Great in theory all it will take in practice is handing over government id to any social media site. We are willingly dancing down an authoritarian path and nobody seems to give a shit.
Today’s justification for digital identity and state tracking of your browser history: “Think of the children!”.
It’s a legitimate societal issue. The mental health and social damage it’s doing to children should not be an accepted as a social media functionality. I don’t know what the answer is, but surely there is a way to achieve both privacy for adult users and age identification for children.
They seem like fully conflicting ideals. Sometimes technology is not the answer. Sometimes non technical controls are.
Besides, by the time the control for instagram is in, nobody will be using it under 30. My partner just told me “instagram really is our parents platform” while showing my mum’s friend started following her. My mum and her friend are both 70.
Applying it further gives all kinds of bad vibes where platforms need to check your ID like a Brisbane night club, except these aren’t Australian businesses. Tiktok forced to comply, if they did, validating that you’re 18 via a digital license that the governnent authenticates Tiktok requested your details and now knows you went via link ‘clickforabortioncontrol.track.tiktok.com’ since they’ll need to reply back to that url ‘yeah they are 14+ bro’ before you get in.
What a distopia.
BTW I’ve got a link for you for how ID got complicated that I configure: https://stack-auth.com/blog/oauth-from-first-principles this explains how to securely without leaking or impersonation, authenticate a user from a central federated identity management (like an online ID would need).
There are smart people, sure. But I’ll tell you it won’t be the first try, or the second that’s correct.
Security is so complex that the smartest people often fail. Odds are stacked, privacy needs security. Failure in security results in privacy being lost.
Anyway I’m in agreement that it’s a horrible world out there with real harm. But mandating less privacy is unlikely to result in a better place, in fact it’s almost guaranteed to be worse and create more harm.
Besides, by the time the control for instagram is in, nobody will be using it under 30.
Right, but the point isn’t just to establish a ban for Instagram. The establishment of laws such as these creates a basis on which further policy can be enacted in the future. It’s sort of like the eSafety Commissioner ordering Twitter to take down content worldwide - a big reason it did that was to test its own powers in a court of law. If a ban is successfully implemented on Instagram/Meta and survives any legal challenges, then it sets a legal precedent upon which further legislation can be enacted against whatever the next big social media platform is.
it won’t.
Tech companies will lose 98% of their profits. Who do they think most tiktok and youtube audience are? do they think 40 yr olds work two shifts then go watch mr breast and listen to ishowspeed screaming exactly like their 9 yr old kid?
Probably a lot like the $80m porn filter that was cracked by a 13 year old within 20 minutes of being released - poorly.
How would it work?
It wouldn’t.
