Australia has just passed a law that will ban kids from social media online. How exactly? Well, through the amazing power of… shoosh.
From the country that brought you the ASSact and “The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia” comes another fine example of tech law innovation /s.
How are we going to implement it ? We have the concept of a plan… But our approval from boomers just went up 2 points, so who cares?
I love how the boomers are super fond and happy about this. Wonder if that will last when it’s implemented and they need to upload their ID to get on the Facebook, before it’s inevitably leaked and they end up thousands in debt
Also, given that they’re targetting kids who are probably fairly happy with their social medias, I reckon with a couple of carefully crafted liberal ads (if they figure out how to stop being dinosaurs long enough to do it, that is), all the people who’ll be able to vote in the election after next could have quite negative implications for labour. They’ve definitely made sure they won’t be branded as “cool” any time soon
It’s ridiculous really… my kids see things online and ask me anything regarding what it means, I use it as a teaching moment and we talk about it. Why and how is someone like Andrew Tate popular with boys of a certain age, for example. How does Instagram affect how girls view their bodies and affect their self esteem? How did something like tiktok change the shape of social media in general and what does it mean? I enjoy these conversations with my kids as they arise. Acknowledgement of something as harmful, without any debate about how, is, in itself, harmful. And insulting to young people. And also ultimately useless because kids know their way around VPNs etc. It’s only ultimately going to inconvenience me and compromise my own desire for anonymity and privacy. What 3rd party application will be entrusted with my age checking and how? Ugh.
It won’t be a 3rd Party application. It won’t be the authentication provided by the device manufacturer either.
This is what myID and myGov is designed for, and is perfectly capable of. Knowing how the Shit Party and Shit Lite Party work, it will probably originally be some half-baked, easily circumvented 3rd party web service, created by a mate of a mate in exchange for “Political Contributions”.
Theres no line for the Liberals to win a young constituency of voters on this. They voted in line with Labor and waved it through Parliament.
Part of me knows this is a populist strategy, but there is the chance that the Parliament has been privy to information the public isn’t.
Three things make me wonder if theres some urgent-ish security concern raised in regards radicalisation of young people driving this,
- Both Partys generally line up on National Security matters.
- They cut debate, and oversight. Maybe to save time, maybe because they are allowed to specify the real reason.
- The Big Social media companies haven’t wet the bed and begun a campaign against it.
If this is related to security, then theres probably other clues. It’d be interesting to see if theres a difference in different country’s Social Medias reactions, say tiktok’s reaction as opposed youtube’s? There could be a clue there. We’re not far off the Aus election, but we have also just witnessed a fairly hot election in the USA, maybe we should be looking back at that, instead of forward.
Or i’m wrong and its just a populist election move that the Liberals weren’t going to let Labor capture the narrative on.
