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the move has left "many unanswered questions."....

Social media companies on Friday criticized Australia's decision to ban them from allowing children under 16 to use their platforms, saying the move has left "many unanswered questions."

The law, passed by Australian lawmakers on Thursday, will make platforms including TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, X and Instagram liable for fines of up to 49.5 million Australian dollars (€30.5 million, $32 million) if they fail to prevent children younger than 16 from holding accounts.

How did social media companies react?

Meta Platforms, which owns Facebook and Instagram, said the legislation had been "rushed."

"We are concerned about the process, which rushed the legislation through while failing to properly consider the evidence, what industry already does to ensure age-appropriate experiences, and the voices of young people," the company said in a statement.

A Snapchat spokesperson said the company had raised "serious concerns" about the law and there remained "many unanswered questions" about how it would work. But the company said it would engage closely with the government to develop an approach balancing "privacy, safety and practicality."

Video platform TikTok said it was "disappointed" by the legislation.

"It's entirely likely the ban could see young people pushed to darker corners of the internet where no community guidelines, safety tools, or protections exist," a TikTok spokesperson said.

What did Australia's PM say about the ban?

Australia's major parties, however, all supported the ban.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said young Australians should be "off their phones and onto the footy and cricket field, the tennis and netball courts, in the swimming pool."

Albanese noted the ban may not be implemented perfectly, much like existing alcohol restrictions. Still, he said it was "the right thing to do."

The crackdown on social media sites will lead to "better outcomes and less harm for young Australians," the premier added, stressing that the platforms have a "social responsibility" to make children's safety a priority. "We've got your back, is our message to Australian parents."

 Scarce details on enforcement

The legislation, however, offers almost no details on how the rules will be enforced.

A trial of methods to enforce the measure will start in January with the ban to take effect in a year.

Platforms would not be allowed to compel users to provide government-issued ID or digital identification through a government system. Underage users and their parents will not be punished for any violations. 

Some, including Green Party Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, blasted the bill, saying it "is boomers trying to tell young people how the internet should work."

"It's also obvious that the people who have drafted and fought for the particular elements of this bill actually have no idea how young people engage with the internet," she added. 

Sunita Bose, managing director of the digital industry body DIGI, said more details on how the rules will be enforced need to be provided.

"We have the bill but we don't have guidance from the Australian government around what are the right methods that a whole host of services subject to this law will need to employ."

Stricter social media curbs considered worldwide 

Other countries will likely be watching closely to see how this legislation is enforced. Many of them are thinking about making similar bans.

In June, Spain proposed a law raising the age of people using social media from 14 to 16.

Last year, France proposed a ban on social media for users under 15, but many were able to circumvent it with parental consent. 

Meanwhile, the United States, for decades now, has required tech companies to seek parental consent to access the data of users under 13.

China has restricted access for minors since 2021, with under-14s not allowed to spend more than 40 minutes a day on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.

sri, lo/nm, ab (Reuters, AFP, AP)

 

https://www.dw.com/en/tiktok-meta-slam-australias-social-media-ban-for-under-16s/a-70909479

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

 

PLEASE DO NOT BLAME RUSSIA IF WW3 STARTS. BLAME YOURSELF.

 

 

tickingtok.....

 

Alex Lo

Why TikTok is being ruined by its new American owners

 

 

TikTok’s transformation under US ownership is reshaping it into a platform for censorship, AI exploitation and political influence, undermining free expression.

Remember all the hyped-up, over-the-top warnings by US politicians and pundits about the dangers posed by TikTok owned by a Chinese company? It turns out they are now doing all those terrible things and adding some threatening extras just for its American users. Who would have guessed?

In one of her latest clips, influential commentator Angela Baker of Parkrose Permaculture, who has close to half a million YouTube subscribers, complained about her TikTok experience since joining it in April 2024. “I’ve watched the platform change radically between then and now. What originally felt like a space where we were having conversations between creators. It felt productive. It felt like a community,” she said.

“It just felt positive. I felt like I was learning a lot. I was being exposed to different ideas and folks who had a really different background and lived experience than me. It felt like an enriching space. Yeah, there were silly dance videos and memes and what have you, but there were real conversations happening, real community, real education happening in that space. It’s no longer like that.”

Sensitive subjects are now heavily censored or demonetised. Politically incorrect influencers are deplatformed or demoted by TikTok’s new algorithm.

Baker said her videos repeatedly “get hit with the most bizarre community guidelines violations just for reading the headlines from CNN and the Guardian. My account got labelled for putting out terroristic threats”. Her claims are supported by other reports dating back to last year; the situation has only worsened.

According to Harvard Independent, “Critics have warned that signs of [Donald] Trump’s growing ties to TikTok’s leadership … could allude to potential government consolidation of control over online content. If political figures like Trump gain unchecked influence over what information remains visible on major platforms, ‘the very foundation of democracy is at risk’.”

In another report by The Wellesley News, “it is widely noted that content moderation may already be occurring. Users have reported limited search results and the removal of comments using phrases that were allowed before – including words related to current activism movements and political discourse, like ‘Free Palestine’.

“Regardless of its relation to Trump, this content moderation is deeply concerning, as it casts a shadow over the essence of free expression that social media platforms like TikTok are intended to promote.”

At their most idealistic, some theorists claim that social media could function as civic spaces for people to share different ideas, hobbies and viewpoints, and form groups and associations, the 21st century version of what Alexis de Tocqueville called civic associations in Democracy in America. People there could build and maintain social bonds, which Tocqueville theorised to be a key but informal pillar of American democracy. America today, though, is hardly a functioning democracy, but more like a disguised corporate oligarchy.

For a time, especially during the most intense period of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, younger Americans were using it to spread anti-establishment ideas, from questioning legalised corporate corruption to repudiating Washington’s support for the Jewish state.

Speaking before a group of American-Jewish and pro-Israel social media influencers in a meeting last September, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu didn’t mince words about weaponising TikTok and social media. “We are going to have to use the tools of battle,” he said. “The weapons change over time and the most important ones are the social media. And the most important purchase that is going on right now is? Class? TikTok. Number one. Number one. And I hope it goes through.”

He was referring to the eventual forced sale of TikTok by Chinese parent ByteDance to a Washington-approved consortium which included Oracle, controlled by pro-Israeli billionaire Larry Ellison, private equity firm Silver Lake, and Abu Dhabi-based investment firm MGX as well as Ellison’s fellow billionaires Rupert Murdoch and Michael Dell.

That was the real threat of a Chinese-owned TikTok: it was ironically too free and uncontrolled. This is why its US owners are now completely redesigning it to reshape public opinion and exploit creators’ content for their own artificial intelligence (AI).

If the outright censorship is obvious, the AI-appropriation of creator content has been far more insidious. Almost immediately after the sale, TikTok automatically opted in every video clip to allow its AI to access and use their content. But since its new AI protocol is opaque, users have no idea what their content is being used for, yet find it extremely difficult to disable the feature.

As one TikTok user observed, “This [AI] feature had been rolled out in secret. It was turned on for every video, and there was no master switch to turn it off. In order to opt out of this feature, I would have to go through all of the 2,800 videos I’ve posted to the app since 2019 … This seemed to be the point – make it prohibitively difficult to opt out.”

The unbelievable amount of content available on TikTok means it is among the world’s largest learning laboratories for AI training.

“They’re going to grab as much content as they can … to teach AI not just how to sell you stuff,” another TikTok influencer said. “They want to teach AI what makes you watch, what makes you stay, what makes you happy, what makes you sad, what makes you mad, what makes you active politically or socially, what makes you inactive politically or socially.”

The next step, she warns, is “to keep us viewing and how to be able to manipulate us without there being any humans in the equation.”

Meanwhile, many content creators have reported a drastic drop in their earnings, thus forcing even previously high earners, relatively speaking, into the highly exploitative gig economy. Baker said she used to earn thousands a month from TikTok. “Four months ago, I was making US$65 a month. This past month, I made US$21,” she said.

Who would have guessed that Chinese communists – out to innovate and to make a buck like good capitalists – inadvertently created an online democratic marketplace in the US that proved too threatening to the American oligarchy – the so-called Epstein class – such that the platform needed to be either banned or forcibly taken over?

https://www.scmp.com/opinion/article/3351493/why-tiktok-being-deliberately-ruined-its-new-american-owners

 

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

         RABID ATHEIST.

         WELCOME TO THIS INSANE WORLD….