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Comment by nojs | Hacker News Reader

Ok, so what’s the real reason the government wants this?

Well, the Australian government has shown it's willing to throw people into camps against their will, so...greater control of the population would be my guess.

You know. To keep kids safe.

They want us to live in Utopia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJYaXy5mmA8

The Australian Government wants social media to be able to identify users who make posts so they can be sued for defamation. Age verification is just an easy to accept start, getting people on board and setting the legal precedent of requiring foreign owned social media companies to collect this private and dangerous information (and note, Australia is also suing these same companies for abusing private information they collect). Assuming the opposition goes along for the ride, identity verification will also kick in before making Youtube comments, Facebook posts or comments, or Tweets. And maybe Mozilla will make some money marketing their VPN as a privacy service for Australians.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-28/social-media-laws-onl...

There is no connection between this and what is in the article, which is about age verification for viewing adult content. If you are commenting on social media, those companies already have all your information.

There is no provable connection, no. But I do find it a coincidence that age verification is being pursued now rather than years ago, just months after the government started pressing for social media to be able to identify users so they can be sued for defamation, bullying etc. Social media may already know who many users are, but they obviously can't prove it to the satisfaction of the courts or with enough reliability or this would not have become an issue.

The ~only reason gov't ever does anything is because they think it looks good to voters.

And any given voter doesn't have "wants" or "beliefs", just violent mood swings and social performance.

This isn't really even a bug of government's! Government action is very often valuable and necessary. But the incentive structure is such that modeling the gov't as a somewhat-rational entity with well-formed desires is usually not the correct frame to start with, IMO

"because the voters want it" is just how they spin it, the reason is to have a chilling effect on expressing dissatisfaction with whatever party is in power.

"Princeton University study: Public opinion has “near-zero” impact on U.S. law.": https://act.represent.us/sign/problempoll-fba/

The government does the bidding of the economic elites. Economic elites don't vote, they buy influence.

I think we also need to realize that those in power aren't necessarily plain old rich like the monocle guy from Monopoly or Mr Burns from the Simpsons. They're just connected, powerful, to a degree rich, and sometimes plain old skilled orators that can convince a lot of people.

If that's the case, then we should be able to do a referendum for legislation this "big" to go through, right? I'd argue that the lack of a robust, accessible and easy form of referendums means we're not fundamentally different to a dictatorship.

I admire Switzerland's system, where the people can petition for a referendum to delete any law they don't like.

This forces the politicians to negotiate with motivated minorities before creating new laws.

Instead in the U.S. we allow rich people and corporations (who are not voters!) to give money to politicians. In most other democracies this is illegal and considered to be corrupt.

Swiss system also allows people to pass any law that they like. For example, the infamous law banning construction of minarets.

I'm also not sure how this is supposed to help minorities (motivated or otherwise), since the referendum is country-wide.

Thanks for your comment, I had not heard of the minaret ban [0], which was an amendment passed by a double-majority (people and cantons), and was considered to violate existing constitutional protections.

I guess this is what happens in a democracy when enough people believe in doing something, even if that something is not right by everyone. Many forms of government are susceptible to this, depending on the culture. The world would be a better place if people had more respect for each other.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Swiss_minaret_referendum

You are not the voter anymore. Watch the second half of GCP Greys. Rules for Rules on youtube, or read the book its based on if you want to understand. The video is a really good summary though.

The "Five Eyes" anglosphere establishment uses Australia as a testbed for authoritarian measures that may later be implemented in the others.

For the greater good. </s>

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