Australia has just passed a law that will ban kids from social media online. How exactly? Well, through the amazing power of… shoosh.
Australia has just passed a law that will ban kids from social media online. How exactly? Well, through the amazing power of… shoosh.
@Lodespawn @Salvo The definition is currently loose enough to apply to iMessage. That’ll be a fun discussion with Apple’s lawyers.
I’ll likely be setting my kids and their mates up some sort of server overseas, maybe a Mastodon instance. I want them to learn to be social online, with some education and moderation.
IANAL, do you think it could be stretched to include SMS, MMS or RCS ? That would make Telstra, Optus and Vodafone liable too.
@Salvo Worth a read of their current def https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary/_Business/Bills/_Legislation/bd/bd2425/25bd39
But yeah, those would seem to come under "the sole purpose, or a significant purpose, of the service is to enable online social interaction between 2 or more end-users[2]
the service allows end-users to link to, or interact with, some or all of the other end-users
the service allows end-users to post material on the service
such other conditions (if any) as are set out in the legislative rules."
Yeah education is really where this effort should have gone, classic nanny state Australia. Sadly the law is coming from a generation who’s formative years was moulded by social interactions that were limited to post, rotary telephones, newspapers and school yard whispers. All of those things existed when they were born and were replaced by social media post midlife crisis. They have no concept of how to deal with something like social media. All they see is their friends getting scammed online and their newspapers talking about online child pornography. You’d think they’d realise from cigarettes, alcohol, drugs and old timey porn magazines that outright banning it does almost nothing to stop teenagers accessing it.
“Hey here’s an evolving disruptive technology that is becoming more integrated with our society than the newspaper or telephone ever could have dreamt. Quick let’s ban our kids from it until they are effectively adults so they only have as much understanding of it as me and maybe end up doing something dangerous with it because they have to treat it like a taboo”