Australia's social media ban in chaos as youths flock to Chinese alternatives

Posted by delichon 10 hours ago

Comments

Comment by ablation 4 hours ago

Please don't post GB News articles. It's worse than Daily Mail for sensationalist ragebait and gammon-pandering garbage.

Comment by xeonmc 6 hours ago

Nothing new under the sun. Blanket Prohibition always breeds worse circumvention.

Comment by lil-lugger 5 hours ago

Should we let teenagers buy alcohol since some get past the measures and buy anyway? Cigarettes? Drive a car?

Comment by NVHacker 4 hours ago

No! But we should allow them use of the regulated social media.

Comment by wongogue 1 hour ago

They have access to messaging and interest/group based social media. Just not public algorithmic feeds.

Comment by grim_io 2 hours ago

Alcohol is regulated, why not let them have it too?

Comment by tom86150 9 hours ago

If have read a lot about censorship that this step is doing. Its simply protecting the youth from clever businesses making them dumber every day. They are not cut from communication, they still can call their friends. Teachers complain about the decreasing abilities of youngsters and true addictional behaviour.

Comment by 9 hours ago

Comment by defrost 9 hours ago

It's absurd to read anything about Australia through the lens of an antipodean GBNews Overnight News Editor who's never visited the country.

Other crackin' GBNews headlines by James Saunders include:

* 'Women-only' block of London flats now accepts men who 'identify as women'

* UK town plans balaclava ban after masked youth crimewave - but burkas EXEMPT

etc. ~ https://muckrack.com/james-saunders/articles

Great source of the latest disinformation by the likes of Nigel Farage, Michael Portillo, Jacob Rees-Mogg, et al, but:

  The channel is described as right-wing on political issues.
  As of 2025, polling suggested that GB News is the least trusted of the five main news broadcasters in Britain.

~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GB_News

As to the subject matter, few in Australia thought it would keep kids off of social media, at best most hoped it'd push the tide back a little and provide some leverage for parents to exert more pressure.

Kids flock to where other kids are, so far that's all the usual watering holes after side stepping bans .. it'll take a little longer for larger crowd shifts elsewhere.

Comment by DecentShoes 8 hours ago

"Women-only' block of London flats now accepts men who 'identify as women'"

What's wrong with that one? It's dishonest if something claims to be women only but accepts men. And this is a growing problem, with women who object being sent death and rape threats over it regularly.

Are you saying you support a ban on women only spaces?

Comment by defrost 8 hours ago

I'm stating that GBNews is a cesspit of click / rage - bait headlines from the extreme end of the UK Conservative wing.

I've an interest in the spectrum of UK political opinion and reporting, however GBNews is not a source of balanced reasoned quality journalism, nor is it a source that has good local reporting from Australian stringers.

In general, it's not a HN worthy source.

Comment by moi2388 7 hours ago

Yes. I support a ban on women only spaces. Discrimination by gender is illegal.

Then why about dressing rooms etc? Simple, make individual cabins. Problem solved.

Comment by wredcoll 8 hours ago

Give it a rest, nigel. Find some other place to peddle your malicious hatemongering.

Comment by MentatOnMelange 9 hours ago

This is a strong argument in favor of hardware-based verification. Just force everything in the app store to verify whether a iphone is "child-locked" in some way. Also makes it much harder to bypass by users. And of course no risk of having your personal information exposed by data breaches that way.

Comment by moi2388 7 hours ago

Or to finally ban illegal Chinese products, both hardware and software..

Comment by platevoltage 7 hours ago

Why would you need to ban something that's illegal?