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Australia bans social media for under 16s
(www.theverge.com)
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this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2024
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What I find intriguing is the potential for fediverse/decentralized service uptake amongst Australians, should the corporate providers decide it's too much bother implementing an identity solution for 26m people and simply rangebans them.
In an alternate universe, parents are devoting 10 per cent of their doomscrolling time to studying their router manuals and determining access windows for social media on their LAN. But why obtain a gram of education to address a serious parenting issue when a ton of democracy-threatening legislation driven by politics will achieve a quarter of the same thing?
I'd assume the law would include federated social media. And while that wouldn't prevent underage Australians to sign up with instances hosted elsewhere, it will impose restrictions on local ones, thus hurting the federation effort.
Take this social media law, plus the software backdoor nonsense from a few years ago, and I can't help but see a clear message emerging from legislators to Australian developers who'd seek to build great digital spaces and tools: Do not domicile anything in this country. Do not host anything on servers in this country. Expect hostility from authorities toward the anonymity, security, and privacy of the people using your code.
I hope you're wrong, and they're going to arbitarily apply the law to King Doge and Zuck, with everyone else getting ignored.