If this is the cokamany bullshit Child Safety Act that the AU Gov put in place with the social media ban and age verification shit™ -- I knew this would happens inevitably. The whole thing was stupid as fuck. Not a single one of us that _actually_ work in this industry were consulted to ask whether we _thought_ this was a good idea, no sir. -- Be careful my fellow Aussies, or we end up letting the government build the Great Wall of Australa!
It applies a 'duty of care' to 'online services', which include 'internet carriage services', 'social media', 'relevant electronic services', 'hosting services', 'search engine services', generative AI services, among others. And for encrypted messaging (which would probably come under 'social media' or 'relevant electronic services'), it only excludes 'lawful communications occurring in private solely between consenting adults'.
And the other big thing is it gives approved researchers authority to use sock puppet identities in contravention of any 'agreement, contract or deed', and gives them immunity from civil consequences.
Reliable sources inform me that the government is never going to abuse this act.
I suppose Wikipedia needs to go to the dark net for allowing British kids to read it. One might reckon that reading Wikipedia would be good for kids, but I suppose the Soviet Uni... err. disagrees.
Reminder that they attacked YouTube - the Video Museum.
> The "news" are there (the Springfield times and the Patagonian Mirror), the "intelligence" (the interview to the Prestigious, the interview from the Authority, the exchange from the Thinkers, the commentary from the Author, the piece from the Periodical...), the "institutes" (the Conference, the Presentation etc.), the "academy" ("""only""" the courses of the MIT, for example, and courses from many other Universities and free Professors), the "divulgation" (a large amount of divulgators of primary importance from 3blue1brown to Steve Mould, Lesics, Asianometry...), the inquirers and commentators in all areas and disciplines, the museum of the historical pieces that must be preserved out of preciousness and importance (from the voice of Freud to the lessons of Dirac), and a massive wealth of Arts and good entertainment. // The value of the above is beyond the scale; its attendance should be taken for a requirement. // A kid that grows up without access to that is something that must be disposed of, wasted, spoiled - "sorry kid, in the ditch. You have not been exposed to Culture, now you are valueless. These things must be absorbed early". // And beasts that restrict access to e.g. the _free_ lessons from the MIT are to be treated as less than beasts.
> We did mean "know, prestigious intellectuals": academicians and renown experts. // The last public intervention of Niall Ferguson is of yesterday; that of Francis Fukuyama is of a few days ago; I see a Paul Scharre out in the past few days... All on YouTube, of course. // Repeat: either the kids have absorbed all of the higher culture we are so lucky today to have disseminated in immediately accessible places, or they can be disposed of as spoilt, wasted - useless. Higher culture that is chiefly on YouTube when in video form: kids are ___mandated___ to it.
(Quoting myself.)
Reminder that if they remove anonymous access, Men will be forced out.
Reminder that the beasts in australia also were reported to wanting to block search engines, together with Wikipedia.
It is if anything an understatement. I am very controlled in my posts.
> a reference for the search engine and Wikipedia blocking claims
Help out and find the name of the female thing in the au government that promoted this bestiality, it will help me in the search. I have a very big database and it is not Embeddings search ready yet. Anyway, the recent news after that other thing keir starmer did its part to get in the history of infamy, mentioned that Wikipedia received an ad hoc exclusion from the ban (winning legally after having lost formerly).
I forgot: I do strongly see that the current horrid mess is due to lack of the diligent calling things with their own names - there are all kinds of bestial players active, which are treated as if normal and not labelled as they deserve.
> a reference
I realized (after searches in my DBs, which as said do not allow fuzzy searches yet), that the source could have been a piece submitted to HN, and then I realized that it could have been a piece found generically on some newspaper on the web. You can search for "the (female member of cabinet) states that blocking social networks ... not enough: children could look for inappropriate things on wikipedia or look for them on google", and there could have been a mention of "genitals". Similarly I remember keir starmer, on another island far away, stating that "kids should never be able to see pictures of naked people until the age of 16". Look for it on your search systems (keyword based or RAG) on the whole web. If you remember the name of the proponent in au I will look again in my offline sources.
Are these authors bought and paid for by big tech? This assertion, with nothing to back it up and zero mention of the negative side effects, calls the entire article’s legitimacy into doubt for me:
> It’s important for kids to do this online, an arena where they often develop social skills and refine their identities.
Later on they say:
> Rather than attempting to block young people from online services that allow them to access information and engage in age-essential communication
The fact being “social media online” is taken as a given for under 16s is laughable. Kids do not need to socialize like this, they do not need to be online, they can and should go outside. When they turn 16 their brains will be slightly more fully formed and I could go on and on but it seems these authors just want the kids exposed to the algorithms.
Yeah, there’s nothing more objectionable than a law that is not seriously enforced. It need not be perfectly enforced (what law is?), but anything that doesn’t come with real teeth should just be repealed, regardless of the merits
You cannot talk about absurd absasing laws and fixate about enforcement. It is excusing satanism. It is diverting attention. It is "if dystopia is to happen, it would be defensible that it is done seriously".
That depends on the purpose of the individual law. Laws against murder must be enforced as much as possible, but the war on drugs has done a lot of unnecessary damage through excessive enforcement - drugs being illegal would still reduce drug use if that was only lightly enforced. The law is not like a segmentation fault.
The problem is might see the solution is to not have such laws in the first place if they are not enforced. But another solution is to give the government more and more and more enforcement power which will, eventually, be used against the people instead of for them. Just as bad is all these enforcement people have to continually justify their pay so the bar for what constitutes an infraction starts dropping in order to keep the prosecution rates up.
It sounds like maybe the problem is that the law is targeting the wrong people. I don’t think any kids should be arrested for smoking weed. If you want penalties for those who supplied it to them, that would make more sense if it’s considered harmful.
If a kid has a substance use problem, that’s a medical/psychological issue, not a criminal issue.
Read the under 16 ban in Australia as ideally their presence on certain social media platforms as being against the law. Parents though very much like the ones that let their under age kids drive on roads despite illegal, will trust those in their judgement will probably be safe, while being able to enforce restrictions of their child if they feel it's robbing their kid of time, self respect or other.
The difference with the ban is unlike back in 2019 when social media were ignoring requests (too hard etc) to remove some of the bad algorithms that were targeting and funnelling teenagers into dark topic areas ... with the change it's on social media to ... well remove targeting algorithms that focus on the 10 to 14 year olds for a start ... else if anything bad outcomes happens - the law I'd imagine will throw the book at them. It also works the other way as well, parents who knowingly permitted their child to engage, won't be rushing off to their lawyers to sue whomever.
The main issue with the ban has been where some people would like to use the under 16 ban as an excuse to do age verification by the most intrusive means as possible - but I could only imagine it only benefits platforms scraping as much PII as they can get.
Content shouldn't target 10 to 14 year olds, sure. But, in practice and mathematically/statistically, I'm not sure what that means. Even if algorithms ignored age completely, there would be statistical correlates.
We should probably ban algorithms suggesting content and ads for dark things for everyone i.e. cigarettes, alcohol, gambling, misleading health content. It is honestly bad for everyone and that's actually the only way to prevent kids from seeing it.
It's not just about ban evasion. It's also about kids seeing this content everywhere.
Yes banning ads for misleading health scams would be a good idea, but banning ads for for those who smoke or drink vying for more market share probably isn't purposeful. I'd agree one of the problems of the modern world are young minds are too often introduced far too early to concepts and behaviours they'd cope with better as young adults, but the world has changed and even in everyday life these are in view one way or another.
As for targeting ... I wish I could find the news item from what I think was around 2018-9 that in particular made me sit up and realise the dissatisfaction with wayward algorithms wasn't merely advertising that was not entirely suitable. IIRC this article after the initial introduction of various incidents where the parents had discovered their child had ended up visiting odd places like self harm topics and content not so desirable, the article then outlined someone or a group of people testing various social media areas with new fake accounts. The damming conclusion was just how quickly the algorithms were determining an age and then funnelling apparently somewhat naive youngsters without much prompting into unexpected topic areas, while the fake accounts which suggested an adult experienced something different.
A search today didn't turn up anything close to what was the real concern I believe that got everyone's real attention here in Australia 2018/19, mostly just benign issues like gambling, advertising for alcohol and other marketing opportunities. [1] [2] [4] [5] The govt at the time did ask the platforms to modify what they were doing but the short answer was too hard and not going to do it.
Muddying the waters are long running calls to control platforms by a few interested parties with concerns, some opting to capitalise any time a particular platform faces criticism. Some of these are legitimate long standing problems like [3] where platforms are expected to have live human moderation keeping a watchful eye over their flock at all time ... while ignoring the platforms are generally trying to balance safety with an expectation of privacy. It's these very things that some apparently very powerful parties use to try and bring an and to anonymous content on the web - every time there's an issue trying to install a real ID gateway - many assume the age gateway will do that.
Everyone knew it when these sort of measures were first discussed here way back when and everyone knew that they would be bypassed as soon as they were implemented.
But politicians, lobbies, and everyone else who gains from this do not care.
> Social media bans suppress kids’ access to information, including information that’s essential to their development, identity formation, and socialization, especially during adolescence.
Indeed children were deprived of their potential for development for all of humanity up until the early 2000s, thank god we finally closed the gap with social media algorithms...
> deprived of their potential for development for all of humanity up until the early 2000s
Exactly: before that age I had to travel a very long distance to reach information collections that were a tiny shard of what is available now from anywhere, anytime, freely, with a few clicks. (The reference is still YouTube.)
Kids in the 90s were growing up in a different world. And that world did have a lot less dissemination of information and experiences. From today's perspective there were vast gaps that were later filled by Tumblr, Reddit and now TikTok
Which is not to say that there aren't major drawbacks too
The real solution to this has always been as much about education. Teach the kids about social media the way we teach about drugs and sex. It’s in many ways more ubiquitous to many teens than the other two these days.
(Oh and regulate the companies, not what consumers are allowed to do)
The only places that seem to be doing well with teaching about sex are those that are not all too concerned about teenagers having sex. And places that do a good job teaching about drugs seem even rarer
I'm all for teaching about social media. But if that is supposed to have any success it should be more like teaching about politics and literature than like teaching about drugs and sex. Give them literacy, discuss which motives and forces are at play so they can see beyond the obvious and make good decisions
You make it sound simple, but a significant portion of the population doesn't want their children to understand anything about sex or drugs. They want to pretend like those things don't exist and anyone daring to talk about them is "indoctrinating" their child. The solution could be simple. But people suck.
My kid (with a little help from Claude) ended up creating his own social network just to get around the bans. The name of his network makes his opinion of the bans pretty clear. For his birthday, all he wanted was his domain name and and "merch pens" printed with the domain on it. I suppose I'm proud!
Could you please stop breaking the site guidelines? You have repeatedly been abrasively personal in comments here. That's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
Do we actually know the bans aren’t working? TFA quotes a study in Australia based on self reported use.
In Poland, every now and then they publish self reported results on teenagers’ sex life. It usually turns out something along the lines of, 70% of 12 year olds have had 5+ partners, do not use any protection and took part in at least one orgy.
I can imagine the bans aren’t working but maybe asking teenagers "are you doing the cool banned thing" is not the right way to determine that.
Adding more and more techno-ignorant laws will be introduced because politicians want to be seen to be doing something while not disrupting business interests.
If they actually wanted working changes the solution need to hit the money/content cycle of advertisers. here is the start of an idea: make it illegal to show ads unsuitable for children before 2100. we used to have laws like this banning tobacco, alcohol, etc. on TV and radio. They worked to slow the indoctrination. They have not been updated to include prescription drugs, gambling, etc online. This is technically already info used to target, does not require age verification, and actually points the algorithms to content that matches ads that can be shown.
'Social media bans suppress kids’ access to information, including information that’s essential to their development, identity formation, and socialization, especially during adolescence.'
Didn't realize I was so deprived.
But yes, this will never work. I'm inclined to see what happens when kids find nostr and get them out of the algorithmic drip, but I assume everyone gives up before that point.
As much as I hate how Scott Adams ended up, he did have a strip that I use to illustrate the futility of "protecting the kids" that I would tell clients (both business and home):
panel 1:
DILBERT: I'M INVENTING A NEW TECHNOLOGY TO PREVENT KIDS FROM SEEING SMUT
ON THE INTERNET.
panel 2:
DOGBERT: SO, YOU'RE PITTING YOUR INTELLIGENCE AGAINST THE COLLECTIVE SEX DRIVE OF ALL THE TEENAGERS WHO OWN COMPUTERS?
panel 3:
DILBERT: WHAT IS YOUR POINT?
DOGBERT: DID YOU KNOW THAT IF YOU PUT A LITTLE HAT ON A SNOWBALL IT CAN LAST A LONG TIME IN HELL?
46 comments
[ 0.22 ms ] story [ 17.2 ms ] threadThe attempt is everywhere - probably not just in the undead "western world".
Can I remind you that the thing out in the australian government uttered something like "a hill to die on"? What were the exact words?
Why are not people outpspoken on the bestiality of those things? To stress the total difference that separates from those things?
https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislat...
It applies a 'duty of care' to 'online services', which include 'internet carriage services', 'social media', 'relevant electronic services', 'hosting services', 'search engine services', generative AI services, among others. And for encrypted messaging (which would probably come under 'social media' or 'relevant electronic services'), it only excludes 'lawful communications occurring in private solely between consenting adults'.
And the other big thing is it gives approved researchers authority to use sock puppet identities in contravention of any 'agreement, contract or deed', and gives them immunity from civil consequences.
Reliable sources inform me that the government is never going to abuse this act.
https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Wikimedi...
Reminder that they attacked YouTube - the Video Museum.
> The "news" are there (the Springfield times and the Patagonian Mirror), the "intelligence" (the interview to the Prestigious, the interview from the Authority, the exchange from the Thinkers, the commentary from the Author, the piece from the Periodical...), the "institutes" (the Conference, the Presentation etc.), the "academy" ("""only""" the courses of the MIT, for example, and courses from many other Universities and free Professors), the "divulgation" (a large amount of divulgators of primary importance from 3blue1brown to Steve Mould, Lesics, Asianometry...), the inquirers and commentators in all areas and disciplines, the museum of the historical pieces that must be preserved out of preciousness and importance (from the voice of Freud to the lessons of Dirac), and a massive wealth of Arts and good entertainment. // The value of the above is beyond the scale; its attendance should be taken for a requirement. // A kid that grows up without access to that is something that must be disposed of, wasted, spoiled - "sorry kid, in the ditch. You have not been exposed to Culture, now you are valueless. These things must be absorbed early". // And beasts that restrict access to e.g. the _free_ lessons from the MIT are to be treated as less than beasts.
> We did mean "know, prestigious intellectuals": academicians and renown experts. // The last public intervention of Niall Ferguson is of yesterday; that of Francis Fukuyama is of a few days ago; I see a Paul Scharre out in the past few days... All on YouTube, of course. // Repeat: either the kids have absorbed all of the higher culture we are so lucky today to have disseminated in immediately accessible places, or they can be disposed of as spoilt, wasted - useless. Higher culture that is chiefly on YouTube when in video form: kids are ___mandated___ to it.
(Quoting myself.)
Reminder that if they remove anonymous access, Men will be forced out.
Reminder that the beasts in australia also were reported to wanting to block search engines, together with Wikipedia.
“Beasts” eh? Sounds a little hyperbolic. I’m going to need a reference for the search engine and Wikipedia blocking claims.
It is if anything an understatement. I am very controlled in my posts.
> a reference for the search engine and Wikipedia blocking claims
Help out and find the name of the female thing in the au government that promoted this bestiality, it will help me in the search. I have a very big database and it is not Embeddings search ready yet. Anyway, the recent news after that other thing keir starmer did its part to get in the history of infamy, mentioned that Wikipedia received an ad hoc exclusion from the ban (winning legally after having lost formerly).
I forgot: I do strongly see that the current horrid mess is due to lack of the diligent calling things with their own names - there are all kinds of bestial players active, which are treated as if normal and not labelled as they deserve.
> a reference
I realized (after searches in my DBs, which as said do not allow fuzzy searches yet), that the source could have been a piece submitted to HN, and then I realized that it could have been a piece found generically on some newspaper on the web. You can search for "the (female member of cabinet) states that blocking social networks ... not enough: children could look for inappropriate things on wikipedia or look for them on google", and there could have been a mention of "genitals". Similarly I remember keir starmer, on another island far away, stating that "kids should never be able to see pictures of naked people until the age of 16". Look for it on your search systems (keyword based or RAG) on the whole web. If you remember the name of the proponent in au I will look again in my offline sources.
> It’s important for kids to do this online, an arena where they often develop social skills and refine their identities.
Later on they say:
> Rather than attempting to block young people from online services that allow them to access information and engage in age-essential communication
The fact being “social media online” is taken as a given for under 16s is laughable. Kids do not need to socialize like this, they do not need to be online, they can and should go outside. When they turn 16 their brains will be slightly more fully formed and I could go on and on but it seems these authors just want the kids exposed to the algorithms.
Wrong laws? Unacceptable laws? Ignorant laws? Absurd laws? Satanic laws?
Unbelievable.
If a kid has a substance use problem, that’s a medical/psychological issue, not a criminal issue.
The difference with the ban is unlike back in 2019 when social media were ignoring requests (too hard etc) to remove some of the bad algorithms that were targeting and funnelling teenagers into dark topic areas ... with the change it's on social media to ... well remove targeting algorithms that focus on the 10 to 14 year olds for a start ... else if anything bad outcomes happens - the law I'd imagine will throw the book at them. It also works the other way as well, parents who knowingly permitted their child to engage, won't be rushing off to their lawyers to sue whomever.
The main issue with the ban has been where some people would like to use the under 16 ban as an excuse to do age verification by the most intrusive means as possible - but I could only imagine it only benefits platforms scraping as much PII as they can get.
We should probably ban algorithms suggesting content and ads for dark things for everyone i.e. cigarettes, alcohol, gambling, misleading health content. It is honestly bad for everyone and that's actually the only way to prevent kids from seeing it.
It's not just about ban evasion. It's also about kids seeing this content everywhere.
As for targeting ... I wish I could find the news item from what I think was around 2018-9 that in particular made me sit up and realise the dissatisfaction with wayward algorithms wasn't merely advertising that was not entirely suitable. IIRC this article after the initial introduction of various incidents where the parents had discovered their child had ended up visiting odd places like self harm topics and content not so desirable, the article then outlined someone or a group of people testing various social media areas with new fake accounts. The damming conclusion was just how quickly the algorithms were determining an age and then funnelling apparently somewhat naive youngsters without much prompting into unexpected topic areas, while the fake accounts which suggested an adult experienced something different.
A search today didn't turn up anything close to what was the real concern I believe that got everyone's real attention here in Australia 2018/19, mostly just benign issues like gambling, advertising for alcohol and other marketing opportunities. [1] [2] [4] [5] The govt at the time did ask the platforms to modify what they were doing but the short answer was too hard and not going to do it.
Muddying the waters are long running calls to control platforms by a few interested parties with concerns, some opting to capitalise any time a particular platform faces criticism. Some of these are legitimate long standing problems like [3] where platforms are expected to have live human moderation keeping a watchful eye over their flock at all time ... while ignoring the platforms are generally trying to balance safety with an expectation of privacy. It's these very things that some apparently very powerful parties use to try and bring an and to anonymous content on the web - every time there's an issue trying to install a real ID gateway - many assume the age gateway will do that.
[1] https://www.news.com.au/technology/online/social/leaked-docu... (2017)
[2] https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/facebook-targeting-insecure-childr... (2017)
[3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/03/01/surge-of-... (2019)
[4] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/oct/09/children-... (2019)
[5] https://insightplus.mja.com.au/2020/48/under-the-radar-preda... (2020)
Everyone knew it when these sort of measures were first discussed here way back when and everyone knew that they would be bypassed as soon as they were implemented.
But politicians, lobbies, and everyone else who gains from this do not care.
Indeed children were deprived of their potential for development for all of humanity up until the early 2000s, thank god we finally closed the gap with social media algorithms...
Is this sponsored by Meta?
Exactly: before that age I had to travel a very long distance to reach information collections that were a tiny shard of what is available now from anywhere, anytime, freely, with a few clicks. (The reference is still YouTube.)
Which is not to say that there aren't major drawbacks too
(Oh and regulate the companies, not what consumers are allowed to do)
I'm all for teaching about social media. But if that is supposed to have any success it should be more like teaching about politics and literature than like teaching about drugs and sex. Give them literacy, discuss which motives and forces are at play so they can see beyond the obvious and make good decisions
1. https://idiocy.schappistudios.com
Feel free to email me if that is actually the case. I can't see anything that would confirm that.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50130544
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50105875
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50072114
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
In Poland, every now and then they publish self reported results on teenagers’ sex life. It usually turns out something along the lines of, 70% of 12 year olds have had 5+ partners, do not use any protection and took part in at least one orgy.
I can imagine the bans aren’t working but maybe asking teenagers "are you doing the cool banned thing" is not the right way to determine that.
I do not take self reported surveys as accurate and I don't think anyone should. Especially for kids.
If they actually wanted working changes the solution need to hit the money/content cycle of advertisers. here is the start of an idea: make it illegal to show ads unsuitable for children before 2100. we used to have laws like this banning tobacco, alcohol, etc. on TV and radio. They worked to slow the indoctrination. They have not been updated to include prescription drugs, gambling, etc online. This is technically already info used to target, does not require age verification, and actually points the algorithms to content that matches ads that can be shown.
Didn't realize I was so deprived.
But yes, this will never work. I'm inclined to see what happens when kids find nostr and get them out of the algorithmic drip, but I assume everyone gives up before that point.
panel 1:
DILBERT: I'M INVENTING A NEW TECHNOLOGY TO PREVENT KIDS FROM SEEING SMUT ON THE INTERNET.
panel 2:
DOGBERT: SO, YOU'RE PITTING YOUR INTELLIGENCE AGAINST THE COLLECTIVE SEX DRIVE OF ALL THE TEENAGERS WHO OWN COMPUTERS?
panel 3:
DILBERT: WHAT IS YOUR POINT?
DOGBERT: DID YOU KNOW THAT IF YOU PUT A LITTLE HAT ON A SNOWBALL IT CAN LAST A LONG TIME IN HELL?
https://dilbert-viewer.herokuapp.com/1996-01-23