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.”
Lemmy should be legally unable to have up and down voting. Sort by new only. ;)
To be honest, I’d start with the following four rules about what data is presented and how:
No secret sauce: Any ranking algorithm, and all the inputs to that algorithm for any post, must be available to all logged-in users. If that clashes with privacy laws, that information can’t be used in the sorting algorithm.
Keep it simple, stupid: If, given the algorithm and a randomly selected set of posts with attached information, a person of average intelligence cannot order the posts according to the algorithm in a reasonable amount of time, the algorithm is too complex and should be discarded.
No means no: All social media must provide the following basic filters: “Don’t show me any more posts by this account” and “Don’t show me any posts whose algorithmic inputs fulfill these conditions (for instance, “Don’t show me any posts with >100 downvotes”)”, and showing a user a post they have indicated they don’t want to see will be treated as a crime.
Little by little: Endless scrolling is not permitted. Feeds and search results must be paginated, so that the user is occasionally jarred loose from their train of thought.
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Lemmy needs a little more work on rule 3, but is otherwise doing pretty good.
I mean, downvotes are manipulation. Voting shouldn’t be allowed at all. That’s a gateway to ranking algorithms. Lemmy is a dumpster fire of alt accounts for vote manipulation.
By date only. No preferences in sort or filter unless you specify. No adjusting the results. Everyone gets the exact same thing by default.
I also think blocking a user should block you from them too. Not reddit/lemmy style.