To be extremely clear: the Government announced that this was an enormous priority that had to be rushed through. They introduced it last Thursday, closed submissions on Friday, and held the inquiry on Monday. Then it was passed by the House on Wednesday and the Senate had a grand total of 1 hour to debate amendments to it on Thursday.
All this incredible haste and lack of due process for a Bill that will not take effect for at least a year. It’s optics, pure and simple.
Well done to the Greens, independents, and LNP Senators Canavan and Antic for having some fucking integrity. Regardless of whether the Bill itself may have ended up being agreed to, the process by which it was passed is inexcusable.
And apparently didn’t process, read or hear the vast majority of the thousands of submissions received on one day notice. So they asked for submissions and ignored them.
Winding back democratic participation unfortunately seems to be common ground between the ALP and most of the LNP. Hopefully we see a swing away from those parties at the upcoming election.
The likes of lemmy instances may be either small enough to fly under the radar, or handwaved away by legislators with “don’t worry it’s not the target of this legislation”, or even be given easy access to ministerial exemption …for now (maybe).
The kicker comes in 10-15 years’ time when, say, a government’s donor inconvenienced by protests organised using a self-hosted forum then asks the government to crack down on the age verification requirements of that forum, effectively silencing it due to the requirements being too onerous for a small forum, or the userbase being unwilling to submit their IDs/faceprints/whatever.
Here are some of the things that were proposed as amendments to this Bill, that the Labor and LNP uniparty voted down.
The Minister must, by legislative instrument, formulate guidelines for the taking of reasonable steps to prevent age-restricted users having accounts with age-restricted social media platforms
In other words, before the Bill actually comes into effect, there need to be some guidelines about what the fuck it actually means. But apparently Labor and most of the LNP (Canavan—who moved this amendment—and Antic aside) don’t think guidelines matter.
the Minister must be satisfied that the legislative rules would not have the effect, or be likely to have the effect, of substantially lessening competition in the market for that kind of electronic service
Labor and the LNP are specifically aware that small guys…like us here on Lemmy…might be hit harder, and decided to vote not to make sure the rules prevent that from happening.
[Remove:] If an entity…uses or discloses the information otherwise than…with the consent of the individual…the use or disclosure of the information is taken to be an interference with the privacy of the individual
Ok I’ve summarised this one immensely because the way it’s laid out is very technical. I’m referring to amendment 3215 by Canavan if anyone wants to verify it.
But basically, Canavan (and Pocock, who moved a similar amendment) wanted to say “if you collect this data, you must only use it for verifying people’s age. Even if you get consent to use it for other reasons, you’re not allowed to.” This would have absolutely enshrined the protection against things like “oh but we put a tick box to get consent to use it for other purposes and they clicked it.”
Labor and the LNP didn’t want this.
an individual is not an age-restricted user if…a parent or guardian of the individual consents to the individual not being an age-restricted user
Yup. Parents are not legally allowed to declare that their children can use apps. Because Labor and the LNP voted this amendment down. Now, if a parent helps their child do it anyway, the parent and child can’t get in trouble, but the platform can, because platforms cannot knowingly allow children to use the app, even with explicit parental consent and supervision.
If they were rushing through the bill then any amendments in the senate would require the bill to go back to the house. Partially explains the reluctance to consider amendments (though why bother with debate then).
Depressingly
The ban is, however, backed by 77% of Australians, according to a new poll.
Most of whom probably don’t care how it was passed or details on the amendments.
The bill was passed by the Senate after amendments. It had to go back to the House anyway. They just chose not to pass many of these quite common sense amendments raised by one of their own members (Matt Canavan), meaning they had plenty of time to consider their opinion and would have voted on it with that prior understanding in mind; they’re not being blindsided by something they have yet to have a chance to fully form an opinion on. The House received the Senate’s amended Bill and passed it within minutes.
Now, if a parent helps their child do it anyway, the parent and child can’t get in trouble, but the platform can, because platforms cannot knowingly allow children to use the app, even with explicit parental consent and supervisio
Not correct. An inadverdent act is not illegal, but circumventing telecommunication controls is a criminal offence under the Telecommunications Act, with penalties up to 20 years imprisonment.
No, this bill specifically only makes it possible to penalise the platforms. Parents or children cannot be penalised. The precise wording in the bill is:
A provider of an age-restricted social media platform must take reasonable steps to prevent age-restricted users having accounts with the age-restricted social media platform.
Civil penalty: 30,000 penalty units
There are also penalties that can apply to individuals, but only if:
the person is a provider of an age-restricted social media platform;
or
the person is a provider of an electronic service;
(To the penalty of “Civil penalty: 500 penalty units”.)
This may be the doomer in me, but I fear this will spell the end of Aussie.zone - Lemmy fits the definition of social media, but I don’t know how it’s feasible for @lodion to verify every user’s age…
Liked this solution from chinwag. https://chinwag.au/verification/
That sounds pretty good. The problem is that getting the Gin to @lodion may be a bit tricky. Also the quality of server administration may not be to the same standard as they dispose of the Gin.
What about uploading a picture of the Dan Murphy checkout chick giving a thumbs up?
If that’s the case, we just all pack up and take over some British instance.
A little payback for the colonisation /s
A possible ban on social media for under-16s in the UK is “on the table”, the technology secretary Peter Kyle has told the BBC.
main reason for it - no anonymous account on social media for_everyone_. It just another surveillance imposing law.
