Perhaps if some thought and care had been put into this ridiculous land grab by our government this kind of outcome could have been avoided.
I’m not giving Reddit a single bit of benefit of the doubt here, but by pushing back against this they may be helping us instead of pissing on us for a change.
Instead of using political capital to shove age verification down our throats, imagine if they used that same capital to restrict gambling advertising? Or implement strong data protection and privacy legislation? Or strong laws against IP theft by AI companies? The government could have pursued all sorts of positive policies to materially improve life for us, what we got instead was the conjunction of the masturbatory fantasies of the intelligence community (who have never enjoyed us having any privacy) and knee jerk reactionary conservatives who know best how to raise kids because of “muh feels”.
This half baked, vague, wishy washy law has made my kids materially less safe online, all so the government can soft sell the idea that you should have to provide ID for every interaction online.
And even if we agree, all you’ll ever hear from me is Fuck u/spez
‘Social Media Account Ban’*
If they are so concerned why don’t they force entire reddit youtube etc behind an age check to view
if they are so concerned why dont they stop sites / apps that run 100 cookies from tracking kids
*jokeThere’s a chance most of the historical bullshit and nonsense (I’m talking pre-bots) was 16 year olds and younger…
Australia is a nanny state censoring the internet.
Not really. The legislation is stupid but the big tech companies are predatory and needed to be regulated. As does the gambling industry. There is a long list of stuff Labor should be doing but mostly aren’t because they are piss weak. They chose social media because it didn’t upset any major supporters and it was judged to be popular with average voters.
It is just very poorly done. I have to go find a new music app now for the family as we can’t all use Youtube Music Premium anymore so it is a waste of money. My kids youtube accounts were managed under family link and had comments disabled some content restrictions and no ads. The ads are as harmful as social media IMO - sexualising kids, creating insecurity over appearance, clothing, weight, pushing unhealthy food, gambling, divisive politics, consumerism.
I can use hacked youtube clients on some platforms but they are closed source from less trusted parties and could be a security risk. I can try and trick YT with vpns and a set of new accounts but thats going to be tricky. Making fake adult accounts is no good as I can’t manage adult accounts under family link and apply the restrictions I want.
But reddit can fuck right off. Hope they get laughed out of court.
Starting on Dec 27th Aussies will have to prove their age before using Google search. It’s absurd.
100% y’all screech once they come for fed shit.
this law covers the fediverse. aussie.zone now has a verification process
i agree with the above commenter: something should be done, but this is the wrong way to do it… it creates problems and effectively solves none
real vibes of
The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia.
- Malcom (cunt) Turnbull - a conservative ex-PM
Very sensible take
You could try https://alternativeto.net/software/quobuz/about/
Hearing in that Australia can straight up not classify a game and therefore ban it is outrageous.
The Mortal Kombat 9 virtue signaling
The middle ground would be making these companies comply with rules that stop them manipulating users, but we already know that these companies would rather cop the fine and do the bad things anyway.
Then increase the fines.
then reddit blocks australians and the whole country is banned from reddit, nice!
from my pov if being a nanny state lets kids be more like kids and less like little phone addicts having their dopamines blown I don’t mind it
there are other countries looking at doing the same
You can regulate big tech without banning support groups.
tbf i’d go even further, I’d ban over 65’s as well 😶🌫️
I’d ban you, because you’re silly.
tbf that wouldn’t realllly impact me that much, it’s just reddit and youtube that I use, and the social media ‘ban’ doesn’t block you from accessing reddit or youtube, it’s not like you get a big “BLOCKED! UR UNDER 16!” page come up, you just can’t sign up for an account, so reddit and youtube still work I’d just not be able to see adult content on those sites
Uhh, this is Lemmy.
Parents should be doing a better job parenting, rather than relying on the state to do it for them.Also, when has banning kids from doing something actually stopped them from doing it? Even “back in my day”, using a proxy to bypass blocked sites was common knowledge amongst the smarter kids. The tech savvy kids would host their own proxies using a free web hosting service and PHProxy (or similar software). These days, it’s much easier to use a VPN or proxy.
Parents can compete against teams of people whose goal is to make their platform as addictive as possible? Nah, it’s a systemic problem and it won’t be solved by some parents sometimes doing something of limited effectiveness. Nor will it be solved by blanket bans.
I don’t disagree, but this law could have been an opportunity to give parents better tools with which to parent.
It is far, far too difficult for any parent today to impose parental controls on their kids’ devices. Parental controls are an afterthought, put in place barely enough to tick the box saying “we have parental controls”, and not effectively doing much of anything. The law could have forced tech companies to do better and make it easy for parents to use effectively.
Ugh “parents should do better parenting” is such neo lib individualist bullshit
Maybe I shouldn’t have included that in my comment, but my point about trying to ban kids from doing stuff being ineffective still stands.
It’s hard already when parents are overburdened with trying to pay the bills.
so you’re in favour of it then? less need for parents to worry about what misinformation and disinformation is being supplied by paid actors on facebook, win/win ?
No, having parents mailed social media dangers brochures instead would be a better idea.
What else should people be allowed to do to children just because the parents aren’t “vigilant” enough?
Hey both of these are covered on the FAQ
proxy to bypass blocked sites was common knowledge
It’s not a technological block, the social media sites will rely on a variety of signals, for example if you sign up for a facebook account in USA, but take a selfie geolocating you in australia and image scan picks up that you might be under 16, you’ll still get pinged for id check
amongst the smarter kids
They are targeting all under 16’s, and this is mentioned as well, even if 10% of kids get around the ban somehow, the fact that 90% don’t removes a huge part of the social in social network
even if 10% of kids get around the ban somehow, the fact that 90% don’t removes a huge part of the social in social network
The kids that get around the ban will spread that knowledge to others. That’s what happened when I went to school, and I don’t think it’s any different today.
