Australia bans teens from social media, but nobody thinks it'll really work

Australia's ban on children under 16 holding active social media accounts comes into force on Wednesday. While nobody expects this world-first policy to stop every kid using their favorite online communities, its backers take solace in the mere fact it's sparked global debate. The ban won’t stop kids using social media, and …

[Winkypop]

Good, bad or ugly

It’s about time people stood up to these socially corrosive platforms. American mega corps can go fly a kite.

[Goodwin Sands]

Re: Good, bad or ugly

First they came for facebook, then they came for El Reg's comments forum.

Let the parents decide - that's what me Mum & Dad say.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Good, bad or ugly

Time to ban books for under 16s.

Do you want giant American publishers to allow your 5year old to read Marquis de Sade or Mein Kampf or The Camel book ?

Obviously we can't control which books children read, so we need to ban them

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Good, bad or ugly

But we do ban certain books from children don't we? As far as I was aware pornographic material is banned from those under 18.

You can say the same for food and drink, we ban those things deemed to do harm to young minds (alcohol and drugs).

We also ban them from free travel (ability to drive) and play games (gambling).

They also can't have relationships with whoever that want due to the age of consent.

We do this because as a society it has been deemed a child cannot make an informed decision on what is good for them, or rather what will do them harm. So stop acting as if this is some Orwellian dystopia.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Good, bad or ugly

>But we do ban certain books from children don't we

Precisely, we don't blame the technology or just throw our hands up and say 'there's nothing we can do except a purely performative ban"

Make the platforms responsible for content, in the same way we make movie studios responsible.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Good, bad or ugly

So, someone found TikTok left in the bushes near college...

Banned or not, it never stopped any of us when we were younger getting hold of Porn VHS/DVD or magazines. In fact, it was murkier as anything then, and you could get magazines from the sex shops.

Now - controlling content and moderation online is a different matter. How many Facebook reports say "We didn't remove the ad

Thanks again for your report. This information helps us improve the integrity and relevance of advertising on Facebook.

We use a combination of technology and human reviewers to process reports and identify content that goes against our Advertising Standards. In this case, we did not remove the ad that you reported.

If you think that we've made a mistake, you can request a review of this decision within 180 days.

We understand that this might be frustrating, so we recommend influencing the ads that you see by hiding ads and changing your ad preferences. Learn more about how we take action on reports like yours." so why even bother reporting bad content? ...

[Sorry that handle is already taken.]

Re: Good, bad or ugly

So stop acting as if this is some Orwellian dystopia.

If you look at some of the books banned in red states over the last few years however...

[herman]

Re: Good, bad or ugly

Yeah, think of the ch... uhm, OK.

[J.G.Harston]

So, children that access social media will be arrested and sent to prison?

[desht]

No. Don't be stupid.

[J.G.Harston]

Person is banned from fishing, they go fishing, person is arrested and punished.

Person is banned from driving, they go driving, person is arrested and punished.

Australian teens banned from using social media, Australian teen uses social media, AUSTRALIAN TEEN IS ARRESTED AND PUNISHED.

That's what "banned" means.

[Lazlo Woodbine]

Read the article properly, especially the sidebar, then consider why you've got so many downvotes...

[James O'Shea]

He got that many downvotes because he's trolling.

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly the "/s" is sometimes mandatory

"So, children that access social media will be arrested and sent to prison?"

Unfortunately no… not a bad idea though (whether the rug rats access social media or not.) :) /s

When you carefully examine youth crime, you invariably find it is committed by children. /S /S

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Clearly the "/s" is sometimes mandatory

>When you carefully examine youth crime, you invariably find it is committed by children

Obviously you need to bam children

[Aladdin Sane]

Well they're already resident in HMP Australia.

I say this in full knowledge that England are getting pumped in the Ashes.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

But we have a plan to ban reporting of this in Britain, and so solve the problem of abysmal sporting performance

[Aladdin Sane]

Can't we just go back to the 90s where we were shit at all sports?

[Irongut]

Why would the Scots, Irish or Welsh care that the England cricket team can't play the game they invented for toffee?

If it were enjoyable to watch cricket then we'd all love watching them get humped.

Beer... the ony way to enjoy cricket.

[Aladdin Sane]

Well ECB does stand for England and Wales Cricket Board.

[James O'Shea]

It is always enjoyable to watch England getting thumped in cricket. And rugby. And Real Football (even the Orange One admits that there can be only one! https://sports.yahoo.com/soccer/article/president-trump-wants-to-rename-american-football-we-have-to-come-up-with-another-name-for-the-nfl-181710848.html ).

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

I assume that if the Celts found out about England's cricketing they would lose all respect for their lords and masters

[I ain't Spartacus]

Beer... the ony way to enjoy cricket.

irongut,

You are fucking doing it wrong! We invented cricket for a reason! Cake. What other sport stops for lunch, tea and has three drinks breaks a day. If you go to Lords, the home of cricket, they will sell you a hamper for a reasonable price that contains snacks for all three drinks breaks, a very full lunch and an afternoon tea (for the tea interval). You are also allowed to bring in one bottle of wine per person, or 4 cans of beer, if you're some disgusting oik!

Cricket is for picnics! All day picnicking. Sometimes interesting things even happen on the pitch. If not, you can always have a nap, until it's time for the next meal.

I took Mum to Lords for afternoon tea one Mother's Day. It was superb. We got 7 different kinds of cake each, plus two scones and lots of sandwiches. I was even offered more, but by that point I was at Mr Creosote levels - and didn't even have room for a waffer thin mint.

Ah memories. Johnners, TMS, cake, lazy Summer afternoons, proper puddings with custard...

[Tim99]

As a citizen of both countries, I know that my team will win (or draw?).

[johnrobyclayton]

It is just too much laziness

Parents can do their job of supervising their children's development and engagement with the outside world.

They are just too lazy to and want to government to do it for them.

Governments can create a platform for children to interact safely and is more attractive to children that everything else.

They are just too lazy to do the work of providing a safe place for their most vulnerable citizens that they will be willing to use.

Advertisers want to attract the most suggestible market to sell stuff to.

They are too lazy to sell effectively to fully self aware and competent buyers.

Children are smart, they can figure out how to get around any restriction on their freedom to interact in any way they want.

They are just too lazy to do so without complaining about the ban hammer.

Predators like to hunt vulnerable prey where they congregate.

They are just too lazy to hunt something big enough and ugly enough to take care of themselves.

I am not interested in fixing their problems for them.

I am just too lazy to care all that much about them.

[Pete Sdev]

Re: It is just too much laziness

Parents can do their job of supervising their children's development and engagement with the outside world.

That's simple, simply raise wages so it is possible once again to run a household on one wage, leaving in most cases 1 parent free to supervise children full time.

It'll go down a treat with employers, I'm sure

[Bebu sa Ware]

"social media companies complied without putting up much of a fight."

Which pretty much tells you that they have determined that it is not going to make much of a difference to their bottom line and the extra data they will garner as a consequence of their enforcing the ban may well be gold.

Personally, I would be happy if they banned the whole boiling for the under 95s. :)

[Zenubi]

Re: "social media companies complied without putting up much of a fight."

Social media orgs Want to know the age of everyone - this is a start of some sort in an important demographic for them.

[Mage]

Re:enforcing the ban may well be gold.

Especially true with the stupid UK scheme which means everyone "over age" loses privacy.

Privacy for everyone is the loss of most of these schemes. The Site owner, government and criminals will all get the personal info. A rise in impersonations, arrests and phising.

[R Soul]

everyone "over age" loses privacy.

No big deal. Anyone stupid enough to sign up for social-media-platform-du-jour has already surrendered their privacy.

[IGotOut]

Re: "social media companies complied without putting up much of a fight."

Not true. They have spent an absolute fortune bribing, I mean lobbying, in order to get this stopped.

They are genuinely shitting themselves, as they know if they don't hook 'em young, they could lose them completely.

[Blackjack]

As long as Kids are allowed to use Smartphones, that they know how to use better that their parents, this ban doesn't do much at all.

[Michael]

stop parents?

Are you proposing those that can't configure a smartphone to stop their children from accessing material they seem inappropriate should be locked up or banned from having children?

I could almost support that policy.

[Blackjack]

Re: stop parents?

You can try

However workarounds so far seem quite easy; use the web browser instead of the App for example, unless yoy also block the web browser, or said Web browser has parental controls and installing a different one is blocked.

Maybe on an Iphone it may be possible to complete block every social media, but on Android? Is gonna be quite hard.

[Anonymous Coward]

VPN?

I suspect a VPN and a new account created in the chosen VPN country would easily sidestep this?

[Infused]

Re: VPN?

For now. Tbough I think they'll go after VPNs once widespread evasion occurs.

[W.S.Gosset]

Re: VPN?

Australian govt public networks have been working on a Great Firewall of Australia for nearly 2yrs now. (See below, "It was never about the kids")

GFOA blocks all VPNs plus Tor.

I have found only 2 ways to get round it. (Without running up my own private cloud VPS then getting on the whackamole train of moving it every time it's spotted and blocked. No interest in that sort of faff if I'm not being paid for it.)

It will be a pain if they do another Covid and backdoor lean on the literal handful of key ISPs to implement it for ALL Australian internet access. (I am still unable to access Oxford University research papers via my phone's network: they forgot to remove that block after govt relaxed the Covid censorship)

[Captain Hogwash]

Re: Great Firewall of Australia

Great Carrier Reef?

[Bebu sa Ware]

Re: Great Firewall of Australia

The carriers cannot get emergency caling (000) working properly for mobiles so any GFoA is only going to fly if the 'F' references fornication.

Great Carrier Reef? — Great Carrier Reefer more likely.

[W.S.Gosset]

Re: VPN?

UK has a Bill in process to ban VPNs for the Under16s.

https://bills.parliament.uk/publications/63901/documents/7465

See p.19: “Action to prohibit the provision of VPN services to children in the United Kingdom”

[Mark 65]

Re: VPN?

Best of luck with that one

[IvaliceResident]

Re: VPN?

This is exactly what I’ve been doing. Registering accounts for Kick, Twitch, Bluesky, Discord and Reddit in other countries using a split tunnel vpn and portable Firefox/Chrome. Works fine no age verification.

[W.S.Gosset]

It's not about the kids

If you look at the primary 2 pieces of legislation this came from, you'll note they're a horror show of tech repression capability matching 1960s East Germany's goals but far harsher given current tech environment.

If you look at the actual implementation of this subset Kids Social Media Ban, on the other hand, you'll note a lunatic discrepancy between the strict Act and the shambolic careless uselessness of this particular implementation.

It's like they don't actually care about this bit of it.

And they don't. It was never about the kids. They just wanted a public face for the other provisions. Eg, realtime access to every social media post live-linked to DigitalID-mapped identity (ie, maps onto bank a/c, insurance docts, tax records, rental agreements, etcetcetc, all in-train now), in the context of sections, for example, carrying 14yrs prison for posting even official government data if it's a bit awkward. For example, if the current legislation was in place whilst Covid was still on and someone posted this graph of Vaccination Status vs CovidEvent taken from the briefly-opened whole-of-NSW-State govt data, then that person would have been liable to be jailed for the same term as aggravated rape.

Examples of how shambolic the current kids thing is, things which the eSafety Commissioner has formally reviewed and approved as meeting the safety needs of preventing Under16s from accessing social media include:

* TikTok: dialog box asking you if you're over 16: tick Yes or No

* Reddit: they will block you if their code determines from your post history that you are DEFINITELY under 16yo

* others are just looking at the DateOfBirth you enter when you create your (new) account

Note that the actual child-dangerous sites (eg Roblox, infested by paedophile pickup artists; eg BlueSky, infested by schizophrenics and paedophile&"MAPS"-apologists if not players; eg PornHub) are explicitly excluded. X, on the other hand, is considered the most dangerous and is being focussed on, despite having only 0.3% of its users under 16yo.

This is not about the kids. It was never about the kids.

[Dan 55]

Re: It's not about the kids

Which is it, Digital ID-mapped identity or ticking Yes or No? Kids going to prison for specifically posting government data? You're going to have cite some sources.

[W.S.Gosset]

Re: It's not about the kids

Please read the post. It is not ambiguous.

[Dan 55]

Re: It's not about the kids

I don't see how it could be simultaneously so easy to get around and at the same time tie people to posts so the government can send people to prison for posting things it doesn't like.

[W.S.Gosset]

Re: It's not about the kids

You will find a careful discussion and explanation of precisely that issue, specifically addressing not just that point but its implications, here.

[Dan 55]

Re: It's not about the kids

Well at least linking in a circular loop saves forum space. There are other posters who go on forever without answering any reasonable questions. Thanks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: It's not about the kids

In Russia evading website blocking is trivial with pro Putin politicians and oligarchs all blatantly evading the blocks and posting on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: It's not about the kids

More dodgy characters on blue sky than X? Fewer under 16s on X?

Citations needed.

[The Central Scrutinizer]

Re: It's not about the kids

You really do post utter garbage.

[DS999]

Outfits even less interested in child safety than the likes of Meta

Is it possible to be less interested in child safety than a company that had a policy of SEVENTEEN STRIKES before suspending an Instagram account for sex trafficking? That's probably worse than doing NOTHING about sex trafficking, because you never know if a company that appears to be doing nothing won't strike down on you like a bolt from the blue and suspend your account over a single infraction. Meanwhile Instagram will apparently warn you 16 times first?

OK that can't possibly be how it really works, there's no way they send out 16 warnings, right? But regardless there is likely to be at least be some kind of notice they're on to you before you've crossed the line so you may have the opportunity to figure out what sorts of stuff gets past their filters and what doesn't.

[Red Ted]

Re: Outfits even less interested in child safety than the likes of Meta

Indeed.

Google, Meta, X, etc all have zero interest in child safety. They have 100% interest in their quarterly and annual financial results.

Whilst the ban could affect those, the fallout for not complying would, for the moment, be worse.

I am quite sure that they will be spending a lot of effort on working out ways around it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Game over Albo

The ban has almost 100% failed on day one. So many kids are getting around it. On closer inspection polls now suggest only a third of parents plan to enforce it.

[Androgynous Cupboard]

Re: Game over Albo

The whole point of social media is it's only useful if everyone's on it. So if a third of your peers aren't on it, you're going to use it a lot less.

[Rahbut]

Re: Game over Albo

"only a third of parents plan to enforce it"

isn't that kind of the problem with all of this? Some parents cba or don't feel it's their responsibility, which is why we end up with (some would argue) state overreach. That said, big tech isn't going to do "the right thing" if it means losing potential revenue - it requires some kind of regulation, but it remains to be seen what the most effective approach might be.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Game over Albo

Big tech doing the right thing would be pulling all physical presence out of Australia and giving them the finger on this crap.

"Sure, fine me, good luck collecting you asses. Oh, and we'll be happy to accept your money for ads, just send it to our new payment location in a more free country. We will, of course, be actively working to make sure our sites are accessible from your country, our ban evasion team are experts at getting around any internet damage your authoritarian government tries to cause."

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Game over Albo

If I still had an under-16 kid and was in Australia, not only would I not be enforcing it, I'd be actively helping the kid get around it. And I'd be showing them how to help all their friends get around it.

I despise authoritarian governments trying to screw up the internet.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Game over Albo

So you go and get your kid as much alcohol as they can drink need? Do you also supply them with cigges, dope etc? Do you have parent child porn watching nights?

And because of the shit that have seen on social media provide them with the gun to do what they want with?!

[Ken Hagan]

Re: Game over Albo

Albanese's comparison with drinking laws is probably closer to the reality than the hysterical sky-is-falling shrieks from the media and from Big Tech. Have you any idea how ineffective the drinking laws are at preventing underage drinking? But is anyone seriously advocating for their repeal?

In the long term, the effectiveness of this measure will depend on the degree of parental support it gets, but there are a lot of tweny-somethings who can remember being either stressed out with peer pressure or just plain cyber-bullied, and when they have kids of their own they might be grateful for legal backing when they say "not yet" to their offspring.

[Infused]

Coming to a Country Near You...

One thing I can definitely say is that lots of other countries will follow suit.

[Anonymous Coward]

We deserve better, we really do

The social media ban is practically pointless without parental enforcement, which begs the question why parental supervision wasn't the first choice. Ah, but it's too good a political opportunity! The Government gets to claim it's protected kids and "dealt with" the social media giants when they really haven't. And then there's the enhanced data collection on users that couldn't be passed up.

What about all the other, less well-known but more dangerous sites on the internet that kids can flock to? Doesn't matter - too far out of the way to make a good example of. And what did GitHub ever have to do with it - that's crazy, unless saving the kids wasn't really the aim.

As for the polls, the questions didn't include granular options, so the support amongst the public is fairly meaningless. I'm sure the response only really translates to "kids good, social media bad" rather than fully-informed agreement with this particular approach, i.e. age restriction implemented by the social media companies themselves or third parties. Had the public had a choice between other more workable and/or more effective options to keep kids safe online - methods with fewer or no 'unintended' consequences - I think the result would have been very different. Alas, the adopted approach was determined when the legislation was drafted (and rushed through, with virtually no debate). There was little choice after that.

Albo already claiming success is right on brand. This guy loves to talk down to people and make grandiose gestures. He's shaping up to be just another power-mad pollie. And the bottleshop analogy is the wrong model. If any adult had to have their ID recorded, transmitted, maybe stored (we don't know) by some unknown company or go through facial recognition-like scanning just to buy alcohol, they'd rapidly find some other shop that didn't do that, and the offending shop would find themselves featured on current affairs TV.

The Juice Media (they do online satire) did a great piece on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxRB5qWphJE

[Ken Hagan]

Re: We deserve better, we really do

Umm, if you want to buy alcohol in the UK you absolutely will have to prove your age. In a shop that might be as simple as guesswork, but if you are buying on the internet it will be harder and might end up being as intrusive as the age check mechanisms for social media or porn. There's no point in taking your custom elsewhere if everyone is doing it and, in my experience, they are. Maybe I'm buying booze at the wrong stores.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: We deserve better, we really do

"if you want to buy alcohol in the UK"

Have you ever lived in Australia? Didn't think so. This is an Australian story - if you want to include the UK, talk about the cricket.

[Ken Hagan]

Re: We deserve better, we really do

Did you read to the end of the article? Quite a lot of discussion about the rest of the world wondering how applicable the Australian experience might be to other countries.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: We deserve better, we really do

That gold badge seem to have gone to your head.

[Bebu sa Ware]

"children won't be able to escape the ban forever" — Minister "responsible."

Ahem. In most cases a couple years would do it, wouldn't it ?

Unless you live in Never Never Land with Peter Pan and Tinker Bell, as our pollies clearly do, children do grow up… hopefully into adults.

Hopefully once the theatre and farce of these silly season productions are over, parents will be more aware of the potential pitfalls of the exposure of their early teen children to these media and then will be more prepared to take responsibility.†

I suspect the media companies might be more pro·active in future fearing a much more heavy handed approach in other jurisdictions given any perceived success in AU.

† hope springs eternal, porcine aviation etc

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: "children won't be able to escape the ban forever" — Minister "responsible."

"I suspect the media companies might be more pro·active in future fearing a much more heavy handed approach in other jurisdictions"

Not just in other jurisdictions. If some harm befalls a child in Oz who is using a site despite a ban the site now finds itself more clearly in the wrong and is going to get hammered hard. It becomes far more worthwhile for sites to police what happens. That might have been the thinking behind it - don't actually keep the teens off the sites but make the sites start to act responsibly.

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone on the radio said this morning "Social media isn't a birthright". He was correct, oddly enough it was Jimmy Carr.

We managed before social media. They still have WhatsApp, they can still communicate. Social media, just like religion in general, has fucked up the world in many ways.

As they say: Go touch grass.

[xyz]

At least they'll learn to count...

(current year -17 (16+1 just in case) = boobies

[James O'Shea]

Re: At least they'll learn to count...

People in Oz have to be 17 before they can see these? https://www.instagram.com/p/DFVYxVzP3hp/ Oz is strange.

[Helcat]

So under 16's are banned from social media. So now when they hit 17 they have access... but have no idea what to expect because they've never encountered it before?

That'd be a real culture shock, surely?

Well, for the generations that haven't had access to social media before, and are kept from it. Much like pron and other 'adult' material. Sure, there's harmful stuff out there, but surely it's better to teach the kids how to survive in the real world than hide them away and mollycoddle them so when they do get out there, it's not such a shock, such a horrific, ugly, dangerous place? AKA educate the kids so they've got the tools to survive in the real world rather than hamstring them so they're dependent on the government for protection...

Oh... ah... I see...

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

I see your well argued reasoned statement and raise you a plan to keep the Oz version of the Daily Mail reader placated while putting the infrastructure in place to track every citizen online

[Tim99]

It's a Five Eyes country - every online citizen can be tracked already...

[Anonymous Coward]

Before we had the Internet, we had porn magazines (oddly found in bushes in the UK for kids to find for some reason) and videos that someone older had that they'd happily show a group of kids.

This along with abuse by people when I was younger gave me a really bad attitude towards sex and women and made me grow up before my time. Having horny thoughts is normal for a teenage boy. I however was obsessed.

We can look back with rose tinted glasses at the old days. However, being exposed to adult stuff when you're young and building your picture of the world is not a good thing. Sometimes we do need to 'think of the children' because the parents can't be bothered (or in my case didn't actually know what was going on in my life even at a younger age). When I got the Internet, I was downloading interlaced GIFs of porn pictures. My parent was none the wiser as the Internet was not prolific.

Let's look at things how they actually are, not how *we* are.

[Ken Hagan]

" (oddly found in bushes in the UK for kids to find for some reason) "

I always assumed they were bought by Dad for his own use but sometimes left lying around where the kids could pilfer them but the kids couldn't hide them in the house in case Mum found them.

At least, that's how it worked in my friend's house.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

So the solution is to keep the kids off el'reg until they are 16, when they get access to 2 girls 1 cup and 3 donkeys.

[I ain't Spartacus]

El Reg is pure filth! Nobody below 50 should be allowed on here!

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

And even then only with a note from their grandparents

[Dagg]

...but have no idea what to expect because they've never encountered it before?

You mean like alcohol?