Reposted by Ben Reid
Ben Reid
@ben-r.bsky.social
837 followers 256 following 117 posts
Human+AI holobiont at the edge of the world 🧠📈🌌 Upgrading the future memia.substack.com 🌱/acc 📚Author: ⏩🇳🇿Fast Forward Aotearoa ffwd.nz 🌐🌏Location: post-meta-Ōtautahi, Aotearoa
![As you are my local MP, I am writing to encourage you, and Labour, not to support National’s Online Safety (Minimum Age and Child Safety Risk Assessment) Bill.
This is a bill that both does not address the problem it is trying to solve, and restricts legitimate democratic organisation of under 16 year olds.
A central issue is that the law initially defines platforms by harmful features, but then exempts whole classes of services according to their stated primary purpose. A messaging or gaming platform may still contain recommender systems, public or semi-public communities, direct contact with strangers, disappearing messages, engagement feedback, commercial profiling, in-game purchases, or other harmful features.
The available NZ evidence [1] [2] identifies harm through content, contact, conduct, commercial practices, and platform design, not simply through conventional social-media feeds.
So the sources of harm identified targeted in the National’s proposed law are not the sources of harm actually being reported by young people. This exemptions method is not fit for purpose.
Academic work has also shown that young people use social media to poltically organise for causes of interest [3], and early evidence from the Australian ban is among under-16 users whose social-media use was significantly disrupted, 51% reported receiving less news as a direct result. Those affected also reported fewer opportunities to discuss news and issues that mattered to them [4].
I think it is part of Labour’s values that young people of the opportunity to participate in society, so that they are active particpants of society as adults.
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