Comment on Trial finds age assurance can be done, as social media ban deadline looms
shirro@aussie.zone 1 day agoThe policy is predicated on protecting children for their mental health and development when they are at a very vulnerable age. Not all kids have responsible and capable parents. Lots of kids live in abusive circumstances, with absent/negligent parents and some kids are forced by circumstances to effectively be the the care givers/providers in their household as their parents guardians may be incapable. The world is really fucking sad sometimes.
When you go into a pub or supermarket and ask for a beer or pack of smokes they don’t give them to anyone who doesn’t have a child lock on them. They ask for proof of age. You can defeat that in various ways but they too are illegal and create risks for those involved. It isn’t perfect but it works well enough to reduce harms.
You want something available only to adults, then the convention is you provide proof you are an adult. That is a privacy nightmare if poorly implemented but then so is the entire digital realm right now.
I think we are missing the big opportunity as a society. The social media platforms are making shitloads of money through predatory manipulation of user habits because they get shitloads from advertising. Just ban the fucking advertising. Most of the bad shit goes away overnight because without the advertising the incentives to keep people trapped in a dopamine loop is mostly gone. The platforms either produce viable paid services or people move to community run alternatives like this one.
TimePencil@infosec.exchange 1 day ago
@shirro
The 'ID is required for beer and smokes' example is misleading.
Most adults are NOT required to provide ID to purchase such items. Only those who look "Under 25 years" *may* be required to produce ID, and even then, that ID is NOT recorded. (An exception may the the NT for alcohol sales.)
Requiring the citizenry to provide ID to either a social media entity OR via a government controlled gateway is something that must NOT be tolerated.
A requirement such as this will 'chill' free speech, weaken our democracy, and undoubtedly expose our personal information to hackers.
It's akin to allowing a person to purchase a pen, paper, envelope, and stamps - but then demanding the writer present both their ID and the unsealed letter at a Post Office, so that one's written words may be recorded against one's name.
To paraphrase Robert Bolt, it's akin to "cutting down privacy to protect children from the devil".
If you wish to argue in favour of this incoming law, do so *after* you've sent a copy of your ID to me.
Zagorath@aussie.zone 18 hours ago
Could you tell the guy at the bar I went to a week ago this, please? I got carded for the first time in years (not counting Safer Night Precincts where everyone gets carded) despite being—and looking—in my 30s.
shirro@aussie.zone 1 day ago
The for profit social media companies profile users and know their demographics in great detail. Kids are obviously watching different content to adults. They are in an equivalent position to a bottleshop employee letting a 12 year old walk out with a carton of premixes and claiming they didn’t know. The industry only cares about money and has proven they can’t self regulate.
The only question is how to react. Not whether to react.
The social media companies are obviously scare mongering and spreading misinformation to protect their financial interests. We need to balance peoples very reasonable demands for privacy with holding predatory corporate behaviour to account. The most likely outcome will be a requirement to use a third party age verification service subject to Australian privacy laws to verify a new user to a service so that there is no need to provide that informtion to the social media companies. I might ad that people willingly give their entire life history to Meta along with all their friends, colleagues and family along with photos that allow biometric fingerprinting of their children for life. Yet giving them a simple yes/no to the question of if you are legal age based on a trusted third party is considered intolerable. Seems like a very odd attitude that would only be defended by the social media companies and their shills.
Zagorath@aussie.zone 18 hours ago
Who’s that trusted third party? There’s no third party that I trust with that information. I don’t want to have to tell the government “I use aussie.zone, and this is my username”. I don’t want it even without the username part. And I’d trust the government a hell of a lot more with that than any private company.
The problem with your comment is that you’re framing it as all about Meta. It’s not. It could have been. Maybe even should have been. Have it apply only to specific platforms designated by the Minister. But the way the legislation was written, it applies to all social media. Including Lemmy instances. Including Mastodon. Including old-school forums. This is why all sensible people were opposed to the bill when it went through within a week late last year. Not because the underlying goal is bad, but because it had been rushed through without proper consideration, and it was missing obvious problems that arose from the way it was drafted. Problems which could have been addressed, if they had done a proper inquiry and responded to feedback from experts, knowledgeable amateurs, and the broader public.