Nobody could have predicted this.
Age verification errors see some under-16s retain access to banned social media platforms
Submitted 1 week ago by Az_1@lemmy.world to australia@aussie.zone
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-12-10/social-media-ban-day-one-teen-access/106126706
Comments
harmbugler@piefed.social 1 week ago
kingofras@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Let’s ban something for the age group that has for generations shown that outlawing anything makes it more interesting for them.
I mean Aussies really generally good at digging shit out of the ground and making money off it. Electing progressive leaders or forming sensible policies that look further than the next 2 weeks? Not so much.
Eyekaytee@aussie.zone 1 week ago
They predicted it and were trying to set expectations 6 months ago:
eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said work to implement the laws was on track but people should not expect that all under-16s would be scrubbed from social media as soon as the ban was in place.
www.abc.net.au/news/2025-06-24/…/105454838
“This legislation does not give us a mandate to cut the Coral Cable or deplatform social media apps on stores,” she told the National Press Club in Canberra on Tuesday.
“Nor should we create expectations that every child’s social media account will magically disappear overnight.”
In her address, she characterised the controversial laws as a social media “delay” rather than an outright ban, despite its blanket application for all Australians under the age of 16 — even if they already own an account or have parental consent.
Almacca@aussie.zone 1 week ago
So it’s all going about as everyone except the government expected.
“My 13-year-old daughter still has access to all her social media accounts this morning, and she verified her age via facial scanning. I am hoping that they are still working their way through and she will be booted off soon. If not then it’s a fail for us.” — Alison, NSW
God forbid you take responsibility for it yourself. It sure is a fail for you, Alison.
Eyekaytee@aussie.zone 1 week ago
The government expected this, it’s not a flat ban, if anything the law is entirely reasonable
It’s only age-restricted social media platforms that face penalties *if they fail to take reasonable steps to stop under-16s creating or having accounts. *
minorkeys@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Impressive how quickly, and for no clear reason, enacting a mass access barrier to the Internet can be implemented by multiple nations all at the same time with little to ne debate or forewarning. What the fuck do they know that they aren’t telling us?
imsufferableninja@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
Oh no. Anyway…
Jumuta@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
this is fucking disgusting:
this is their true motive, they want ownership of our devices and the software running on them
FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au 1 week ago
That’s actually much better than what they’re currently doing. If all you had to do was verify with your phone that you are >16 it would mean that each social media app and then every other site that the government demands do age verification doesn’t need to verify you. It means you only verify once, on your device.
Unfortunately that’s why they’ll never do it - the government wants to ram through a universal digital ID, and this is how they do it.
Enoril@jlai.lu 1 week ago
No fucking way. This is not a valid solution.
Don’t you learn from history?
You have other way than locking and taking the control of everybody computer (as smartphone are today).
Look how the corporation are trying to reduce our liberty by removing us the choice of choosing our marketplace, locking our applications, removing our capacity to say no to IA, actively scanning our photos, videos, making link between our contacts, our needs, our interests.
This is already to much power too give to external people.
And you want to give even more? The total control of what can be used on it?
Are you that blind?
For this problem, only one solution: parenting!
Stop deporting local issue to worlwide consequences.
Discussing with the kids about the risks and why they should be wary of these social networks for their future is the only way.
These platforms are no different than drugs and alcohol. You can deal with it with good parenting.
And definitely by not screwing everybody else with more control. It’s just an excuse anyway. And it’s far far far worse that having gouvernement ID card.
We all have one here, than doesn’t block us to manifest.
Matty_r@programming.dev 1 week ago
Absolutely not, nothing good can come of this. All youre doing is giving more power to Apple/Google to control everything youre allowed to do on your device. You now have to have an approved phone, with their approved Operating System, apps installed via their approved app store, an approved browser… Etc etc.
That digital ID stuff is horrible as well, they already tested it during covid with the checkins nonsense.
minorkeys@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Better for what? So they can indoctrinate kids into normalizing absolute government overreach and a further slide into a technofascist state?
Zagorath@aussie.zone 1 week ago
At the device level is a much better place to put it. It’s a place that could actually work, and it’s a place where it’s much easier to do it in a privacy-preserving way.
The best solution would be to use parental controls. A lot of operating systems already have something along those lines, but they’ve tended to not be very good. If the law instead required that OSes supported parental controls where the parent can set the child’s age, and then apps and websites have to respect that, via an operating system API (with websites accessing a browser API, with the browser calling the OS’s API), that would remove any privacy concerns, because the only “verification” is the parent.
Or there’s this option, which preserves privacy along with a more robust age verification. Somebody (preferably the government, rather than a private company) has to do official age verification, once, and that would then get stored by your device and could be reused in a way that can’t be traced on different sites. The age verifier can’t see which sites you use your verification on. The sites can’t learn anything about you other than “yes, this person is old enough”.
astutemural@midwest.social 1 week ago
How about we not legally mandate this bullshit at all? Parental controls and child-friendly accounts are a thing that already exist. I don’t want a bunch of pigs spying on my child to determine if their internet activity is ‘acceptable’. Fuck that.
minorkeys@lemmy.world 1 week ago
You don’t even need to set any specifics, just flip the ‘not an adult’ option on and that’s it.