- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
What do you guys think about this? I think its a big positive.
Edit: After reading about this on hacker news, I get why they do it. Its to make people upload identification documents, to get them prepped to authenticate for using the internet. Now the world makes sense again. I was wondering why they would do something positive. But now I get it.
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I see that you’ve changed your opinion, OP, but I still have a question.
How did seeing this as positive go together with being on the fediverse? How do the volunteers running this thing cope with these demands?
More generally: How can the open internet survive if every local government makes its own rules about what information or service you may or mustn’t give its citizens?
I can’t see this working out well for anyone
It’ll work out well for authoritarian governments wanting to restrict Internet access
I think its a big positive
That’s an ironic position to hold given your username…
Well I changed my opinion. :)
What do you guys think about this? I think its a big positive.
It’s not. But not for the reason you say.
I get why they do it. Its to make people upload identification documents
This is just some conspiracy theory nonsense. The law specifically says that photo ID cannot be the only way users can verify themselves. And it also says that any uploaded documents must not be used for any other purpose. No, the reason behind the law is exactly what they say it is: to protect kids. They’re just really bad at their job and don’t understand the ways this law will not accomplish that goal.
I’ll repost some of my comments from elsewhere:
The ultimate goal is a good one. Keep kids safe from dangerous social media algorithms. The method used to arrive at it…the Government did the wrong thing at pretty much every opportunity they possibly could.
Step 1: the government should have considered regulating the actual algorithms. We know that Facebook has commissioned internal studies which told them certain features of their algorithm were harmful, and they decided to keep it that way because it increased stickiness a little bit. Regulate the use of harmful algorithms and you fix this not just for children, but for everyone
Step 2: if we’ve decided age verification must be done, it should be done in a way that preserves as much privacy and exposes people to as little risk as possible. The best method would be laws around parental controls. Require operating systems to support robust parental controls, including an API that web browsers and applications can access. Require social media sites and apps do access that API. Require parents to set up their children’s devices correctly.
Step 3: if we really, really do insist on doing it by requiring each and every site do its own age verification, require it be done in privacy-preserving ways. There are secure methods called “zero-knowledge proofs” that could be used, if the government supported it. Or they could mandate that age verification is done using blinded digital signatures. This way, at least when you upload your photo or ID to get your age verified, the site doesn’t actually get to know who you are, and the people doing the age verification don’t get to know which sites you’re accessing.
Step 4: make it apply to actually-harmful uses of social media, not a blanket ban on literally everything. Pixelfed is not harmful in the way Instagram is. It just isn’t. It doesn’t have the same insidious algorithms. Likewise Mastodon compared to Xitter. And why does Roblox, the site that has been the subject of multiple reports into how it facilitates child abuse get a pass, while Aussie.Zone has to do some ridiculous stuff to verify people’s age? Not to mention Discord, which is clearly social media, and 4chan, which is…4chan.
Step 5: consider the positive things social media can do. Especially for neurodiverse and LGBTQ+ kids, finding supportive communities can be a literal life-saver, and social media is great at that.
Step 3.5: look at the UK. Their age restriction has been an absolute failure. People using footage from video games to prove they’re old enough. Other people having their documents leaked because of insecure age verification processes and companies keeping data they absolutely should not be holding on to
And perhaps most importantly:
Step 0: Transparent democratic processes
Don’t put up legislation and pass it within 1 week. Don’t restrict public submissions to a mere 24 hours. Don’t spend just 4 hours pretending to consider those public submissions that did manage to squeeze into your tight timeframe. There is literally no excuse for a Government to ever act that fast (with possible exception for quick responses to sudden, unexpected, acute crises, which this definitely is not). Good legislation takes time. Good democratic processes require listening to and considering a broad range of opinions. Even if everything about what the legislation delivered actually ended up perfect, this would be an absolutely shameful piece of legislation for the untransparent, anti-democratic way in which it was passed into law.
And that’s not to mention the fact that in some ways, not having an account is making things more dangerous. Like how porn bans in other countries have basically just amounted to PornHub bans, with people able to ignore it by going to shadier sites with far worse content on them and less content moderation. And I’ve seen a number of parents point to YouTube in particular, saying that when their kids had an account, they were able to see the kids’ watch history, and could tell the YouTube algorithm to stop recommending specific channels or types of content. Without an account, you can’t do that.
And, naturally, we’re already seeing cases of kids passing despite being under-age. 11 year-olds who get told they look 18. A 13 year-old whose parent said they could pass for 10, who—just by scrunching his face up a bit—got the facial recognition to say he’s 30+. Shock-horror, facial recognition is not a reliable determiner of age. It never should have been allowed.
I disagree, but thanks for your opinion anyway. :)
You just still have belief in the US government being good and want to protect kids. Thats nice.
First of all, what does the US government have to do with this?
Second, I made quite a detailed comment. Which bits do you disagree with and why?
Yeah thanks for that. I dont put that much work into any comment. Impressive!
My opinion is that the US government is in bed with the tech industry and their wet dream together is to watch and control the entire population, on the internet as well as in real life.
Thats why I dont think this is about protecting children. Its just how they get to their end goal of authentication on the internet for everyone. Step one is stuff like this, require id to verify your age.
Step two is to implement it for everyone because “we already have age verification for kids, lets make it more automatic for everyone by letting people authenticate when they use the internet”. Thats how it goes. :)
But this article is about Australia.
Step one is stuff like this, require id to verify your age
Right, but the law doesn’t do that. In fact it was specifically forbidden from doing that. Here’s the full text of the Bill. Section 63DB specifically says:
(1) A provider of an age-restricted social media platform must not:
(a) collect government-issued identification material; …(2) Subsection (1) does not apply if:
(a) the provider provides alternative means…for an individual to assure the provider that the individual is not an age-restricted userIn plain language: you can only accept ID to verify age if you also have some other method of verifying age instead.
So far, it looks like most sites are relying on data they already have. The age of your account, the type of content you post, etc. Because I have not heard of a single adult being hit with a request to verify their age anywhere other than Discord, and even on Discord, it’s only when trying to view NSFW-tagged channels. (Which is an 18+ thing, and completely unrelated to this law, which is 16+ for all social media. Despite Discord having been officially classified as not social media, but a chat app, which does not apply.)
It also says, in 63F:
(1) If an entity:
(a) holds personal information about an individual that was collected for the purpose of, or for purposes including the purpose of, taking reasonable steps to prevent age - restricted users having accounts with an age - restricted social media platform; and
(b) uses or discloses the information otherwise than:
(i) for the purpose of determining whether or not the individual is an age - restricted user; or …
(iii) with the consent of the individual, which must be in accordance with subsection (2);
the use or disclosure of the information is taken to be:
(c) an interference with the privacy of the individual for the purposes of the Privacy Act 1988 ; …(2) For the purposes of subparagraph (1)(b)(iii): (a) the consent must be:
[(i–v) voluntary, informed, current, specific, and unambiguous]; and
(b) the individual must be able to withdraw the consent in a manner that is easily accessible to the individual.(3) If an entity holds personal information about an individual that was collected for the purpose of, or for purposes including the purpose of, taking reasonable steps to prevent age - restricted users having accounts with an age - restricted social media platform, then:
(a) the entity must destroy the information after using or disclosing it for the purposes for which it was collected
In other words, whatever information you collect to do the age verification, unless you already have it, with the user’s consent, for some other purpose, you must not store their information.
It would not have been hard to just not include that part of the law. Some privacy advocates would have spoken up about it, but the general public would have probably brushed it off. No, they included that because this isn’t about information harvesting. It’s a misguided but genuine attempt to protect kids. And, if you’re looking for a more cynical spin on it, it’s to win some good PR with people for being able to say they’re protecting kids, while also not doing anything that would substantially hurt big tech’s bottom line…like regulating the algorithms themselves.
But again, you mentioned the US government. What does that have to do with this? This is a law passed in Australia, but the Australian government. An entirely different country, and one with an actually functioning government and legislature.
Im upvoting you, you put so much effort into this response and made me think twice about it. Perhaps you are right. I would love if you are. And yeah, its australia, not the US, of course.
In other words, whatever information you collect to do the age verification, unless you already have it, with the user’s consent, for some other purpose, you must not store their information.
A lovely fairy story, based on ignoring all past and current law-breaking by the tech bro companies!
But again, you mentioned the US government. What does that have to do with this? This is a law passed in Australia, but the Australian government. An entirely different country, and one with an actually functioning government and legislature.
- Most of the media companies are subject to US government control. If US says to track someone but Aus law says not to, who do you think they’ll obey?
- Australia doesn’t have an actually functioning legislature at the moment, with Labor getting over half the lower house seats from about a third of the votes, but I doubt that’s changed this bad law much. If anything, more L+N input would probably have been worse and I don’t know the other party views on it.
with Labor getting over half the lower house seats from about a third of the votes
Yikes. This is some really dangerous misinformation. Labor received 55% of the votes. Because we use an actual democratic system, not the FPTP farce that America and the UK have. You cannot compare first preferences in IRV to votes in FPTP.
No, you have IRV, not any proportional system. IRV is better than most-takes-all but it’s still a malfunction. Labor ended up with 55% after voters for smaller parties were denied their first choice entirely.
No mention of enforcement in that article. No kids getting fined or arrested for using VPNs or buying accounts off others. This law is primarily a Trojan horse to build the ID document and facial recognition databases and smash the scourge of anonymous people criticising governments and oligarchs.
No kids getting fined or arrested for using VPNs or buying accounts off others
It’s actually explicitly not going to do that. The social media companies are the only ones with any legal burden here. That’s the intent, and you don’t need to go into cooker nonsense to justify it. It’s no different from how a harm reductionist approach to drugs involves targeting dealers, not people buying for personal use.
As a European ‘cooker’ was new to me, but I found https://cookerpedia.org/wiki/Cooker which is probably it.
I hope you’re right that it’s nonsense but it’s way too obvious that this law ain’t gonna achieve its stated aim and has huge negative drawbacks for me to dismiss concerns so readily. Governments and oligarchs around the world seem mad keen on getting everyone’s ID and biometrics with broad consent, including the exceptions to most privacy laws, and they usually seem to tie ID laws to “won’t somebody think of the children” pleas.
As others point out, the big media companies don’t have to change their algos to stop harming children or adults. Just gather their ID and whatever lies about age.
it’s way too obvious that this law ain’t gonna achieve its stated aim
Absolutely. See my much longer comment elsewhere in the thread for all the real problems with this bill. We don’t need conspiracy theories. Hanlon’s razor very much applies here. It’s incompetence, not malice.
However, I think we can look at the worst part of this Bill—the nature of its passage through Parliament—for a clue as to its underlying purpose. It passed in just a week, right before Christmas last year, but didn’t actually come into effect until yesterday. The goal was good PR. I suspect not rattling cages with the big social media companies was part of it too. They wanted to look like they were doing something to protect kids, and hopefully win the election off the back of it (not that they needed much help with that, with how incompetent the LNP were), but they didn’t want to put up the fight that would be necessary to force the social media companies into actually making their algorithms less harmful…to children and adults. It’s lazy, it’s cowardly, it won’t work. But it’s not a secret ploy to spy on you.
online was one of the first positive queer places i had since i didn’t have anything irl; stef sanjati was also the first out trans person who made me realise i could do this.
which i suspect is the entire reasoning for the ban.Probably bigger than that - they want to make all of us feel watched. But yeah, its worse if you are in a group the US government is currently oppressing. The way things are going, I guess we all will be in some kind of a group like that sooner or later. Like “social media terrorist” for having negative opinions about the US online.
Bans only work in paper. In practice they’re just making it slightly harder. If there’s an obstacle there’s also way around it.
Another angle is that this is Newscorp pushing the Labor govt for this to consolidate the news delivery and away from the ad-bypassing social media platforms.
But it’s mostly just a test to see if people will bend over or if this is even enforceable long term.
I think it’s a big positive
Is it really? Ask yourself, is the oppression of individuals based on age really a positive?
Do the voices, opinions and perspectives of those most impacted by this monstrous lawn not matter to you? Because all this proves is your support towards a fascist regime.
Of course, technological factors such as those you have outlined come in play as well. This law is a stepping stone for a totalitarian police state where everyone is impacted - irrespective of age.
However, the resonance induced in taking control of the corporations, by ultimately taking control of a class of individuals based on fallacious ageist remarks - is what makes this counterproductive, non-inclusive and destructive to trust.
There are individuals within that class that are using their might into defending their human rights, youth rights - and all you’re doing with supporting this law is disregarding them and treating them as sub-humans. One group of teenagers used 1984 as a highlight to the situation, and they are right. Ageist, infantilisation doesn’t solve nothing.
As stated before, this law has both issues in technological and egalitarian perspectives. And it’s up to you to decide if you are really against corporatocracy or if you’re just a fascist in disguise.
Yeah I understood what its really about when I read hacker news comments.
