Govt mulls ID points to use for social media

From the article:

"The federal government is considering requiring identification checks for the use of social media platforms as part of its broader big tech crackdown, a proposal which has been rejected by a range of experts.

The final report from a government-led parliamentary inquiry into family, domestic and sexual violence included a recommendation that government legislate a requirement that for users to open or maintain a social media platform, they must provide 100 points of identification...."

"...But the proposal is misguided and potentially dangerous, and it’s especially disappointing that it has become the main focus from a significant and important report, Electronic Frontiers Australia chair Lyndsey Jackson said.

“It’s certainly problematic that identity and anonymity online comes as a quick fix. It’s come in a climate where politicians are very uncomfortable with how much scrutiny their own backyard is being put under,” Ms Jackson told InnovationAus.

“It’s quite convenient for a lot of people to reduce anonymity online. From a practical position, giving 100 points of identification over to social media platforms, even what is a social media platform and where you draw the line on those, certainly there are a lot of platforms where you would not want them to have all that data on you,” she said.

“It’s not like any of these platforms have systems that people can trust to hand over all of this information.”

The identification proposal is a “red herring”, and attention should instead be focused on the report’s other important recommendations, Ms Jackson said.

“It is worth nothing that this has come from this inquiry into family, domestic and sexual violence, and the report makes a range of recommendations that are probably going to shift the needle and create improvements a whole lot more than the social media identification one,” she said."