Re: Banning Social Media For Under-16s

Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote

One of our local pro-right-wing-wannabe parties insists the law would
be "unworkable". Yes, Malinauskas admits that bans on underage
smoking, drinking and now social media are never 100% effective. But
they greatly reduce the incidence of the activity, and that is what
leads to harm reduction.

>
Rubbish, it'll be easy for kids to fake the ID requirement. That
idiotic law effectively just enforced a compulsory course on
identity fraud for under 16s. While of coure ensuring the
government can track every honest adult social media user who does
verify using their real ID.
>
Even if it did work it'd only push kids to using other social media
sites that don't obey the government anyway.
>

Certainly, relying on the social media companies to police themselves
is never going to work. Because if it had worked, we would have seen
the results, after more than 20 years of their activities. The fact
that things are, if anything, worse now than when they started, shows
the uselessness of trusting them.

>
The government will only be more inept at it. but really this is
about them tracking people rather than solving a problem anyway.