ian_holt

the article also mentions; <But the government puts much of the onus on social media platforms to ensure users understand the verification process and on users to read up to make sure they aren’t being scammed.>

Unfortunately, the said-government doesn't seem to worry about the fact that their own systems have been breached over the years

we are having similar issues here in Australia with the government very quickly trying to become the overall "Lord of our Lives". Digital Id, banning kids from whatever/whenever the government dreams up another idea "to keep them (and us) safe". Nope, that is the job of the parents. Digital currency is another "awesome" idea, as far as they are concerned. Because, you see, we should not travel too far or eat too much meat, etc. And the "good old" Agenda 2030, where it sounds so wonderful, where "you will own nothing and be happy". Of course that won't include the elites - they will be very happy and own everything

<s there a plan to start fining the social media companies themselves? Or raise their liability thresholds?>

they will apparently be fined around AUD$50M if they fail to do due diligence (not sure how the legislation phrases. I am not sure if any social media company has at this stage. Unfortunately we have a dictator as a so-called e-safety commissioner backed up by an equally useless PM who seem to think all parents are unable to monitor themselves or their kids online behaviour

<I wonder if a cease and desist to their legal department would work better?>

I assume you mean the LinkedIn legal dept. The problem there is that these companies are so big that a 'complaint' or 'cease & desist' to them would be like a mosquito bite, if that, & most likely get lost in the 10s of thousands of other complaints.

It's the same with FB & Insta, etc. One of my daughters had a FB acct taken over that she had accumulated quite a following (~100k plus) with her custom hand drawn artwork. It was impossible to get any acknowledgement of the issue let alone get a suitable solution. And, unfortunately these large companies do not care. Sometime makes you wonder if LinkedIn & the like are even worth it

<The memory makers can't just sell to only AI companies forever, if they do Chinese manufacturers will move in and eventually eat them from below (as has happened many times before)>

Unfortunately this has been happening almost forever. You can spend 10s of thousands of $$ design, prototyping, building & marketing anything, whether a physical product or software & some company where the wages are lower are going to come along, build it cheaper (not necessarily better quality either) and ship it to the world.

As a result, the other countries import more stuff "because it is cheaper" and eventually local manufacturing dwindles away to virtually nothing. That is the case here in Australia. Our manufacturing base has shrunk to stuff all compared to what we had 30 years ago & as a result we are poorer as a nation for it

I found I had exactly that issue ~3 months ago. A particular government department had their systems hacked and 1 of my email addresses became public along with 10s of thousands of other users. That in itself was bad enough except that this particular department had known about the breach about 2 months earlier and to make matters worse they had not been aware that the breach had occurred back in June 2025.

<We need to establish measures of accountability for data holders. Not securing customer data appropriately needs to be prosecutable, and the affected parties need to be given a right for compensation>

I 100% agree with you here. The trouble is, the government which are often the ones to push for major court-issued penalties when corporations stuff up, don't want to be held to the same level of scrutiny and penalty. Go figure

<In his own words: "you become dumber under a smart wing". Sharing because I think this applies to many things in life.>

Applies a lot in life, eh. The old expression re muscles "if you don't use it, you lose it" applies a lot to coding or even in just normal day to day systems maintenance. Asking an AI agent, do to simple task just because "an agent is quicker or more effective" will quite often end up costing more in the long run do to one not remembering "how" to do something

you had me interested at the word "pancake" but I ain't gonna do maths to get it

<The only effective tools parents have is to disallow or remove devices from their kids. It will work at the beginning but as they grow up it will become impossible, since at some point kids get influenced mostly by their friends' circle>

Very true & having 6 kids of my own, I know that only too well. I still don't like the idea of Mr Government trying to tell me how to raise my family. Here in Australia the government seems to like that a lot...

And in addition to that, it is the role of the parents to be having the say in what their kids should and shouldn't be doing. As far as I am concerned most governments stick their collective noses in where they are not required. And, yeah, I do agree that kids shouldn't be on social media. Having sid that, even some adults shouldn't be on social media...

I quite like that idea also. And I would not have thought it would be that difficult to implement in most systems these days

Having 1 or 2 backup email accounts and/or an SMS sent to a registered mobile phone number seems to me to be relatively simple to implement

Along with a built-in delay, the inconvenience of having to wait is way better than losing access to critical accounts

Unfortunately, we seem to lose more than we really gain, much of the time. Often it is 'sold' to us as 'convenient' but, I suspect, more often than not we don't gain that much

Call me stupid maybe, but when I was studying, whether school, college or whatever I always aimed for 100% in my results as I knew I would not get 100% and I knew if I aimed for 80-90%, then I would get that either. And I have always taught my own kids the same. Shoot for the stars and you might get somewhere near them...

I better not show my beautiful, flower-loving wife this article. We already have enough flowers (and I would like to be able to keep our home)

>In my experience, a decent proportion of people have always been nervous about joining in. I'd wager that for many of the onlookers it isn't driven by a creativity/participation thing, it's just a (pretty normal) fear of embarrassing themselves. Scroll back 30 years and I would undoubtedly be one of those awkward teenagers wanting to join in but scared to do so out of fear of embarrassing myself.

You just described me 40 odd years ago :))

I wish I knew about this site when I was trying to teach my kids to tie their shoelaces. Man, the hours I wasted and the hair I pulled out back then! :)

In addition, to the fact that governments are still run by us mere mortals, is the fact that even the government is unable to 100% to guarantee that our data is "safe" in their hands...

I agree with that too. Whilst we here in the "Land Down Under" (Australia) seem to have a fixation on NOT wanting to go down the nuclear energy route and we seem rather keen on tearing down our last remaining coal-fired power stations and 'trying' to rely on so-called renewables. From direct experience, our energy costs have gone through the roof and regardless of what our 'wonderful' politicians tell us, that is not going to change any time soon. We seem to want to just give our uranium to USA, Japan, France, and South Korea so they can make cheap energy, whilst we send our best coal to Japan, China & India. Go figure...

I have a similar issue with the couple of cats we have in our office (known also as my home). Either they want to go outside, get fed (again), or simply just decide they need attention more than I need to work. But still, sometimes it is a nice distraction, and sometimes that distraction is what I needed to help me actually re-focus on the task at hand :)