shirro

Opening up private company communications to the government makes that data a huge target for foreign intelligence and criminal organisations. Even our allies will happily pass on valuable company secrets to their own companies. Everyone is out for themselves. The software our government uses to analyse data will generally be closed source and supplied by a foreign power and not sufficiently audited.

Unfortunately our politicians are dangerously ignorant about the techological risks to national sovereignty and our economy. So they rely on often dubious advice from parties with a vested interest that is opposed to the public interest.

There are a number of good alternatives. Signal wins because it's well known, easy to use and install. Governments are targetting private communications, not a specific app so their entire class is under threat and alternatives that can be backdoored will be.

It's all very short sighted. If you really want to stop private communications you have to outlaw all people with technical knowledge and access to general purpose computers. I can cobble something together that is secure enough for a criminal or terrorist to communicate with freely available software but it won't be full featured or nice to use.

Taken to the extreme this thinking ends with sending all the people with glasses to "work" some fields in the country because intellectuals challenge the security of the regime. That makes no fucking sense in a liberal democracy. So why even start down this path. Get a warrant and surveill people at the end points. It's the only acceptable solution.

I think YT Kids is shit as a babysitter for little kids particularly when we have the ABC. But my kids are older and have individual accounts with age based limits and it is working really well along with parental guidance ofcourse.

I do not give a fuck about foreign multinationals in general, particularly not tech ones, and I'll back a democratically elected Aussie government and our sovereignty against them on principle. But Youtube's account system is working out well for our family and I don't want to lose it otherwise I am going to have to spend effort on circumvention which is just a waste of everyone's time.

It's just an extension of extremist Christian white nationalism/neonazi shit. They realized terminally online young men were very vulnerable to this sort of grooming way back before gamergate even. It was definately weaponized in the US against Clinton and Harris. It's 90% political in origin.

It is arguably true that many young men are shat on by the world we have created for them compared with the past. Stupid fucking gig economy, home ownership, cost of living, transition from manufacturing to service economy. But the people enslaving their brains are the same people with a foot on their necks keeping them down economically and socially. Pull back the curtains and its a handful of mega rich cunts protecting their fortunes by raising a compliant army of cucks to distort the democratic process.

Young men need to open their eyes and tell the sketchy old pedo dudes trying to manipulate them to fuckoff, NYPA!

There is that other country as well. The one you can get in serious shit for questioning or mentioning genocide.

Being a sovereign nation should mean we can tell the yanks they can fuck off.

Unfortunately they have their corporate and defence hooks into us really badly.

If the current US administration has any global impact it is this: We all need to wake the fuck up, diversify our strategic relationships, and reduce our dependence on the US.

Non-murican - strongly feel preference should be given to genuine refugees fleeing war, famine etc where they have absolutely no ability to influence their fate other than escape. The US is a failed democracy but the people there have barely begun to challenge their government compared to what we have seen elsewhere in the world. And there is still refuge available in blue states. US citizens need to stand up and fight. Then if they fail, only then do they get to go in the queue with the genuine humanitarian refugees. I don't like queue jumpers. Sorry but impingement on your civil liberties doesn't compare with families in war torn parts of the world living in fear fear of having their limbs blown off every night.

Ofcourse business around the world would like to cherry pick talent for in demand jobs. They prefer not to invest in developing local people when they can import experienced talent for less. So people with in demand skills will get in that way, not as refugees.

Do you mean to say what is wrong with US multinational tech companies forcing Australians to log into their services so they can extract more value from them under the cover of a voluntary industry code of conduct they wrote and submitted to their US born ex-employee that isn't mandated by any Australian legislation and isn't part of any Australian party policy to my knowledge?

Ranked choice is bare minimum for a democracy these days. Whatever ancient shit the US has doesn't count anymore. Also get rid of the elected tyrant bullshit and upgrade to parliamentary democracy. Then go for mixed-member proportional for extra credit. Also get rid of voting machines and do it all on paper.

But ripping off vulnerable people is for winners who can pay off politicians.

The for profit social media companies profile users and know their demographics in great detail. Kids are obviously watching different content to adults. They are in an equivalent position to a bottleshop employee letting a 12 year old walk out with a carton of premixes and claiming not only that they didn't know (false) but they want to keep not knowing because it is good for business. The industry only cares about money and has proven they can't self regulate.

The only question is how to react. Not whether to react.

The social media companies are obviously scare mongering and spreading misinformation to protect their financial interests. We need to balance peoples very reasonable demands for privacy with holding predatory corporate behaviour to account. The most likely outcome will be a requirement to use a third party age verification service subject to Australian privacy laws to verify a new user to a service so that there is no need to provide that informtion to the social media companies. People willingly, enthusiastically give their entire life history to Meta along with all their friends, colleagues and family along with photos that allow biometric fingerprinting of their children for life. Giving them a simple yes/no to the question of if you are legal age based on a trusted third party seems a very reasonable request in comparison.

The policy is predicated on protecting children for their mental health and development when they are at a very vulnerable age. Not all kids have responsible and capable parents. Lots of kids live in abusive circumstances, with absent/negligent parents and some kids are forced by circumstances to effectively be the the care givers/providers in their household as their parents guardians may be incapable. The world is really fucking sad sometimes.

When you go into a pub or supermarket and ask for beer or smokes they don't give them to anyone who doesn't have a child lock on them. They ask for proof of age. You can defeat that in various ways but they too are illegal and create risks for those involved. It isn't perfect but it works well enough to reduce harms.

You want something available only to adults, then the convention is you provide proof you are an adult. That is a privacy nightmare if poorly implemented but then so is the entire digital realm right now.

I think we are missing the big opportunity as a society. The social media platforms are making shitloads of money through predatory manipulation of user habits because they get shitloads from advertising. Just ban the fucking advertising. Most of the bad shit goes away overnight for kids and adults because without the advertising the incentives to keep people trapped in a dopamine loop is mostly gone. The big platforms either learn how to produce viable paid services or people move to community run alternatives like this one.