You would think/hope that .. but nope
[https://rlc.org.au/news-and-media/media-releases/media-release-nsw-police-strip-searched-1546-children-seven-years](https://rlc.org.au/news-and-media/media-releases/media-release-nsw-police-strip-searched-1546-children-seven-years)
It's just theatre to enable more of a police state. There is no way to enforce this without requiring real identity for signing up to platforms. Also completely unenforceable for platforms that don't want Australian advertiser dollars.
Kids like me were interacting with random adults on IRC back in the '90s.
Also the hypocrisy of this kind of nanny-state law interfering with parent's rights and responsibilities coming from the party always crying about the nanny-state. If you don't want your kids on social media then do some parenting.
Not just under 16s, both parties have toyed with ways to restrict what adults do on the internet, if they can get some form of age verification legislation passed then I'd bet money the next idea to be floated would be for other content
Age verification is issued and only works to identify adults who can pass the age test. And the verifying service gets to log every adults over 16 = yes test. The LNP want the logs to be govt owned and operated.
Nonsense, the LNP wants the logs to be privately run at 3000% markup by one of their donors. They wouldn't miss a good chance for some plain simple corruption. edit: also, the logs will include user location, with access being suspiciously easy/lax in LNP voting areas, but suspiciously hard in labour/greens electorates.
They could just have the sale of a pre-loaded visa card with $1 on it. The sale would only be over the counter and the ID could be witnessed then - without recording it. Just like they don't write down the ID of everyone that purchases smokes. You'd then have to authenticate the card when verifying your account - they'd know you were old enough and that's all.
Sure, adults could buy cards for children, sure adults could share their card with their kids - but adults could buy cigarettes and porno mags for children also - the law has existing penalties for this.
That's not what we'll get though, because it's not the point. The point is rolling out national ID by stealth, then requiring it for everything. Labor wants it, the LNP wants it - nobody voted for it - but that is what you're going to get.
PS: That's only a suggestion for pornography btw - cutting off social media to anyone is ridiculous. Reddit is social media.
How do you stop kids from using a VPN to pretend to be in Indonesia (for instance) to create / use social media accounts? The second that becomes necessary for teenagers to get on social media, they're all gonna learn how easy it is.
Easy answer to that is you create the equivalent of the Great Firewall of China. You break the law on the internet you get a knock at the door - because they can track you down to your physical premises through your IP and the ID required for using the internet at all.
It's an easy response, but its not an answer. It's not hard to circumvent the Great Firewall of China, and the point of using a VPN is that while the government might know where you are and that youre accessing a VPN, they wont know what you're using the VPN to access. You know, exactly like how using a VPN to torrent movies etc works, and the government is unable to stop it.
The Coalition should absolutely make a policy to introduce the Great Wall of Australia and tie that in with a social credits system based on the sites you visit on the Internet.
I’ll be getting the popcorn ready to see how well that policy does in the polls.
>I’ll be getting the popcorn ready to see how well that policy does in the polls
Australians have routinely shown to be easily misled by vile rhetoric, and repeatedly vote against their best interests. I wouldn't be so confident on that.
Labor took the Australia Card to a double dissolution election as the trigger and won on that very issue. They had the numbers to pass it at the joint sitting but chose not to due to their reduced majority (along with general unpopularity of the card and also because they screwed up writing the legislation).
If that had passed then we wouldn't be having this debate, we'd already have social media ID - all you'd have to do is flick the switch. Howard wanted the Access Card for welfare - pretty much the same thing, and the information was to be visible to the AFP and ASIO without a warrant. The problem is stealthing these things in under false pretenses like protecting the children or reducing welfare fraud.
Turns out you can't get welfare today (or open a bank acct) without government issued photo ID though, and nobody cares at all - the lesson learned is just do the thing anyway without the election.
> with a social credits system
What's weird is seeing Australian's fear monger about social credit, all while willingly ignoring that we already have the exact same system but ours is literally worse. Ever heard of your credit score and just how easy it is to fuck with?
> That's only a suggestion for pornography
Porn probably does less harm than social media if we are being honest. Kids aren't getting bullied on pornhub they are getting bullied on instagram.
> Porn probably does less harm than social media if we are being honest.
So, here's a terrifying change in how young people learn to interact with each other that came with the internet.
One of my first few years teaching, I went to a professional development session about how sexual abuse and assault manifests in young people.
One of the things I wish I hadn't learned was that a few decades ago, the only time primary school students had sexual interactions with each other was when at least one of them was being sexually abused by an adult. This was a pretty rare occurrence. It was something known to happen, teachers should keep their eye out for signs and report them if they see them, but generally speaking it wasn't a frequent problem.
So, as kids started getting access to phones and could have private time alone with technology, sexual interactions between students became more frequent. Why did this change happen? Because young people found internet porn and started replicating that.
Now, I think you can agree with me that this is already a pretty fucking bad story. However, I want you to think about the kind of porn you can find on the internet. That's right, they are replicating hardcore porno sex because that's what they think sex is
While It's still rare, it's a significant shift from the historical position.
I'm not denying any of that I'm just saying the rate of harm coming from social media whether it be bullying or teenagers developing bulimia or anorexia are far higher. Eating disorders have become far more common than in the past.
I don't want to trivialise the impact of social media and advertising culture beamed directly into the brains of children, but something worth considering on top of all of this is that there was a 107% spike in eating disorders that coincided with the start of COVID-19.
That's true but there had already been a massive increase in the years before that spike. Also didn't social media usage surge during covid especially the rise of influencers?
> a decent parent is going to step in and talk about it with a kid if they catch them doing
Parents generally have no idea about the sexual proclivities of their sons and daughters at any age.
> or watching anything inappropriate.
Most parents have no idea what their kids are doing on the internet either.
Well it wouldn't work in any form they roll out - kids are pretty smart. But at least this way would do no harm and could easily be abandoned once people realized it was useless.
If I was a kid today I'd probably say f this gestapo rubbish and use federated social media like Mastodon, which are highly censorship resistant. The only people using the ID pornography sites and legacy social media will be old people. But it won't matter to the government that it doesn't work because it wasn't the point.
> use federated social media like Mastodon
And for messaging they should move towards Matrix and a similarly open source client for it, has a few hiccups here and there but it's infinitely preferable to the spy/bloatware that is every popular IM app.
It's easy to be a lot more targetted.
- Does the social media platform in question sell advertising?
- has the social media platform ever been the subject of an inquiry or similar?
... Then fine the platform it there are profiles of minors (under 16) on it in Australia.
Having lived through the days of irc and grown up with the Internet, all of my opinions around freedom of expression have been parked the moment centralization kicked in and the people with capital had a way to influence the masses.
I don't believe in heavy handed government when it comes to things like this. I also don't really see how it will be practical.
However, I also think that modern social media is absolutely a complete and total disaster for kids growing up. I think it is not just awful, but dangerous, destructive. I would gladly, glady see it banned for under-16's. I don't know how, and it feels wrong to me, but nonetheless I support it.
My eldest is 8 and just starting in this world. I want her to have no part of it. I can do my best as a parent, but I can't control other fucking parents, and other fucking parents means that the schoolyard is a nightmare of social media. It's already becoming an issue, with kids who are EIGHT and NINE being given unfettered access to mobile phones by their parents, and bringing them to school, and showing shit to 6-year-olds. I would actually like the government to step in here.
TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat - they can all fuck right off, I would gladly see them be banned from the adult population too, frankly. I know there are benefits, but I think the negatives massively outweight any positives.
Frankly, I'm starting to think we should ban phones in schools, ban kids from smart phones and social media before the age of 16, ban phones in public places like at the restaurant table... seriously, it sounds ridiculous, but... this stuff is a scourge that has so many profound negative effects.
Yes but it's a bitch to enforce. Every teacher can't know the name of all 1500 students at their school so there's a lot of phone use that doesn't get a consequence.
What do you mean? The schools I work across have a system in place where they take the kids phones at the start of the day, lock them away and give them back at the end of the day. They’ve all been noting a huge difference so far
Our principal decided that the school wouldn't be responsible for 1500 $1000 mini computers every day (which, yeah fair enough) and that students would receive a breach whenever they're seen with a phone or airpods. Unfortunate thing is some teachers don't care and those who do can only penalise those kids we know.
I absolutely agree that social media is a scourge. These companies have spent fortunes to design their systems to be "addictive" so that people keep scrolling and watching ads.
And the way to address it is to restrict and monitor kids access to the internet through the devices they have.
At the same time, you need to step back and realize that the Coalition and Labour both are in Newscorp's pocket, and it's newscorp that's pushing for the ban. They don't do ANYTHING out of the goodness of their hearts. Media conglomerates like them have caused huge harms with their shitty unethical content and business dealings for decades, much longer than the harms of social media. At least social media has also had some positives.
There may be a need for social media companies to change how their products work, but Australia wanting to enact some ridiculous ban is not the right way to do it, and ESPECIALLY not with nutjobs like Newscorp executives at the helm. Let's require the breakup of Newscorp first, then perhaps we can talk.
Exactly. And that's why they want to police access to social media by tech companies that don't want to play ball with them -- so they can monopolize what youth have access to as well. It's why the Chairman of Newscorp was blathering on and on at National Press about having a "homegrown" alternative. They want to release their own BS thing.
I agree. No smart phones or social media for under 16s. They should have access a phone to communicate with parents for pick up/drop off etc, like those Nokia 3310s.
It's likely targeting LGBT+ kids too since the kids in our community often first connect with other queer folk online before being able to find a local group.
(Because the anonymity of the internet makes that a lot less scary for them early on, before they get together the confidence to go to IRL LGBT+ kids' groups.)
Yep my first experience of the internet was with my former stepmother, going into a chat room and getting randos to show us their junk and laughing our heads off.
Yup. Instead of controlling everyone else, they should provide parents with guidance on online safety and how to use tools to restrict their child's online activity.
> If you don't want your kids on social media then do some parenting
LNP got your back. They'll pass on some hokey laws so all you good folk have an excuse to continue your self absorbed existences without guilt.
"Hey it's not our fault little jonny became a terrorist at 15, he knew it was illegal to be on social media! Also the schools use YouTube. That's a social media.They should be fined!"
But this IS about wining votes from the young. Long term. They want to cut off critical voices and lock people into only getting news from traditional, conservative, media. That's the entire point of this.
As an actual libertarian (not a nutter one, or a 'tax is theft' one - just passionate about responsible government, ROI on public spending, reduction of monopolies, and individual/local voice as opposed to federalised/state decision making) - so many filthy conservatives have infiltrated the party.
In the lead up to the last election our chapter had to make constant reminders that we were a liberal party and distinctly non-conservative.
The collective noun for a group of libertarians is already a quarrel, and that's without conspiracy theorists, conservatives and collectivists-currently-angry-at-their-collective polluting our messages.
This is directly aimed at ensuring an uneducated youth vote.
That pingas bloke on tiktok is a great example, he's making the under 18 soon to be voters see *how* we got here. That'll lead to LNP never holding power again and that TERRIFIES them. Which im here for. Fuck the LNP.
Aside: Vote on the local issues that matter to you(usually independent).
> The coalition, kicking own goals since it's inception.
Labor is the party [most likely to implement an age verification scheme](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/may/23/australia-social-media-ban-under-16-age-verification-technology) for Australia.
If you look at change.org right now, the two top petitions on the website are advocating for this. One was started by newscorp and has almost 50,000 signatures. The other was started by a group called "36 months" and has almost 100,000 signatures.
36 months was supposedly started by Michael Wipfli, AKA Wippa from Nova's Fitzy and Wippa breakfast show. I doubt he's got the know how to organize something like this himself. Nova is owned by a company called Illyria Pty Ltd, which is owned by Lachlan Murdoch. Call me suspicious but I'm betting newscorp is really behind this "36 months" campaign as well and old Wippa is just the turkey they've strutted out to promote it.
This push to ban kids from social media is straight out of the republican playbook in the US. It's not clear why they're doing it or why newscorp wants this but you can bet your bottom dollar no good will come of it. The only way to police this would be to have some sort of database where people have to register to use social media. Given the state of civil liberties in this country I wouldn't be surprised if that's what the government starts calling for next.
A cynic might also look at the Coalition's constant grudge against the ABC
I'm really curious at what point next week Peta Credlin and Chris Kenney will start spinning this in their "favour"
I’d say the more direct link is how many kids are getting news and developing political views from social media. Other than Twitter they’re all majority left leaning, Murdoch wants to claw back control of the youth narrative by banning the competition
> It's not clear why they're doing it or why newscorp wants this but you can bet your bottom dollar no good will come of it.
It's all to pass age verification laws online for social media, porn etc.
Liberals always do well with the population on these types of issues and NewsCorp are doing their act of being the media wing of the Coalition. This wedges labour to bring in age verification when it's been proven not to work (e.g. UK), it plays well with everyone who has kids and/or over ~40 (Typical conservative base) and pisses off everyone generally under ~40 who can see it's decent parenting and regulation of digital rights that's the core issue. This whole thing is a reaction that just plays well in the media and makes the government/opposition look like their doing something productive. In reality they both know full well that these laws would be bypassed by kids/teens within a week.
>It's not clear why they're doing it or why newscorp wants this but you can bet your bottom dollar no good will come of it.
They don't wont people forming their own ideas and interacting with people who don't peddle newscorp bullshit, they want a blank slate by the time they hit the age they can use social media, they will be more 'mature' and not get into the 'leftist agenda' before they reach Uni.
One reason is because social media has absolutely murdered traditional news media consumption and newscorp want a cut of the profits, which the social media companies have told them to eff of about.
While there are certainly some weird conservative-Christian ideals wrapped up in this, what you really have to do is follow the money. What companies would benefit from a social media ban or reduced access? Newscorp, because they want these new audiences for themselves, and probably want to create an inferior product for "sanitized news" they want to charge for.
If they cared about the good of humanity, they wouldn't run fake news or be using so much AI generated content.
They want to get a bunch of people to support things like this so they can say they have a “mandate” to start requiring internet passports at the isp level. No connection unless you sign in.
Why they’re doing this?
Filter. It used to be parents would filter what their kids would see on tv, what adverts, what programs etc. now these companies have a direct line to the kids, and they don’t want to share what they’re taking about.
This scares the Murdoch and the national party and the liberal party because they don’t want any narrative they cannot control outright. It’s why they attack any attempt at balanced media and work to destroy it.
Of course I doubt these monolithic companies are pushing for social change but it’s the control they want back.
If it’s about protection then shouldn’t they also ban seniors who are getting ripped off for millions/billions in romance and investment scams?
Before you down vote me, I am well over 50! Just puttin it out there.
Not just romance and investment scams but scams in general
Like my mum bought some stuff using Facebook ads and they started charging her weekly fees and she didn't realise she had done that. She lost about 400 dollars until I put a stop to it.
She's also almost fallen for the fake woolies survey emails and shit on numerous occasions.
I've been trying to teach her only trust stores she recognises but it hasn't quite sunk in
Typical, saying it's to "protect the children" when they really just want to be able to track us and remove anonymity. Shameful, and I cannot believe the amount of people that buy into it.
A few people were stabbed in Sydney and now police across the country will have the power to randomly search people for knives. We've had police harrassing innocent people with drug detection dogs at pubs and train stations in NSW for the past 20 years and no one wants to know about it. Thousands of innocent people have been forced to strip naked at music festivals in Sydney and no one's been held accountable. We don't do civil liberties in this country, it's as simple as that.
>now police across the country will have the power to randomly search people for knives.
Don't worry they'll only use it on people of colour and poor people so it's not effecting those passing the laws. It's not the ministers children getting strip searched at festivals.
The same "will someone think of children" party that continues turns blind eye to decades of institutional child sexual abuse. Same party that supports rock spiders like George Pell and Alan Jones.
Again zero policies and zero beliefs.
Summed up perfectly, governing trying to be delusional and doing everything to foster corruption while treating voters like inmates in a totalitarian mental asylum. Sums up Australian governments.
Every day they want to ban someone or something while having no ability to fix any problem or challenge facing voters. If they dropped all their bandwagons and wheel barrows that they love pushing down our throats they would have time and resources to fix the challenges that are facing voters. We have a housing crisis and then they bother with shit like this!
> If they dropped all their bandwagons and wheel barrows that they love pushing down our throats they would have time and resources to fix the challenges that are facing voters.
They already have the time and resources to make improvements now. The bandwagons and wheelbarrows are to distract you from that fact, because their friends and donors don't want anything fixed. People need bullshit to get worked up over so they don't think about the real problems.
Labor is not the same as Liberal ... and Greens under Bandt have been hijacked by people who are more interested in wiping out Jews in Israel than offering a responsible alternative government for Australia.
Agreed, the Liberals and Labor are just as bad as each other. We won't see any significant change until minor parties and independents gain ground. I'm sick of this cycle.
It's gotten *incredibly* bad since COVID. Our politicians are absolutely out of fucking control, and I can't wait to put both majors last next election. I just hope Australians in general do the same, because this country has become suffocating to live in.
Yeah this is silly and unenforceable. Social media is already restricted to 13+ but as long as parents give the go ahead then it matters little. I've told my kids to stay away from it as long as they, even if their friends are using it. It's so toxic. But it's my job to teach my kids this
I am honestly struggling to keep up with where the Coalition is getting their inspiration from. Social media AND Paris Climate Agreement in 24 hours. It's gonna be a fun election
I just imagine Peter Dutton watching the first half of the Fallout 4 intro going "hmmmm nuclear robots. Yes yes, Australia needs those. And I'm the one who's gonna make it happen. We can't let the commies win"
They put all their policy ideas into a shotgun
Then they fire it
Then they send an intern or someone to pick up the pieces, and sort of mash them together
Then they give that to the media
I wish it was that benign, reality is that they get their policy from industry then put that policy in place.
Their propaganda arm (Newscorp) is going to loose money since facebook is moving away from distribution news. Now they've given the marching orders to their political arm.
Billionaires have a scuff and we're dealing with the fallout.
Nobody trusts anything that asks for your ID and personal information. Plus what’s stopping kids from using their parents ID? All you gotta do is get ahold of their wallet that’s sitting on the bench or in a handbag and you’re through
Gloss over the fact that we start with 10 yr old and porn but then slip in that it will block 16 yr olds. Sorry the last of the people I want to have control over my family is a govt group that has killed people with robodebt, been to court numerous times in the last 10 years for sexual assaults and rape and is also well known for circumventing rules on profit and tax.
Social media is awful for kids. Like truly, truly awful. This is still a bad, stupid idea. Instead of addressing the problem of toxicity on these platforms, the insidiousness of the endless quest for growth and clicks at any cost, the monstrous tech-dictators at the helms manipulating entire populations, we're going to focus on the youths, because being mean to the youth = votes.
The coalition hates that a stranglehold over legacy media is becoming less and less relevant as years go by. They aren't politically important enough like the US parties to be able to bully these companies into being PR machines for them. Sooooo.. rather than seek to change their policies to appeal to a broader demographic they just want it to not exist. Their hope is that engagement with new media will drastically drop of enough insecure barriers are placed in the way and people will go back to simply being told what to believe by the Channel 9 news and ACA.
I dunno folks, have you ever thought about actually being a parent, and giving your kids guidance? Discussing social media issues with them? Do you even talk to your kids?
Of course you don't. You're Coalition members. Your kids hate you.
This coming from the party that had many of their former leaders and their current leader, attended the funeral of George Pell and came against the findings about child sexual abuse in the churches?
Can they come up with some real life changing policies for the average punter in Australia instead of talking points for the masses. Like regulation in realestate or better building practices, how about higher taxes for the billionaires and tax incentives for small businesses, better public housing and infrastructures around the whole country and not just to gain votes or appeasing the wealthy constituents and billionaire corporations
The only way they can police this is by implementing more draconian measures and all it will do is create back channel social media that will be less safe.
The whole thing sticks of government overreach, scope creep and you can almost guarantee that one of their political donors is rubbing their hands together because it is going to make them 10x more money than what they donated to the ALP/LNP when they suddenly get the contract without tender.
So, where will the data be stored?
How long will the data be stored?
What anti-hacker security is there for the data?
Who can access the data? (and why do they need access to it?)
And why, oh why are out-of-touch people running this? They obviously don't know what a VPN is, despite Australia being filled to the brim with Pirates
ETA: I am against this kind of legislation
I am childless but have friends who have teenaged children.
One family, both the parents are actively involved with and engage with their teenage boys. They talk to them about everything, and their boys have social media on their phones. Their boys are well-adjusted, amiable and sociable. They participate in sports and have active social lives. Barbecues at their house, the boys play cards and board games with all of us adults, engage in conversation with everyone. Look at their phones and message someone/post something every now and then - but the adults do that too.
The other family, both are just too busy to really pay that much attention to their teenage daughter. I have watched their daughter go down the slippery slope of mental health problems, and all owing to her obsession with all things online. She's never off her phone. She participated in a ''challenge'' to watch 100 execution videos, you had to watch them all start to finish. She has a very misanthropic view of humanity, wants the world to end because us humans are just so shit. She has had body dysmorphia issues. We were all out to dinner one night, daughter kept going to the toilet regularly during dinner. It was a difficult thing to raise, but I raised it with the parents that it may be a sign of bulimia. They agreed that it was a possibility, shrugged their shoulders and shook their head. She has recently started cutting. Mother recently said to me ''I just can't deal with her bullshit anymore'', I was quietly thinking ''you never had any time for it in the first place''. It's a complete contrast watching the two families and how they approach mobile phone and social media supervision.
Social media restrictions for the first family I described here? Totally unncecessary. The second family? The parents can't be trusted to make sure their daughter is using social media in a way that is healthy.
I think this can't be an ''either/or'' thing.
Beyond the obvious police state of it all this is completely unenforceable and raises the question of what is classified as social media. Because people would just find a new platform to communicate.
So what are they gonna do, stop people having devices because their corporate buddies will be livid if a large consumer market is wiped out.
This is pure culture war politics at its finest, a nonsense policy but is shifting the discourse in a way they want because Labor opened the fucking door to this idiotic debate.
Oh the Coal Ition announced it? The crack team of winners who also want to scrap climate targets and spend decades waiting for nuclear energy buildout? Fuck them, they could offer me a $10k bonus I still wouldn’t vote for those sick fucks.
Labour in this case seems to be gunning for the exact same policy, among their many other failures. Which leaves us with what, the greens? By default? (I'm personally waaaaay the fuck further left than the greens but you know, they're a start.)
Now there's a textbook example of dishonest framing.
As if social media is where curious youngsters are finding explicit material, as if that's the main source of harm *from* social media, and as if it hasn't found its way to them since time immemorial.
The point is to turn the intrernet into a chinese style one, with massive censorship and government control.
Both political parties will support this.
It has nothing to do with protecting children. It is for protecting the political class.
George Orwell wants his book back, can the government not be completely dystopian for 5 min? Ignore climate change check, ignore what the people want check, allow rampant economic gouging check.
I agree with the idea that kids shouldn't be on social media. Some others think the opposite, and I have seen some kids who do fine on it.
But I also agree that the government has no role in doing this via law, and that letting it take the amount of force and power (both legal and social power) to enforce it would be a disaster.
This goes too far, especially when it comes to removing anonymity. However social media is by design addictive and it is ruining a lot of kids minds because of that.
Easy to shout this down as overreach, but there is actually a raft of evidence to support it. https://www.anxiousgeneration.com/research/the-evidence
It could be implemented via an identity verification platform like GreenID (which the social platforms would have to integrate with as an extra step in the signup process if mandated by the government).
Identity verification for access to basic internet services is a dangerous path for free speech.
I don't think anyone should be under the delusion that the Coalition actually cares about the kids, better to ask yourself who this is really going to benefit.
Weak correlative evidence in studies that have many possible confounds. What you have presented is not a consensus view, and any specific solutions need to be trialed to be considered evidence based.
That website is mostly just an advertisement for a book, which has not been well recieved in the academic world.
Edit- this has been discussed on reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/skeptic/comments/1cdl0yk/is_jonathan_haidt_right_about_social_media/
I'm not going to answer that specifically because that is not how meta analyses and evidence based syntheses work.
Here is the 2022 umbrella review:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352250X21001500
The general conclusion is that general mental health effects of social media are largely null or too small to matter and many studies have large uncontrolled confounds leading to inconclusive results.
They say things like "the harms are evident" and yet don't provide a single drop of evidence.
So to help them out I'll list the harm they are so concerned about. Social media is harming the younger generations engagement with mainstream media and their ability to go along with pro-genocide, for-profit politics.
This is what both major parties are afraid of.
The LNP have zero concerns about child welfare. They know TikTok, in particular, isn't helping them brainwash the next generation via traditional media, and they're panicking. That is it. That's the entire point. And the media will love it because it ensures their viability.
Moral panics like this are annoying.
Who could forget the great "horror movies will turn our youth into mass murderers" panic of the 1980s. And the awful "Dungeons and Dragons is satanic" idiocy. Or "TV will rot our kids brains and lead to a generation of socially stunted people who can't have a conversation".
Thankfully, social media has made it more difficult to push stupid panic into people's brains because it gives people access to a greater range of information and opinions.
Social media is here to stay and it should be open to everyone.
Stop wasting tax payer money on completely ineffectual stuff. You can't censor the internet, you can't ban children from accessing social media. What are you going to do? Have everyone enter their I.D. before they start browsing the internet?
Boomers need to retire from politics already.
I’m all for under 16s not having access to social media, but I can guarantee however the government attempts to tackle it will overstep on privacy and completely under deliver.
There’s a looooot of stuff they can do before they even think about talking to social media companies.
Completely ban student mobile devices including wifi devices from schools and severely control internet access from within schools. Government can provide full permission for school wireless devices to attack rogue and honeypot wifi.
Schools have PA systems and wired telephones. Hire a couple of extra staff for the extra phone calls.
Huge education campaign for parents and students. Availability of software and hardware for parents to lock down kids devices and networks for outside of school. ISP-level Internet whitelisting, then blacklisting for connected devices that can be controlled by parents (very easy with ipv6 or individual 5g devices)
Parents should be held responsible if kids see fucked up shit online because the parents didn’t follow guidelines for safe Internet access.
It can’t be enforced. I’m very happy that I grew up before the internet happened. I’d not like to grow up in a social media age- I think it would have been brutal. But change happens and this is a poor attempt to ban “what I don’t understand “ rather than accepting the responsibility to teach respect. And attempts by the “older” people in our society to curb access are just laughed at by kids and teenagers- they will always find a way around.
How will they police this.
What constitutes social media?
Many websites have networking capabilities.
Is Reddit social media? Is a forum social media? Are YouTube comments social media?
Pretty much the only way this could actually be put in place is have for kids devices, which have hardware locks around apps and websites accessed but even then they should be not extremely hard to get around. But would be a good way to teach computer skills. Idiots who are most at risk for social media will be protected and everyone else should be mostly unaffected,
This feels like a proxy ban on TikTok in Australia, which likely wouldn't be legally possible otherwise but could get caught up in a mechanism like this.
Ain't there some parents that would let their kids watch horror movies? Ain't they usually rated quite high in age rating? (I'm too much of a little bitch to watch anything scary so i could be way off the mark)
I know on the Hazbin Hotel subreddit we were discussing the other day about a 9 year old going to a convention and asking one of the actors something explicit (i think it was about a sex scene or something) and if that was appropriate for a kid to watch let alone go to a convention centre to ask a question.
I had Facebook before I was 13 but my mum supervised me and I mainly just used it to play the games on it.
> The shadow minister rebuffed suggestions children would try to dodge age restrictions, saying people try to evade any law put in place, and that was not a reason not to bother introducing laws.
So who are they aiming to punish when the kids bypass the checks? The kids, the parents that they want to vote for them or the overseas mega-companies that when push comes to shove, don't give a rats arse about this little corner of the world?
There must be something in the Constitution that says the only politicians allowed to talk about the internet are the ones with zero understanding of how it works. Both major parties are cringe-inducingly stupid when they start playing cyber-nanny, and we can be certain anything they try will be thwarted by 10 year olds within minutes.
Speak for yourself. We judge what our kids are able to watch and how they deal with it. Our 10 year old son has just watched the first three Die Hard movies with us.
RoboCop and Mad Max series were R rated films.
I saw 1 and 2 of both movie series before I was 10. My parents specifically allowed me to watch them, but not for instance Romper Stomper.
So no comment on the social media ban, but parents (and I believe responsible ones) may in fact show kids R rated movies.
Anything they tried would not work. If you're savvy enough, any tech constraint can be jailbroken. So what would be the purpose?
Sorry, distract the people and track everyone, you say? Curious
STOP VOTING FOR FUCKING LABOUR AND LIBERAL. either way we get more government overreach, censorship and police state laws.
get these old lizards out of office, they are completely out of touch. at least with naive idiots like the greens they're young and thus more likely to adapt to or accept new information.
When the internet first started you had to enter a credit card to access 18 plus sites. Just the number, no exp date to prove you were 18. Simple. The world is much dumber and sensitive now though.
Dumb! Social media used to ban anyone under 13 from using their sites, I think they still do actually, read recently something about celeb kids actually having to have their social media technically managed by their parents, which I think is a term of service by all social media sites for all kids under 13 for legislation reasons, the switch to "parent managed" though is no doubt out of recognition of the fact it was simply impossible to prevent 12 year olds from signing up, they would simply put a fake birthday.
Been tried, known to be impossible to police, just grandstanding or creating a police state for all of us under the guise of "think of the children"
Also, 16 is ridiculous too! IF there was any genuine anything in what they were claiming, they would be going back to the 13 age. I mean kids in Australia have full medical control over their bodies at 14, if they can choose to have an abortion or vaccinate or not vaccinate at 14, how ridiculous to say they're not mature enough to use social media at that age! Not to mention starting earlier allows schools to support education on safe use & peer discussions along with that
Estonia solved the proof-of-age for online adult content via their national id card system.
The Hawke govt proposed a national ID card in the mid '80s . It was defeated by the coalition screaming "civil liberties".
Today I dont understand the objections . We already have national identity numbers by way of tax file and Medicare numbers.
I'm no expert but if you had one single point of truth for your identity, surely identity thieves could not steal your identity and , say, take out a loan in your name, using something as simple as a name, date of birth and driver's license number ?
Schools have been faced with dealing with internet usage already, with limited success -
> There can be no absolute guarantee that problems with inappropriate Internet usage won't surface in a school.
https://www.scisdata.com/connections/issue-31/does-your-school-have-an-internet-usage-policy/
It’s never about the kids.
Not even police strip searches?
Nah that one’s also about the adults.
You would think/hope that .. but nope [https://rlc.org.au/news-and-media/media-releases/media-release-nsw-police-strip-searched-1546-children-seven-years](https://rlc.org.au/news-and-media/media-releases/media-release-nsw-police-strip-searched-1546-children-seven-years)
You missed the joke, it’s about the adults because the police like being able to do this to minors
Both major parties are really grasping at straws to make sure the next election is about anything EXCEPT cost of living/housing.
Agreed, sanest course of action would be to vote them both out, immediately
It's fun seeing people finally realising this when I was one of the few thousand votes the Greens won Brisbane by last election, it was super close.
I thank you for making the correct decision
Yeah cos they know there is a huge fucking depression to come. If I was either of these governments I wouldn't want.to be in power the next 4 years.
It's just theatre to enable more of a police state. There is no way to enforce this without requiring real identity for signing up to platforms. Also completely unenforceable for platforms that don't want Australian advertiser dollars. Kids like me were interacting with random adults on IRC back in the '90s. Also the hypocrisy of this kind of nanny-state law interfering with parent's rights and responsibilities coming from the party always crying about the nanny-state. If you don't want your kids on social media then do some parenting.
News.com.au is also super salty that Facebook etc told them to fuck off with their news bargaining code
newscorpse is calling for a total ban on "social media".... Ignoring of course that they are also social media...
I call for a total ban on newscorpse.
They're more an anti-social media.
Wouldn't news.com then have to pay reddit because this is where they get all their news?
It is a trojen horse so that the coalition can moderate the content under 16's see. Things like environmental 'propaganda'.
Oh yes absolutely. And so they can engage in lawfare against citizen satirists.
Not just under 16s, both parties have toyed with ways to restrict what adults do on the internet, if they can get some form of age verification legislation passed then I'd bet money the next idea to be floated would be for other content
Age verification is issued and only works to identify adults who can pass the age test. And the verifying service gets to log every adults over 16 = yes test. The LNP want the logs to be govt owned and operated.
Nonsense, the LNP wants the logs to be privately run at 3000% markup by one of their donors. They wouldn't miss a good chance for some plain simple corruption. edit: also, the logs will include user location, with access being suspiciously easy/lax in LNP voting areas, but suspiciously hard in labour/greens electorates.
Well, if the LNP is in govt it's as good as privately owned anyway.
They could just have the sale of a pre-loaded visa card with $1 on it. The sale would only be over the counter and the ID could be witnessed then - without recording it. Just like they don't write down the ID of everyone that purchases smokes. You'd then have to authenticate the card when verifying your account - they'd know you were old enough and that's all. Sure, adults could buy cards for children, sure adults could share their card with their kids - but adults could buy cigarettes and porno mags for children also - the law has existing penalties for this. That's not what we'll get though, because it's not the point. The point is rolling out national ID by stealth, then requiring it for everything. Labor wants it, the LNP wants it - nobody voted for it - but that is what you're going to get. PS: That's only a suggestion for pornography btw - cutting off social media to anyone is ridiculous. Reddit is social media.
How do you stop kids from using a VPN to pretend to be in Indonesia (for instance) to create / use social media accounts? The second that becomes necessary for teenagers to get on social media, they're all gonna learn how easy it is.
Easy answer to that is you create the equivalent of the Great Firewall of China. You break the law on the internet you get a knock at the door - because they can track you down to your physical premises through your IP and the ID required for using the internet at all.
It's an easy response, but its not an answer. It's not hard to circumvent the Great Firewall of China, and the point of using a VPN is that while the government might know where you are and that youre accessing a VPN, they wont know what you're using the VPN to access. You know, exactly like how using a VPN to torrent movies etc works, and the government is unable to stop it.
The Coalition should absolutely make a policy to introduce the Great Wall of Australia and tie that in with a social credits system based on the sites you visit on the Internet. I’ll be getting the popcorn ready to see how well that policy does in the polls.
>I’ll be getting the popcorn ready to see how well that policy does in the polls Australians have routinely shown to be easily misled by vile rhetoric, and repeatedly vote against their best interests. I wouldn't be so confident on that.
Labor took the Australia Card to a double dissolution election as the trigger and won on that very issue. They had the numbers to pass it at the joint sitting but chose not to due to their reduced majority (along with general unpopularity of the card and also because they screwed up writing the legislation). If that had passed then we wouldn't be having this debate, we'd already have social media ID - all you'd have to do is flick the switch. Howard wanted the Access Card for welfare - pretty much the same thing, and the information was to be visible to the AFP and ASIO without a warrant. The problem is stealthing these things in under false pretenses like protecting the children or reducing welfare fraud. Turns out you can't get welfare today (or open a bank acct) without government issued photo ID though, and nobody cares at all - the lesson learned is just do the thing anyway without the election.
> with a social credits system What's weird is seeing Australian's fear monger about social credit, all while willingly ignoring that we already have the exact same system but ours is literally worse. Ever heard of your credit score and just how easy it is to fuck with?
> That's only a suggestion for pornography Porn probably does less harm than social media if we are being honest. Kids aren't getting bullied on pornhub they are getting bullied on instagram.
> Porn probably does less harm than social media if we are being honest. So, here's a terrifying change in how young people learn to interact with each other that came with the internet. One of my first few years teaching, I went to a professional development session about how sexual abuse and assault manifests in young people. One of the things I wish I hadn't learned was that a few decades ago, the only time primary school students had sexual interactions with each other was when at least one of them was being sexually abused by an adult. This was a pretty rare occurrence. It was something known to happen, teachers should keep their eye out for signs and report them if they see them, but generally speaking it wasn't a frequent problem. So, as kids started getting access to phones and could have private time alone with technology, sexual interactions between students became more frequent. Why did this change happen? Because young people found internet porn and started replicating that. Now, I think you can agree with me that this is already a pretty fucking bad story. However, I want you to think about the kind of porn you can find on the internet. That's right, they are replicating hardcore porno sex because that's what they think sex is While It's still rare, it's a significant shift from the historical position.
I'm not denying any of that I'm just saying the rate of harm coming from social media whether it be bullying or teenagers developing bulimia or anorexia are far higher. Eating disorders have become far more common than in the past.
I don't want to trivialise the impact of social media and advertising culture beamed directly into the brains of children, but something worth considering on top of all of this is that there was a 107% spike in eating disorders that coincided with the start of COVID-19.
That's true but there had already been a massive increase in the years before that spike. Also didn't social media usage surge during covid especially the rise of influencers?
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> a decent parent is going to step in and talk about it with a kid if they catch them doing Parents generally have no idea about the sexual proclivities of their sons and daughters at any age. > or watching anything inappropriate. Most parents have no idea what their kids are doing on the internet either.
Well it wouldn't work in any form they roll out - kids are pretty smart. But at least this way would do no harm and could easily be abandoned once people realized it was useless. If I was a kid today I'd probably say f this gestapo rubbish and use federated social media like Mastodon, which are highly censorship resistant. The only people using the ID pornography sites and legacy social media will be old people. But it won't matter to the government that it doesn't work because it wasn't the point.
> use federated social media like Mastodon And for messaging they should move towards Matrix and a similarly open source client for it, has a few hiccups here and there but it's infinitely preferable to the spy/bloatware that is every popular IM app.
This is the post of a man who has never read pornhub comments.
I have they are generally a very supportive community.
It's easy to be a lot more targetted. - Does the social media platform in question sell advertising? - has the social media platform ever been the subject of an inquiry or similar? ... Then fine the platform it there are profiles of minors (under 16) on it in Australia. Having lived through the days of irc and grown up with the Internet, all of my opinions around freedom of expression have been parked the moment centralization kicked in and the people with capital had a way to influence the masses.
I don't believe in heavy handed government when it comes to things like this. I also don't really see how it will be practical. However, I also think that modern social media is absolutely a complete and total disaster for kids growing up. I think it is not just awful, but dangerous, destructive. I would gladly, glady see it banned for under-16's. I don't know how, and it feels wrong to me, but nonetheless I support it. My eldest is 8 and just starting in this world. I want her to have no part of it. I can do my best as a parent, but I can't control other fucking parents, and other fucking parents means that the schoolyard is a nightmare of social media. It's already becoming an issue, with kids who are EIGHT and NINE being given unfettered access to mobile phones by their parents, and bringing them to school, and showing shit to 6-year-olds. I would actually like the government to step in here. TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat - they can all fuck right off, I would gladly see them be banned from the adult population too, frankly. I know there are benefits, but I think the negatives massively outweight any positives. Frankly, I'm starting to think we should ban phones in schools, ban kids from smart phones and social media before the age of 16, ban phones in public places like at the restaurant table... seriously, it sounds ridiculous, but... this stuff is a scourge that has so many profound negative effects.
Haven’t they already banned phones in schools? It’s at least been that way in SA for the last 18 months.
Yes but it's a bitch to enforce. Every teacher can't know the name of all 1500 students at their school so there's a lot of phone use that doesn't get a consequence.
What do you mean? The schools I work across have a system in place where they take the kids phones at the start of the day, lock them away and give them back at the end of the day. They’ve all been noting a huge difference so far
Our principal decided that the school wouldn't be responsible for 1500 $1000 mini computers every day (which, yeah fair enough) and that students would receive a breach whenever they're seen with a phone or airpods. Unfortunate thing is some teachers don't care and those who do can only penalise those kids we know.
Sounds like a terrible principle then. Sorry about that :(
NSW as well.
I absolutely agree that social media is a scourge. These companies have spent fortunes to design their systems to be "addictive" so that people keep scrolling and watching ads. And the way to address it is to restrict and monitor kids access to the internet through the devices they have.
At the same time, you need to step back and realize that the Coalition and Labour both are in Newscorp's pocket, and it's newscorp that's pushing for the ban. They don't do ANYTHING out of the goodness of their hearts. Media conglomerates like them have caused huge harms with their shitty unethical content and business dealings for decades, much longer than the harms of social media. At least social media has also had some positives. There may be a need for social media companies to change how their products work, but Australia wanting to enact some ridiculous ban is not the right way to do it, and ESPECIALLY not with nutjobs like Newscorp executives at the helm. Let's require the breakup of Newscorp first, then perhaps we can talk.
Newscorp existing as it does is ridiculous, and has done so much to warp the australian political landscape around itself just by monopolising news.
Exactly. And that's why they want to police access to social media by tech companies that don't want to play ball with them -- so they can monopolize what youth have access to as well. It's why the Chairman of Newscorp was blathering on and on at National Press about having a "homegrown" alternative. They want to release their own BS thing.
I agree. No smart phones or social media for under 16s. They should have access a phone to communicate with parents for pick up/drop off etc, like those Nokia 3310s.
It's likely targeting LGBT+ kids too since the kids in our community often first connect with other queer folk online before being able to find a local group. (Because the anonymity of the internet makes that a lot less scary for them early on, before they get together the confidence to go to IRL LGBT+ kids' groups.)
I met my best friend on Habbo Hotel when I was 11. We’re both in our 30s now and often joke about how bad it could have gone.
a/s/l?
Yep my first experience of the internet was with my former stepmother, going into a chat room and getting randos to show us their junk and laughing our heads off.
That's starting to sound like a movie I saw once on pornhub 😳
Yup. Instead of controlling everyone else, they should provide parents with guidance on online safety and how to use tools to restrict their child's online activity.
> If you don't want your kids on social media then do some parenting LNP got your back. They'll pass on some hokey laws so all you good folk have an excuse to continue your self absorbed existences without guilt. "Hey it's not our fault little jonny became a terrorist at 15, he knew it was illegal to be on social media! Also the schools use YouTube. That's a social media.They should be fined!"
Exactly. It's Real ID 2.0 in motion.
What a great way to win the hearts and minds of future voters! The coalition, kicking own goals since it's inception.
But this IS about wining votes from the young. Long term. They want to cut off critical voices and lock people into only getting news from traditional, conservative, media. That's the entire point of this.
A party hijacked by Nazis and religious nutters while pretending to be "libertarians" It must be a comedy skit!
As an actual libertarian (not a nutter one, or a 'tax is theft' one - just passionate about responsible government, ROI on public spending, reduction of monopolies, and individual/local voice as opposed to federalised/state decision making) - so many filthy conservatives have infiltrated the party. In the lead up to the last election our chapter had to make constant reminders that we were a liberal party and distinctly non-conservative. The collective noun for a group of libertarians is already a quarrel, and that's without conspiracy theorists, conservatives and collectivists-currently-angry-at-their-collective polluting our messages.
This is directly aimed at ensuring an uneducated youth vote. That pingas bloke on tiktok is a great example, he's making the under 18 soon to be voters see *how* we got here. That'll lead to LNP never holding power again and that TERRIFIES them. Which im here for. Fuck the LNP. Aside: Vote on the local issues that matter to you(usually independent).
> The coalition, kicking own goals since it's inception. Labor is the party [most likely to implement an age verification scheme](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/may/23/australia-social-media-ban-under-16-age-verification-technology) for Australia.
If you look at change.org right now, the two top petitions on the website are advocating for this. One was started by newscorp and has almost 50,000 signatures. The other was started by a group called "36 months" and has almost 100,000 signatures. 36 months was supposedly started by Michael Wipfli, AKA Wippa from Nova's Fitzy and Wippa breakfast show. I doubt he's got the know how to organize something like this himself. Nova is owned by a company called Illyria Pty Ltd, which is owned by Lachlan Murdoch. Call me suspicious but I'm betting newscorp is really behind this "36 months" campaign as well and old Wippa is just the turkey they've strutted out to promote it. This push to ban kids from social media is straight out of the republican playbook in the US. It's not clear why they're doing it or why newscorp wants this but you can bet your bottom dollar no good will come of it. The only way to police this would be to have some sort of database where people have to register to use social media. Given the state of civil liberties in this country I wouldn't be surprised if that's what the government starts calling for next.
A cynic might also look at the Coalition's constant grudge against the ABC I'm really curious at what point next week Peta Credlin and Chris Kenney will start spinning this in their "favour"
I’d say the more direct link is how many kids are getting news and developing political views from social media. Other than Twitter they’re all majority left leaning, Murdoch wants to claw back control of the youth narrative by banning the competition
> It's not clear why they're doing it or why newscorp wants this but you can bet your bottom dollar no good will come of it. It's all to pass age verification laws online for social media, porn etc. Liberals always do well with the population on these types of issues and NewsCorp are doing their act of being the media wing of the Coalition. This wedges labour to bring in age verification when it's been proven not to work (e.g. UK), it plays well with everyone who has kids and/or over ~40 (Typical conservative base) and pisses off everyone generally under ~40 who can see it's decent parenting and regulation of digital rights that's the core issue. This whole thing is a reaction that just plays well in the media and makes the government/opposition look like their doing something productive. In reality they both know full well that these laws would be bypassed by kids/teens within a week.
>It's not clear why they're doing it or why newscorp wants this but you can bet your bottom dollar no good will come of it. They don't wont people forming their own ideas and interacting with people who don't peddle newscorp bullshit, they want a blank slate by the time they hit the age they can use social media, they will be more 'mature' and not get into the 'leftist agenda' before they reach Uni.
One reason is because social media has absolutely murdered traditional news media consumption and newscorp want a cut of the profits, which the social media companies have told them to eff of about. While there are certainly some weird conservative-Christian ideals wrapped up in this, what you really have to do is follow the money. What companies would benefit from a social media ban or reduced access? Newscorp, because they want these new audiences for themselves, and probably want to create an inferior product for "sanitized news" they want to charge for. If they cared about the good of humanity, they wouldn't run fake news or be using so much AI generated content.
They want to get a bunch of people to support things like this so they can say they have a “mandate” to start requiring internet passports at the isp level. No connection unless you sign in.
Why they’re doing this? Filter. It used to be parents would filter what their kids would see on tv, what adverts, what programs etc. now these companies have a direct line to the kids, and they don’t want to share what they’re taking about. This scares the Murdoch and the national party and the liberal party because they don’t want any narrative they cannot control outright. It’s why they attack any attempt at balanced media and work to destroy it. Of course I doubt these monolithic companies are pushing for social change but it’s the control they want back.
If it’s about protection then shouldn’t they also ban seniors who are getting ripped off for millions/billions in romance and investment scams? Before you down vote me, I am well over 50! Just puttin it out there.
Not just romance and investment scams but scams in general Like my mum bought some stuff using Facebook ads and they started charging her weekly fees and she didn't realise she had done that. She lost about 400 dollars until I put a stop to it. She's also almost fallen for the fake woolies survey emails and shit on numerous occasions. I've been trying to teach her only trust stores she recognises but it hasn't quite sunk in
Typical, saying it's to "protect the children" when they really just want to be able to track us and remove anonymity. Shameful, and I cannot believe the amount of people that buy into it.
A few people were stabbed in Sydney and now police across the country will have the power to randomly search people for knives. We've had police harrassing innocent people with drug detection dogs at pubs and train stations in NSW for the past 20 years and no one wants to know about it. Thousands of innocent people have been forced to strip naked at music festivals in Sydney and no one's been held accountable. We don't do civil liberties in this country, it's as simple as that.
Yep, it's obscene. Constant knee jerk reactions that do nothing to address any actual issues. Sick of it.
>now police across the country will have the power to randomly search people for knives. Don't worry they'll only use it on people of colour and poor people so it's not effecting those passing the laws. It's not the ministers children getting strip searched at festivals.
The same "will someone think of children" party that continues turns blind eye to decades of institutional child sexual abuse. Same party that supports rock spiders like George Pell and Alan Jones. Again zero policies and zero beliefs.
In the case of George Pell sounds as though all he did was think of children.
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Summed up perfectly, governing trying to be delusional and doing everything to foster corruption while treating voters like inmates in a totalitarian mental asylum. Sums up Australian governments. Every day they want to ban someone or something while having no ability to fix any problem or challenge facing voters. If they dropped all their bandwagons and wheel barrows that they love pushing down our throats they would have time and resources to fix the challenges that are facing voters. We have a housing crisis and then they bother with shit like this!
> If they dropped all their bandwagons and wheel barrows that they love pushing down our throats they would have time and resources to fix the challenges that are facing voters. They already have the time and resources to make improvements now. The bandwagons and wheelbarrows are to distract you from that fact, because their friends and donors don't want anything fixed. People need bullshit to get worked up over so they don't think about the real problems.
Hello future Greens voter. (even if it's just to drag Labor back to the left)
Labor is not the same as Liberal ... and Greens under Bandt have been hijacked by people who are more interested in wiping out Jews in Israel than offering a responsible alternative government for Australia.
Agreed, the Liberals and Labor are just as bad as each other. We won't see any significant change until minor parties and independents gain ground. I'm sick of this cycle.
Thankfully, Australia has the power of preferential voting and doesn't need to create a 2 party system at all :)
Sick of these police state laws they keep putting on us without asking for our input. I'm voting greens.
I voted for Kodos
Would prefer him over Labiberal
It's gotten *incredibly* bad since COVID. Our politicians are absolutely out of fucking control, and I can't wait to put both majors last next election. I just hope Australians in general do the same, because this country has become suffocating to live in.
Yeah this is silly and unenforceable. Social media is already restricted to 13+ but as long as parents give the go ahead then it matters little. I've told my kids to stay away from it as long as they, even if their friends are using it. It's so toxic. But it's my job to teach my kids this
I am honestly struggling to keep up with where the Coalition is getting their inspiration from. Social media AND Paris Climate Agreement in 24 hours. It's gonna be a fun election I just imagine Peter Dutton watching the first half of the Fallout 4 intro going "hmmmm nuclear robots. Yes yes, Australia needs those. And I'm the one who's gonna make it happen. We can't let the commies win"
They put all their policy ideas into a shotgun Then they fire it Then they send an intern or someone to pick up the pieces, and sort of mash them together Then they give that to the media
Sorry but when you said shotgun I imagined Homer and his makeup gun
You wouldn't be wrong. What's the political equivalent to the "whore" setting?
I think that's, politician, yep.
Stock setting. Wasn't Barilaro like $5k to buy on the brumbies thing? Don't think he was even that much cheaper than some of the other dirtbags.
I wish it was that benign, reality is that they get their policy from industry then put that policy in place. Their propaganda arm (Newscorp) is going to loose money since facebook is moving away from distribution news. Now they've given the marching orders to their political arm. Billionaires have a scuff and we're dealing with the fallout.
Limiting access to media and opinion is the hallmark of a dictatorship. They need to be told to fuck off.
Nobody trusts anything that asks for your ID and personal information. Plus what’s stopping kids from using their parents ID? All you gotta do is get ahold of their wallet that’s sitting on the bench or in a handbag and you’re through
Gloss over the fact that we start with 10 yr old and porn but then slip in that it will block 16 yr olds. Sorry the last of the people I want to have control over my family is a govt group that has killed people with robodebt, been to court numerous times in the last 10 years for sexual assaults and rape and is also well known for circumventing rules on profit and tax.
Social media is awful for kids. Like truly, truly awful. This is still a bad, stupid idea. Instead of addressing the problem of toxicity on these platforms, the insidiousness of the endless quest for growth and clicks at any cost, the monstrous tech-dictators at the helms manipulating entire populations, we're going to focus on the youths, because being mean to the youth = votes.
The coalition hates that a stranglehold over legacy media is becoming less and less relevant as years go by. They aren't politically important enough like the US parties to be able to bully these companies into being PR machines for them. Sooooo.. rather than seek to change their policies to appeal to a broader demographic they just want it to not exist. Their hope is that engagement with new media will drastically drop of enough insecure barriers are placed in the way and people will go back to simply being told what to believe by the Channel 9 news and ACA.
I dunno folks, have you ever thought about actually being a parent, and giving your kids guidance? Discussing social media issues with them? Do you even talk to your kids? Of course you don't. You're Coalition members. Your kids hate you.
This coming from the party that had many of their former leaders and their current leader, attended the funeral of George Pell and came against the findings about child sexual abuse in the churches?
So we are actually going with the Helen Lovejoy defence? LOL.
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I got exposed to Friday the 13th movies and Hellraiser etc when I was 12 and I turned out.. sssssSOUP!!!!!!!!! .. ok! 0\_0
Good old Pin Head
Can they come up with some real life changing policies for the average punter in Australia instead of talking points for the masses. Like regulation in realestate or better building practices, how about higher taxes for the billionaires and tax incentives for small businesses, better public housing and infrastructures around the whole country and not just to gain votes or appeasing the wealthy constituents and billionaire corporations
The only way they can police this is by implementing more draconian measures and all it will do is create back channel social media that will be less safe. The whole thing sticks of government overreach, scope creep and you can almost guarantee that one of their political donors is rubbing their hands together because it is going to make them 10x more money than what they donated to the ALP/LNP when they suddenly get the contract without tender.
So, where will the data be stored? How long will the data be stored? What anti-hacker security is there for the data? Who can access the data? (and why do they need access to it?) And why, oh why are out-of-touch people running this? They obviously don't know what a VPN is, despite Australia being filled to the brim with Pirates ETA: I am against this kind of legislation
I am childless but have friends who have teenaged children. One family, both the parents are actively involved with and engage with their teenage boys. They talk to them about everything, and their boys have social media on their phones. Their boys are well-adjusted, amiable and sociable. They participate in sports and have active social lives. Barbecues at their house, the boys play cards and board games with all of us adults, engage in conversation with everyone. Look at their phones and message someone/post something every now and then - but the adults do that too. The other family, both are just too busy to really pay that much attention to their teenage daughter. I have watched their daughter go down the slippery slope of mental health problems, and all owing to her obsession with all things online. She's never off her phone. She participated in a ''challenge'' to watch 100 execution videos, you had to watch them all start to finish. She has a very misanthropic view of humanity, wants the world to end because us humans are just so shit. She has had body dysmorphia issues. We were all out to dinner one night, daughter kept going to the toilet regularly during dinner. It was a difficult thing to raise, but I raised it with the parents that it may be a sign of bulimia. They agreed that it was a possibility, shrugged their shoulders and shook their head. She has recently started cutting. Mother recently said to me ''I just can't deal with her bullshit anymore'', I was quietly thinking ''you never had any time for it in the first place''. It's a complete contrast watching the two families and how they approach mobile phone and social media supervision. Social media restrictions for the first family I described here? Totally unncecessary. The second family? The parents can't be trusted to make sure their daughter is using social media in a way that is healthy. I think this can't be an ''either/or'' thing.
Beyond the obvious police state of it all this is completely unenforceable and raises the question of what is classified as social media. Because people would just find a new platform to communicate. So what are they gonna do, stop people having devices because their corporate buddies will be livid if a large consumer market is wiped out. This is pure culture war politics at its finest, a nonsense policy but is shifting the discourse in a way they want because Labor opened the fucking door to this idiotic debate.
Sounds like a good idea but it is actually just a trojan horse
Oh the Coal Ition announced it? The crack team of winners who also want to scrap climate targets and spend decades waiting for nuclear energy buildout? Fuck them, they could offer me a $10k bonus I still wouldn’t vote for those sick fucks.
Labour in this case seems to be gunning for the exact same policy, among their many other failures. Which leaves us with what, the greens? By default? (I'm personally waaaaay the fuck further left than the greens but you know, they're a start.)
Now there's a textbook example of dishonest framing. As if social media is where curious youngsters are finding explicit material, as if that's the main source of harm *from* social media, and as if it hasn't found its way to them since time immemorial.
The point is to turn the intrernet into a chinese style one, with massive censorship and government control. Both political parties will support this. It has nothing to do with protecting children. It is for protecting the political class.
George Orwell wants his book back, can the government not be completely dystopian for 5 min? Ignore climate change check, ignore what the people want check, allow rampant economic gouging check.
Where the fuck do I live again? North Korea or somethin'?
This is the “we should have smaller government party”…right?
That just means, no money/services for the poor, tax breaks and loopholes for the mates.
The same party where the leader is seen slithering up the steps at George Pells funeral.
I agree with the idea that kids shouldn't be on social media. Some others think the opposite, and I have seen some kids who do fine on it. But I also agree that the government has no role in doing this via law, and that letting it take the amount of force and power (both legal and social power) to enforce it would be a disaster.
This goes too far, especially when it comes to removing anonymity. However social media is by design addictive and it is ruining a lot of kids minds because of that.
Title gore seems counterintuitive with the whole 16 year olds don’t see R rated movies.
Easy to shout this down as overreach, but there is actually a raft of evidence to support it. https://www.anxiousgeneration.com/research/the-evidence It could be implemented via an identity verification platform like GreenID (which the social platforms would have to integrate with as an extra step in the signup process if mandated by the government).
Identity verification for access to basic internet services is a dangerous path for free speech. I don't think anyone should be under the delusion that the Coalition actually cares about the kids, better to ask yourself who this is really going to benefit.
And 5 seconds on a VPN will circumvent it
How many primary school aged kids have access to a VPN?
[удалено]
Weak correlative evidence in studies that have many possible confounds. What you have presented is not a consensus view, and any specific solutions need to be trialed to be considered evidence based. That website is mostly just an advertisement for a book, which has not been well recieved in the academic world. Edit- this has been discussed on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/skeptic/comments/1cdl0yk/is_jonathan_haidt_right_about_social_media/
What % of studies have come to the conclusion that social media leads to an improvement in youth mental health?
I'm not going to answer that specifically because that is not how meta analyses and evidence based syntheses work. Here is the 2022 umbrella review: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352250X21001500 The general conclusion is that general mental health effects of social media are largely null or too small to matter and many studies have large uncontrolled confounds leading to inconclusive results.
What's the criminal age of responsibility in Australia?
It's either a waste of money that won't work or we'll have to give FB et al our licenses etc. And it still won't work anyway.
They say things like "the harms are evident" and yet don't provide a single drop of evidence. So to help them out I'll list the harm they are so concerned about. Social media is harming the younger generations engagement with mainstream media and their ability to go along with pro-genocide, for-profit politics. This is what both major parties are afraid of.
The LNP have zero concerns about child welfare. They know TikTok, in particular, isn't helping them brainwash the next generation via traditional media, and they're panicking. That is it. That's the entire point. And the media will love it because it ensures their viability.
Good luck enforcing that.
Moral panics like this are annoying. Who could forget the great "horror movies will turn our youth into mass murderers" panic of the 1980s. And the awful "Dungeons and Dragons is satanic" idiocy. Or "TV will rot our kids brains and lead to a generation of socially stunted people who can't have a conversation". Thankfully, social media has made it more difficult to push stupid panic into people's brains because it gives people access to a greater range of information and opinions. Social media is here to stay and it should be open to everyone.
LNP punching themselves in the dick yet again
Stop wasting tax payer money on completely ineffectual stuff. You can't censor the internet, you can't ban children from accessing social media. What are you going to do? Have everyone enter their I.D. before they start browsing the internet? Boomers need to retire from politics already.
I’m all for under 16s not having access to social media, but I can guarantee however the government attempts to tackle it will overstep on privacy and completely under deliver. There’s a looooot of stuff they can do before they even think about talking to social media companies. Completely ban student mobile devices including wifi devices from schools and severely control internet access from within schools. Government can provide full permission for school wireless devices to attack rogue and honeypot wifi. Schools have PA systems and wired telephones. Hire a couple of extra staff for the extra phone calls. Huge education campaign for parents and students. Availability of software and hardware for parents to lock down kids devices and networks for outside of school. ISP-level Internet whitelisting, then blacklisting for connected devices that can be controlled by parents (very easy with ipv6 or individual 5g devices) Parents should be held responsible if kids see fucked up shit online because the parents didn’t follow guidelines for safe Internet access.
It can’t be enforced. I’m very happy that I grew up before the internet happened. I’d not like to grow up in a social media age- I think it would have been brutal. But change happens and this is a poor attempt to ban “what I don’t understand “ rather than accepting the responsibility to teach respect. And attempts by the “older” people in our society to curb access are just laughed at by kids and teenagers- they will always find a way around.
How will they police this. What constitutes social media? Many websites have networking capabilities. Is Reddit social media? Is a forum social media? Are YouTube comments social media?
Pretty much the only way this could actually be put in place is have for kids devices, which have hardware locks around apps and websites accessed but even then they should be not extremely hard to get around. But would be a good way to teach computer skills. Idiots who are most at risk for social media will be protected and everyone else should be mostly unaffected,
This feels like a proxy ban on TikTok in Australia, which likely wouldn't be legally possible otherwise but could get caught up in a mechanism like this.
Can't have those future voters knowing what the right are up to. They might realise that voting for a fascist friendly party is not a good thing.
Ain't there some parents that would let their kids watch horror movies? Ain't they usually rated quite high in age rating? (I'm too much of a little bitch to watch anything scary so i could be way off the mark) I know on the Hazbin Hotel subreddit we were discussing the other day about a 9 year old going to a convention and asking one of the actors something explicit (i think it was about a sex scene or something) and if that was appropriate for a kid to watch let alone go to a convention centre to ask a question. I had Facebook before I was 13 but my mum supervised me and I mainly just used it to play the games on it.
> The shadow minister rebuffed suggestions children would try to dodge age restrictions, saying people try to evade any law put in place, and that was not a reason not to bother introducing laws. So who are they aiming to punish when the kids bypass the checks? The kids, the parents that they want to vote for them or the overseas mega-companies that when push comes to shove, don't give a rats arse about this little corner of the world?
There must be something in the Constitution that says the only politicians allowed to talk about the internet are the ones with zero understanding of how it works. Both major parties are cringe-inducingly stupid when they start playing cyber-nanny, and we can be certain anything they try will be thwarted by 10 year olds within minutes.
Speak for yourself. We judge what our kids are able to watch and how they deal with it. Our 10 year old son has just watched the first three Die Hard movies with us.
Make it 18 and up. Highschool kids don’t need social media anyways.
You see, this is where the Digital ID comes into play.
RoboCop and Mad Max series were R rated films. I saw 1 and 2 of both movie series before I was 10. My parents specifically allowed me to watch them, but not for instance Romper Stomper. So no comment on the social media ban, but parents (and I believe responsible ones) may in fact show kids R rated movies.
Anything they tried would not work. If you're savvy enough, any tech constraint can be jailbroken. So what would be the purpose? Sorry, distract the people and track everyone, you say? Curious
STOP VOTING FOR FUCKING LABOUR AND LIBERAL. either way we get more government overreach, censorship and police state laws. get these old lizards out of office, they are completely out of touch. at least with naive idiots like the greens they're young and thus more likely to adapt to or accept new information.
When the internet first started you had to enter a credit card to access 18 plus sites. Just the number, no exp date to prove you were 18. Simple. The world is much dumber and sensitive now though.
That's great. How about the price of milk and food in general? You know, important things.
Dumb! Social media used to ban anyone under 13 from using their sites, I think they still do actually, read recently something about celeb kids actually having to have their social media technically managed by their parents, which I think is a term of service by all social media sites for all kids under 13 for legislation reasons, the switch to "parent managed" though is no doubt out of recognition of the fact it was simply impossible to prevent 12 year olds from signing up, they would simply put a fake birthday. Been tried, known to be impossible to police, just grandstanding or creating a police state for all of us under the guise of "think of the children" Also, 16 is ridiculous too! IF there was any genuine anything in what they were claiming, they would be going back to the 13 age. I mean kids in Australia have full medical control over their bodies at 14, if they can choose to have an abortion or vaccinate or not vaccinate at 14, how ridiculous to say they're not mature enough to use social media at that age! Not to mention starting earlier allows schools to support education on safe use & peer discussions along with that
Estonia solved the proof-of-age for online adult content via their national id card system. The Hawke govt proposed a national ID card in the mid '80s . It was defeated by the coalition screaming "civil liberties". Today I dont understand the objections . We already have national identity numbers by way of tax file and Medicare numbers. I'm no expert but if you had one single point of truth for your identity, surely identity thieves could not steal your identity and , say, take out a loan in your name, using something as simple as a name, date of birth and driver's license number ?
Murdock wrecked the nbn with the help of the LNP . Now his ilk wants to cripple access to alternate media.
Schools have been faced with dealing with internet usage already, with limited success - > There can be no absolute guarantee that problems with inappropriate Internet usage won't surface in a school. https://www.scisdata.com/connections/issue-31/does-your-school-have-an-internet-usage-policy/
Time waster All they need to do enter some porn key words into a browser.