↳ In-reply-to » @prologic what do we make of Labor's proposed social media minimum age ban, I.e ID verification, and the likes of Yarn? I haven't been able to find out exactly how far the legislation goes, but some have said it's broad enough to include any site that even has a comment section 🤔 but that could be FUD.

@eldersnake@we.loveprivacy.club I’m feeling slightly better (though my sinuses are still giving my grief 🤦‍♂️) so I’ll try to answer this and properly state my position on the proposed minimum age restrictions being proposed by the Labor government.

Firstly I think it’s completely ineffective and unenforceable. The only way you’re going to get this enforced is to somehow makes all the “big tech” companies oblighes, which some already are. But then you can just work-around it anyway. Okay if you start requiring things like state-enforced age verification like a driver’s license or something, then things start getting even more weird.

Frankly I don’t think it’s the right approach. I think it will ultimately achieve nothing. It’ll be just like the many numerous attempts at banning alcohol and drugs. Once you’re addicted, there’s no way you can stop people from indulging in stupid crap that may possibly kill them.

The only way out of this mess IMO is to educate people, educate the parents and to make it practices of targeting, categorization and the manipulation of content based on metadata either you or a 3rd-party questionable obtained illegal.

In other words. The very foundation of what “bit tech” social media companies thrive on. Make that illegal. Problem solve. But oh wait?! 🤦‍♂️