Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024 [Provisions]
www.aph.gov.au
On 21 November 2024, the Senate referred the provisions of the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024 to the Environment and Communications Legislation Committee for report by 26 November 2024.  The closing date for submissions is 22 November 2024. 

It’s worth making whatever kind of submission you can manage for this. The page even specifically notes: “Due to the short timeframe of this inquiry, the committee would appreciate submissions being limited to 1-2 pages.”

This bill will affect all users of social media in Australia, and may have a particularly negative effect on Fediverse platforms (like Lemmy and Mastodon) which are operated by individuals or small organisations that may not have the resources to implement age verification.

  • zero_gravitasOPEnglish
    1·
    3 days ago

    There are ways to implement age verification that address privacy concerns, for sure. It remains to be seen whether the government chooses to use them, or if they will use this as an excuse to de-anonymise Australian social media users.

    In any case, blind signatures (or other cryptographic methods) won’t address the issue that Australians will be banned from any social media platform by default, until the developers get around to implementing the required age verification system (whatever that ends up being).