The very same office of the eSafety commissioner that is enforcing age verification for social media.
https://www.esafety.gov.au/newsroom/blogs/social-media-minim...
The very same office of the eSafety commissioner that is enforcing age verification for social media.
https://www.esafety.gov.au/newsroom/blogs/social-media-minim...
You say that like it's a bad thing. Not everyone thinks so.
I'd be interested to know how it could be a good thing.
I'm all for shutting down Facebook entirely and jailing their executives, but i don't think age verification is an appropriate answer. It's already common at least here in France for Facebook to request user ID cards (wtf) and that has not at all stopped harassment, nazism, fake news, etc...
You're right, some people are misguided and think age verification can be done in a way that isn't the death of privacy and anonymity online.
Don't we all hate social media? From that standpoint, anything that makes it hard to use or come with direct negative consequences is good.
I wholeheartedly disagree. When we consider a policy, it's not enough that the narrow outcome is good. What also matters are the broad outcomes and whether or not the policy is principled.
We presumably all hate Alex Jones. Does that mean the goverment saying "Alex Jones is banned from communicating publically" is good policy? Even if we agree the direct outcome is good (which I do), the principle of "the governement can silence people it doesn't like" is profoundly dangerous. In such a case I would argue we should all resist such a policy, even if we like the outcome (Alex Jones being silenced) because the principle (the majority can use the governement to silence a minority) is terrible. This isn't even accounting for the messy second order effects, e.g. radicalising Alex Jones supporters.
I think that applies to social media too. I don't like social media. However even more than that I'm scared of people using the government to limit what other people what they can and can't do for "their own good". This isn't a principle I think we can get behind. I think it's a principle that has motivated a lot of misguided acts in the past (e.g. criminalisation of drugs, sex work, taking the kids of first nations people in Australia, ...).
What do you mean by "social media"? We all hate Facebook, but do we all hate Hacker News? Mastodon? A Discord or IRC community for an online game?
I'm all for age restrictions for certain kinds of social media, but age verification is a system of surveillance and the death of online privacy.
Age verification for social media looks like it is different from age verification for internet. But it really is not.
Some people think it'd be reasonable to have every car reporting it's GPS position and speed to the government to stop people speeding, or to have facial recognition cameras on ever corner to catch criminals, or to make everyone carry an ID card that people can demand to see.
On the face of it living in a police state is safe, and secure, and actually increases your freedom to just live your life without pain. And if these systems were never abused that might be true. But sadly, the reality is that every time these things are implemented they end up being used against the citizens. So they're always a terrible idea.
The eSafety office is actually perfectly reasonable, minus the stupid woman running the joint. She is incompetent as fuck and clearly clueless.
The eSafety Commissioner should be elected, especially since the changes impact every day Australians, with no ability to have a say on the matters.
>The eSafety office is actually perfectly reasonable
If it was reasonable it would have been taken to an election, and not rushed in as a measure to scrub the internet of the chrstchurch massacre.
Eh, I'm no big fan of the eSafety Office but if it was taken to an election there'd either be vague general support or just a lack of interest - no big opposition outside maybe The Greens and civil/digital rights groups.
Yes. Isn’t effective regulation of dangerous products wonderful.
Effective in that its easily bypassed, and dangerous insofar as the government appears to be happy for the use to continue as long as kids use their dogs face to bypass it.
Of course, when you point this out they step into "Oh but we knew it wouldn't work immediately" which is so silly its staggering.
But of course, the technology has been applied immediately to moral panic stuff like porn also.
It is, provided there is a broad consensuss of experts in the field who agree on the danger and what to about it, the government regulates based on that information and that the regulation is effective.
Apart from those things, the Australian government did an excellent job.
Who are the experts in the field, and who decides they're experts?
"More doctors smoke camels than any other cigarette".
I'd add one of these: https://fortune.com/2026/02/21/peter-thiel-bill-gates-steve-...
but uh here I am on a social media site rebroadcasting that message... I'll add that I'm for an open internet, I don't think we need age verification. Walled gardens have a lot more shade then alternatives. Becoming aware of the many forms of abstracted gambling (time, tokens, or otherwise) makes the internet a much more affordable and sane place.