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

  • TheEntity@lemmy.world
    19·
    1 year ago

    From the Lemmy.world terms of service:

    No one under 18 years of age or under the regulated minimum age defined by your local law (whichever is higher), is allowed to use or access the website.

    If someone lies to access the website, it’s on them.

    • IsThisAnAI@lemmy.world
      22·
      1 year ago

      No it’s not. It’s in the service operator to verify. With the current writing every instance would need to verify age.

  • greyfox@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    1 year ago

    Are Lemmy.world servers located in Australia? Google says Europe so it seems like this is a non-issue.

    Most social media have corporate entities in many of the countries they serve because they want sales people to sell that ad space and bank accounts to receive that ad revenue through, so usually the means of enforcing this would be to fine those entities/bank accounts. But I doubt lemmy.world would have much connection to Australia.

    Or are there provisions in the law that would let them block the servers?

  • AnAustralianPhotographer@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
    2·
    1 year 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.