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 It need not be perfectly enforced (what law is?), but anything that doesn’t come with real teeth should just be repealed, regardless of the merits

With the approximately zero quality of current administrations the difference between "legitimate" and "legal" has become bewildering and well beyond damaging.

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.

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.

Should young people be surveilled to ensure they don't smoke weed, or is it okay if smoking weed is illegal but some of them do it anyway and hide it?

Smoking, drinking, watching adult films. Arguing that adding another to think list leads to "everything" is rather a stretch

FYI that site reveals full names and PII. You may want to consider supervising your child and that website. Also do not share it.

I don't agree in you letting them create this.

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

In my life I don't think I've ever answered a survey honestly and I'm nearly 40 years old.

I do not take self reported surveys as accurate and I don't think anyone should. Especially for kids.

We are already going through the "digital duty of care" act now.

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.

> [au g]ov

The 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?

> [kids] do not need to be online

They ___must___ at the same level as they must read. See posts elsewhere in this page.

--

Oh, a sniper. I will be even more clear: either the kids get cultivated, or they are wasted and waste. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50140206

Why do you infer that it doesn't work?

Im not surprised, the Plattforms have 0 interest in kids not accessing. If they could make money from this i would bet my left Hand 99.5% of kids would not manage to enter.

FaceID works pretty good. I dont see any law of physics / math forbidding a proper biometric, privacy compliant age filter to work at scale.

> 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

Plenty of folks on this social media site are only here because they were given un-monitored internet access by negligent parents at a formative age.

[flagged]