Comment by protocolture
5 days ago
Violent revolution I guess. Genuinely what are the other options?
I made a formal submission to the Australian Government in the very small consulting window they held for the Access and Assistance bill. Pleading with them to consider simply not introducing the law, as there was no justification for it at all. Google also made a submission against the bill, as did many large local and overseas corporations.
The government went ahead anyway.
What are the chances of me swinging any government when Google et al are on the other side, determined to provide privacy and anonymity destroying products to bolster their bottom line?
Probably worth mentioning that the Access and Assistance bill permits the Australian government to secretly (even just verbally) compel anyone building age assurance technology to secretly backdoor it to collect metadata, or any other information they choose. There's no level of safety from the government one can achieve with any app. If they resist they go straight to the Australian version of a secret national security court. The bill doesn't even make it clear whether briefing their solicitor about the request is legal. It doesn't matter how good the crypto is if the app is recording details outside of that. Its all just theatre at this point. There's no safe app, so we should completely resist all attempts to do things the government could restrict, leak or misuse.
I dont see how this is even slightly contentious in the year of our lord two thousand and twenty six, after decades of leaks affirming governments do this stuff, decades of governments and corporations dangerously failing their citizens privacy, when a particular government is hell bent on using all the personal data it can hoover up to persecute migrants and refugees. How are people blindly monofocusing on the crypto while trusting everything else?
There are steps in between “send an email saying don’t do the thing you want” and “murder lawmakers”.
> I dont see how this is even slightly contentious in the year of our lord two thousand and twenty six
Violent revolution in response to data privacy issues?
Tech people really will do absolutely anything to avoid talking to their neighbors and engaging in electoral politics, won't they?
The vast majority of the population supports banning social media for kids so revolution isn't happening. Of course the social media companies object to their product being banned. It's like cigarette companies objecting to plain packaging.
>The vast majority of the population supports banning social media for kids so revolution isn't happening
Age assurance is being used in more than a single scope. I dont disagree that the revolution isnt happening, but theres no need to be so reductive.
>Of course the social media companies object to their product being banned. It's like cigarette companies objecting to plain packaging.
They aren't objecting to age assurance tools. They are objecting to the current ham fisted model, but when they can organise something less nebulous than the current regime they will be fighting to implement it first.
Sure, the implementation details are blunt. But Facebook, Google, and Reddit have had decades to sort this out on their own and yet they have only poured fuel on the problem and watched the ad dollars rain in.
So I have little sympathy that the resulting laws are not optimal for them.
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>The vast majority of the population supports banning social media for kids so revolution isn't happening.
reddit isn't the vast majority of the population, fren. it's 1% of 4%.
unless you've got polls you could show to back up your claim? polls, not opinion pieces. polls asking unambiguous questions like "are you in favor of banning social media?" or "are you in favor of age verification laws?", not vague ones like "are you concerned about the content your kids might see on the internet?". got any of those?
77% of the Australian population were in support of "Proposed ban on social media for children under 16"
https://yougov.com/articles/51000-support-for-under-16-socia...
This was in 2024, since then the attitude is still very much that kids should be taken off social media, but that the current restrictions aren't yet working as the face scanning verification is easily bypassed.
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> 6 in 10 parents worldwide support social media ban for under 16s - but children are divided
> Support among parents for a social media ban for under-16s is highest in Malaysia (77%) and India (75%), Argentina (55%) and lowest in Japan (38%) and Nigeria (39%)
> Globally, the majority of Gen Z (51%) – the first true digital natives – support a social media ban for under-16s. Support for the ban is highest in India (73%) and UAE (67%), Argentina (54%) and lowest in Japan (28%), UK, and Canada (both 40%
https://www.varkeyfoundation.org/post/6-in-10-parents-worldw... Support among parents for a social media ban for under-16s is highest in Malaysia (77%) and India (75%), Argentina (55%) and lowest in Japan (38%) and Nigeria (39%)
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