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: )
I don’t see how the communist remark is relevant. Social media has proliferated largely unchecked. They are potentially damaging platforms, especially for younger people. That’s ignoring the rampant misinformation. I mean have a look at X and the “your body my choice” nonsense. I’m surprised people are genuinely advocating for the multimillion dollar corporations being in charge rather than our government.
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’.
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 not 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 better 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 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?
We’re in danger of a domino effect happening across the planet where governments finally have the de facto authorization to scour youth and youth culture off the web. For millions this is the loss of a right to access they had assumed from birth. Any argument that applies to children browsing the web applies to adults, since we recurringly prove we’re not better decision makers than children.
In my country the elite are pedophiles who want to marry children and allow them to be employed debt trapping them and then forcing them into a financial corner. Our highest lawman was nearly an actual known child sex trafficker but his appointment would have sparked a World War III like series of disclosures and open blackmailing because there are now too many pedophiles running the government to effecticely threaten each other.
There is a type of common sexual deviancy inspired by eastern cartoons that fetishizes the undeveloped body. It is commonly defended by its connosieurs as valid art from a superior enlightened culture. There is a throughline of normalization of child marriage and relationship forming that is slowly being legitimized and trust me it was already legal in half my country to marry children, but not acceptable.
Meanwhile childrens identities are making them targets in school hallways, bathrooms, and gymnasiums. The ramifications of the social world order bear down on them without their consent or understanding. Fascism splits up children into tribal groups and targettable minorities just the same as adults.
Darkest of all is the future promise of more children disappearing into a black hole. Closed borders where only ICE and men like Matt Gaetz and the late great Epstein have the power to move through unabbated. In Trump’s first administration they told us to our faces they lost 1,488 children. 1,488 necessary victims of border policy. They lost more than that, 1,488 if you don’t know, is a Nazi dogwhistle referring to the 14 words and then signalling allegience to Adolph Hitler. They told us to our face they threw fifteen hundred children down a well. Where are they now?
Who benefits ultimately from controlling what children see and think? Who benefits from being able to silence them? Who benefits from being able speak for children?
Children’s rights and liberties are a flashpoint in our civilizations understanding, worship, and secret contempt for the concept of natural and civil rights. When they’re shoved off the net another much more easily targettable adult minority will be next.
But that’s the problem, this bill does absolutely nothing to rectify that. They could try and hold the companies to account (good luck with Elon on Trumps team), or even better, they could snap back to reality and actually look at educating kids how to navigate and use these online spaces.
Do you think that kids at 16, suddenly getting access with no prior experience or knowledge of how the systems work will be better?
- We have existing regulation about media and who can watch it, we should update this and apply it as well as we can to new technologies.
- Children should be taught how to verify information and utilise online spaces healthily, like it or not, these spaces will be around in some form.
- Parents should be taught how to work with their children and should be held accountable, same as if i let my 13 yr old go to an R rated movie.
There are much worse places than instagram and tiktok, that won’t be following any government recommendations. This bill does nothing but enhance the surveillance state, as everyone will be required to verify their identity, what the government is really doing is fighting online anonymity, but please just think of those poor little kids.
I agree with all your criticism of social media, I hate it (this is the only platform I am on) but if they pass this bill, social media will still be round, fucking up the world, just the same.
