So Australia banned under 16s from social media recently and now the government is going after companies for failing to “do enough” to inhibit under 16s from getting on social media...
Interesting comment in opposition to the law:
"Use the highly effective parental controls available to you. It will stop your under 16s accessing social media and in addition will stop them from installing bypass VPN software on any devices you give them (i.e. those that you control). "
It might keep your 6 year old off social media, but it's not going to work for a teenager or even pre-teens short of diminished mental capacity.
Key issue here is "give them"... computing devices. A 11-12 year (and even younger really) old can easily come up with the money to just buy one. I used my lunch money at ~11 or so to save up for a PC in the 90s and that is at least 10 times more than what you’d need today after inflation.
Mandating devices be locked down and "authenticated" is too simplistic and doesn’t work nor should we try. Education is key. You can bypass the most hardened devices. GNU/Linux exists, but even without it you can buy a device used and bypass the strictest age-verification measures.
Moral crusaders in the 90s tried to stop kids access to R rated films. In NJ where I lived theaters didn’t ask for ID, but I was stopped in Boston of all places at ~13. At ~11 a rental shop started restricting kids so I just said I was my older brother (worked for a while). When that stopped working I thought to myself the restriction is on the rental account so I just verified with the clerk I could still buy an R rated movie. It cost 4x as much, but early eBay existed, so I sold it after. In protest I switched to cheap online rentals. I was early to DVDs in ~1997.
Interesting comment in opposition to the law:
"Use the highly effective parental controls available to you. It will stop your under 16s accessing social media and in addition will stop them from installing bypass VPN software on any devices you give them (i.e. those that you control). "
It might keep your 6 year old off social media, but it's not going to work for a teenager or even pre-teens short of diminished mental capacity.
Key issue here is "give them"... computing devices. A 11-12 year (and even younger really) old can easily come up with the money to just buy one. I used my lunch money at ~11 or so to save up for a PC in the 90s and that is at least 10 times more than what you’d need today after inflation.
Mandating devices be locked down and "authenticated" is too simplistic and doesn’t work nor should we try. Education is key. You can bypass the most hardened devices. GNU/Linux exists, but even without it you can buy a device used and bypass the strictest age-verification measures.
Moral crusaders in the 90s tried to stop kids access to R rated films. In NJ where I lived theaters didn’t ask for ID, but I was stopped in Boston of all places at ~13. At ~11 a rental shop started restricting kids so I just said I was my older brother (worked for a while). When that stopped working I thought to myself the restriction is on the rental account so I just verified with the clerk I could still buy an R rated movie. It cost 4x as much, but early eBay existed, so I sold it after. In protest I switched to cheap online rentals. I was early to DVDs in ~1997.
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