Enforcing a ban also presents additional privacy risks, experts add.
Under the Australian law, platforms looking to verify a user’s age can either request copies of identification documents, use a third party to apply age estimation technology to an account holder’s face, or make inferences from data already available such has how long an account has been held.
Michael Geist, a professor and Canada Research Chair in internet and e-commerce law at the University of Ottawa, said that potential data collection alone is concerning and would need to apply to all social media users regardless of age to be effective.
He noted that it can be difficult to discern between a 15-year-old and a 17-year-old by appearance alone, whether in person or online through biometrics systems.
“So what those systems tend to do then is dig deeper,” he said. “They look at who your friend circle is or the language that you use when posting to try to make a better guess.
“Well, now they’re literally engaging in increased surveillance in order to try (to identify your age), and raising even more privacy concerns in order pull this together.”
Social media is great for kids or adults when compared to the monolithic groupthink alternative. The problem isn’t social media, it’s the companies behind it, driving engagement through hate and outrage.
This is a big reason why nonprofit, fediverse options are healthier spaces for everyone: no one is profiting off of making you hate anyone else.
Yes, if you go looking, you’ll definitely find content that’s unhealthy or even dangerous, but (a) federated systems tend to protect against this with defederation, but critically (b) it’s not pushed into your eyeballs by a third party motivated to do so. In this way, nonprofit social media is a lot like real life: sure you can meet Terrible People, but that’s just existing in society.
Well, defed is just when they personally don’t like something. There are right wing run Lemmy instances that defed from lefty instances. And lots of content is removed in general.
Lemmy is just as manipulative as the corporations, just with their own topics.
I think we should conversationally separate “access to information” from “social media.” Although they sort of go hand in hand.
I’m sure there probably are far-right instances out there somewhere federating with each other. If the Naziverse federation somehow grows to have anything like the cultural relevance of the mainstream Fediverse federation, the problem will not be the technology. The problem will be that your society is full of Nazis.