It looks like it will be handled by third party verification services in Australia. You will likely provide some form of ID with age which is likely to be government id and the service will check it then inform the social media company you pass. The legislation doesn’t allow direct government involvement in running the verification service and the verification companies have to conform to privacy laws.
It is certainly a flawed system. If kids want to access things they will and there is potential for abuse. However when considering harm mitigation you need to look at the whole population.
A lot of the more extreme libertarian views on the Internet originate in the US where their “freedoms” of speech and firearms have obviously just been a distraction while they were robbed blind. They couldn’t even protect their school kids from mass shootings because they put ideology and theoretical bullshit ahead of morality, empathy and the survival of their families. I used to buy into the Internet libertarian stuff in a huge way in the days of IRC and Usenet before the mega rich tech bros moved in and turned the Internet into a shitshow of scams, mass-surveillance and brain washing. Still a big proponent of free software and agree with a lot of stuff from the EFF but the oligarchs ruined it. Now I want to burn it down. Anything to keep these nonses away from our kids is good with me.
requiring third party services is still problematic; i seriously do not trust any third party services to handle data as critical as ID.
having that leaked isn’t like having your passwords or nudes leaked…it can seriously ruin entire lives!
I’d honestly rather have the government directly involved than some fuck-off “we’re in it for the money”, “how cheap can we go before we start leaking” company…
that said, i completely agree with the rest of what you said!
only i think that age restrictions is the wrong solution for the problem at hand, because it doesn’t actually solve the problem.
the problem isn’t (just) “kids have access to social media too early”, the problem is “social media has become manipulative cesspool designed to brainwash entire populations”!
age verification doesn’t solve issues like election interference, rising violence, privacy violations, misinformation, disinformation, etc, etc.
what does solve most, if not all, of those problems is properly regulating social media companies!
and it starts with forcing those companies to have open source, verified algorithms, to prevent them from being able to claim “they’re committed to X”, while blatantly ignoring any and all regulation.
the real problem is that just about nobody actually knows how exactly the massive social media platforms serve content, and how little control users have over their own algorithms.
solve that problem, and kids can be online just fine again! just like you and i were!
it is possible to return to a better internet, but that requires actually solving the root of the problem(s) at hand, instead of getting distracted with things like age verification, which, again, is just mass surveillance by a different name.
It looks like it will be handled by third party verification services in Australia. You will likely provide some form of ID with age which is likely to be government id and the service will check it then inform the social media company you pass. The legislation doesn’t allow direct government involvement in running the verification service and the verification companies have to conform to privacy laws.
It is certainly a flawed system. If kids want to access things they will and there is potential for abuse. However when considering harm mitigation you need to look at the whole population.
A lot of the more extreme libertarian views on the Internet originate in the US where their “freedoms” of speech and firearms have obviously just been a distraction while they were robbed blind. They couldn’t even protect their school kids from mass shootings because they put ideology and theoretical bullshit ahead of morality, empathy and the survival of their families. I used to buy into the Internet libertarian stuff in a huge way in the days of IRC and Usenet before the mega rich tech bros moved in and turned the Internet into a shitshow of scams, mass-surveillance and brain washing. Still a big proponent of free software and agree with a lot of stuff from the EFF but the oligarchs ruined it. Now I want to burn it down. Anything to keep these nonses away from our kids is good with me.
requiring third party services is still problematic; i seriously do not trust any third party services to handle data as critical as ID.
having that leaked isn’t like having your passwords or nudes leaked…it can seriously ruin entire lives!
I’d honestly rather have the government directly involved than some fuck-off “we’re in it for the money”, “how cheap can we go before we start leaking” company…
that said, i completely agree with the rest of what you said!
only i think that age restrictions is the wrong solution for the problem at hand, because it doesn’t actually solve the problem.
the problem isn’t (just) “kids have access to social media too early”, the problem is “social media has become manipulative cesspool designed to brainwash entire populations”!
age verification doesn’t solve issues like election interference, rising violence, privacy violations, misinformation, disinformation, etc, etc.
what does solve most, if not all, of those problems is properly regulating social media companies!
and it starts with forcing those companies to have open source, verified algorithms, to prevent them from being able to claim “they’re committed to X”, while blatantly ignoring any and all regulation.
the real problem is that just about nobody actually knows how exactly the massive social media platforms serve content, and how little control users have over their own algorithms.
solve that problem, and kids can be online just fine again! just like you and i were!
it is possible to return to a better internet, but that requires actually solving the root of the problem(s) at hand, instead of getting distracted with things like age verification, which, again, is just mass surveillance by a different name.