Australia's prime minister on Thursday vowed to ban children under 16 from social media, saying the pervasive influence of platforms like Facebook and TikTok was "doing real harm to our kids".
Laughs in nostr and fedi. Because I'm absolutely certain that the Australian government can keep young children off of social media, especially when that social media is run by random people all over the world and does not require any sort of age verification of any type. Hell, noster doesn't need anything besides opening an application and saving a 100 character string or so called an NSEC.
I see the problem, but don't see a solution in this Aussie strategy. An age-ban probably makes social media more attractive to a 5- 10- or 15-year-old, and anyway, any bright kid can get around it, and share their get-around with all their friends.
Although I have an additional fear.
It is known that block listing (everyone but Y, Y being children here) is an ineffective cybersecurity strategy. What does work is allow listing (everyone must identify themselves, gatekeeper maintains a list of who is allowed in).
Enforcing the existance of such a tool, and having the allow list be at the mercy of political figures, now and in the future, is a scary idea to me.