World's First Youth Social Media Ban

[Waterfall]

What do you think about Australia banning social media for kids under 16?

 

[Waterfall]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/australia-social-media-ban-1.7395487

 

[Mendalla]

It's not really the first social media ban, just the first in a Western democracy based on age. I see what they are trying to do here, but the devil in the details is proof of age. How much personal info will people be giving up to provide that proof? What happens if an age-verification provider gets hacked, because you know they will be heavily targeted? How do the age-verification providers deal with appeals when they make an erroneous call in either direction? There's so much more than just passing the law here. I just hope they get it right because I am betting that other Western governments and political parties will be watching and possibly modeling their own legislation and regulations on Oz's. Including ours.

 

[Waterfall]

It's not really the first social media ban, just the first in a Western democracy based on age. I see what they are trying to do here, but the devil in the details is proof of age. How much personal info will people be giving up to provide that proof? What happens if an age-verification provider gets hacked, because you know they will be heavily targeted? How do the age-verification providers deal with appeals when they make an erroneous call in either direction? There's so much more than just passing the law here. I just hope they get it right because I am betting that other Western governments and political parties will be watching and possibly modeling their own legislation and regulations on Oz's. Including ours.

Changed title to include youth.

I hope they do watch Australia and the fines are gloriously obscene IMO.

 

[Mendalla]

the fines are gloriously obscene

As long as there are also gloriously obscene fines for age-verification providers and social media companies who misuse or mishandle personal information collected for age verification. Because, to be honest, that's a major security risk to my IT eyes and I am not sure risking people's data (any more than it is already at risk) is an acceptable price for protecting kids from the ills of social media. So what we need to be watching is how the age-verification issue is resolved. Use of a third party age verification provider rather than trusting the social media companies to do it and a requirement that data collected for age verification be one-time (i.e. generates a token that confirms verification and then is deleted as some of the schemes mentioned in the article do) unless the user consents to it being stored are critical for someone like me to trust the system. And the a-v provider needs to be SOCII and other security standards compliant, given the risks if some hacker could penetrate it and start generating their own tokens to sell to people needing them for verification.

 

[Waterfall]

As long as there are also gloriously obscene fines for age-verification providers and social media companies who misuse or mishandle personal information collected for age verification. Because, to be honest, that's a major security risk to my IT eyes and I am not sure risking people's data (any more than it is already at risk) is an acceptable price for protecting kids from the ills of social media. So what we need to be watching is how the age-verification issue is resolved. Use of a third party age verification provider rather than trusting the social media companies to do it and a requirement that data collected for age verification be one-time (i.e. generates a token that confirms verification and then is deleted as some of the schemes mentioned in the article do) unless the user consents to it being stored are critical for someone like me to trust the system. And the a-v provider needs to be SOCII and other security standards compliant, given the risks if some hacker could penetrate it and start generating their own tokens to sell to people needing them for verification.

Good points.......third party especially.
Still I like the idea of it all.

 

[Luce NDs]

What will ordinary folk really know about all this stuff?

As normal not much as they will be isle informed as is the anonymous desire ... again ominous as de nous ... giving rise to paranoia to Nous ... that's us!

It is just because of how little we know that we have no appreciation of ... i.e. the great unknown out there all alone ... gross wanderings?

Possibly virtue of the philosophical and thus eliminated ... something more's to mull?

 

[Mendalla]

One thing I will point out: If Canada goes this route, are you prepared to hand over images or documents to prove your age in order to access Facebook, Instagram, etc.? What about Wondercafe2? Though our small size and the fact we are non-commercial tends to mean we are exempt from legislation like this a lot. e.g. PIPEDA, the federal privacy act, does not apply to us (yes, I have checked into it). I do follow best practices as the admin, of course, and we really collect very little private info. Birthdate and email is really all and, of course, you can always fake the former since there's no validation.

EDIT: Further thought. Legislation like this could kill small social sites like us without some kind of exemption or protection. After all, can we really afford a commercial age-verification service? Again, past practice has been to focus legislation like this on commercial sites but all it takes is someone not taking that into consideration or even a mis-wording to have this apply to us.