Great insight into how my country instituting this would not effect me at all.
All those services are fucking garbage. Maybe there’s better things to do online than eat shit?
Comment on MegaThread: Under 16 lockout/verification/ID required
melbaboutown@aussie.zone 1 week ago
I’m a disabled adult that lives in an unsafe area, relying a lot on the internet for entertainment and a connection to the world.
I also don’t fancy the risk of identity theft or being doxxed. And even if I wasn’t in a position to be chronically online, these measures set a concerning precedent for online privacy and control of information that is much larger than our individual screen time.
YouTube: It will be locking me out of my YouTube account so I’ll lose all my saved playlists, can’t block harmful channels or recommendations (though the algorithms still function to serve them), could not choose to go premium to stop the alcohol and gambling ads, and I can’t watch certain favourite songs or my mates gaming channel.
I am still able to find plenty of uncensored material that’s not suitable for children while signed out though. So that’s something /s
Facebook: There are people I’d like to casually keep in touch with that are more likely to use the platform than text or email. Guess I kiss acquaintances goodbye? There are also disability support groups on there.
Twitch: Can’t watch a friend’s content or use the platform. This better not affect my Minecraft.
Reddit: This will prevent the choice of going back and talking to our Redditor buds who didn’t migrate over to Lemmy. (The Melbourne Daily Discussion Thread began on Reddit and before the exodus everyone had been internet friends for a long time.)
Also if I want to go and read only I may be prevented without an account. I also didn’t get it together in time to back up my comments in order to delete my account, so I may not get to.
TikTok: Hate the platform and avoid it as much as possible but increasingly everything is being put on it.
Everything else: I don’t use it but resent being told that I can’t unless I submit to an unreasonable invasion of privacy.
More broadly the UK version of this has shut down a number of small forums. So they’re gone. And there is still the potential for Australia or other countries to expand the targeted sites in future and do the same. Deciding on what they want to do and who can afford to fight or comply.
I hope this is an embarrassing fail. But if this precedent is set and the scope is allowed to creep there is the possibility that there won’t be independent alternatives to the large tech companies and they will be empowered to behave worse.
Also did I mention the control of information flow and potential for censorship?
krooklochurm@lemmy.ca 1 week ago
melbaboutown@aussie.zone 1 week ago
[deleted]Zagorath@aussie.zone 1 week ago
I try MMOs but honestly the chat is full of cooker stuff and people raging. Minecraft servers are full of kiddies and I wouldn’t touch Roblox or Call of Duty with a ten foot pole (and I’m hoping Steam doesn’t get got).
If you’re interested in multiplayer games with a more mature playerbase, may I recommend the Age of Empires franchise? With its most popular game having originally released in 1999, but being rereleased in an excellent remaster in 2019, plus a brand new entry in the franchise in 2021 and remasters of the other games having come in 2018, 2020, and 2024, you get the feel of playing a modern game, with an audience that is mostly more mature purely because they’re older (or because they learn the community norms from people who are older).
That said, Minecraft is a very diverse game, and I’m sure there would be some corners of it that are more mature. I know there’s an ongoing project to very faithfully recreate the entire Middle Earth, I assume that attracts a more mature type.
Just touching on the RPGs mentioned in another comment, if sitting up at the table is the problem, the prevalence of virtual tabletops and online TTRPGs these days may mitigate that concern. If you can sit at your computer for video games or social media, you can likely also sit at it for an RPG. Though focus may be its own issue still, I can’t speak to your experience with that since it’s so personal.
melbaboutown@aussie.zone 1 week ago
I actually played Age of Empires when it was on disc! I had no idea it was an mmo now. Thanks, I’ll have to sort the problem of almost full drive and give it a try.
fancy-straw-simple@piefed.ca 1 week ago
What the heck is “cooker” referring to?
melbaboutown@aussie.zone 1 week ago
Oh, it’s an Aussie slang word referring to a conspiracy theorist, often one that’s engaging in antisocial behaviours or very far down the rabbit hole and imposing it on others.
Think aggressively screaming antivaxers, sovereign citizens, Qanon, you get the picture.
krooklochurm@lemmy.ca 1 week ago
My suggestion would be to do something. Make something. Learn to code, learn graphic design, pick up another language, study a topic you’re interested in.
Whatever your health issues are there is a lot that you can do indoors - I’m assuming given how much you’ve been able to type that you can type, so learning to code is a great option.
There’s also role playing games - getting into a regular d and d game can be a great, social thing to do that is way more fulfilling than passively consuming content.
On top of all of that, pirate movies, pirate tv shows.
That would be my advice anyway.
Zagorath@aussie.zone 1 week ago
Tbh once they started cracking down on adblockers I switched to uBlock Origin and haven’t had any problems since. Which is funny, because I previously used Adblock Plus specifically because I liked their “acceptable ads standard”, where they would let through ads that are designed unobtrusively. UBO doesn’t support this. So now instead of less terrible ads getting through, YouTube’s actions have caused me to get rid of all ads, entirely. Way to shoot yourselves in the foot there, guys.
I have never had a TikTok account. Occasionally people send links, and those work just fine in the web browser on a computer. On mobile they try to force you to download the app though.
I believe data dumps of Reddit are available from third parties which would help you with this, if you want.
vas@lemmy.ml 1 week ago
FYI, they work even better with
yt-dlp ‘YOUR_URL’It’s not a silver bullet as yt-dlp also relies on people’s hard work, so generally I’m absolutely not on the platform either. Downloading from TikTok only happens once in half a year maybe.
melbaboutown@aussie.zone 1 week ago
I just lazily switched to Brave because phone and it stopped the ads.
I mostly wanted to back up a copy of my comments for myself and then wipe them off Reddit, but the process of installing the GitHub tool to grab my posts didn’t quite work and I was very tired.
Zagorath@aussie.zone 1 week ago
Brave’s weird love of cryptocurrencies turned me off, so I’ve switched to Firefox. Which allows some extensions to work on Android, including ad blockers.