Echoing the concerns about this being a way to seek in more digital ID laws. Thinking of it like the patriot act after 9/11. "You want to be a Patriot, don't you? ?"
Parents need to take responsibility for raising and protecting their children, not defer to private corporations and the state
Good intention, bad precedence for the future. How are companies going to enforce these rules? By requiring everyone to create accounts or use some digital ID service that just adds to the data collection and tracking we already have too much of. When did the effort move away from parents being responsible for raising their children? There are already parental controls and you can still buy non-smart phones that have no internet connection. How is this not coddling?
The devil is in the detail of how the age verification is handled. I glanced thru the article and didn’t see that anywhere which tells me that this is NOT in fact a win for humanity. What I find interesting is that the calls for state regulation are pointed at limiting the age of access to social media rather than simply making it illegal for companies to harvest any data on anyone at all! That would do away with the biggest perverse incentive in the equation. 500 years from now if any human can still think clearly or obtain a real version of history they will look back and realize that human digital enslavement began when the people in our time failed to outlaw the harvesting of digital data on ALL living things and especially on all human beings.
I would love for the restrictions of harvesting of data we need more privacy laws, but the issues are much bigger than just that. We have algorithms that promote behavior or continued scrolling. We have bullying of young girls who are not capable of handling it. It is a complex web of multiple issues.
Hitler put a barbed wire fence around the Warsaw ghetto, telling the Jews it was for their protection from outside forces. And then, having restrained the Jews, he started rounding them up and sending them for extermination.
The Berlin wall was ostensibly created to protect east Berliners from outside forces.
Be very leery of any government action that they claim is there to protect you.
I'm all in favor of regulations that protect young children from internet predators. But is there an ulterior motive? My experience with governments is that what they tell you is not the real intention. At the very least, well intentioned regulations are often perverted by political interests to further their own objectives, not citizen's. Regarding the internet, we have seen copious censorship in the furtherance of political interests. Will these new laws be abused by governments to advance political agendas? Count on it.
Yes, children need to be protected from predators. And citizens need to be protected from government excess. What provisions have been made in these new laws to assure that governments won't pervert the law to their own ends, as they invariably do?
If only it was that easy. I have a high school age daughter and we're stricter than the vast majority of parents when it comes to smartphone/social media and it's still a game of whack-a-mole. There's a whole cottage industry where this kids have "spam" accounts which are the ones they actually use for DMs, etc. Big Tech makes it more and more difficult for parents to actually parent so I applaud the countries who are taking steps to curb social media. These apps are like drugs to our kids and too many of us are either ignorant to that or okay with it.
I don't have kids, so take what I say with a grain of salt, but I don't see the downside of this considering what kids are being exposed to at younger and younger ages due to social media.
I view this similarly to driving a car. We don’t say, “Parents just need to be better parents and make sure their kids are old enough to drive.” We have regulations for cars and drivers because we know vehicles are good but powerful. We know the risks of operating a vehicle. A whole process for designing safer cars, learning to drive, and being old enough to do so has arisen in response to horrible incidents of the past.
Whereas cars are physically risky more often than mentally; the internet is more about the mental risks before the physical. We know driving is physically risky to adults, therefore we are even more restrictive on children. We know the internet is psychologically manipulating many adults, therefore we place age restrictions on children.
That being said, I do think it is worthwhile to discuss how we place those restrictions. Should it be decided on a more local level so people have a greater say in the process? I think that is fair. I cannot speak for other countries, but in the United States driving is governed primarily by each state. Handling restrictions within whatever entity balances the most effective but most local level possible makes sense to me.
Thank you all for your reflections and breakdown of new Social Media Legislation in Australia. It is wonderful to hear from you all and know the world is watching what is happening here and the implications for our young people and their families worldwide.
I’m surprised at the negative reactions. A 13-year old child is not able to enter into an informed contractual relationship. A 16-year old maybe even less.
The biggest problem with this law is that we currently have no method of verifying age of someone 16 or above. There is no universal ID proving the age of someone who has no government ID (i.e. Driver's License). In addition, we want this requirement to have privacy requirements. When you go into a liquor store to buy alcohol the clerk looks at your driver's license. They don't record the information and put in an online database. Think of having your age, address, and photo available to companies or hackers. Add the issue of having your sixteen-year-old having this detailed information recorded on multiple internet sites, some of which have poor data security (Just look at how many data breaches occur monthly). There needs to be a privacy forward method of age verification developed before this law will ever work.
We wanted to give you a quick heads-up that in order to comply with the Online Safety Act Substack is introducing age verification steps for readers in Australia.”
Next step - book discussion groups to be banned in schools.
No, they didn’t. Their catastrophic “compassion” and subjective, feelings based ideology just regulated the under 16’s out of any tehcnology that allow’s for communication - read the Act. Be better informed Jon, I expect more from you.
Hello Jon, I have been following your commentary. As a psychotherapist in NY working with teen girls and young adults mostly, and also (I believe I am a year ahead of you fr SHS), I would love to join your podcast or dialogue on what I'm seeing for the last 3 decades from my being an early adopter to working in leadership in online community spaces, and now in private practice, I think there are reasons to be hopeful about adding your straight-forward AI etc policy guardrails. I also have seen and participated in wonderful innovations online for reaching those more isolated with mental and physical barriers. While I am not a rocket scientist in research, I do see every day anecdotal evidence of black and white thinking, uptick in anxiety, and general over-thinking, for which we now know many of the causes. I would love if we had even more discussions on how to prevent the phone-based childhood from destroying our kids' brains!
Be hyper vigilant for authorities leveraging the issue of "child safety" into requirements for digital ID.
Echoing the concerns about this being a way to seek in more digital ID laws. Thinking of it like the patriot act after 9/11. "You want to be a Patriot, don't you? ?"
Parents need to take responsibility for raising and protecting their children, not defer to private corporations and the state
Read the article.
Good intention, bad precedence for the future. How are companies going to enforce these rules? By requiring everyone to create accounts or use some digital ID service that just adds to the data collection and tracking we already have too much of. When did the effort move away from parents being responsible for raising their children? There are already parental controls and you can still buy non-smart phones that have no internet connection. How is this not coddling?
The devil is in the detail of how the age verification is handled. I glanced thru the article and didn’t see that anywhere which tells me that this is NOT in fact a win for humanity. What I find interesting is that the calls for state regulation are pointed at limiting the age of access to social media rather than simply making it illegal for companies to harvest any data on anyone at all! That would do away with the biggest perverse incentive in the equation. 500 years from now if any human can still think clearly or obtain a real version of history they will look back and realize that human digital enslavement began when the people in our time failed to outlaw the harvesting of digital data on ALL living things and especially on all human beings.
I would love for the restrictions of harvesting of data we need more privacy laws, but the issues are much bigger than just that. We have algorithms that promote behavior or continued scrolling. We have bullying of young girls who are not capable of handling it. It is a complex web of multiple issues.
Then don’t use these services. Facebook is hardly a human necessity.
Its much more than Facebook. Youtube, Apple, Twitter, etc. are listed. I'm surprised they didn't include Substack or Bluesky.
Hitler put a barbed wire fence around the Warsaw ghetto, telling the Jews it was for their protection from outside forces. And then, having restrained the Jews, he started rounding them up and sending them for extermination.
The Berlin wall was ostensibly created to protect east Berliners from outside forces.
Be very leery of any government action that they claim is there to protect you.
I'm all in favor of regulations that protect young children from internet predators. But is there an ulterior motive? My experience with governments is that what they tell you is not the real intention. At the very least, well intentioned regulations are often perverted by political interests to further their own objectives, not citizen's. Regarding the internet, we have seen copious censorship in the furtherance of political interests. Will these new laws be abused by governments to advance political agendas? Count on it.
Yes, children need to be protected from predators. And citizens need to be protected from government excess. What provisions have been made in these new laws to assure that governments won't pervert the law to their own ends, as they invariably do?
Govern me harder daddy 🫦
If only parents could be trusted to do their jobs and parent.
If only it was that easy. I have a high school age daughter and we're stricter than the vast majority of parents when it comes to smartphone/social media and it's still a game of whack-a-mole. There's a whole cottage industry where this kids have "spam" accounts which are the ones they actually use for DMs, etc. Big Tech makes it more and more difficult for parents to actually parent so I applaud the countries who are taking steps to curb social media. These apps are like drugs to our kids and too many of us are either ignorant to that or okay with it.
I don't have kids, so take what I say with a grain of salt, but I don't see the downside of this considering what kids are being exposed to at younger and younger ages due to social media.
The buck stops with you.
Ahhh, Christian ✅️
Ahhhh, someone who can’t take personal responsibility.
What part of 'I don't have kids' did you not understand, my brother in Christ?
Are you a kid with brain rot? Because you sound like one based on your reading comprehension.
I view this similarly to driving a car. We don’t say, “Parents just need to be better parents and make sure their kids are old enough to drive.” We have regulations for cars and drivers because we know vehicles are good but powerful. We know the risks of operating a vehicle. A whole process for designing safer cars, learning to drive, and being old enough to do so has arisen in response to horrible incidents of the past.
Whereas cars are physically risky more often than mentally; the internet is more about the mental risks before the physical. We know driving is physically risky to adults, therefore we are even more restrictive on children. We know the internet is psychologically manipulating many adults, therefore we place age restrictions on children.
That being said, I do think it is worthwhile to discuss how we place those restrictions. Should it be decided on a more local level so people have a greater say in the process? I think that is fair. I cannot speak for other countries, but in the United States driving is governed primarily by each state. Handling restrictions within whatever entity balances the most effective but most local level possible makes sense to me.
Thank you all for your reflections and breakdown of new Social Media Legislation in Australia. It is wonderful to hear from you all and know the world is watching what is happening here and the implications for our young people and their families worldwide.
I’m surprised at the negative reactions. A 13-year old child is not able to enter into an informed contractual relationship. A 16-year old maybe even less.
The biggest problem with this law is that we currently have no method of verifying age of someone 16 or above. There is no universal ID proving the age of someone who has no government ID (i.e. Driver's License). In addition, we want this requirement to have privacy requirements. When you go into a liquor store to buy alcohol the clerk looks at your driver's license. They don't record the information and put in an online database. Think of having your age, address, and photo available to companies or hackers. Add the issue of having your sixteen-year-old having this detailed information recorded on multiple internet sites, some of which have poor data security (Just look at how many data breaches occur monthly). There needs to be a privacy forward method of age verification developed before this law will ever work.
True
I recognise the deleterious effects of social media.
It is however an intervention in parenting
It’s a tension , but maybe parents need this regulation to cope?
“Hi there,
We wanted to give you a quick heads-up that in order to comply with the Online Safety Act Substack is introducing age verification steps for readers in Australia.”
Next step - book discussion groups to be banned in schools.
From a societal viewpoint ideal.
From a kids viewpoint, if the desire they can still get access.
No, they didn’t. Their catastrophic “compassion” and subjective, feelings based ideology just regulated the under 16’s out of any tehcnology that allow’s for communication - read the Act. Be better informed Jon, I expect more from you.
https://thepaulbuchanan.substack.com/p/catastrophic-compassion?r=4qeeg8
Hello Jon, I have been following your commentary. As a psychotherapist in NY working with teen girls and young adults mostly, and also (I believe I am a year ahead of you fr SHS), I would love to join your podcast or dialogue on what I'm seeing for the last 3 decades from my being an early adopter to working in leadership in online community spaces, and now in private practice, I think there are reasons to be hopeful about adding your straight-forward AI etc policy guardrails. I also have seen and participated in wonderful innovations online for reaching those more isolated with mental and physical barriers. While I am not a rocket scientist in research, I do see every day anecdotal evidence of black and white thinking, uptick in anxiety, and general over-thinking, for which we now know many of the causes. I would love if we had even more discussions on how to prevent the phone-based childhood from destroying our kids' brains!
agree.....hope it works out and others follow.