オーストラリアのSNS利用禁止法案とその影響

quick disclaimer I'm making this video because I live in Australia and the stuff I've seen over the past months have got a lot of people talking but I still don't think enough people know about what's going on so I just wanted to spread some awareness about it all right so let's get into it hi welcome to another episode of Cold Fusion for the better part of a decade we've all known about the negative impacts of social media on Children and Youth to combat this the Australian government has just introduced a bill to ban all children 16 or younger from social media but is everything as it seems right now there's discussion and massive vocal concerns for government privacy violations and even free speech so this isn't just about the privacy or collecting data about kids this is literally everybody access in social media that's how it has to work isn't it yes in this episode we'll explore what's in the bill how it's going to work and unfortunately how this could lead to a future can of worms you are watching to Fusion TV on the surface this all sounds great there's been internal Studies by meta and a plethora of external studies confirming the negative effect of social media on kids randomized trials have been conducted where young participants were split into two groups the control group who use social media normally and another group that reduced their social media usage for a few weeks and what do you know the group who used social media less were less lonely and depressed the synopsis to all of this is that a bit of social media use per day is healthy for kits but after about an hour hour or so it all goes downhill now in the mid 2020s for the first time governments are doing something about it the proposed bill in Australia will ban those under 16 from using social media is the strictest bill of its kind in the world the ban will affect meta apps like Facebook and Instagram Tik Tok X and even YouTube is likely to be included in fact YouTube sent me and presumably all other creators an email warning about the changes for creators and Google would only notify creators like this if it's a serious issue so what's in the law as Reuters reports the legislation will include quote an age verification system to assist in blocking children from accessing social media platform a number of countries have already vowed to curb social media use by children through legislation though Australia's policy is one of the most stringent the bill has the highest age limit of any country 16 and pre-existing accounts will be nuked and there's also no exemption for parental consent the ban appears to be a popular move according to a 2024 ugv Australia survey 61% of Australians pulled support restricting access to social media to those younger than the age of 17 even the opposition party is in support so the big question how will this work well Australia is triing two methods to determine who's under the age of 16 one method is to use a government ID and the other method is by using biometric data we'll get to this can of worms later but let's see what the Australian government has said Australia's e safety commissioner recommended a quote double blind tokenized approach end quot this means that information would be provided to a verifying third party and that third party would certify the user's age and give that information to the social media platforms anonymously under this system the details about the child aren't going to be revealed in a 2024 Australian e safety commissioner report they look to the EU for an extremely cuttingedge Solution by using cryptographic encryption for a so-call quote age Assurance token end quot and these are Anonymous stored on device or in an app another idea being talked about is to utilize user behavioral patterns an algorithm will then determine the rough age of the user other options to filter and determine age include facial scanning either from a camera or in the form of an ID scan and this is where the skepticism begins to build so proponents do say that this will keep children safe encourage them to live in the real world and give them back the childhood that they were robbed of but there was an interesting moment during the prime minister's announcement of the bill during question time when asked will Australians have to be prepared to scan their faces when using social media the answer wasn't exactly straight should Australians be prepared for having their faces scaned to use social media should they be prepared to upload their documents some sort of government database that uh social media companies can tap into for age verification I mean what are the options here as you said the age Assurance trial hasn't hasn't been finalized yet well this is exactly what the age Assurance trial is informing but let's be clear too these platforms know their users better than anyone these platforms understand their habits their capabilities what sort of content should be driven to them and what their behaviors are so in this year that we will take in terms of implementation that will be the key Focus uh and as the Prime Minister mentioned it's very important um to have privacy Protections in place this is a complex area but it is one that we are determined to get right it's one that we are determined uh to implement because we know what's at stake here interestingly on public TV when discussing the issue of the bill and face scanning for all Australians the answer is a straight no you're right this is the first country in the world to do this we should be proud of that I don't think we're going to be the last you're saying the the tech companies have to come up with a plan to prove that they're not so is that facial recognition do you think no I don't think it will be but behind the scenes in the community ation legislation committee the answer seems to be yes testing of using biometric information including facial age estimation and voice analysis take me through more details what that amounts to some of the products on the market that purport to do age Assurance involve estimation using facial features voice analysis and other biometric information so that that means like a 180° like you do for your face ID is that how that what that means not just a selfie it it yeah I can't speak with any details but there are um uh companies and tools on the market which purport to be able to accurately estimate a child's age using things like facial features um proportion of bone allocation distance between eyes Etc I mean there's there's a range of different um utilizing I should say machine learning and AI so people capabilities as aange people with existing accounts people with existing accounts will they have to subject this give this biometric information to keep their accounts like a 50-year-old have to do that where the platform doesn't already hold the age inference data that provides them that is constitutes a reasonable step it is possible they will be required to provide some further Assurance thank Youk and with that we come to the other side of the argument on the other side of the aisle people argue that banning kids under 16 is just a thinly veiled attempt at Mass surveillance um of course if you're testing to see if someone's 13 or 14 or 15 or 16 you're also testing to see um by definition if they're 6n plus so if there's going to be age verification everybody is going to have to go through an age verification process weren't they sure yes yes so so this isn't just about the privacy or collecting data about kids this is literally everybody accessing social media that's how it has has to work isn't it yes digital rights activist Meredith Whitaker tells the Sydney Morning Herald quote my God Banning people under 16 from using social media will not work it would basically be creating a system to monitor internet usage at a whole population scale because you can't know that somebody is over the age of 16 without checking everyone end quote and this all comes to a head when Australia passed the digital ID bill of 2024 a national digital identity system Australian became familiar with scanning QR codes during the co pandemic but the government says this is different Tex is something brand new and World leading Labour says businesses will soon be able to opt into technology called trust exchange or Tex to verify a customer's identity allowing personal information the government already has to be shared with the tap of a phone cyber experts have concerns about that record if the government's involved in every transaction then they have the potential to know that I've gone to this hotel at this time but the government says it won't be tracking how people use the technology Australians would understandably want to be satisfied that the privacy issues have been thought through here while entering the system as voluntary at this time it wasn't without opposition the labor government introduced legislation for a digital ID into the Senate last year and curiously it was passed without any debate being allowed which should be a warning sign Lisa given from the Melbourne University rmit speaks quote some people very cynically are saying the ban around social media is just to push the government's decision to implement a digital ID system because if a ban comes into place and we say no one under the age of 16 can have access to a social media platform that really means that every single user is going to have to prove that they are over 16 so in the process they would have to join the digital ID system of the Australian government end quote and that's not all and the Australian government is rushing through a Vue bill that cracks down on misinformation and that's misinformation on subjects including elections and negative commentary about the economy or financial system this bill does cover elections and political thought clearly in violation even of the United Nations and the fact that elections referendums and we've just had one Public Health preventative measures and imminent harm to economy or financial markets are just some of the topics that will be covered uh by this bill is chilling whether you're Progressive whether you're conservative whether you're from the left or right we need to rise up and oppose this bill the government's function is not to regulate in a free Society the content of people's minds it isn't their role to arbitrate over the free thought and free expression and free speech of people and you're getting that from every quarter of Australian politics and Australian Society in opposition to this bill it's Universal there is no support for this bill and even the United Nations have said this would be a violation of the right to free speech with all of that context now you can see what why some Australians are raising an eyebrow about the timing of all of this and just a last minute update to all of this as I was making this episode The misinformation bill was so heavy-handed and authoritarian that not one member of the Opposition signed off on it a bill aimed at cracking down on misinformation and disinformation on the internet has been pulled by the federal government the bill failed to gain support in the Senate with the greens and Coalition against it so thankfully Australians can breathe easy knowing that the misinformation bill has been scrapped of course there's still the digital ID issue but the craziest thing is no one voted for this and there's not even any debate but let's move on to other concerns about the Banning of kids others think that the legislation could just backfire altogether there's a possibility that young people would just use alternative apps in secret there could be an Australian youth Exodus from apps like Tik Tok YouTube and meta apps and a migration to those apps that aren't included in the ban like Rumble kick and even more obscure apps these apps are more often the wild west and could lead impressionable teens down an even darker path another form of backfiring could come from a lack of peer support social media may have many negatives but it's also where young people go to find each other and find people going through similar things to connect we're just not sure of the impact taken that away could have and others still say that it really should be a responsibility of the parents or that these measures should be done at an app store level even before the kids get to the login screen of a social media page and after all of this fuss the ban may not be effective critics state that a simple VPN could bypass the Australian ban rendering it useless of course this depends on the final implementation but from what's proposed so far the ban might have loopholes and may not work unless it's worldwide so what's next well the legislation will be introduced into the Australian Parliament this year and the laws will come into effect 12 months after being passed by lawmakers another update to this story the under 16 social media ban bill has officially been passed the talk in the media now seems to be around forcing social media companies to come up with Solutions in collaboration with the Australian government the public doesn't know how this ban is going to be implemented and at this rate I doubt the government does either so we're all just going to have to wait and see so all in all this is the way I look at it the social media ban comes from a great place everyone can agree that we want to protect kids online but we should ask ourselves is this really the best way to do it parents should be the first line of defense not the government even though it's a noble cause I do have concerns over its Effectiveness and the glaring potential for abuse by the Australian government but that's just my opinion what do you guys think feel free to let me know in the comment section below also feel free to send this to anyone who would be interested you know when you look at the social media bill in more detail it doesn't seem very logical does it but something that definitely is logical is brilliant.org brilliant is where you learn by doing with thousands of interactive lessons and maths science data analytics programming and AI they have courses on logic which teach you how to think logically in a fun and entertaining way each lesson on brilliant allows you to play with Concepts a method proven to be six times more effective than watching lecture videos plus all content on brilliant is crafted by teachers researchers and professionals from MIT cowtech Duke Microsoft Google and more learn at your own pace to brush up an project for work or just for your own self-development and curiosity to try everything brilliant has to offer for a full 30 days visit brilliant.org coldfusion you'll also get 20% off an annual premium subscription anyways that's about it from me my name is deogo and you have been watching cold fusion and I'll catch you again soon for the 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