Here are some stories and articles we followed in the last week.

Parents and teens have their "come and take it" moment

World-wide discussion has erupted over the parliament of Australia passing the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024. As with any complex topic, the discussion has been filled with a general lay understanding of the issues, along with a host of misinformation about the topic.

Effectively, the bill calls for Age-restricted social media platforms (ARSMP) to take reasonable steps to prevent the use of their platforms by children under the age of 16.

Some key notes:

• The legislation only calls for platforms to take reasonable steps, which have not been defined
• The Australian government is currently conducting a trial to help test out possible solutions and understand their impact
• There are no civil penalties for consumers
• Penalties for platforms will commence somewhere between 12 months from now and never
• The definition of an "electronic service" which satisfies the definition is fluid right now and may change

There is a lot to unpack with legislation like this and the key question to ask yourself is "What possible futures does having this legislation in place open up?"

Harnessing anticipation

It is interesting to see how complexity and anticipatory methods are being used in different industries at large. This GovLab report is one such example focused providing a policy compass for key issues. In this case it is about human migration and mobility, but the report acts as a good primer and intro to the topics at hand and an example of applying those methods in practice.

Electronic Frontier Foundation launches digital rights bytes

From the article

“It’s increasingly clear there is no way to separate our digital lives from everything else that we do — the internet is now everybody's hometown. But nobody handed us a map or explained how to navigate safely,” EFF Executive Director Cindy Cohn said. “We hope Digital Rights Bytes will provide easy-to-understand information people can trust, and an entry point for thinking more broadly about digital privacy, freedom of expression, and other civil liberties in our digital world.”

It seems like they are just getting this initiative off the ground but it has some good information on important subjects in "byte-sized" form. You can use this website when trying to explain things to your family/friends this coming holiday season!