The government is being pretty coy about the details, so most of the article is necessarily conjecture.
Selected excerpts from the article:
The definition of a social media service, as per the Online Safety Act
An electronic service that satisfies the following conditions:
- The sole or primary purpose of the service is to enable online social interaction between two or more end users;
- The service allows end users to link to, or interact with, some or all of the other end users;
- The service allows end users to post material on the service.
Under the proposed changes, it will be the responsibility of social media companies to take reasonable steps to block people under 16.
How will your age be verified?
The government’s legislation won’t specify the technical method for proving a person’s age.
Several options are on the table, including providing ID and biometrics such as face scanning.
The government’s currently running an age assurance trial to assess all the methods, and it’s scheduled to continue into 2025.
Based on the results of that trial, eSafety commissioner Julie Inman Grant will make recommendations to platforms.
It’s possible that Australians will be asked to provide their IDs or biometric data directly to social media companies in order to use their platforms, but that’s not guaranteed.
Many of the big players, including Meta, have instead argued for the age verification onus to be placed on app stores, rather than individual platforms, as that would mean proving your age once — rather than every time you sign up to a platform.
It’s also possible that a third-party company that specialises in ID verification will act as a go-between between users and social media platforms.
No matter which model is adopted, the prime minister has said privacy protections will be introduced to cover any data people end up providing.
Aka another scheme to tie faces to anonymous identities.
just like religion; you gotta indoctrinate them while they’re young & impressionable so that they will more easily accept your biases as reality; otherwise they’ll be corrupted by information from unapproved sources like tiktok
you gotta indoctrinate them while they’re young & impressionable so that they will more easily accept your biases as reality;
Lol and social media companies are just such complete white knights too and would never engage in such tactics.
Well tiktok is one of the worse sources to obtain information from in my opinion because you pretty much guaranteed to only get information and opinions from people who align with your ideologies.
The same goes for all general use social media platform and singling tiktok out on these grounds can only be intentional.
What will this mean for Lemmy instances? XMPP servers? Email servers?
What if a 15 year old runs their own personal Mastodon server? LoL this is gonna be yet another entertaining Australian government shitshow.
My guess is that small targets like the fediverse will likely escape scrutiny because it would be a lot of trouble for a tiny handful of users.
If large numbers of kids started moving here once all the big platforms are blocked, and the pearl clutchers get wind of it, then the govt might move slowly towards trying to do something.
I can’t believe how fucked this is. Social media isn’t always the healthiest thing, but banning it? I was hardly allowed to leave my house as a kid, i have no idea what i would’ve done if i couldn’t talk to my peers online.
Welp. I think I’ll stick to writing to the local paper if I need to sign in blood to have a public opinion.
Maybe kids will start learning how to use a desktop properly… The Linux variety 🐸
WTF is AU government gonna about that haha
