This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Maybe if they focused on the root of the problems with Social Media instead of banning it from children, they could make the world a better place for everyone.
Endless scrolling and their recommendation algorithms keep people on their platforms for far longer than otherwise intended. They could start with forcing these companies to have chronological posts with a fixed number of posts per page to give users a natural break point for when to stop.
Not just that, but also holding social media owners accountable for hosting fascist content, and arresting them, no matter how rich they are.
I cannot get behind the hosting part, it is too abusable. If that was changed for promoting, I could support that.
Y'know what, fair point.
They can still access social media. They just can't have accounts.
Which does mean they can't access a lot of adult content. So there's that.
Heh no. 4chan is not banned.
You don't need an account for 4chan anyways. My point is that no social media accounts means nsfw posts on twitter, reddit, youtube are harder to access.
So, the ban is focused on Social Media apps which refuse to comply with demands to fix cyberbullying. If an app complies it will no longer be banned.
This added context is extremely helpful.
This is nothing to do with children.
The Australian media demanded these laws so they could control the political climate in Australia. By mandating identity they can go after anyone who opposes them.
I always know I'm dealing with a scumbag normie website when there's infinite scrolling with no option for pagination.
It's getting pretty easy to avoid the herd.
Will not work. None of these kinds of bans has ever worked. Is it not a common trope that teenagers can and do drink to excess despite not being legally allowed to purchase alcohol? Are we under some misguided belief that age verification procedures in this manner can or ever have worked effectively to reduce harm on minors?
Will have large unintended consequences far beyond social media access for teenagers.
Will actually make the internet less safe for teenagers, as they will now be lying about their age and circumventing the systems in place, which renders all existing protections for them ineffective.
Is pointlessly age targeted legislation as social media is also bad for adults as well. Its bad because of business practices and lack of ethical considerations in gigantic monolithic international social media corporations. If your end goal is making the internet safer for teenagers, your end result will actually end up being making the internet safer for everyone.
Will not work. None of these kinds of bans has ever worked. Did everyone just forget that they got blackout drunk as minors who could not legally purchase alcohol? Are we under some misguided belief that age verification procedures in this manner can or ever have worked effectively to reduce harm on minors?
Minors may not be 100% alcohol free but that does not mean they consume the same amount with or without age restrictions.
Will actually make the internet less safe for teenagers, as they will now be lying about their age and circumventing the systems in place, which renders all existing protections for them ineffective.
maybe, let's see how it works.
Is pointlessly age targeted legislation as social media is also bad for adults as well. Its bad because of business practices and lack of ethical considerations in gigantic monolithic international social media corporations.
that's true for other age-gated things like alcohol and tobacco. there is legislation to protect adults as well as banning use for children.
Is this law parfect? Probably not, but I think it's a reasonable starting point and at least they are trying something.
It would absolutely be more effective to use legislation to address the root causes of excessive alcohol consumption than to make blanket bans. I'm not saying that the bans won't do anything, but they are absolutely not effective on a broad scale. There are so many circumventions that are trivially easy to access that it renders the ban more of a general barrier for entry than an actual prevention of access. Its moreso "how hard are you willing to work to get it" than "you cannot access this". So harmful alcohol consumption becomes a matter of effort. Addiction is frequently characterized by massive efforts to access substances. Its one of the hallmarks. I'm not arguing for teenage alcohol consumption, just pointing out that it's only ever been a trivial block and we are very socially aware that it is circumventable and frequently is circumvented by minors.
And alcohol is a physical object that must be acquired. Social media access is not.
You can circumvent this ban from any device at any time. It's like porn bans. It's now just a matter of effort. Install VPN, click click done. Youre now able to browse freely as a minor. And again, now youre lying about your age. So all age protections are gone, and you are free to engage with the same content as before but with less actual protections in place. Youve taken an undesirable situation and rendered it into a subversive one, one that requires circumvention by design, and will therefore make the relationship between the user and the platform a dishonest one. This has a lot of consequences. It makes it a lot harder to actually check the age of people using their platforms, cause everyone underage will lie. You won't be able to prevent them from engaging with grown adults in profoundly harmful ways, for example.
Alcohol and tobacco are (mostly) harmful in all circumstances, yes. Social media is not harmful in all circumstances. Human socialization can be a good thing, but it is impossible for those substances to be good things (except possibly in extremely niche circumstances). If social media platforms were designed to be good for people, then they wouldnt cause the same harm. If they had legal requirements to be moderated, to not spread misinformation, to not promote unhealthy and damaging habits, to stop the spread of hatred and bullying, then they would be significantly less harmful for teenagers and also everyone of all ages. These things would actually make social media better for teenagers. Completely useless age verification actually makes social media WORSE for teenagers. Teenagers are never not going to use social media. Sorry thats just the truth. Entire fields of technology and software design have been developed by teenagers seeking to circumvent age bans throughout history. These bans dont even require any kind of new innovation. They just need to setup a basic VPN. Trivial.
I fully believe it will work. The point is not to make it impossible to visit, but very annoying to. I cannot forsee the average kid jumping through hoops to maintain access, especially when most of their and their friends accounts were deleted. Eventually, they'll realise there's nothing left to go back to. Social media lives and dies by it's number of users after all.
You could present literally the same arguments for why teenagers would never drink alcohol. Its against the law for them to purchase right, so its an inconvenience to access, so clearly they would all abandon it as all their friends become unable to access it as well. You could make the same argument for most kinds of bans. There are actually very few things for which imposing barriers to access has ever eliminated its use. Porn is an obvious example as well. Porn bans are essentially meaningless to consumers. They are so trivial to bypass as to be functionally non-existent. The only thing that imposed bans have done is make it difficult for companies to profit off of it. I am essentially ambivalent about that, but it's a literal direct parallel in this case.
What is likely is that tools for circumventing in simpler faster ways will develop. Installing a VPN is already a single click operation. You dont have to do anything else. Teenagers are not going to abandon social media. Maybe you havent encountered many in the past 2 decades, but social media use is and has been near universal among them since social media came to exist. Like you're nuts if you think they're actually going to stop using it haha I dont know what else to say. But yeah maybe youre right. Making stuff against the law totally eliminates it because everyone is so lazy and incompetent they won't expend any effort to overcome trivial barriers to access things they have built their entire lives around lol
I don't agree with porn as an example. It clearly isn't a social activity.
Alcohol on the other hand.. Haven't you heard that Gen z and younger have much lower rates of drinking? Social drinking is on the decline, and I argue it supports my theory. Their friends aren't drinking socially as much, so many don't either.
I don't think VPN are going to help much. Good VPNs are paid services, and it's kids under 18 we're talking about here. They would somehow need to maintain a recurring VPN subscription fee from their pocket money. Free VPNs aren't the same thing, they're usually exposed to steal data or other nefarious activities.
Platforms like discord and roblox aren't blocked because they're considered communication apps or games. Kids will probably just stay there.
Porn is comparable because of its implementation and circumvention strategy, not because of its substance.
Drinking rates are decreasing, yes, but i disagree that it has anything to do with carding. It has been illegal for minors to drink since... at least the 60s? Earlier? Lol
Free VPNs are abundant and teenagers using instagram are almost certainly entirely unconcerned with their data being stolen. A market gap will come to exist for better free VPNs, advertising revenue being the driving factor.
I dont think that the majority of teenagers on Instagram / Facebook / TikTok are using discord or even aware of what it is. Some of them are definitely but I dont see those platforms as being interchangeable or serving the same functions whatsoever.
And now on to recreational drug and alcohol use…
You can covertly buy and take illicit drugs all by yourself and have a good time. Bypassing a ban to get on a social platform with very few of your social peers is... pointless?
So what if you get to watch a tiktok from the other side of the world, none of the kids in your class are sharing that experience and building the peer pressure.
The majority of influencers are not in the same geographical regions as their fans. Content is not as regional as it once was. The TikTok algorithm is based on time spent viewing something, and things like search terms and engagement, more than it is about where you are geographically.
The same can be said for Instagram. How you connect with other users on instagram is by following them. It will recommend you new users based on who the people you follow also follow. Where you are does not have really anything to do with how you would engage with your fellow peers. They'll mostly be asking you directly what your handle is and then following you. Your geography would mostly impact what kinds of new content the algorithm will feed you without any prior data, drawing instead from content that is popular with where you are from and what age you said you are and what gender you said you are.
I think a lot of people in this thread are misunderstanding how people use social media in general. Activating a VPN and creating an account somewhere else will not fundamentally alter how you use the platform. It just adds a very simple very easily accessible bypass measure to using it.
I personally expect that the platforms will make whatever concessions the government is asking for so they dont have to do this. Because teenagers make up such a large part of their userbase that it would be a massive hit financially to lose out on it. But the ban itself would be ineffective in ultimately preventing teenagers from accessing those platforms.
You can still view these sites.
A surefire way to get kids to do something is to tell them they can’t.
Anecdotal evidence but I saw one parent say their 9 year old dgif and immediately asked them to play outside with them; which they rarely did prior.
Kids want attention, thats why social media is so dangerous for them; they're sitting ducks for predators.
I work with kids and except for legit ipad babies, kids treat cellphones like a backup when there's nothing better to do... they prefer playing games with other kids or engaging their parents/role-models.
I personally see zero downsides to this. I genuinely hope Canada follows suite.
I personally see zero downsides to this
I would encourage you to read my comment in another thread. There's the beginning of a good idea in this legislation, but nearly everything about how it's actually done is awful.
but nearly everything about how it's actually done is awful.
I mean that parts not surprising lol
Restrictive tech policies just lead to populations that are tech savier.
Good, we kinda need it.
As an Australian, Discord wants me to verify my age to access nsfw channels. I aint giving discord my real credentials. I will work out something later when I have had a coffee.. and uppers
Same boat. Managed to bypass it in 15 minutes by using random photos of IDs from google images.
My server just took a vote and changed our one NSFW channel to no longer be marked NSFW. All we used that channel for was posting slightly sex-themed memes anyway.
It seems to be popular with people i talk to in real life. It also seems go be very popular with leftwing people outside niche internet spaces like this. Most people are viewing this as a good way to prevent misinformation brainwashing and not paying attention to the removal of internet freedom. From talking to these people its because they dont think there is internet freedom as internet is only 5 sites which all spy on you already.
Most people are viewing this as a good way to prevent misinformation brainwashing
If only the government had actually made that the law. Crack down on the harmful algorithms that commercial social media use, instead of this shit.
Well that would be a much bigger line to cross. Its reasonable to say under 16s are to young to navigate the world of online info. But its completely different to say no age can go on the internet.
no age can go on the internet.
I don't think anyone had ever suggested anything like that.
You're right. I have no idea how I read your initial comment and jump to that conclusion. I must have been tired when i replied.
For the actual response. I think this law does partial combat the misinformation,advertising and brainwashing concerns. I dont think we can/need to prevent misinformation, advertising or brainwashing for people over 16 without serious infringement on civil liberties.
For algorithm's its far less feasible to go after. These companies protect the algorithm because its the core IP of their business. Its not something we can simply get rid of without destroying the most popular feature of the platform.
The fact is, right now we know that Facebook has at times made a deliberate, conscious choice to leave in aspects of their algorithm that were causing harm. Their own studies have shown this. Making that practice illegal—knowingly causing harm with your algorithm—would be a good place to start with regulation.
Gambling is an age-restricted activity because it exploits the brain’s reward mechanisms to drive profits, and can lead to addiction. Big tech social media platforms have a lot in common with slot machines, designed deliberately to drive profits, so this law makes sense. Now make free to play games with loot boxes an age-restricted activity.
Gotta start somewhere. Let them try and see how it goes.
This will end in a generation best equipped to avoid government mandated network restrictions.
And one that will have good reason to disrespect government and the law.
"10 of the largest platforms"
So they'll move to the 11th...
I don't know if this is the answer but I'm glad someone is trying something. will be a good case study regardless.
That just shows how much of an idiot these people are. These teenagers are just going to learn to use platforms such as Mastodon, Lemmy, and Nostr.
Probably not and, at any rate, those platforms are far, far superior, in terms of cyberbullying, than the commercial platforms.
