Australia Kicks Kids Off Social Media + Is the A.I. Water Issue Fake? + Hard Fork Wrapped
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
It's your day to play.
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It's your way to love.
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It's your answer to what should I watch? It's your money to save.
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The other day, my friend Kyle is out in the suburbs here in the Bay Area, and he's like in a parking lot, and he sees a car, happened to be a Tesla, and he notices the license plate. And do you know what the license plate said? What did it say? The license plate was hard fork. No. So Kyle listens to the show and for whatever reason assumed that this must have been your car. Wow. And so he walked up to the sort of, you know, passenger's side window, which was down, and he says to the man behind the wheel, oh, hey, do you know Casey? Because he assumes this is you. And the man looks at him and is like, no. And Kyle, you know, of course, becomes embarrassed and explains, oh, well, you know, like there's a podcast and, you know, it's my friend, host it.
And the man looks at him and says this. This is the second time this has happened. Wait, that's amazing. Yeah. So whoever is out there driving the Tesla with the hard fork license plate, we're sorry for the fact that you're just going to be accosted now pretty much every time you park your vehicle.
You know how people put those bumper stickers on their Teslas that say, like, I bought this before Elon went crazy? That guy should buy a bumper sticker that says, I bought this before there was a hard fork podcast.
It would solve all his problems. I'm Kevin Russo, tech columnist at the New York Times. I'm Casey Noon from Platformer. And this is Hard Fork. This week, the drama down under as Australia bans children under 16 from social networks. Will the rest of the world follow? Then, blogger Andy Maisley joins us to separate fact from fiction on AI's environmental impact. And finally, it's our first ever Hard Fork Wrapped. Wrap it up, Kevin.
Well, Casey, I miss you. I know you're in San Francisco this week. I am back in my hometown in Ohio visiting some family, and it's cold here.
Yeah, and let me just explain this. You know, sometimes podcasters get in a huge fight, and they just don't really want to be in the same room for a little bit, and one of them will go home to their family and just kind of cool off. So, Kevin, thank you for taking a step back, and, you know, hopefully cooler heads will prevail here.
Yeah, you're welcome, and I hate you.
No, actually, Kevin went home for the holiday, and it's very sweet, you know, going there to be with your family.
It is weird to be, like, on someone else's, like, Zoom setup, though. Okay, say more. You know, it feels very personal.
Yeah.
It feels like you're sleeping in their bed or something. You know, it's like, things aren't where they were, you know? My windows are everywhere. I've got one monitor over here, one monitor over here.
Well, with that in mind, maybe we should zoom in to what's happening in Australia.
Great transition. Thank you. Love that segue. Thank you. But yes, this is the big tech news this week. On Wednesday of this week, the children of Australia lost access to their social media accounts, many of them, as a new nationwide law went into effect that bars anyone under 16 from having an account on the most popular social media sites.
That's right, Kevin. And I think this is really big news because for more than a decade now, countries have been reckoning over what to do about social media. It seems to have a lot of secondary effects on their people and their countries that they don't like. And yet what to do about it has remained an open question. And people have tried to pass little regulations here and there. This is the biggest step we have seen a democracy yet take to simply say, hey, if you aren't 16 years old, you just actually can't use this at all. And I think that this is the first domino to fall in a move that could reshape how we all use the Internet.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–16:23
2
What happened in Australia’s new law banning under-16s from major social platforms?
16:23–27:32
3
Which apps are covered by Australia’s social media ban and how must platforms verify age?
27:32–52:40
4
How are Australian teens responding to the social media ban and what workarounds are they using?
52:40–1:10:15
5
What outcomes will researchers track to measure the law’s impact on teen mental health?
1:10:15–1:12:08
Speakers
6 identifiedMore from Hard Fork
A.I. Safety Goes Mainstream + a ‘Hard Fork’ Exit AMA
The Ezra Klein Show: The A.I. Revolt Is Here
The A.I. Mob That Attacked Hugging Face + METR’s Ajeya Cotra
Meta Shifts the Blame + Do Data Center Bans Work? + The Final HatGPT
OpenAI’s Two-Week Pause + Jill Lepore on the Threat of the “Artificial State” + Train of Thought
Zuckerberg’s Anti-Doom Fantasy + Finally an A.I. Detector That Works + A.I. Math