Summary
Australia has introduced a bill to ban social media access for children under 16, enforcing strict penalties of up to AU$50 million for non-compliance.
The law would require biometric or government ID for age verification and prohibits parental consent as an exemption.
While aiming to protect children from harmful content, critics argue it may drive teens to unregulated platforms.
Some services, like YouTube and WhatsApp, will be exempt for educational or messaging purposes.
The bill has bipartisan support but faces scrutiny from independents and child welfare advocates.
This bill is unlikely to pass.
But not impossible. Australia passes some dumb shit sometimes.
Remember when Turnbull said that the laws of mathematics are subject to the laws of Australia in regards to encryption?
Yeah we do some really dumb shit.
“The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia.”
Brother thinks he can force companies to break unbreakable encryption because the law says so lmfao
this is just giving up privacy in exchange for children still bypassing it anyways lol
Yeah our governments, globally, are light years behind tech companies. I still need to send notarized letters for things when, as an American, the dod, nsa, fbi, cia, etc all are using palantir software by the quizat haderach Peter Thiel which has more information on me than any other involved party.
This just feels like a slow burn into making lisan al gaib able to observe everything I do.
Yay ineffective posturing! I hope they spent millions on Facebook ads… /s
It’s a proposal…
[insert every shitty law that has ever been passed]. It’s a proposal…
How will we ever control the minds of children if we can’t control their computers? How will we even force our narratives on them without removing all counter-narratives? How can they ever be happy without taking away their freedom and information? Go Australia! Keep that delusional settler vibe strong! \s
Good for Australia.
I get that it would probably be a net good if we could keep kids off social media. Unfortunately this is one of those things that the cost of any remotely effective enforcement is higher than the benefit in my view at least.
Do you think Lemmy will integrate biometric IDs for Australia?
This affects Adults too.
No, because a lot of people here care about digital sovereignty. Otherwise, we would still be on Facebook. So, if the main developers integrated that into the software, people would strip it out and fire the main software developer, or they would strip it out at every version that got released and then release it without it.
So it seems shortsighted celebrating what is a law to outlaw things like Lemmy.
I mean, they can’t enforce it because there are so many instances all over the world. They can’t possibly target every instance administrator.
First of all, yeah they can. Second of all, they get rid of the main ones and suddenly there is a lot less of Lemmy out there.
Not caring about laws isn’t something to be proud of. Lemmy will get left behind because the devs don’t care about GDPR or laws like these. Admins will get hit by huge fines and lives will be ruined. Same with illegal content being shared to federated instances automatically. You won’t be able to explain that it was on your machine “because federation” in court.
I worry that this will also affect political awareness amongst teens in a way that encumbent parties and business will happily exploit for their own gain.
If it’s “successful”, expect to see similar legislation proposed throughout the world.
