The stuff that causes a lot of the harm is just what people tend to do online…
The online harms I’m concerned with are bullying, harassment and misinformation. Platforms should be required by society to moderate against these, or face penalties proportionate to revenue. Instead just banning under 16s, even if it could be done in a way that is both effective and respectful of everyone’s privacy (I’m not convinced that it can) would still be a lazy abrogation of this responsibility, still leaving kids vulnerable to the same behaviours in offline spaces and everyone else vulnerable to the harms purportedly being caused among the youth online currently.
But the government isn’t interested in this because these behaviours serve to entrench existing social hierarchies, and the government—being in charge of the nation-state—likes existing social hierarchies.
Wall of text incoming.
I don’t see how both these claims can simultaneously be true. Either Australia has tools to hold these companies to account, in which case, how would they have previously failed if they’d already tried? Or it doesn’t, and this is just one more completely futile policy that won’t give companies any more than the usual slap on the wrist if it ever goes to court.
I argue that they didn’t try, because they never actually cared about children’s wellbeing, because if they did they’d have done better than this, ergo this policy isn’t really about that and is actually about making citizens more easily identifiable online.
Additionally, it does nothing to reduce the power of seppo tech giants. On the contrary, they’ve got money, they’ll be fine. Independent social media sites however, don’t all have the resources to implement verification systems, so some will feel the financial burden of compliance a lot harder, and others will simply cease serving Australian users, further strengthening Silicon Valley’s hold over the internet.
As I have said over and over again in this thread, what the ban will do is cut children suffering domestic abuse (a problem that is absolutely rife in this country) off from their support networks. It’ll cut minority kids that’re subjected to bullying by their peers off from their communities. It’ll drive more kids to shadier corners of the internet where they’re at greater risk of predation. I’m not being hyperbolic when I say this is going to get children killed.
Furthermore—and again, as I’ve been repeating all over this thread—everyone—yes, that includes adults—will be required to submit personally identifiable information to private organisations just to communicate with other people online, making anyone in this country who uses social media a potential victim of identity theft the moment a data breach happens. And happen it will. It’s happened before, and it’ll happen again.
What’s more, knowing that the platforms they’re using have their identities will make a great many people more hesitant to speak critically about existing power structures, especially the government. This is bad.
I stand by my previously stated opinion that all this is worse than the status quo, but even if it weren’t you should be asking why this is the solution that the government came up with.