World-first social media ban on children in 'Land of Kangaroos' makes global headlines
www.abc.net.au
Australia's social media ban for children makes headlines around the world, including as far away as Russia, as articles question how it could work and whether similar laws would be introduced elsewhere.

Hi Lemmy.World Admins and Support Staff,

I like this place a lot and wanted to give you a heads up pollies down under passed some new laws.

The govt wants a ban on social media for everyone under 16. This week was the last sitting week of parliament and a few bills were passed by both houses and are set to become law. (See link).

I’m not after any immediate reaction or actions, but looking to bring it to your attention for you to discuss (edit:internally) how you would react. I haven’t seen the legislation and don’t know how this is meant to be mechanized and it seems pretty hard to do.

Some other tech giants have already made statements as this appears to be a worldwide first.

Edit: I might have a look at the laws text and put some details here as a comment

-AnAustralianPhotographer

  • AnAustralianPhotographer@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
    5·
    3 days ago

    Ive had a look at the legislation, its an ammendment to an existing set of laws. It underwent some changes as it passed through the House of Representatives and the Senate, so i had a look at the ‘As passed by both houses’ version at https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislation/Bills_Search_Results/Result?bId=r7284

    So it looks like what is ‘Social media’ can be defined by a Minister / Commissioner, it looks like there needs to be something documented by the entity to prevent underage users(again not calling on lemmy.world to do something for this as part of this post) by the Social media company, and it looks like the recording of government id’s for the purpose of confirming ages is expressly prohibited.

    A penalty Unit is around $300.

      • pivot_root@lemmy.world
        6·
        3 days ago

        Without the government providing an age verification service, I would guess the answer to the former is a performative checkbox and the latter is “haphazardly and arbitrarily”