Hacker News Reader

Comment by falaki | Hacker News Reader

I really hope other nations, including the United States, copy this. Australia proved that it is possible. I think the results will be so overwhelmingly positive that others will take notice. Good job Australia!

Reading "Anxious Generation" is a must for all parents in this day and age.

View on HN

Isn't it a little early to declare success? I think the bigger worry with the US though is not whether it is technically possible, but whether anyone in power cares to actually help kids versus using this it as an excuse to implement Orwellian surveillance upon citizens.

Alcohol, tobacco and many other products have age restrictions, so do cars and many other products of the modern society. Social media can and should have age restrictions.

This is a nonsense take that gets perpetuated over and over. For some reason.

Purchasing alcohol or buying a car is not the same as verifying your age on an internet property. They aren't even comparable. This is just as dumb as saying "well you have to verify your age to go into a bar". Sure, but does the bartender or salesman who sells you the alcohol completely remember every pixel of your photo or video selfy, permanently? Or do they just remember your face more generally?

The problem with these age verification laws is that they harm everybody, adults and kids. They don't do anything to protect kids and their sole purpose is a way for governments to suppress things they don't like. Any age verification technology (be it age estimation or similar) has a permanent record of the photo ID or video selfies (or whatever you use to prove your age) that you give it. Forever. If these systems didn't have those records, the result would be you having to verify your age every time you visit the website. There is a massive, massive difference between getting alcohol at a bar, or going to a strip club or similar, and providing your photo ID to a bouncer or bartender, who probably won't remember your ID after 5 minutes, versus a computer which permanently remembers it. That is the differentiator.

Surveillance could be part of it, if you let it be. Improved mental health, education, and social outcomes for each generation is also pretty darned important.

> Reading "Anxious Generation" is a must for all parents in this day and age.

Great, another Oprah's book club book that assures parents that there's just one easy trick to saving your children.

I hope it won’t, because the whole thing is just a medium to enable digital ID using fears as a justification, in this time it’s kids.

The whole ‘anxious generation’ isn’t because of social media, it’s because the new generations are hopeless and helpless (incl genz and millennials too), wherever you look in any domain, it’s bleak times waiting ahead for them, boomers fucked them up severely and now want to suppress them with laws and bills and control them because they know for a fact something will snap at this current rate.

While I am definitely in favor of the US causing itself more damage, its actually quite sickening to see people spruiking this legislation.

First of all, Australia has proven nothing, kids are stepping politely over this barrier without issue.

Second we are already hearing from disabled teens losing their only social lifeline.

Congratulations, you have isolated and disenfranchised a bunch of kids.

The changes are not even 12 hours old for most of Australia and people are declaring failure. Far out.

For people in an industry that is _built_ on A/B testing, HN sure expects governments to get everything perfect first go with no edge cases or externalities doesn’t it!

I dont like it when government tests in production. I dont think anyone should be happy with governments testing in production, especially when they have already claimed victory, and are doing a world tour to sell the concept to other countries.

In case you hadn’t noticed there is no test instance and prod is filled with malware and black hats.

The test isnt a few days old, and the Australian government has already been to the EU and UN to sell it as a success.

The Australian government consists of malware and black hats.

push it to prod!

Of course it is possible, why would it not? I'm glad this is happening and I'm sure it'll follow in other countries, probably not the in the US though. Frankly I really hope most people just get off social media's grip and start interacting the way we used to.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com