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: elevated photo of the Australian Senate)

  • Taleya@aussie.zoneEnglish
    4·
    14 hours ago

    Misinformation and snake oil salesmen have been issues since we invented society. This is the new iteration of it. Decrying it as the new biggest bad no one has ever seen before that must be slain is an absolute copout.

    ‘They will get around it’ - how is that a weak argument? I can guarantee you it will not be a small portion. The entire purported point of this is to ‘protect’ children from being exposed. If they’re not protected whats the point? Why do this? To make yourself feel better and performative? That’s the same fuckin’ cancer in a new hat

    As others have pointed out, the issue is media literacy, a blanket ban won’t resolve that. And what good will unleashing a bunch of uneducated and unexposed sixteen year olds on reddit do anyway? We’ll still have the same damned issue, only with older people. Hell, my in laws got sucked into the conspiracy cooker shit and they’re hitting 70.

    SM is attractive as it’s a wider society to play in. The bad faith actors attract and prey on people who are receptive due to issues outside of SM, actual rl societal issues and banning kids will just add a delicious slip of forbidden fruit to the fuckers.

    • CTDummy@aussie.zoneEnglish
      1·
      19 hours ago

      The proper comment is here but I’ll quote.

      “In the future we are going to look back on seeing children use iPads that directly connect them to the most sophisticated engagement and manipulation algorithms ever as something as horrid as a child smoking a cigarette, or doing any other drug”

      Are you aware of dark patterns? How’re they’re all through websites and games now? To the extent that AI now inadvertently writes websites to include because practically all data their trainings are polluted with them? Simply “educating” people out of what amounts to nearly hostile platforms and algorithms is ludicrous. I get a lot of the criticism for the bill I do. People try to pin this as people crying “think about children” and “just let parents work it out” are woefully misinformed and parent have been failing for decades now.

      I also thinks it worth noting that the senators in opposition (and unsurprisingly now commenter) all seems to be using highly emotive language to criticise the bill. A lot of reducto ad absurdum going on as well (like 3 comments I’ve seen so far with “think of the children” nonsense). Frankly pretty telling.

      • Taleya@aussie.zoneEnglish
        2·
        16 hours ago

        I think you’re rather missing the point.

        Yes, we have dark patterns, we have algorithms subtly coded and designed to drive us towards desired outcomes. These are the problems, and hitting the age of 16 won’t make them go away. It won’t make you less susceptible. That’s explicitly why I referred to my inlaws falling down the batshit rabbit hole. There is no immunity from this

        If you actually want to tackle the issue, you educate and you punish the behaviour. This utter crap of legislation does nothing to address the issue.