In Australia, a decisive debate has begun on a planned law that would ban children and youth under 16 from using social networks. The ruling coalition is seeking to pass it this week, after the plans were finalized at the beginning of the month. Ahead of the weekend, influential US billionaire Elon Musk claimed the plans looked like a backdoor to control access to the internet for everyone in Australia. Finance Minister Jim Chalmers has rejected this And assured that it is “not a particularly big surprise” to his government that Musk is not very happy with the plan. But that doesn’t worry them, after all it’s about the safety of the children.
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Sharp criticism of IT companies
The initiative, presented in early November, states that children should be banned from using social networks without exception. Even the permission of a parent or guardian will not change this. According to the AP news agency, short messaging service X (from Elon Musk), TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit and Instagram will be affected. YouTube may also be affected by the ban in some circumstances. This law is going to be discussed in Parliament this week and will be passed on Thursday. Although initially there was widespread support for it, including in the opposition, the atmosphere has recently changed. According to the Sydney Morning Herald Recently concerns have grown that this is actually the first step towards tighter control of the Internet. If the bill is passed then the law can be implemented in a year.
As part of consultations on Monday, the head of a lobby group of big IT companies asked for more time report apHe criticized that Parliament is expected to pass a law that it does not know how it works. Among other things, it is planned to impose fines of more than 30 million euros for providers who systematically fail to deny children access. The news agency says the lobbyist was thoroughly interrogated and the veracity of some of the allegations was questioned. A member of Parliament wanted to know how exactly his ten-year-old stepson could create accounts on Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube at the age of eight. The nominal minimum age there is 13 years. The answer is that the industry needs to improve in this area.
(mho)
