Summary
Australia has introduced a bill to ban social media access for children under 16, enforcing strict penalties of up to AU$50 million for non-compliance.
The law would require biometric or government ID for age verification and prohibits parental consent as an exemption.
While aiming to protect children from harmful content, critics argue it may drive teens to unregulated platforms.
Some services, like YouTube and WhatsApp, will be exempt for educational or messaging purposes.
The bill has bipartisan support but faces scrutiny from independents and child welfare advocates.
I mean, they can’t enforce it because there are so many instances all over the world. They can’t possibly target every instance administrator.
First of all, yeah they can. Second of all, they get rid of the main ones and suddenly there is a lot less of Lemmy out there.
Not caring about laws isn’t something to be proud of. Lemmy will get left behind because the devs don’t care about GDPR or laws like these. Admins will get hit by huge fines and lives will be ruined. Same with illegal content being shared to federated instances automatically. You won’t be able to explain that it was on your machine “because federation” in court.
I worry that this will also affect political awareness amongst teens in a way that encumbent parties and business will happily exploit for their own gain.
If it’s “successful”, expect to see similar legislation proposed throughout the world.