U16 Social Media Ban - Senate 1hr debate before the vote, some time tonight on the livestream
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:
)"Comrade! Papers! NOW!"
I remember when we used to be horrified at some of the terrible regimes and their draconian requirements and powers.
And yet, here we are happily strolling into the same situation.
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.
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?
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.
Question; Would you rather incompetent public servants retaining one set of your personal data or multiple commercial interests collecting your personal data?
Except in the case of a data breach, your information is much more secure with The Government as long as they are kept accountable.
Unfortunately the Shit Party and the Shit Lite Party appear to be doing everything they can to prove that government is not accountable, (except for their “Lobbyists”).
Call of duty lobbies mentioned in senate. What a time to be alive lmao
Yes, and rightly so. Because this bill is so immensely stupid and the process by which it has been enacted so deeply undemocratic, that even a moron like Canavan (or was it Antic?) can see that the way they've carved out exemptions is haphazard and poorly thought through.
Why does Labor always do this? Instead of concentrating on good social policy and undoing some of the pro-corporation crap the Liberals have snuck in, they come up with some utter stupidity about the internet and end up dying on that hill.
Internet filter repeat incoming. This will be their undoing next election.
I have warned about this. Access to online services will soon be locked behind your mygov id.
These plans have been in motion for a long time.
Too many kids die over this shit. The corpos have had, what, 15 years (?) to sort this shit out.
So now we see the heavy handed government regulation coming along. That’s what happens.
i guess that's true but the system totally shouldn't function that way at all, group punishment is retarded.
we pay these dumbasses to run our government for us, shouldn't we be holding them accountable when they do dumb shit like this, rather than just accepting it as how the real world is?
Come to Darwin where because there are people who get drunk and do stupid shit and get banned from buying alcohol, we are all punished and must present I.D every time we purchase takeaway alcohol.
Governments love group punishment because it's easiest to implement.
Have mega corporations like Facebook/meta and Twitter/x been held accountable? Because they’ve resulted in kids killing themselves or developing psychological disorders.
What I’m not seeing is the backlash against those.
Fuck our useless government. Incompetent like most. But I’m so sick of the corpos getting a little bit of outrage and then not only do people move on in short order, but they keep using their platform and generating profit for them.
So now we all have to hand over ID to the government which will link our real identities to our online activity?
And that's a good idea you think?
Are you sure you can't imagine a scenario where that might be an issue?
Actually, don't worry. Government databases never get hacked, and politicians never deceive the populace for nefarious purposes.
🙄
What about “heavy handed” makes you think I thought this was a good idea?
Is lemmy exempt I wonder?
They prolly don't know it exists. If they do, be prepared to switch instance as I doubt lodion will want to deal with Id checking
I, and at least one other person here sent submissions in specifically mentioning the fediverse.
Mine wasn't a very technical submission, i tried to focus on the value and potential destruction of that value if safeguards aren't allowed for nascent social media.
So at least there is a record of it. My worry is all the Muskivites submissions will drown out ones like mine.
It's not even clear yet what form the ID checking will take. They've rushed this through way too fast and without proper consultation. But there does seem to be some sort of a plan that the ID checking would be done by a government service in some manner, rather than users needing to send ID directly to the platform.
I'll take that as a no
The relevant Minister will be able to give exemptions as needed, but unfortunately there is no threshold for any sort of minimum size requirement or for non-profit community groups. So we would probably, to be completely lawful, need to get chummy with some politicians who can reach out to the Minister and seek an exemption.
(But realistically, we're probably small enough that nobody would notice.)
it's seriously annoying as fuck how there's no exemption for any of these internet regulations based on size, all it it seriously achieves is strengthening corpos and depowering individuals with souls
The info is still really vague but seemed to so far apply to big platforms like reddit and facebook and X - however my info might be outdated by now.
Then again it could be that the fines for non compliance and verification charges might also apply to smaller platforms with less available funding than the big companies, and push them under.
The info I’ve been reading seems to be inconsistent and sometimes even conflict. And yeah, could be outdated by now
Faaark, I'm agreeing with Malcolm Roberts!
Debate's kicked off.
We should ban u16s from public transport. Too many have had fatal accidents due to dangerous behaviour around railways and bus stops. Compulsory learning from home, now!
If you think that’s a solid argument or one based in logic, good news. You’d probably make for an ideal liberal senator.
Satire, I thought it was obvious.