#if you have questions about how australian parliament actually works lmk

[alasse-irena]

I'll start by saying that I have similar problems to you with this legislation, however it's managed, but I do want to push back a little bit, because a lot of the information you've given here isn't true.

TLDR: This is a representative democracy working as normal. Contact your MP. Tell them what you think about this legislation. Tell them how social media has helped you. Ask all your friends to do the same thing. Talk to people outside your usual social circle about it if you can. I think one of the big reasons it's not getting the pushback you want is that a lot of people aren't seeing the data safety risk, they're seeing "a better childhood for my kids".

A few things:

With regard to "there was no vote on this, no nothing, they just went ahead and fucking passed this": that's not what's happened. This legislation hasn't been passed yet. It has to pass the upper and lower houses before it becomes law, which means the MPs and senators that we elected to represent us will vote on it. This is the same way that all new legislation is treated. (Maybe you want all Australian citizens to vote on each new piece of legislation. That's fair - but it would be an overhaul of our entire system of government and a move away from representative democracy to direct democracy. There were 170 pieces of legislation introduced in Australian Federal Parliament in 2023. Imagine if we'd had to hold nationwide votes to decide what to do about all of them. I'm not saying this form of democracy is impossible, but it's a huge logistical challenge.)

The government still hasn't figured out who will be responsible for age verification, or how it should be done. They're assessing the options, and will continue to do so into next year. (Social media companies are trying to encourage them to put age verification responsibilities on the app store instead of on each individual service. Given that you can access most social media in your default browser rather than through the app, I don't think anyone involved has really thought through how to do this effectively.)

The legislation actually doesn't have much benefit to the government in terms of your privacy: every way of doing this that's been put out there has your info either going to the social media company, or to a third party company. (Yes, putting all this data in the hands of for-profit companies is also bad; they're incentivised to illegally sell it to advertisers, something which major social media companies have been known to do.) The cybersecurity risks here are large, but the real motive is to appeal to parents and educators as voters. Social media is creating situations that worry a lot of people. It has wide-reaching and well-researched effects on youth: the big ones here are mental health and body image issues, along with right-wing radicalisation. Across Australia, many people believe that handling this problem is both important and urgent, which means that for the government, looking like they're willing to do something drastic about it is a big vote-winner. This is one reason you should be concerned: it's such an uncontroversial move that it has bipartisan support (i.e. both parties believe failing to support it will lose them votes).

In conclusion, yeah this is a bad piece of legislation. I don't like it, I don't think it's going to help, I think it's going to just drive a lot of the problems its trying to solve underground and create cybersecurity risks on the way.

But it hasn't happened yet. The democratic process is still going on and you still get a part in it. Go talk to some people about it.

fucking australia’s trying to get everyone to link their government id to their social media accounts else you cant use them anymore, the actual fuck is wrong with this country