Why do people keep posting Techdirt blog pieces in the Australia community? The guy who writes these pieces is an American who has been fully against regulation since the very beginning. He is just quoting a Guardian Australia article and interspersing his own high modality commentary which adds nothing of value. Why not link the actual article instead?
In any case, the Guardian article implies that teenagers with disabilities can no longer contact their friends (not true) and that alternative online spaces do not exist (also not true). Just a couple off the top of my head are My Circle and Livewire. Of course, like most fearmongering pieces on the social media ban’s “impacts”, the Guardian Australia article makes absolutely no attempt to suggest alternatives or even interview someone from one of these organisations. The reporting on this issue has been lacklustre and full of confirmation bias since the very beginning.
shirro@aussie.zone 2 weeks ago
Back in the old days we used to run forums and mailing lists for people of various interests. People used to make their own little idiosyncratic places full of creativity. I miss it so much.
Then the big US social media companies came in and took everyone away and the old Internet became a ghost town. Lots of online communities died to be replaced by highly predatory foreign companies.
I don’t know why we should listen to people defending predatory social media but everyone ignored us old people telling them that these walled gardens were going to kill the Internet with massive corporate influence. Everyone is so fucking stupid now. Technical people can’t even do technical shit anymore. I hate it.
eureka@aussie.zone 2 weeks ago
These places still exist, although admittedly they’re further from the spotlight and many were sapped by mainstream general-purpose platforms. But there are thousands of them around for those who care to look. I don’t even think it’s a stretch to say we’re on one, community hosted by Aussies for Aussies.
schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
Me too, friend. Me too.
The central reason why we can’t have it anymore is that governments around the world have regulated it away. One example being what the article in the OP is about. 🙁
BlueSquid0741@lemmy.sdf.org 2 weeks ago
Governments have regulated that we can’t have forums, mailing lists? What about special interest bulletin boards? I read the article but I didn’t pick up on that.
shads@lemy.lol 2 weeks ago
Agreed, completely. I used Facebook for all of 9 months before I did the self reflection and realised that it was like voluntarily poisoning myself and got out in, I think, 2012 or so. I was unemployed at the time and it became clear to me that it was doing bad things to me mentally and I was developing an addiction to the scroll.
Imagine if you would that instead of this garbage social media ban on kids we had some serious investigation into the corrosive nature of these social media orgs and they were held accountable for every bit of “experimentation” they conducted without informed consent. While we were at it we could have maybe whipped up some regulstion to curb the gambling industry.
The only people I have personally talked with who say the teen social media ban is unambiguously good just so happen to be the same people whose brains have been completely cooked by a combination of Facebook and Sky News. I kid you not when I say that the last person to loudly assert social media ban good also told me about the time he threatened bodily harm to a man who was wearing a mask immediately after Covid lockdowns were lifted and got upset when he unmasked got within 20cm of his face.
Oh and the absolute bullshit conspiracy theories he spouted about Daniel Andrews while telling me he wishes we had an Australian Trump to “get rid of all the corrupt pedos in Australian Politics”.
Oh how I wish we had some IT savvy legislators who would make good law, since this won’t happen I would settle for them doing nothing. This sort of ineffectual crap serves the sole purpose of creating opportunities for these corporations to further entrench their hold over the internet. I am watching on with dread to find out how much data is going directly to Palantir from this mess.
Taleya@aussie.zone 2 weeks ago
Calling everyone who disagrees with you a brainrotted cooker will not win you friends.