[llui85]

Some notes:

* It is illegal for a platform to provide children with a social media account, not for the child to create an account. Circumvention of this by the child is not illegal.

* No grandfathering - all accounts under 16 once this takes effect (which won't be until this time next year at earliest) must be deactivated.

* Maximum fine (per instance?) is 50 million AUD (about 32 million USD)

* The legislation is vague on the technical details, although it does specifically mandate that platforms cannot use government-issued ID of any kind (including digital ID).

[LinuxBender]

I don't have a horse in this race but in my opinion a more graceful way to deal with this is to freeze the account until the under-16 is over-16 so they don't lose their friend connections, history, etc... The under 16 should have time to add a comment saying how to contact them otherwise. Discord group, etc... There must be a reason to remove the account that I can not see.

[dyauspitr]

Ideally they do lose all of that. That’s the root of the problem.

[guidedlight]

Leisure Suit Larry was ahead of its time with its age verification system.

[elros]

For those of us who weren’t around at the time, could you d on what made it good? Thanks!

[plagiarist]

> The legislation is vague on the technical details, although it does specifically mandate that platforms cannot use government-issued ID of any kind (including digital ID).

That's unexpectedly sane from a law like this. Hopefully they can figure out some zero-knowledge proof of age. (But then there's nothing stopping adults from creating and selling proof values to kids.)

[stephen_g]

That wasn't in the original bill and it was only amended to add that yesterday, because it wouldn't get past the Conservative (Liberal/National Party) whose votes they needed to ram it through Parliament with almost no scrutiny otherwise (the hastily drafted bill only having been introduced the Friday before the final sitting week of the year).

[triceratops]

> But then there's nothing stopping adults from creating and selling proof values to kids

That's also true for alcohol and tobacco.

[dyauspitr]

How do they plan on verifying age without using a government id?

[xienze]

They have something called “myID” (a digital ID), which is available to anyone 15 or older.