This is not the place to debate the existence of the upcoming law-This is the place to explain and/or debate the use of the law. What does it cover, what it does not cover, etc.
Shouldn’t that be under, not over?
Thank you-fixed.
Maybe not. It is the southern hemisphere.
It’s an interesting question. Does it cover instant messaging services? Comment sections? Message boards?
The latter actually scares me a bit. What if a 15-year-old Aussie signs up to the SDMB, and the authorities go after the board? There’s no way we’ll survive that.
Social media platforms, specifically, it appears, though it’s not yet known exactly which ones will be affected.
Everything on the internet is social media if you try hard enough.
That seems drastic. When apparently they have parents who should be monitoring. And making cromulent decisions, about their child.
I bet TikTok, Instagram and the many less known places will take a small “who cares” kick in the ankle.
Nobody ever died from no social media.
And note:
The law specifies that users will not be forced to provide government identification as part of the verification process, a measure that the conservative opposition said was included after they raised concerns about privacy rights.
Considering that the verification process sounds like it could be a simple checkbox:
I verify I am over 16 years old.
If this was all the verification I have a bad feeling a lot of youths would lie.
I think because of a US law many websites in the United States prohibit those under the age of thirteen. So this will probably be enforced in a similar manner.
The gov’t rushed the legislation through, there’s no real information about what it will entail.
Here in Australia most people think it’ll involve everyone having to get a digital ID to access the internet. Or some of the internet. Or something. And yes, that’s a truly appalling idea, and gets worse the more you think about it.
Successive AU gov’ts have a history of creating stupid internet laws that have no effect on the problems they’re trying to fix but make using the internet more annoying for everyone.
What that be under the guise of “At least we’re doing something!”…which almost never turns out for the best.
For a variety of reasons this isn’t going to happen. But even if Australian authorities wanted to sanction the SDMB they couldn’t because it has no presence in Australia
Paired with a heavy dose of “think of the children!”
ISTM the law is targeting the more popular social media apps and SDMB is likely not going to attract attention here.