Comment on Honest Government Ad | Social Media Ban
Mountaineer@aussie.zone 5 days ago
Beyond the above, I feel there’s an inherent value to anonymous conversation that will be lost.
Sure, anonymous conversation allows echo chambers where cookers come up with nonsense - but every societal upheaval in the past would have started with unsanctioned conversations happening behind closed doors.
Woman’s suffrage?
Same sex marriage?
Person-hood/voting rights for indigenous Australians?
It’s easy to see them as obvious now, but once they were illegal.
Those changes occurred in public referendums that started with private conversations.
Zagorath@aussie.zone 5 days ago
This law doesn’t actually change that, necessarily. It applies to “social media”, and not to “chat” applications. As such, Discord is apparently not included (though I’d argue it really should be, under the letter of the law, because it straddles the line between chat and social, but in my experience it sits mostly on the social side of the line), and apps like What’s App, Messenger, and Signal are definitely exempt. The law also doesn’t actually require deanonymisation. Just reasonable steps to demonstrate they are old enough.
You can see how AZ has chosen to go about complying. Other sites might comply just by looking at the age of an account, or usage patterns (e.g., accounts that have talked about jobs, taxes, and home ownership might be presumed to be older, while accounts that talk about Roblox are assumed under age). Or they might use the identifying options of facial recognition and government ID, but through an intermediary so the site itself never traces your account to your real ID. Indeed, this last option is arguably how it should have been required to be done—using blind signatures or zero-knowledge proofs involving trusted age verifiers—with methods that could identify the person directly being banned.
Mountaineer@aussie.zone 5 days ago
I understand that I’m making a slippery slope argument, a fallacy in itself.
I just don’t trust that the purpose of this legislation is what it says on the tin because it’ll never achieve it’s stated aim, it’ll just teach a whole generation how to break the law.
And having failed, will the government stop?
No, they’ll try to ban VPNs, or something else equally vacuous.
Zagorath@aussie.zone 5 days ago
IMO the actual unstated aim is much simpler: win good PR by saying they’re doing something, while upsetting big tech as little as possible.
Doubtful. It’s being tried by some of the most extreme states in America, but even there it’s unlikely to go very far. It’s just not a practical option. That big tech they’re trying not to upset? They won’t like this. Businesses use VPNs all the time.
Mountaineer@aussie.zone 5 days ago
The Australian government isn’t scared to piss off Big Tech when it suits them.
The ASSISTANCE AND ACCESS ACT 2018 lead to some people I know being given the option of quitting or relocating to somewhere that the Australian government couldn’t do THAT.
It’s certainly an extra factor when deciding to offshore development teams here.
As a “great” man once said: