The idea in Australia is to place the responsibility on the social media companies.
The government isnt filtering traffic or enforcing behaviour. It is fining companies if they don’t implement a form of age verification that is compliant with privacy laws.
We can’t even make these companies pay tax and obey other laws so I am not very optimistic but at least it raises awareness of the problem.
These systems are based on the flawed assumption that poor people and minorities are less able to manage money that others. It is hugely discriminatory and treated poor people (and specifically the most disadvantaged racial group in the country) like criminals and addicts. It removed personal agency and forced people to use specific retailers, preventing them buying used goods and fresh market produce. The program was expensive and the only people who benefited were the company running it. It is populist divisive nonsense.
Anyway the point is digital payment systems can absolutely be used in democratic states to enforce spending behaviours and you can even see how it starts with people here believing such a system is justifiable. Then it gets extended to other minorities. The elderly, veterans, disabled, unemployed.
Fortunately in a democracy we can educate people as to why overly simplistic solutions that appear to protect vulnerable people are in actuality a really bad idea.
Sadly not entirely true. The incredibly shitty previous government in Australia widely trialed a racist, classist cashless welfare card for indigenous people. Recipients got 80% of their welfare on it and it could not be used for alcohol, gambling or cash incase they spent it on drugs or porn or other “sinful” things.
As we become more dependent on digital systems there are new ways for our privacy and freedoms to be eroded which makes participatory democracy all the more important.
Almost all my transactions are contactless payments and it pisses me off that they all go through VISA when there is a perfectly good local network for debit card payments.
It looks like it will be handled by third party verification services in Australia. You will likely provide some form of ID with age which is likely to be government id and the service will check it then inform the social media company you pass. The legislation doesn’t allow direct government involvement in running the verification service and the verification companies have to conform to privacy laws.
It is certainly a flawed system. If kids want to access things they will and there is potential for abuse. However when considering harm mitigation you need to look at the whole population.
A lot of the more extreme libertarian views on the Internet originate in the US where their “freedoms” of speech and firearms have obviously just been a distraction while they were robbed blind. They couldn’t even protect their school kids from mass shootings because they put ideology and theoretical bullshit ahead of morality, empathy and the survival of their families. I used to buy into the Internet libertarian stuff in a huge way in the days of IRC and Usenet before the mega rich tech bros moved in and turned the Internet into a shitshow of scams, mass-surveillance and brain washing. Still a big proponent of free software and agree with a lot of stuff from the EFF but the oligarchs ruined it. Now I want to burn it down. Anything to keep these nonses away from our kids is good with me.