So your argument is that hackernews is similar to TikTok and instagram?

I completely disagree.

The core of HN is not self promotion, narration, or comparison - the very things driving teen suicides up from social media use.

I further suggest most of the replies to my original comment are willfully ignoring the data the Australian govt is citing for these bans, and what psychologists worldwide are citing.

None of the discussion here so far even touches on a possible solution to a problem that is driving measurable deaths.

Instead we have a collection of false equivalence and abdication of social responsibility by big tech, which is fairly on brand for hn and frankly intellectually lazy from my perspective.

▲

brokenmachine 7 months ago | parent [-]

From the actual bill:

63C Age-restricted social media platform (1) For the purposes of this Act, age-restricted social media platform means: (a) an electronic service that satisfies the following conditions: (i) the sole purpose, or a significant purpose, of the service is to enable online social interaction between 2 or more end-users; (ii) the service allows end-users to link to, or interact with, some or all of the other end-users; (iii) the service allows end-users to post material on the service;

I would say that HN is covered under that.

https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/bi...

You are quite shortsighted if you can't see the possible outcomes of such a far-reaching and anti-democratic law.

▲

beardedwizard 7 months ago | parent [-]

I would argue it's short sighted to do nothing to prevent harm from social media, and we certainly won't find out what works or doesn't by doing nothing to chase a perfect solution that will never exist.

	▲	brokenmachine 7 months ago \| parent [-]
		Doing the wrong thing is worse than doing nothing. This has too many chilling effects. It's so far from perfect it's crazy. By the letter of the law any service even allowing only one-on-one conversations is covered. It's obvious to me that these secondary effects are by design. Open communication is the most important thing that democracy needs, and this is a clear attack on it. Also can we not recognise that social media can have good effects as well? https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-12-01/social-media-ban-unde... Murdoch media is losing it's power and fighting back. Why not restrict the algorithms they're permitted to use, to fight echo chambers? That might actually have a chance of helping every person, not only <16 year olds?