Australian Senate, last sitting of the year. No idea when the Social Media Ban debate is kicking off.
If anyone’s keen, feel free to give a live run-down of anything interesting in this thread.
(sorry about all the edits, just trying to get a decent thumbnail: 
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It’s a wild overstep peddled in the name of “think of the children!!”
As any 12 year old with a porno mag will tell you, kids will get around this without even blinking. And the fun fact is that I, a grown arse adult three times their “acceptable” age to fuck around with the dangerous social media will coincidentally be asked to prove my age, full name, address to any comment I may make online and boy oh boy wait until I say something that disagrees with the obsidian order.
This comment right here. Not a fan of this bill at all and may potentially leave any platform that demands this information and/or ‘digital id’.
Moving countries here. just gonna post on this instance for nostalgia
For real? Hyperbole? Or vpn joke
Not OP, but this garbage solidified my decision that I wish to move countries sometime soon. I think the EU’s done a good job at regulating corporations while also not making such over the top decisions, and generally respecting democratic processes when they do make heavy handed decisions
The GDPR has been completely ineffective.
Instead of preventing immoral businesses from collecting our data, it has forced moral and immoral businesses to make their websites completely useless unless we give them explicit permission to collect our data. We get that stupid, ineffectual modal pop up whenever we visit their site, and no matter how many permissions we give them, they are forced to ask every time.
The thing is All-The-Countries are just as bad (if not worse).
At least we have preferential voting in Australia so (if we can educate our idiotic fellow voters) we have a (theoretical) chance to vote both major parties out.
Wasn’t the digital ID addressed in the debate? It seems the main refutations are “it won’t fix everything immediately” and “digital ID will be enforced for everyone”. The only valid complaints I’ve heard are about digital ID which is only one of the way the government will require these companies to verify if I’ve understood the debate. I think “a small portion will work around it” is a weak excuse to avoid dealing what has been a big problem practically since the inception of social media.
Misinformation and snake oil salesmen have been issues since we invented society. This is the new iteration of it. Decrying it as the new biggest bad no one has ever seen before that must be slain is an absolute copout.
‘They will get around it’ - how is that a weak argument? I can guarantee you it will jot be a small portion. The entire purported point of this is to ‘protect’ children from being exposed. If they’re not protected whats the point? Why do this? To make yourself feel beeter and performative? That’s the same fuckin’ cancer in a new hat
As others have pointed out, the issue is media literacy, a blanket ban won’t resolve that. And what good will unleashing a bunch of uneducated and unexposed sixteen year olds on reddit do anyway? We’ll still have the same damned issue, only with older people. Hell, my in laws got sucked into the conspiracy cooker shit and they’re hitting 70.
SM is attractive as it’s a wider society to play in. The bad faith actors attract and prey on people who are receptive due to issues outside of SM, actual rl societal issues and banning kids will just add a delicious slip of forbidden fruit to the fuckers.
The proper comment is here but I’ll quote.
“In the future we are going to look back on seeing children use iPads that directly connect them to the most sophisticated engagement and manipulation algorithms ever as something as horrid as a child smoking a cigarette, or doing any other drug”
Are you aware of dark patterns? How’re they’re all through websites and games now? To the extent that AI now inadvertently writes websites to include because practically all data their trainings are polluted with them? Simply “educating” people out of what amounts to nearly hostile platforms and algorithms is ludicrous. I get a lot of the criticism for the bill I do. People try to pin this as people crying “think about children” and “just let parents work it out” are woefully misinformed and parent have been failing for decades now.
I also thinks it worth noting that the senators in opposition (and unsurprisingly now commenter) all seems to be using highly emotive language to criticise the bill. A lot of reducto ad absurdum going on as well (like 3 comments I’ve seen so far with “think of the children” nonsense). Frankly pretty telling.
I think you’re rather missing the point.
Yes, we have dark patterns, we have algorithms subtly coded and designed to drive us towards desired outcomes. These are the problems, and hitting the ae of 16 won’t make them go away. It won’t make you less susceptible. That’s explicitly why I referred to my inlaws falling down the batshit rabbit hole. There is no immunity from this
If you actually want to tackle the issue, you educate and you punish the behaviour. This utter crap of legislation does nothing to address the issue.
@Taleya
SM?
Sado-masochism?
Ohhhh…
Social Media!
Come to think of it, aren’t they the same thing?
@CTDummy
The social media problem is a media literacy problem. You don’t teach media literacy by shielding children from media. It’s a legislative band-aid in lieu of a solution that we can’t be assed to implement.
Nevermind that the purported exemption for Youtube, presumably on the basis that Youtube is useful, is not objective.Tiktok and other platforms have equal potential for usefulness - and if you don’t think so, I’d challenge you to explain why?
The proper comment is here but I’ll quote.
“In the future we are going to look back on seeing children use iPads that directly connect them to the most sophisticated engagement and manipulation algorithms ever as something as horrid as a child smoking a cigarette, or doing any other drug”
Are you aware of dark patterns? How’re they’re all through websites and games now? To the extent that AI now inadvertently writes websites to include because practically all data their trainings are polluted with them? Simply “educating” people out of what amounts to nearly hostile platforms and algorithms is ludicrous. I get a lot of the criticism for the bill I do. People try to pin this as people crying “think about children” and “just let parents work it out” are woefully misinformed and parent have been failing for decades now.
It’s pretty bad, but the hyperbole comparison to a global leading cause of premature death is a bit over the top. Besides, as I previously addressed: this legislation will not solve the problem, neither by its intent or practical application.
The Luddites had good points, but ultimately the species continues marching forward and is better off for it.