“Fence the ocean”
According to the recent article, ‘Very blunt approach’:
eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant has expressed reservations about the social media ban for under-16s pushed by Minister for Communications Anika Wells.
“What you’re effectively asking us to do with this is fence the ocean,” she said. “We might be able to create some friction and some degree of safety, but it’s a futile exercise if you think you’re totally stemming the ocean.”
The context for this news report is that recently polling suggests 70% of Australian youth are using social media in defiance of a recently legislated national ban.
“Life finds a way.”
So many endemic problems in our digital ecosystem seem to end up with attempts at fencing the ocean: malware, spam, passwords, and so on. Speaking at a very high level all of these seem to result from design flaws, including: ignoring design intentions, failure to redesign when needed, applications powering through beyond design limits, ignoring slowly festering problems and technical debt until it’s “too late” to ever go back.
As the commissioner states, we “create some friction and some degree of safety” and then call it good enough. This is an especially easy trap for the software industry to fall into because they understand how these things work and so are well equipped to deal with the outcomes — unless everyone else.
Had social media services started out with concerns for child safety and onboarded from the start with appropriate protections we would be in a very different digital world.