Meta starts kicking Australian children off Instagram and Facebook

[Users] who believe they have been wrongly categorised as under 16 can ask for a review and submit a "video selfie" to verify their age. They can also provide a driver's licence or a government-issued identification.

Because uploading your image and ID to Meta isn't a security risk at all, oh no.

Why are governments helping Meta and friends harvest their citizens' data? Evil or clueness?

Surveillance capitalism just wants to completely destroy all anonymity for data harvesting, propaganda, and control purposes.
...
Considering Epstein didn't kill himself, and literally none of his hundreds/thousands of oligarch-customers have faced any consequences, this pedelephant in the room could very well be what chat control, photo scanning, etc is actually all about.
Parent takes photo of their baby/child in the rudey nudey > custom pedo-developed algorithm flags it as potential child porn > sends image/vid to gov server for "verification" > data gets "hacked" by pedos.
Same system could easily be adapted to stealing everyones private sex pics/vids, as the entire idea is that it's performed by closed source applications in the background, without the user ever being aware.
And with the way CSAM works, governments could easily insert hashes of ANY files — say a whistleblower steals the un-redacted Epstein files — so OS's/services would identify everyone who had downloaded that file(s), sending the alarm straight to the secret police's surveillance system; maybe they could be silenced before they've had a chance to tell anyone.
I "lost" my old FB account because they demanded my ID to verify my legal name, near 11 years ago. I fucking refuse, and will always refuse.
Fuck Zucc.
- I got flagged on Facebook for using an obviously fake name. So I changed to a more plausible sounding name and it worked. I had prepared a doctored passport scan but it wasn't necessary.
  For another FB account they wanted me to get at least two user friends to verify they know me or some bs like that. I didn't bother. Years later I was able to log into that one anyhow.
  They know that they can't push too hard.
- What do you use instead for online social groups? Do you ever hit a group or business that's only on Meta apps, whether fakebook or whatsapp?
- That's just silly. Can you provide evidence to this? Or is it just feefees
Evil, since they probably have backdoors into all of those systems. Though I’m not sure why they want a bunch of videos of 16 year olds…
- Though I’m not sure why they want a bunch of videos of 16 year olds…
  Do they have pizza restaurants with secret basements in Aus? /s

(But keeping their data)

Of course. They are gathering data from people who have never even had a meta account.
- Yes because if someone installs the Facebook app they have had their phone contacts list slurped. They then build a map of our circles of friends.

The problem is not even social media itself, but the fact that profit-driven ANYTHING cares more about money than its own consumers. Quite frankly, what should be happening is to see some of these people changing to better alternatives, like Mastodon and Lemmy.

Finally, I do not believe this will remain only for the 16- age group. I am aware this is extreme speculation, but this may eventually roll out to some “dangerous” adults, then union workers (again, “dangerous), then women, then everyone that is not wealthy enough to bribe oneself into social media. I also believe this is one of many steps to castrate the future of the young, and to control the narrative.

Do not take my word for it, however; check back in this post, some years from now.

Usually I'm against this sort of thing but hear me out:

it'll at least keep SOME kids off social media
"kids will just use VPNs" >> some will, but maybe govs will finally realise how stupid trying to block things are and actually start regulating social media properly
"kids will just join other social medias" >> not great but maybe that'll help break meta's dominance?

kids will just use VPNs" >> some will, but maybe govs will finally realise how stupid trying to block things are and actually start regulating social media properly
We're seeing in real time that some (US) states that pass these stupid age verification laws are already going after VPNs instead of realizing their law is dumb.
I can guarantee they're going to try to completely outlaw VPNs before they do any kind of meaningful regulation on social media, when they can use that as a massive data warehouse by making favorable decisions to the oligarchs running them.

Why don't people just use ai to generate fake licenses? Fight the system.

You know I stopped at "meta is kicking Australian children" and had a good laugh.

Hilarious truncated headlines are hilarious.

We have won, but at what cost...

Correction: they think they've won, but only because they're clueless.

If I had kids, I'd say an hour of social media is fine. After that, give me the phone and do your damn homework you dumb kid.

Good you don’t have any.

So how does this affect all those kids with Meta Quest VR? This is why I don't own a quest and still have HTC goggles regardless of that flaws.

I would imagine not at all given that you don't need a facebook account for Quest and the headset doesn't count as social media.
- They're making it harder and harder to use without a FB account. I believe the newest one is near impossible.