As a parent myself, it definitely helps when you can collectively avoid having your kids on these platforms. I can’t express how much easier it is to restrict it and not seem like a kook when authorities are also on board.
No, they aren't just that, because they are government regulations requiring everyone wanting access to something that cannot be marketed to children under the rules to prove that they are not a child, which is not inherently essential to a regulation of what can be marketed to children.
There is a difference between regulating what can be marketed to children and mandating that vendors secure proof that every user is not a child.
(Just as there is a difference between prohibiting knowingly supplying terrorists and requiring every seller to conduct a detailed background check of every customer to assure that they are not a terrorist.)
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[1]: Tangentially, those are trivially circumvented in many countries. When I was a teenager in St. Petersburg, we’ve used a “duty free delivery service”, which (I suppose) just stocked liquor at the duty free shop on the border with Finland, and then sold it. Not sure how legal was the core premise (probably not), but we used it because their couriers didn’t even pretend they need to check our passports (definitely illegal).
In many countries, alcohol is available in grocery delivery services. Couriers happily leave your order at the doorstep even though they are supposed to check your ID. In many other countries, even buying in-store is possible (e.g. Japan, where in any konbini you can just press a button on screen saying “yes, I’m 21”).
I think I still can dispute it in court, but for that I’ll have to go back to Russia. (I could hire a lawyer, but the amount is like $300.)
When uploading ID documents, your account gets tied to your real world identity. That's not a precedent the government should be setting, because private entities having an excuse (the law) to require identification erodes privacy, and because in the future other services could be required to ask for an identification, too. Yes, it's the slippery slope (aka "boiling the frog") argument, but that's how laws that erode privacy evolve - step by step.
Now it's account for social media, then it's porn sites, then it's forums where you might see porn or discussions on suicide, drugs or anything deemed morally hazardous. They might require an ID just to view the site or require the site to not make it public. If (or "when", if we don't oppose such laws) enough countries mandate something like this, most sites will likely require an account for all content, regardless of where the person is located, as otherwise they'll likely have to prove that they've not only geolocated the IP of the visitor, but checked that they weren't using VPNs, Tor or similar services.
As for using zero-knowledge proofs and similar technology to make it less infringing on privacy - I very much doubt the government (any government) to implement this with 100% privacy and security.
Actually, in lots of places it was porn sites first, but...
Actually in Australia, IDs usually do get scanned and stored. About the same time I was getting too old for clubs, they were starting to introduce ID scanners. You line up, hand over your driver's licence or passport, they slap it on a wall-mounted scanner, the scan goes into a database and in you go. No scan, no entry. Nowadays I think they just use phone/tablet scanners.
Yes, handheld is now used. If you use the digital licences app on your phone in NSW/QLD the licence details are picked up by a QR code and cross verified via an auth API with Services NSW / TMR QLD. You are also checked against a database of banned patrons, against court ordered exclusions, and police issued exclusions. If you use the physical licence, an extra step of ID —> licence details extracted occurs, then the same process is followed.
I agree that people will lose their identity online if age checks become normalised. That’s not been the case with the club and inner city alcohol venues checks.
In Finland the government has allowed banks to offer (2fa) identification services to those that are using their services. If I sign into a government site using my banking ID, the bank gets paid for providing the service. To my understanding none of my actual ID information is transferred to a party wanting to identify me.
The Linkedin 'validate your identity' was the first time i was asked to actually take a picture of my passport/scan the chip. I'll refuse until they'll allow me to identify with my banking ID.
I wish they did, that would be huge.
Of course, nobody is sure what "reasonable steps" actually means, other than a selfie or ID upload.
Here is the text of the bill: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display....
The slippery slope is long behind us, we're already at the bottom.
Do you think there should there be police on every corner you must submit your ID to to prove you're not an illegal immigrant?
This law isn't letting anyone use social media freely until they're suspected of not being an adult, at which point they have to age verify. It requires everyone to identify themselves whenever they want to view, interact, reply or share content on the internet.
Additionally, the law makes no judgement on the technology used to identify age, just that social media companies need to make an effort. I suspect that companies will not want to deal with the data security issues (very illegal to share pictures of underage people without consent), and will not be "sharing" with 3rd parties.
Everyone who wants to view, interact with or share that content has to verify their age to do so.
> I suspect that companies will not want to deal with the data security issues (very illegal to share pictures of underage people without consent), and will not be "sharing" with 3rd parties.
There are countless instances of exactly this happening, over and over again, not to mention that it's the way age verification's implemented now nearly everywhere lol
Pretty much every company will contract a 3rd party service to perform those checks, making sure they get as much bang for as little buck as possible. Said services are usually the weak link that shares the data with others, often through PNGs in public buckets so that Russian teenagers have an easy job CURLing them.
If the government took security seriously, it’d endorse a solution and then take responsibility for it, given it came up with the law in the first place.
4chan, Mastedon, BlueSky, PeerTube, Pixelfed
They have millions of users. They're about to get more.
No, you can't block these. No, you can't order these to do anything.
The idea that someone is going to make an engaging experience on a “decentralized” network is honestly a bit silly to me. The market potential of this business is low. Decentralized networks with much larger incentives have failed to capture critical mass.
There will be side effects, but social media has been so ridiculously corrosive to the welfare of teenagers that I can’t imagine a ban would be worse.
You pick one of the worst examples? Prohibition drove a black market for spirits . the 21st amendment repealed it because the government missed out on hundreds of thousands in taxes.
The reason to make the law and repeal it were both awful. The lessons learned were all wrong. It's just awful all around (and I speak as someone that doesn't really drink much).
This prohibition era retcon is a way to justify the fact that people like to drink and there were many people who stood to make money on re-legalization.
Which is why I said the question of it being a good thing is different. I encourage you to look at the data, as someone who also enjoys to drink.
Government bans are surprisingly effective in most developed countries.
My lens is "did America actually learn anything valuable from this period?". And all I see is "We The Government are fine poisoning our citizens as long as we profit from it". A lesson that passed on to cigarettes, then hard drugs, then fast food (which persists to this day), and now with social media. Then The Government wonders why no one trusts them to do the right thing.
In that lens, I'd say prohibition and its downstream effects on how to regulate in general was absolutely awful and damning.
*allowing our citizens to make their own choices about what they consume
Remember how pervasive cigarette ads used to be?
Human behavior is variable and can be influenced, even against our best interest.
At what point do we acknowledge advertising as a form of psychological attack that causes people to do harmful things they wouldn't otherwise do?
The government's role in this imo shouldn't be to allow corporations to try to convince people to hurt themselves and then to sell them things to hurt themselves with, but then turn around and restrict people's rights to slow down the self harm. Rather I believe the government should seek to annihilate corporations that try to harm the population.
Is not the implicit relationship between corporations, people, and government, such that corporations want to be allowed to exploit a population for profit in return for some nominal good, and the government allows that only so long as the good outweighs the harm?
Why not?
I've got a marketing campaign ready that will sweep the nation and convince millions to ReVitaleZ!
Meanwhile, years after the actual Radithor radium water [1] scandal, the very same government was merrily blowing up atomic bombs in open air, in the desert [2].
And even today there are crazy people around the world happily consuming radioactive gas in specially designed spas [3]. They should be locked up for their own good, the government always knows better!
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radithor
[2] https://www.pbssocal.org/shows/artbound/downwind-upshot-knot...
I'm shocked the same government which supports global warming and mass species extinction, and which threatens to bomb "shithole countries" "back to the Stone age", has a less than perfect attitude about nuclear weapons. Shocked I say!
Next I suppose you'll say that this same government hasn't clamped down hard on coal power plants which, in addition to their CO2 emissions, generates ash which destroys waterways, kills people, and is full of radioactive waste?
I'm so glad our governments always know better than that!
It would be a shame if food and drug laws were in place mostly because even rich people and politicians can't ensure their food and drugs are safe.
It's time to take my protein powder supplements. I'm glad the government inspects every manufacturer so I don't have to worry about doing my own lead tests each time I buy some. Thank you Orrin Hatch for your diligence!
When decentralized networks win, they often win so big that they become invisible. AOL is dead, the web isn't. Email, the global telephone network, the internet itself, these are all decentralized networks.
The hardest part of doing this for social media is actually discovery. It's easier to show people an "engaging" feed when your algorithm has access to the full firehose to select from. But that doesn't mean doing it in a decentralized way is impossible, and if you pass a law that drives people away from centralized services, the incentive to do it goes up.
You're also missing what folks keep saying: the network effect isn't there. It needs to be popular enough that there's social pressure to be there. If it's that large, it's going to be large enough to be on the radar and then be under enforcement.
Slippery-slope arguments, for the most part, exist to fear monger folks away from change, even when the argument itself is non-sensical.
well for one: I find it humorous how this law has an exception for Roblox. That really speaks to how up to date lawmakers are on the situation (or worse: how easy it was for Roblox to pay them off). I don't see how it's a slippery slope when the corruption is before our very eyes.
YouTube’s tendency to push extreme rabbit holes and funnel towards extremism and conservatism in young men is what led to them being included.
He hates women, to the point of trafficking them. He's a predator and he spreads hate, and it reflects poorly on conservatives if they feel that represents their political views.
The problem is, it's also an asymmetric weapon when you try to ban that unevenly. If you censor Tate but not the likes of Kendi who use the same tricks, you're saying that it's fine for one side to play dirty but not the other, and that's how you get people mad. Which plays right into the hands of the demagogues.
So all you have to do is achieve perfect balance and censor only the bad things from both sides, right? Except that that's one of the things humans are incapable of actually doing, because of the intensely powerful incentive to censor the things you don't like more than the things you do, if anyone holds that power.
Which is why we have free speech. Because it's better to let every idiot flap their trap than to let anyone else decide who can't. And if you don't like what someone is saying, maybe try refuting it with arguments instead of trying to silence them.
Not necessarily. You need to have that controversy shown to enough people of similar mindsets, which requires a platform, or for them to somehow grow their local audience, which was difficult for folks on the fringe to do in the past, but is easy now that social media promotes the fringe.
> So all you have to do is achieve perfect balance and censor only the bad things from both sides, right?
No. Regulate social media that drives views to these people. They're able to exist because social media uses algorithms based on engagement, and these people game the engagement system to slowly radicalize them. If you remove the pipeline, you also lower the popularity of these people.
Sure, some of this is word of mouth, but it's mostly not. Social media actively encouraging people to view this content.
> Because it's better to let every idiot flap their trap than to let anyone else decide who can't.
Yes, but free speech doesn't include the right to be platformed. Depending on the country, the definition of free speech also differs, and I have a feeling you're only considering this from the US point of view.
Fixed that for you.
Which previously parents could blocking using the parental tools. Now they cannot because logged out will still show said videos.
The government are idiots
I don't think it's just corruption, there are people who are trying to do the right thing, even if flawed.
That's the point, there are always fringe social networks you don't know, and they are probably x10 toxic than reddit comment sections.
We should be aiming to remove purposely addictive things from our children's lives, and all currently popular social media platforms are addiction machines.
Slippery slope arguments exist because the act of governing has the tendency to converge on ratchet effects. It never bloody loosens, do every damn inch has to be treated with maximal resistance.
Society already puts limits on children's access to media, their access to addictive substances, advertising that's allowed to be shown to them, etc. The internet, and especially social media, is a gap in the existing limits. This isn't a slippery slope, it's adding a missing set of compliance.
Social media is: media, addictive, shows unregulated advertising to them, is psychologically harmful, and their algorithms have been radicalizing them.
Regulation is absolutely needed here. I'd rather see tight regulation, rather than being blocked completely, but social media companies have been highly resistant to that. For example, they shouldn't be allowed to show advertising, they shouldn't be able to do tracking, they shouldn't be allowed to have an algorithm led feed, notifications should be mostly off by default (and any notification that is shown to primarily exist to make you open the app should be disallowed).
The problem with changes like that is that they destroy the network's engagement and remove their profit, and for the most part, it's changes adults would like to see as well. Making those changes for some countries laws would push other countries to introduce similar laws and not limit them to children.
This pattern of thought is exactly the issue. Stop offloading parenting of your children to government! That won't end well for neither children nor adults.
You cannot parent in isolation and outside of society. How society is structured has an huge impact on parenting. It is delusional to think of parenting as some kind of thing that exists in isolation separate from and not influenced by the rest of society. Parents often can only have little influence themselves.
This is a value neutral description. Though I do think total parental autonomy in parenting is not a worthwhile goal and also not at all realistic. As parents you have to deal with society.
What does that mean for social media bans? To me mostly: network effects are wicked strong and fighting against them as an individual parent is basically impossible. This can lead to parents only having bad choices available to them (ban social media use and exclude them from their friends, allow social media use and fry their brains). Are bans that right solution? Don’t know. I’m really not sure. But I do know that it‘s not as simple as „parent better“.
From my point of view I'm already paying for their brats with higher taxes, now I will also have to gradually give my documents to random web sites more and more just to reduce the "burden" of parenting on lazy parents...
As an actual parent, I have never heard of this or seen it. Can you provide some real examples?
How is the quote from OP's comment that is right at the end of the sentence you cited not a "real example"?
It's an extremely American religious belief that everything is an individual problem. Luckily, almost no other country has this religion.
Since the law doesn't actually say how it should be implemented, it's compatible with existing law. Actually I wonder if simply sending the "I am 18+" header would already be legal in Australia. Probably not, on the basis that it doesn't actually work right now, but maybe they could convince a judge that it's actually the browser's fault it doesn't respect the header.
- Makes it illegal to ask users for ids.
- Sets the same "penalty" for requiring ids as for "deliberately allowing minors"
Please either provide supporting evidence or stop making misleading claims.
Section 63DB.
Please actually read before making me waste rate limit slots.
Here is the law: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display....
Are environmental laws are a way of off-loading all environmental care to the government?
Are laws against violence a way of off-loading physical protection to the government?
Compromising my privacy in order to allow you to omit having some tough but needed conversations with your child (i.e. _parenting_) regarding harms of social media is not a sacrifice I'm willing to make. Homer Simpson was supposed to be a parody on a bad father, not a role model with his "You're the government's problem now!".
> Are laws against violence a way of off-loading physical protection to the government?
Of course they are! I support government protecting me from violence in some capacity, although I don't support "chat control"-like laws since the cost/benefit doesn't seem to be favorable.
As any parent knows, if you tell your kids that something is harmful, they will stop immediately. No questions asked. I've never met a child who did something their parents told them not to do, have you?
> I support government protecting me from violence in some capacity
So, you do like big government telling people what they can and can't do, as long as you feel it directly helps you. That said, laws against violence don't protect you from violence, the laws kick in after the fact.
> I don't support "chat control"-like laws since the cost/benefit doesn't seem to be favorable.
Possibly because you don't have kids and thus maybe not a full understanding of the cost/benefit? Perhaps, instead of lecturing actual parents about what parenting is like, you could ask questions about the cost/benefit you claim to be interested in.
You can configure parental controls or take away the phone.
> So, you do like big government telling people what they can and can't do, as long as you feel it directly helps you.
Yes, of course!
> That said, laws against violence don't protect you from violence, the laws kick in after the fact.
They protect me by discouraging other people from committing violence on me, obviously.
> Possibly because you don't have kids and thus maybe not a full understanding of the cost/benefit? Perhaps, instead of lecturing actual parents about what parenting is like, you could ask questions about the cost/benefit you claim to be interested in.
Cost/benefit for me, not for Homer Simpson-esque dads. You already took responsibility on yourself by becoming a parent, now please do the hard part (the parenting).
Your first suggestion was silly, so now you have pivoted to telling me another way to parent. All the while have zero experience of your own. Did you know that social media is accessible on devices other than personal phones? Kids use computers and tablets at school (as early as 1st grade) with access to the internet.
> Yes, of course!
Which is my entire point. Parents, on the other hand, have to worry about people other than themselves.
> They protect me by discouraging other people from committing violence on me, obviously.
Now you are outsourcing your personal protection to the government. I have to pay extra because you can't defend yourself. You took on the responsibility of protecting yourself by being born.
> Cost/benefit for me
We get it, you don't care about anyone else. Things that help you are good, things that inconvenience you are a product of other people's errors. Nothing more really needs to be said.
Parents are supposed to be parenting, without the help of the Government. You do not want your kid to spend their time on Facebook or Instagram? Do something about it yourself, as a parent. I understand that tech-illiterate people may be at a disadvantage here, but we are on HN and I am pretty sure we are able to:
Set up a Raspberry Pi (or any other SBC, or even an old x86 box) running Pi-hole with custom blocklists, configure DNS-level filtering with time-based access rules, or implement iptables/nftables rules on your router to enforce schedules. You can use hostapd with separate SSIDs for children with different firewall rules, set up a transparent proxy with squid + SquidGuard for content filtering and time restrictions, or configure your router's DHCP to assign specific DNS servers per MAC address with dnsmasq managing time windows. If you want more granular control, there's pfSense or OPNsense with packages like pfBlockerNG-devel for domain blocking and traffic shaping, or you could write a simple cron job that modifies your firewall rules based on time of day. These are all straightforward solutions that don't require government-mandated age verification systems with their inevitable privacy nightmares and implementation overreach.
The technical capability exists; the question is whether parents are willing to invest a few hours to implement it rather than demanding legislation to do their job for them.
Why wouldn't we want the government to support parenting in similar ways the Government support's retirement, personal security, entrepreneurship, education, health, and other societally important activities?
> These are all straightforward solutions that don't require government-mandated age verification systems with their inevitable privacy nightmares and implementation overreach.
Yes, they are. They all also stop being effective as soon as a child is outside of your wifi network, which was my entire point.
> whether parents are willing to invest a few hours to implement it rather than demanding legislation to do their job for them.
Framing it this way doesn't really help your point. It proves that you don't understand what parents are actually dealing with. It is the same response that people on HN have when a non-developer writes a technical article in NYT.
Mandatory identification and age-verification requirements are against privacy, justified under the familiar refrain of "think of the children". The critical question is how far society is willing to go in accepting pervasive surveillance and data collection under this rationale. Not long ago, we expressed concern and even disdain toward such practices when observing them in countries like China. Today, however, the gap between those systems and our own is narrowing to an uncomfortable degree.
FWIW there are technically sound, privacy-preserving solutions to achieve this goal. Zero-knowledge proofs, for example, can verify eligibility or age without disclosing identity or personal data. These solutions are well understood and feasible. Yet they are consistently excluded from policy discussions and implementations. This omission suggests that the underlying objective is not genuine child protection, nor meaningful respect for individual privacy, but rather increased control and data accumulation.
> They all also stop being effective as soon as a child is outside of your wifi network, which was my entire point.
True, these solutions do not work outside your Wi-Fi, but the point is that government-mandated age verification compromises privacy for limited benefit. I believe parental guidance (and the guidance of their teachers, ideally) and household controls are more effective. In any case, the broader point is that there is no technical silver bullet. Parents will always need to combine education, guidance, and trust-building with any tools, rather than relying on government mandates that compromise privacy.
I agree. You haven't explained why the government can't be one of those tools, just as it is for so many other harmful activities (drugs, alcohol, gambling, firearms, etc.).
You use the phrase "relying on" to imply parents are just asking government to do everything for them. A more charitable view is that this is a tool along with other tools to support a common societal goal.
There would be nothing new here?
The argument is that kids being online isn’t the governments business one way or the other.
The slippery slope argument is always secondary, but how often has government regulation not grown in size and scope? Combine that with how norms shift and the type of large scale identity infrastructure put in place to support this, can you honestly say this isn’t going to grow?
All of that also ignores the possibility (read inevitability) that a bad actor/authoritarian would exploit this access further without popular support.
And they tie your SIM card with your ID.