences via algorithms to push advertising and political positions. That needs to be stopped.

This is a start.

It's a bit like the bans on under 18 (Australia) drinking without supervision. We know that the bans aren't "perfect", but they work for the majority of the time for the majority of the kids.

256_4• 7 months ago

A lot of the arguments I see in this thread are about whether modern mainstream social media are bad for young people. When the debate becomes about that, it's very easy to defend these types of Orwellian laws. It becomes "This is a problem, therefore the solution is good", without questioning the solution itself. I think this type of thinking is demonstrated, or perhaps exploited, very well by this article (I'm not implying the WEF is secretly behind everything, I'm just using this as an example):

https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/01/davos-2025-special-a...

The first part of that article is an absolutely scathing, on-point criticism of mainstream social media. I find myself agreeing with everything said, and then, suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, the article pivots to "therefore we need completely 24/7 mass surveillance of everyone at all times and we need to eradicate freedom of speech". That article is like a perfect microcosm of this entire international shift in internet privacy.

People and their governments seem to agree that modern social media is a problem. The difference is why. The people think it's a problem because it harms people; governments think it's a problem because they don't control it.

I think that the root cause of this shift to mass surveillance is that people in democratic countries still have a 20th-century concept of what authoritarianism looks like. Mass surveillance is like a novel disease that democracies don't yet have any immunity to; that's why you see all these "it's just like buying alcohol" style false equivalences, because an alarming number of people genuinely don't understand the difference between normal surveillance and mass surveillance.

rhubarbtree• 7 months ago

Well, no one is suggesting 24/7 surveillance, we’re suggesting banning children from using social media, as it has demonstrably very harmful effects on their education and wellbeing.

It’s not Orwellian. If it were, then not allowing kids to vote or drink before they become adults would be Orwellian.

We are simply banning kids from a harmful activity until they are old enough to decide for themselves. The ban has to be at a social level decided by the democratic process, because there’s a coordination problem here: it’s not a harm that can be remedied at the level of the individual.

The real villains here are the social media companies that have profited from the misery and manipulation of children, to their ultimate harm.

I find it hard to believe anyone would argue in good faith against this ban. In tech circles there are a lot of vested interests that don’t want other governments to protect the children in their countries from harmful products. Shame on them.

256_4• 7 months ago

You've basically just confirmed what I said at the end, that democracies have no immunity to mass surveillance. 24/7 surveillance may have been an exaggeration but not by much, really. Age verification, as it exists now, inevitably means mass surveillance, in particular tying real life identities to political beliefs and porn preferences on a mass, computerised scale. If you're too young to remember the Snowden leaks I can maybe understand why you'd think mass surveillance is not an inevitable consequence of age verification, but I'm old enough to remember them, so I think it is. The existence and impact of mass surveillance seem to be invisible to you.

It’s not Orwellian. If it were, then not allowing kids to vote or drink before they become adults would be Orwellian.

To be clear: What do you think you're refuting? I don't think children should be on modern social media. I don't think anyone should be, but especially not children. There are plenty of ways of going about this. This is why I said:

A lot of the arguments I see in this thread are about whether modern mainstream social media are bad for young people. When the debate becomes about that, it's very easy to defend these types of Orwellian laws. It becomes "This is a problem, therefore the solution is good", without questioning the solution itself.

You then claim that the tech industry, and by extension "tech circles", don't like this because it means they make less money. I'm not sure how forcing companies whose business model is based on surveillance capitalism to do even more surveillance would hurt them, but if it does, it's still not my concern anyway. And conflating random hackers like me with "big tech" seems to have become increasingly common recently.

qwery2• 7 months ago

I find it hard to believe anyone would argue in good faith against this ban.

This is a problem. You will not accept an argument against the ban.

Instead you paint anyone presenting any opposition to any part of it as a stooge of predatory businesses.

We are simply [...]

It's a simple idea, but the implementation is anything but.

The real villains here are the social media companies [...]

They're getting out of this easy. You're giving them a free pass.

Tax them. Sue them.

Hold them liable for the content they show users.

Ban social media for children without empowering the social media companies or the government.

denismi3• 7 months ago

Australia is a Five Eyes country, with carte blanche access to data that the incumbent social media companies freely share with all the acronym deep-state authorities.

Could you elaborate further on how preventing a sizeable proportion of its citizens from communicating through these established spy-nets, causing them to disperse out to unpredictable alternatives they might not be able to control, increases mass surveillance?

256_4• 7 months ago

That's definitely an interesting argument I haven't seen before.

I suppose it depends on how effective these types of measures actually are, and also on how many adults refuse to identify themselves. I would assume governments are more interested in spying on adults than under-16s, so the adults are probably more relevant here.

I hope you're right, though. Maybe there'll be a renaissance of smaller platforms. Probably not, but I can hope.

PurpleRamen• 7 months ago

It becomes "This is a problem, therefore the solution is good", without questioning the solution itself.

This is a very simplified view. The topic has been disputed for years, and societies has tried to find alternative solutions. But turns out, there is no other well enough working solution at the moment, hence the nuclear option. And sometimes that is the only working option anyway.

Should be noted, this is not a first. Social Media has already been restricted to various degree for kids of certain ages in several countries. Australia is just raising the age from the usual 12, 13 up to 16.

I find myself agreeing with everything said, and then, suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, the article pivots to "therefore we need completely 24/7 mass surveillance of everyone at all times and we need to eradicate freedom of speech".

So it's a poor article, so what? These attempts are not new. There are regularly political attempts pushing towards stricter regulations and more surveillance. Some work, some not.

That article is like a perfect microcosm of this entire international shift in internet privacy.

There is no shift. Those views have always been there, even before the internet. This is a normal part of societies, including democratic. There is a constant power-struggle between control and liberty in any society, and the balance is always shifting depending on how good or bad certain problems are at that moment.

But a certain thing which is missing here BTW is a complete ban of all open media, for everyone in all ages and groups. For Government, kids on social media are not a big problem, that will only bite them in the decades to come. But people now, today, who are getting radicalized against the standing order, those are a problem. And nobody demanding for a ban is good sign for a healthy enough democracy. Because think about in which countries this is not the case..

qwery2• 7 months ago

So it's a poor article, so what?

I believe their point was to illustrate the disconnect between the problem and the solution. They agree with the problem, and experienced "whiplash" when the solution was described.

For Government, kids on social media are not a big problem, that will only bite them in the decades to come.

In Australia the kids on social media are a problem for the government, today. A 16 year old is less than two years away from voting. Successive governments have laughed at the idea of lowering the voting age to 16 or 17. The government has very little influence on social media -- this is different to older forms of media / communication.

metacortexx• 7 months ago

This is a good start to protect kids! Let's hope it helps families and makes the internet a better place for everyone.

mentalgear• 7 months ago

Should have been done 20 years ago, all the millions of miseries that could have been prevented, if politicians hadn't fallen for the Zuckerberg/Sandberg narrative.

wartywhoa232• 7 months ago

The infovacuuming phase of social networks is complete. Training datasets grabbed, social graphs built, biometry compiled.

Now it's very logical to spin that expensive infrastructure down, removing free communication channels which can dangerously synchronize people against the state, and leaving only channels of control: digital ID, CDBC and a white list of governmental "services", all else outlawed.

People of 2010s uploaded their personal data into the cloud because they thought that was cool, people of 2030s will do because their telescreens demand them so.

Everyone who thinks this will stop at "think about the children" is beyond all repair.

_petronius• 7 months ago

Your sci-fi distopia flash fiction is compelling, but not actually on topic in this discussion.

"Think of the children" is weaponized for censorious purposes, but also the harms of social media are well documented (unlike many of the other moral panics fuelled by this phrase). Communication channels are becoming managed spaces, but by private companies not accountable to the electorate, not by the state.

I'm not sure a blanket under-16s ban on all social media is the right answer, but there are really good reasons why people support this that you need to engage with to have a useful discussion here.

wartywhoa232• 7 months ago

Your sci-fi distopia
to have a useful discussion here

Typical dismissive tactics of a devil's advocate;

by private companies not accountable to the electorate, not by the state

This tale about corporations being separate entities from the state doesn't entertain anymore.

niemandhier• 7 months ago

To ostracise means literally to be outed from society.

Most people I know want to keep their kids off social media, but do not want them to be ostracised.

Given that law, it might now be possible to keep your kids off the networks.

In my experience, at least for younger teens, it’s a small subset of kids enabled by their parents that push everybody else into the mouth of the kraken.

Example from my life:

Kid A has an Instagram account curated by her mum, who is more than happy to set up all kinds of communities, etc., for the kids in the class to cite: “finally be able to better communicate and stay in touch”.

Sure, you can keep your kid out, but social isolation is not easy for teens. Given that law, you could get Insta-mom banned.

egorfine2• 7 months ago

Father of four here.

I will do everything in my power to keep my kids' connected to their social networks. I have a strongly opposing view: social media is one of the best inventions and there is no way or need to protect people from participating.

With all the negative effects they bring the society has to learn how to live with it instead of pretend fighting.

gverrilla2• 7 months ago

Send your children to Gaza.

egorfine2• 7 months ago

Why?

DeathArrow• 7 months ago

If they scare teens of Instagram the danger is some of them will go to places like 4Chan.

fxwin2• 7 months ago

i assume 4chan would fall in the age restricted social media category

fithisux• 7 months ago

It is exactly like smoking. They use age verification, instead of banning it.

Because they are deeply involved.

It is not about protecting. It never was.

ljlolel• 7 months ago

It's funny because Facebook and these social networks are always testing in Australia and New Zealand because it's a whole English-speaking society but it's a bit isolated and far away.

_pdp_• 7 months ago

Many of us grew up without social media and turned out to be fine!

Anyone arguing against this ban is delusional what social media does to undeveloped brains. There are plenty of studies to support this as well.

Social media is harmful to children. We are talking about 10 yo having access to non-stop stream of inappropriate content for their age. You can blame the parents but social media is now fact of life that cannot be so easily escaped.

Like buying alcohol, gambling, driving, voting and other similar things which are restricted under particular age, the discussion should be about at what age is safe for children to participate in the public discourse.

I really hope similar controls are implemented across EU.

pharrington• 7 months ago

Modern social media is worse for our mental health than cigarettes are for our physical health. This should be a no-brainer.

fpauser3• 7 months ago

This is a good thing!

exasperaited• 7 months ago

Tech people imagining their own preferential boogeyman harms that might flow from any action intended to reduce the harms of their products. Again.

alexnewman• 7 months ago

My wife did a lot of conversations with kids in Australia. They all said they hate social media and regularly get harassed by Asian criminal gangs trying to blackmail them. They support the law cause they were only there cause they felt they had to be. We freed these children . The Australian internet is far more dangerous than the USA

roschdal• 7 months ago

This is a brilliant idea!

techterrier• 7 months ago

HN: social media is as bad as smoking

AUS: we agree, and like smoking, won't be letting our kids do it

NH: but freeze peach!

zulban• 7 months ago

HN is not one person.

maqnius• 7 months ago

Regulating dark patterns and recommendation algorithms would benefit everyone. Banning social media until age 16 and then suddenly allowing teenagers into the toxic social media world feels half-baked and somewhat misses the point to me.

quitit• 7 months ago

I have seen a swift uptick in "Australians" negatively posting on social media networks about the new restriction.

Notably the central theme presented by these same "Australians" was that there should be no changes, limits or restrictions to the types of information collected by social media companies, or how they handle such personal information, rather that everything should be exactly as it was... how very convenient.

Some were even so incensed about their personal privacy that they wrote how much they disagree with having to share their SSN with online platforms.

As many of you would already know, mentioning a "SSN" is a give away that the "Australians" are not genuine people. These accounts are perpetuating the lie that Australians must provide a government identity to access these services. While an ID can be used, it's not mandatory and is actually one of the less convenient options, in comparison to 3rd party verification or a face photo.

Seems a bit of a disingenuous argument to complain about taking a photo of one's face for verification, but having no qualms about using the social media network to post photos of oneself for public viewing.

random97498324• 7 months ago

It feels like there is more bot activity then ever before. Reddit is now filled with fresh accounts, suspended accounts and bunch of content that suddenly gets deleted. It doesn't even feel like you are interacting with people anymore.

The "social" part is severely decaying.

timbit422• 7 months ago

New accounts should be limited to read-only for at least a month.

pfdietz• 7 months ago

This would be a nonstarter in the US. SCOTUS has ruled "minors are entitled to a significant measure of First Amendment protection." (Erznoznik v. City of Jacksonville, 422 U.S. 205 (1975)) This sort of blanket ban would collide with that.

ulrashida2• 7 months ago

I'm not sure if you've been following, but the current SCOTUS hasn't seemed to as concerned about upholding precedents as previous courts have.

oddrationale• 7 months ago

A lot of debate here is debating a social media ban. But what actually being banned is accounts, not access.

Australian teens can still scroll TikTok, Instagram, and watch Twitch streams from logged out accounts. They just can't comment, like, or upload their own content.

One might argue that this removes the algorithmic feeds. But I would wager that social media companies will just use browser fingerprinting to continue to serve algorithmic content to logged out users, if they aren't doing this already.

My take. This ruling seems to impact the content creators (from Australia specifically) more than the content viewers. Which I'm not sure is the intent of the legislation.

SoftTalker2• 7 months ago

I don't use social media but from occasionally trying to look at a link someone has sent me, the experience of viewing these sites without being logged in is very limited. If you can see anything, it's maybe one post and then you get a popup demanding that you log in to see more or view the whole thread.

twiclo• 7 months ago

I think they'll loosen that for Australia after this.

miggol• 7 months ago

But what actually being banned is accounts, not access.

Is this implied, or is this detailed in the law? I can see why this would make sense. So many businesses just have a link to their facebook page as their business website, which you should still be able to view. And presuming platforms like YouTube fit the definition, banning kids from watching anything on there would be pretty rough.

One might argue that this removes the algorithmic feeds. But I would wager that social media companies will just use browser fingerprinting to continue to serve algorithmic content to logged out users, if they aren't doing this already.

On the subject of YouTube, I wonder if they would allow for the creation of teen accounts, which restrict all social media functions but allow subscriptions. But would that then also remove algorithmic recommendations? What about data harvesting off those accounts? If so, I might have to look up how to get a teenage fake ID.

indoordin0saur• 7 months ago

browser fingerprinting to continue to serve algorithmic content to logged out users, if they aren't doing this already

This is going to be a poor substitute. New browser, updated browser, lost cookies, new phone, different device... Those all will reset your algorithm and the companies will have a hard time tracking down data they can associate with you.

ProllyInfamous2• 7 months ago

I was in college when this really cool idea came out: a social network database which only college students could join, regulating access to students@*.edu emails, only [obviously: TheFaceBook]. When distant relatives began sending `friend request`s, just a few years later, I left that platform forever.

Seems like local school districts could reintroduce such a platform (perhaps one already exists) for class discussions to continue outside of the classroom... but without the temptations of the outside world [which these u16 bans rightfully seek to limit]. Hyper-walled gardens, actual community-based social spaces, sans predation.

As always, I imagine with the unlimited timelessness of childhood multiple clever work-arounds will persist, regardless of any law. May the cat-and-mouse be merry.

superxpro123• 7 months ago

It's interesting that, in almost every proposed solution, there is a degree of moderation involved. There simply is no way around it.

ProllyInfamous2• 7 months ago

there is a degree of moderation involved

Life in moderation, even with tech.

I've used an outbound-only landline, for going on two years; the previous two decades I always carried a work cell phone. It's incredible that even years later, if I happen to hear my former ringtone (used by other people), or hear that familiar `buzzing` sound: I still get anxious feeling like I must respond to these ficticious nobodies...

The portability of the cell phone is IMHO what made it so addictive / disruptive. Back when most computers didn't fit into our pockets society had clearly delineated spaces between online/offline — now everything is connect so nothing is...

lizknope• 7 months ago

When I was a teenager I responded to bans by trying to get around them like warning stickers on music.

Talking about the dangers of D&D or the Satanic Panic seemed idiotic to me and still do.

But when people explained why something was bad I would listen. Did their concerns seem legitimate?

I'm 50 and I've never smoked a cigarette. In the movies it looked cool. But I saw older people with horrible health issues and also the smoke smelled horrible and made their breath stink. Those people were not lying to me about the danger of tobacco.

So are people lying about the dangers of social media? But if you think it is bad for teenagers then how do you convince them that it is? I would rather have commercials with teenagers talking about how they were depressed or developed eating disorders or whatever from looking at social media. Then they stopped and now they are happier with more real life interactions.

I can tell you that I deleted my facebook account in 2016 (didn't use it much) and haven't been on instagram in 5 years. I don't miss it at all. All facebook ever did was annoy and anger me.

fs_software• 7 months ago

I wonder how teens who already use social media will be affected compared with kids who won’t have accounts until age 16.

shevy-java2• 7 months ago

I don't like censorship.

I also don't like antisocial media.

Still, I dislike censorship more than that antisocial media.

pookha• 7 months ago

This has nothing to do with protecting kids...This is the classic "OH WONT SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!" meme that governments fall back on to terrorize and coerce the herd. There's an obvious push by neo-liberals to implement a digital application (ID) that they can use to "authorize". What the UK and Australia and the US homeland security really want is the ability to see a troublemaker and to toggle a switch on their digital certificate\token to dissociate them from the internet. No doubt they've got legions of Keycloak systems stood up and ready.

Havoc2• 7 months ago

And the UK is pushing for age checks on VPNs

https://bills.parliament.uk/publications/63901/documents/746...

regulations which prohibit the provision to UK children of a Relevant VPN Service (the “child VPN prohibition”).

MagicMoonlight• 7 months ago

That’s a list of random possible amendments which haven’t been agreed.

Havoc2• 7 months ago

That's why I said "pushing for" not "enacted"...

casey2• 7 months ago

I could have sworn china did something like this a decade ago, but sure World first LOL

realaaa• 7 months ago

why are they not going for the true root cause of the problem?

stop dilution our attention - shorts, infinite scrolls, predatory algorithms - this needs to be controlled really

and yeah of course scams and pedos etc - surely Big Tech can crack down on that also

again why a good behaving majority needs to suffer, because of minority crap + bad incentives of ads driven platforms?

chocoboaus33• 7 months ago

Just a reminder that the Australian government has chosen to not ban sports betting advertisements including live odds and crosses to betting companies inside sports broadcasts

that kids watch

And parents have asked the gov to ban

But they won't because tax revenue

So don't try and tell me this government is all about the kids

mdnahas• 7 months ago

The banned websites have negatives, but they also have positives too. I hate to think of the young geeks banned from YouTube’s Kahn Academy, Veritasium, Smarter Everyday, …, and all the DIY tutorials.

Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

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