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Social Media Ban for Australian U16s, how will BBB be impacted?

What are your thoughts on this world first social media ban for minors?

  • Positive, Social Media is inherently harmful for kids/teens.

    Votes: 2 28.6%

  • Negative, Kids/teens need to navigate a digital world.

    Votes: 4 57.1%

  • Mixed.

    Votes: 1 14.3%
  • Total voters
    7
You'll have to leave. ;)

The requirement here is over 16s anyway, and everybody is honest on the internet. In terms of social media it's generally the adults using it rather than the teenagers that are the problem.
 
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…um… I’ll state the bleeding obvious… if a 14-15 year old teenager wants to see porn… he goes to a porn site… ticks the “are you 18 years or older” box and then watches porn… same difference with social media sites… how the hell is ANYONE going to enforce it?… it’s not going to change anything at all… a big hooha about nothing… just about Politicians trying to score Political points as far as I’m concerned… cheers.
 
Brekkie said:
You'll have to leave. ;)

The requirement here is over 16s anyway, and everybody is honest on the internet. In terms of social media it's generally the adults using it rather than the teenagers that are the problem.
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I would have had to leave as i naughtily joined this forum when i was 15. :P
 
Mr Stickyfingers said:
…um… I’ll state the bleeding obvious… if a 14-15 year old teenager wants to see porn… he goes to a porn site… ticks the “are you 18 years or older” box and then watches porn… same difference with social media sites… how the hell is ANYONE going to enforce it?… it’s not going to change anything at all… a big hooha about nothing… just about Politicians trying to score Political points as far as I’m concerned… cheers.
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How hard is it for the government to write a law that reads:

A) All Social Media Companies operating in Australia must:
1) not knowingly or recklessly allow a minor to create an account on or use their website or app.
2) provide a 'report underage account' button for any user to make moderators aware of a possible underage user.
3) verify the authenticity of all reports under section 2.
4) give the suspected underage account authentically reported under section 2 30 days to disprove their age.
5) delete underage account reported under section 2 immediately upon confirmation of it being underage.
6) inform the reporter of every underage account under section 2 as to the outcome of their report within 30 days.

B) The E-Safety Commissioner must:
1) provide a portal for people to report suspected underage accounts, which Social Media Companies have failed to remove from their websites despite clear and convincing evidence provided under a section A2 report.
2) Order a social media company to delete any underage accounts it is made aware of under section 1.
3) Fine any social media company which breaks an order under section 2 thousands of dollars per day.

Social Media Company is as any commercial enterprise whose primary purpose is to facilitate communication between two or more people online.
 
A law can be written easily. How easy is it to enforce in practical terms?

For instance how does a social media company suspect someone of being a minor? For instance BlueSky have had over 6Million people join in 10 days - what are they going to do to work out which of those 6 million are under age except ask date of birth, which can be faked pretty easily. Is it just by a report button? Whilst this will pick ups some it will also come with the consequence of a lot of false flags and abuse by anyone who just disagrees with someone else on social media.

Does this not perhaps come back to parental responsibility to monitor how much screen time a child is having and what they are doing? Does there need to be a law that will effect all users of the platforms?

And lets face it - if they are not looking at social media - what else are they going to look at on their devices - either gaming or pron. Probably SM is not the worst option.
 
Isee said:
How easy is it to enforce in practical terms?
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In this draft, the onus is on social media companies operating in Australia to follow a list of steps, with the e-safety commissioner empowered to issue fines, etc. should said social media companies fail to follow said list of steps.
Isee said:
For instance how does a social media company suspect someone of being a minor?
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I would interpret the "recklessly allow a minor to create an account" clause to be where a social media company does not ask for any date of birth during the account creation process.

I would interpret the "knowingly allow a minor to create an account" clause to be where a social media company does not reject the creation of an account when someone fills in a date of birth fit for a child during the account creation process.
Isee said:
Is it just by a report button?
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The person clicking on the report button would need to provide evidence as to why they believe the account they are reporting is underage (e.g. links to photos clearly showing a child, screenshots of posts about teenage life like schooling), to prevent drag queens, oppressed minorities, holders of controversial political views, etc. from being targeted by trolls.
Isee said:
Does there need to be a law that will effect all users of the platforms?
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Unlike other proposals, such as mandating privacy invading and identity theft inviting age verification for all social media users, the onus to disprove underage social media use is on the small subset of accounts which have been reported with supporting evidence as being underage.
 
It seems Utah has the right idea with making age verification be done at the app store level, via credit card, as per its most recent social media bill.
 
Kingston said:
No. Why are we not expecting parents to actually parent their children, including monitoring their activities online? FFS
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Do we really want kids running up credit card bills via their own App Store accounts with no parental control?
 
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