Australia investigating five social media giants for not enforcing ban on kids Australia’s government has decided to double the fines it can levy companies that don’t take appropriate steps to enforce the country’s ban on children under 16 accessing social media – and said Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube are under investigation for possible non-compliance. The decision to increase fines …
The European Space Agency (ESA) who own the launch site, is nothing to do with the Eu, the UK and Switzerland are founder members, even Canada is allowed in.
Arianespace, the people with the rockets, is a French company owned by Airbus and a bunch of other European defense companies.
Remember when Albo's ALP said that the social media ban age-check solution (face scans, et al) wasn't the end state? They said they'd see how it goes and improve it over time. Well, here we are, with the 'solution' shown to be ineffective, just as many of us said it would be.
Is Albo going to implement an improved solution, one that actually works? Of course not! He's doubling down (and doubling fines) pushing the same flawed methodology, saving face at all costs (and, as many have surmised, probably pursuing the ulterior motive of gradually introducing ID checks for anyone going online, this being the thin end of the wedge - don't forget, our intrepid Aussie Government has also enacted 'age checks' for search engines and is pushing its government ID app for official functions).
The eSafety Commissioner recently dropped some heavy hints about disagreeing with the chosen solution. In the lead up to implementation late last year, several experts quit the advisory group in disgust. And there are plenty of experts who disagree with it now, even Amnesty International, including whether a 'ban' for under-16s is the right path at all.
Satirical outfit, The Juice Media, summed up the situation quite well: https://www.thejuicemedia.com/honest-government-ad-social-media-ban/
There are better solutions to protecting kids online. There are better solutions to addressing the harms of social media. Some have been discussed right here on El Reg. Many experts have chimed in.
But bloody-minded governments push on with this flawed 'ban' and intrusive age-checks. They don't seem to care if the 'solution' actually works. They certainly don't care about unintended consequences for the rest of us. They care about about obedience, control and identifying everyone.
Bloody control freaks. And liars.
The Juice Media is generally associated with the left and the Greens, actually. (But Labor rusted-ons tend to label everyone who disagrees with them as "right wing" - one track minds, etc.)
Did you have anything to say or is an insult all you're capable of?
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"Is Albo going to implement an improved solution, one that actually works?"
Well given the only likely effective (though still not 100%) solution is to require everyone to hand over government issued photo ID with a corroborating selfie to Facebook et al I hope he doesn't...
Good methods might not really exist. We should consider some options, but I think one of the most important things we must admit first is that, if we fail to find good methods, that still doesn't make bad methods good. Even if we can't make social media stop various things we'd like them to stop, we still have reasons not to put an ID check in front of any site some politician wants to control or make it possible for anyone to sue a website to remove any user post they dislike.
The things I most want social media to stop actually are things we have ways to prohibit. Privacy abuses can be detected and they can be punished. The GDPR is an excellent start for a law that would do that, but we'd need to extend it either so that the data protection authorities aren't just for cosmetic reasons or that individuals can bring legal action when regulators have made it clear they're unwilling to enforce the law.
The problem of unhinged content is trickier, but one method I think would be easier than strict liability for anything they leave up is more limited liability about what they promote. Failed to spot a weird post proposing murder, unfortunate. Spotted that post and chose to show it to thousands of people who had no previous connection to it even though 2.3% of them reported it? That was a publishing decision and it can be used against them more easily.
"Good methods might not really exist. We should consider some options, but I think one of the most important things we must admit first is that, if we fail to find good methods, that still doesn't make bad methods good."
This right here. This "Cure" is way more dangerous than the disease.
Banning “curated” timelines would be the big change I’d like to see. I think social media in general would be a much better place if people only used “friends and following” feeds.
I’d also like to see better vetting of advertisers, better responses to scam reporting, a de-emphasis away from likes and some kind of action against clickbait.
But of course all of this costs money and heaven forbid that.
A pre-configured "child safe" device (or laptop) would solve most of the ID and bypass issues. Lock the chidren's traffic through an ISP-run proxy filter (which could be centrally controlled and updated - the government could do it themselves if they wanted). Include kid-safe DNS and kid-safe search, to keep them out of harmful sites. Include some on-device functions to prevent sharing nudes (at all) or giving personal contact info unless to other recognised kids' accounts or approved/endorsed services. It'd protect kids far better than age-gating done by a handful of platforms, the wisdom of which has never been apparent to me given the thousands upon thousands of harmful sites out there. Parents who _want_ to be more hands-on could be given some level of control over what gets filtered and could see what their kids are doing online.
Then there's no need to bother the adults with age verification or ID checks unless said adult is applying for a child-adjacent role. The authoritarian angle and variability of kids needs are both pretty well solved by giving parents the degree of control they want (from none - all settings left at safe defaults - through to fine-grained filter configuration and site-by-site/app-by-app approval).
But it requires investment, planning and working _with_ the device makers and ISPs (rather than shouting at them). It also requires recognising that kids' needs, and parents' wants, are highly variable - something governments are apparently shite at.
Well, yeah. Sit all this alongside what they're doing with 3D printers (coming soon to a jurisdiction near you), or their steadfast refusal to improve privacy laws, or their cosy relationship with big tech over AI and data centres. It looks like they want your data and to have it inextricably tied to your real ID.
The Aussies should give each kid a cut of the fine.
So, if 13 year old Justin from Queensland reports to His Majesties Austrialian Government that he uses Insta, then the Government should impose a fine and pay Justin a part of the money.
This will accelerate things ...
So why didn't they do this for TV and newspapers? Naked people all over the TV late at night, and loads of stuff that isn't suitable for kids in newspapers. If only children had someone to keep an eye on what they were doing. It would make it so much easier.
They do do this for TV and print media. For those types of media it's not just parents on their own against TV and newspapers.
The article is misleading, the 80% figure is just for the 14 to 16 age group which is the least vulnerable sector. For the 9 to 13 group it's around 40% and for the most vulnerable group, the under 9s the rate is under 10%.
Interestingly most use fake ID's, VPN use is at a very low level, around 3%.
It's early days and the implementation is far from ideal but it's better than just throwing ones hands in the air and saying it's unfixable.
"It's early days and the implementation is far from ideal but it's better than just throwing ones hands in the air and saying it's unfixable."
Except there's been a string of experts saying this was a crap solution from the get go. It was rammed through parliament with virtually no debate and in record time. It's not just that the government should have known better, they were TOLD about the problems but ploughed on anyway creating this god-awful mess we have now.
“Social media companies have a social responsibility, and they must uphold their legal responsibility in Australia to keep under 16s off social media,”
The terms and conditions when you create a login are the ONLY legal conditions they have to worry about.
What the feck will the Australian government do when there's a actual "under 16 social media platform" with age verification to make sure that no adults can have access?
