Australia intends to set a minimum age limit for children to use social media, citing concerns about mental and physical health. The plan has sparked backlash from digital rights advocates who warn the measure could drive dangerous online activity underground.
This one is insidious. Pretty much everyone agrees that social media is addictive and repetitive exposure at a young age has a startling negative effect on mental health.
The downsides of this come mostly from the infrastructure that will be used to control access. If there suddenly exists a collective database that contains age and identity information for every citizen that is accessible online in some capacity to verify ID, that’s a really juicy target for online criminals and a huge blow to online privacy.
The effects of the recent SSN hack are still to be seen, but that was a release of identification information for up to 2.9 billion people. It’s insane that people aren’t making a bigger deal of that.
If the age verification responsibility lies with the companies, it would mean each one spends as little as possible and we end up with a dozen poorly implemented databases, all ripe for a breach. If the government handles it, that’s better I suppose because one system could be made more robust, but that’s a big expense.
I suppose the companies that would need it could be taxed to cover the costs of this system, but you know how companies love being taxed. I’m sure smarter people than me are working on it though.
Pretty sure it’d be government, next to the single patient digital record. Put a nice big bow on it in a government data centre we can fund short term with all the savings from aged care and disability supports 💪🏻
This one is insidious. Pretty much everyone agrees that social media is addictive and repetitive exposure at a young age has a startling negative effect on mental health.
The downsides of this come mostly from the infrastructure that will be used to control access. If there suddenly exists a collective database that contains age and identity information for every citizen that is accessible online in some capacity to verify ID, that’s a really juicy target for online criminals and a huge blow to online privacy.
The effects of the recent SSN hack are still to be seen, but that was a release of identification information for up to 2.9 billion people. It’s insane that people aren’t making a bigger deal of that.
I was thinking the same.
If the age verification responsibility lies with the companies, it would mean each one spends as little as possible and we end up with a dozen poorly implemented databases, all ripe for a breach. If the government handles it, that’s better I suppose because one system could be made more robust, but that’s a big expense.
I suppose the companies that would need it could be taxed to cover the costs of this system, but you know how companies love being taxed. I’m sure smarter people than me are working on it though.
Pretty sure it’d be government, next to the single patient digital record. Put a nice big bow on it in a government data centre we can fund short term with all the savings from aged care and disability supports 💪🏻