The Economist-20241207期「Business」Tech regulation: Tech v teens
02 全文梳理
【para1】政策出台👉澳大利亚通过法案禁止16岁以下青少年使用社交媒体，以保护其免受网络危害。
【para2】规则现状👉尽管社交媒体设有年龄限制，但普遍执行不力，许多年轻用户仍通过冒用信息使用平台。
【para3】政策趋严👉出于对青少年心理健康的担忧，全球多地加强监管，澳大利亚成为首个实施全面禁令的国家。
【para4-7】实施禁令的种种难题
-para4 年龄验证👉因为缺乏可靠的年龄证明方法，许多公司使用机器学习通过自拍来估计年龄。
-para5 技术挑战👉年龄检测技术存在种族偏差，对深色肤色青少年预测误差更高。
-para6 界定争议👉澳大利亚的禁令范围引发争议，将TikTok纳入禁令，但豁免了YouTube和电子游戏。
-para7 责任归属👉争论集中于由社交媒体平台还是操作系统或应用商店承担年龄检查的责任。
【para8】平台差异👉年龄限制对初创公司负担更重，对青少年用户比例较高的平台影响较大。
【para9】影响未知👉目前尚不清楚禁止青少年使用社交媒体将如何影响他们成年后的兴趣，但某些应用可能会因禁令而处于不利地位。
03 原文阅读 708words
Tech regulation: Tech v teens
Australia plans to ban social media for under-16s. Can it?
Tech regulation: Tech v teens
Australia plans to ban social media for under-16s. Can it?
[5] That still means errors at the margin, especially for people with dark skin, who tend to be underrepresented in training data. Yoti, which checks ages for Meta on products including Facebook Dating, reports an average error of about a year for light-skinned 13- to 17-year-olds, and a year and a half for dark-skinned teens.
[6] Technical challenges aside, how broad should crackdowns on social media be? The category spans everything from video to messaging. Australia has suggested that TikTok will fall under its ban but that YouTube will be exempt, for its “significant” educational content. Video games are also off the hook, though they have become increasingly social as children use platforms like Roblox to chat as well as play.
[7] Another question is who should carry out the checks. Australia is placing the burden on the social-media platforms: “You create the risk, you’ve got to deal with it,” says Mr Allen. Meta and others say the checks should instead be done by operating systems or app stores, making it Apple’s and Google’s problem. That would allow users to have their phone vouch for their age anonymously, rather than hand over mugshots or IDs to every social network, gambling app or porn site they visit. For now, governments seem wary of making Apple and Google create global ID registries of their billions of users.
[8] Age limits will hit some social platforms harder than others. The cost of performing checks will be more burdensome for startups than incumbents (Yoti quotes between three and 31 cents per check, depending on volume). And whereas only about 5% of Facebook’s users in America are under 18, at Snapchat the figure is 19% (see chart). Young users at least are not especially valuable to advertisers: ads aimed at under-16s probably make up a “low single-digit percentage” of spending, estimates Brian Wieser of Madison and Wall, an ad consultancy. Meta has not shown advertisements to under-18s in the EU for more than a year, amid a legal dispute; its bottom line has hardly been dented.
[9] No one yet knows the extent to which keeping teens off social media will reduce their interest as adults. But apps like TikTok, which is already threatened with an outright ban in America, could be disadvantaged if they are banned for teenagers while direct rivals such as YouTube are let off. The big winners from a social-media crackdown may be alternative types of screentime, such as gaming—at least so long as the enthusiasm for banning children’s online pursuits goes no further. ■
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