Why are so many countries like Australia, UK, EU, etc suddenly pro censorship. Aren’t these all liberal democracies? I would think these policies would be very unpopular. Is there some analysis of how this came to be normalized?
1. we don't have as an antagonistic relationship with our government and we trust that most of what will be banned will be gross stuff we don't want weirdos watching.
2. I think most people feel social media really is breaking young people, and its easier if all kids are banned than just trying to ban your own kids. It's really hard to explain to a kid why they are not allowed to watch you tube when every other kid is.
Update: Also, the only thing this law is going to do is to force every parent in Australia to create accounts for their kids.
They have one with us.
Laws created based on parent's inability to explain something to their kids are invariably shit.
Unfortunately, this has propagated down to a lot of the people. They want the government to be the parent instead.
As Jordan Shanks once said - "I have 6 investment properties" is the entire personality of a lot of Aussies. Many others are the same they just don't have the opportunity.
This whole situation appears to be a failing on all angles. From government over reach, corporate greed by forgoing morals to the people who are so worn down they just don't have anything left to give.
I would have more respect if they just came out and said you can't be anonymous on social media any more. When you post, somebody needs to know who you are, how old you are, and where you live.
I think the world would be a better place if everybody would just pull their head in and get off social media.
With respect to Donald Horne, its not the 60's any more, and there are plenty of great Australian ideas and culture. The hottest 100 last weekend is a great reminder of how much great Australian music there is.
I'm not sure the approach taken by Australia will be effective (i'm not sure how it can be implemented), but i don't see the problem with doing something against harmful companies like meta, tiktok, x/twitter
One of the study https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10476631/
I don't agree with the approach from the Australian government and I don't see that at being effective but regulating shady companies using deceptive techniques to maximise their profit is a necessary thing.
Personally I think differentiating impact on kids/teens and adult is a mistake and the approach should be around really strict control on data collection as well as strict control on the use/abuse of manipulative techniques to create addictions.
Australia tends to be more willing to make collectivist decisions like this, unlike America which places immense value on individual choice.
Australia used to have energy for protesting this sort of shit, but its all spent.
We used to have a pretty decently funded anti internet censorship lobby. It died in the 2010s.
Since then its just been hit after hit after hit. Any minute justification is seized upon to wind up internet freedoms.
Former PM Turncoat said “The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia,” That was 2017. And so far its been a bipartisan position.
The truth is that industry used to also oppose censorship. But its been completely captured. Every time one of these censorship proposals come through, Ausnog gets the usual "Should we act this time?" emails, and nothing comes of it.
Its over. Freedom of Communication is dead in this country, instead of our politicians.
All the campaigns I was involved in for well over a decade achieved absolutely nothing because of this. It is worse than that now, seeing the screws slowly get tightened on peaceful protests makes this even worse. They cant just ignore it but actively suppress it and get away with it.
A few years back I wrote an essay about the passing of Ted Kaczynski, it was never published as they said to be a topic you do not touch. However my conclusion was that I fear the "children of Ted", those that end up being so silenced, end up radicalized by their own oppression that violence becomes their only answer. I suspect we are only a decade or two away from this on a lot of issues.
I'm happy to be proven wrong about any of that though. It's been quite a few years since I read it.
I completely agree with your "Children of Ted" hypothesis, for that matter. Historically, oppression births revolutionaries, for better or worse.
Charles Stross calls it the Beige Dictatorship. As long as they agree on 99% they can do whatever they want without public support. And you bring this up with low information voters and they just say "But Blorbus will decrease health spending by 3% thats a huge difference!!!" meanwhile all our civil liberties are eroded.
Not in the idealistic sense that you imply, so this has always been normalized, and variations of such policies have always been implemented
Particularly highly religious parents, like those in Utah.
Social media is undermining the fabric of our societies and destroying a whole generations emotional development. I support this- in part because I know those who want to get around enough or be private will always find a way, but it has a positive, reality affirming effect on the public.
Watch the press conference from our PM and comms minister from yesterday to understand that this is coming from a place of compassion or control. They have said repeatedly they will always ensure a non id method is ensured. I know there are flaws in that though. https://youtu.be/SCSMQUmrh38?feature=shared
Maybe this is what you meant? it's what the CSIRO and the Privacy Commissioner said was their recommended method to do proofs of age/identity through government issued documents, without revealing what the URL was being accessed.
Next time dont do that.
It is people who dont understand technology getting frothed up by media scares into believing government promises about censorship.
> They have said repeatedly they will always ensure a non id method is ensured
And you believed them?
Terminally online types complain all day about how social media is terrible and needs to be regulated until the moment actual legislation is being passed then they complain about that instead.
> Terminally online types complain all day about how social media is terrible and needs to be regulated until the moment actual legislation is being passed then they complain about that instead.
'Terminally online types?', 'complain all day?'
You have broad assumptions, exaggerations, and stereotypes in that one sentence. It could be the dictionary definition of strawman.
Even if that were the case, demanding a solution doesn't mean accepting a bad solution.
"My dog is hungry" "Well I killed your dog and it no longer experiences hunger, please clap"
I need you to understand that you have put at severe risk a lot of good honest people for a false sense of security that is more likely to push kids into worse places than actually prevent harm. With the inclusion of Youtube, its likely the government is going to ramp this up to apply to any website with a comment section. Civil Liberties are easy to destroy in this manner, but oh so difficult to restore. We fought, hard, against internet filtering in this country. We shouldn't have to re-litigate it every 5 years or so while getting white anted by our own.
If there's something worse than ashamed, its where you should be right now.