Image by Thomas Breher from Pixabay
By Jo Nova
What looks, smells, and works like a Trojan horse to force all adults to use a digital ID?
Incredibly, we have only until today (Friday) to put in submissions on this major, world first, social media ban for under 16s. Feel the panic. It’s as if our PM is running out of time to ram through complex legislation before the Donald Trump inauguration? Perhaps he’s hoping Elon is distracted.
The Good News is The Australian Misinformation Bill appears to be dead. Congratulations! The Bad News is the Internet ID bill (posing as a ban on Under 16s using social media) has support from both major parties, even though it is wildly ambitious, vague, dangerous, and the first in the world. The government can’t answer questions on how this will be managed. Instead, the people who have screwed everything up, say “Trust us” we will work out the details later. (Thanks @Craig Kelly)
The laws, supposedly, will pass next week, but then there will be a 12 month “consultation” to work out what will be banned. Since when do we pass the laws and consult later?
Everyone knows this is just an excuse to make adults upload passports, drivers licenses, facial recognition or use some new form of government ID token in order to use X or any of the social media platforms.
As Theo says on X:
Funny I found out through SOCIAL MEDIA that I had less than 24 hours to make a submission.
The government would like to parent your children for you. The government say they are helping parents, but parents can already ban social media or smart phones, or get apps to help limit or monitor their children’s behaviour. This legislation treats Australian parents like they are children themselves. It will remove parent’s choices.
What about kids in the Australian outback who live far from friends? Too bad if they feel suicidal because their account and online friends are about to be nixed by the government. If only farmers were smart enough to manage their own kids, eh?
What does “Social Media” mean? Whatever the Government wants…
Somehow, thanks to the angels in Parliament, students will still be able to see government funded propaganda at school, the mainstream news, and Google Classroom, but they won’t be allowed to seek out other views on X, Instagram, TikTok, Linked In, Facebook or Youtube. [Apparently, kiddie versions without news feeds, like Youtube kids, and “messaging services” like WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger would be exempt, or maybe “SnapChat”– according to the ABC]. But that’s the point. Google is a political player, as is X, but one of them is banned, and one endorsed. The Conservatives are fools for falling for this.
The definition of “social media” is so broad any platform that allows user interactions (ie. comments) could potentially fall under this ban. (Does that mean blogs like this one?) The responsibility for ensuring all commenters are over 16 would fall on the platform. No one seems able to explain how that works in a global internet. What if Australians use VPN’s (will they ban them too) and what if say, American children genuinely want to read an Australian site, and ask questions? Fines are up to $50 million or jail time.
This could be particularly burdensome or onerous for small bloggers and sites to comply with. Not to mention that readers may not want to speak up if they know their comment is tracked, or their information may be hacked. That’ll put a dampner on things.
The Liberal Party (supposedly conservative) are supporting this legislation. Bizarrely.
It’s the start of your social credit score
In the name of saving children from bullying on Facebook, we’re going to risk giving them a totalitarian dystopia.
Mandatory ID makes dissent so much more difficult, and that’s the point.
Would you like be a whistleblower or government critic? Just put your face on the camera please. It will be so much easier for the government to track and collate all your comments, and probably guess how you vote.
When hackers steal the data, employers, the CCP, insurance companies, and marketing teams will be happy to buy the details for the right price.
Not so many people will be able to retweet or “like” something risky, so great thoughts and wicked jokes will disappear like a drop of rain in a desert. Unliked, and unshared, and mostly unheard.
Read the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024 [Provisions] here (or PDF here). Or just search X for all the views on the social media ban. (While you still can).
So much is unknown. Voice your concerns today!
Social media ban or big brother control? The government, with support of the Liberals, is proposing a ban on children under 16 accessing social media, justifying the measure by claiming it’s “popular.” Oh, really? It’s ironic that the same parties that accuse One Nation of… pic.twitter.com/QbyLYdyEfi
— Malcolm Roberts 🇦🇺 (@MRobertsQLD) November 20, 2024
The goal is always the same: They want control of the media.
The lamestream news already answers to government regulators, and multinational conglomerate investors. But since Elon Musk bought Twitter there is freedom on social media. It’s a disaster for crony capitalists and career socialists.
The Twitter files showed that the CIA was able to get social media giants to shadowban or block the voices they didn’t like. Forced internet ID is just another way to stop free-speech on the internet, especially on X for allowing The People to speak their minds.
Anthony Albanese’s excuse for doing this is so that parents who feel they need to ban their own children don’t have to stand up to teenage peer pressure, they can blame the government instead. We all care about our children, but there must be a better way than a blanket ban which forces every Australian to use ID online.
Instead we could be teaching young children what bullying looks like and how to deal with it. A skill they will need for the rest of their lives, especially against The Government.
Please put in a short submission. It would help if you could also email your local Liberal representative and senator to ask them how they can possibly justify this. There is still time to stop this. If you feel strongly, let Liberal Party members know you will go out of your way to help small independent parties win votes on this free speech issue. Perhaps you could even hand out minor party flyers or How To Vote cards?
63C Age-restricted social media platform
(1)For the purposes of this Act, age-restricted social media platform means:
(a) an electronic service that satisfies the following conditions:
the sole purpose, or a significant purpose, of the service is to enable online social interaction between 2 or more end-users;
the service allows end-users to link to, or interact with, some or all of the other end-users;
the service allows end-users to post material on the service;
As much as I hate kids stuck on a computer all day, the reality is that kids communicate with each other over the internet these days. Hello, its 2024! Or how are kids supposed to interact with their friends next time there is a “lockdown”?
What happens to on-line gaming?
Australia, the wowser totalitarian state.
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Based on that definition, young people will not be allowed to make phone calls, nor send SMS anymore.
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Isn’t it frightening how quickly this is coming to pass … yes, it looks – from comments in the press – as if this is quite likely to come to the UK, too.
I am not sure my comments – not being n Australian – would matter to most legislators in Australia [or anywhere outside the UK. And not much here, I fear], but this is a really bad idea.
Again, it’s a Government doing ‘more’.
Did we ask them to do ‘more’ – not usually.
I read today – online – in the Grauniad, a lefty ‘newspaper’
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/nov/21/labours-new-public-bodies-are-likely-to-come-at-a-high-cost-thinktank-finds
– that our new Government, whose ‘landslide is broad but not deep, getting about 20.2% of the votes from those eligible to vote [so perhaps no more than one in six people actually voted for them], has already set out 17 new Quangos [almost one a week since the election].
To be manned and paid for …
The Silly Walks Regulation and Oversight Board is not – so far as I can find – amongst them.
This is why the UK Government – less than 70 million souls, including our recent migrants, and me – is spending £1,200,000,000,000 this year.
Give or take billions …
Jo – thank you for the work you do.
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Auto — thanks to you to. This is a battle we will all face. I have updated the post. The Australian Government is launching an” age verification test”, and it’s with the UK Consortium Age Check Certification Scheme.
So, yes, this presumably is coming to the UK asap.
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I do not support severing the ‘special relationship’ between the United States and the UK (and Australia for that matter), but as the slide towards techno-totalitarianism continues in the rest of the Anglosphere, it is a question that American conservatives are beginning to ask themselves.
https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2024/11/21/why-again-do-we-still-have-a-special-relationship-with-the-tyrannical-uk-n2648018
The ‘special relationship’ is based upon shared values between the anglophone countries regarding ‘natural rights’ that no government should be able to infringe upon. But more and more, it seems like America is the only country that still believes in natural rights, rather than ‘privileges’ that the government grants … and can revoke. That is the pathway to totalitarianism.
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I was pondering what sorts of things make other things the very coolest things for every 15 year old kid to have.
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Ponder long, Homk!
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“I was pondering what sorts of things make other things the very coolest things for every 15 year old kid to have.”
Parents that understand how difficult the years 14-18 can be and help their children cope with the ups and downs of the pubertal years.
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Honk,
Ponder this.
For the religious, if the Devil punishes bad people, does that not make him/her a good person/entity?
Geoff S
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‘bad’ . . . by whose standards?
And, do we know the punishment that we are told about?
Just askin’
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The domination of the far left factions of Albanese Labor
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… and, it appears, the far left factions of Dutton Liberal.
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The good-old “Australia Card’, on steroids.
And, if you do not have a trackable and hackable, internet presence, you will be an “Un-person”, subject to the whims of the sociopaths..
This did not come about overnight, or in “isolation”.
Also remember; Paranoia is an IRRATIONAL fear. Fear of real threats is utterly RATIONAL.
Some character called Benjamin Franklin is on record as saying:
“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. ”
As for those who demand that others be stripped of their liberty on the same grounds……..
See also:
“The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.” – H. L. Mencken.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, and intolerable.”
“Men go mad in herds and recover their senses one by one”
See also, Voltaire:
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
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There’s no such thing as “real threats” … there is real violence in the here and now, and there are perceived threats of future violence which haven’t happened yet.
My point is that every threat is an interpretation of the current situation mindful of problems that may or may not turn out to be real … therefore by its nature must be a subjective thing.
Looking back in hindsight of course, it becomes possible to reinterpret the events and figure out what was real at the time. All scientific measurements must be in the past … you cannot measure things yet to come. You can imagine those things might happen but that’s still your subjective imagination.
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Tel,
That isn’t up to your usual standard: getting all philosophical over a minor word choice. Why not just suggest Bruce use “plausible” instead of “real”?
The “subjectivity” you refer to can be pretty academic. Parachutists carry a reserve chute for the “subjective” risk that the main one won’t open. But what if the secondary fails too? I don’t expect they consider the ground rushing up towards them being a very subjective thing, even though they haven’t been hit yet. Yes, maybe Superman will swoop in and save them, but would you really quibble about them calling the threat “real”?
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Imagine, a social media ban AND the next lockdown.
At least Albo doxxed himself.
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Of course this Age Verification ID is designed to identify personally anyone making a comment on any open website.
One obvious consequence ? As did Brian Fisher (BAEconomics) during the 2020 election campaign, make accurate comments on the economics and scientific aspects of AGW. You will be doxxed and very quickly find bricks thrown through your windows at 3 am.
As I said, ask Brian Fisher. Who doxxed him ? Holmes a Court, who has sneakily since admitted it and hypocritically apologised … that’s the way. Deliberately do the nasty damage then pretend to be contrite.
Who will doxx you ? Anonymous Canberran public servants working through NGO’s sympathetic to leftie causes. (I’ve had exact personal experience of this).
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Hey, wasn’t that this guy?
Tony.
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You can see the link with the misinformation bill. One bill allows them to place a legal restriction on what we post and the other bill allows them to identify the person responsible. And to claim this is all for our own safety is the Orwellian red flag.
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Having spent a generation in their ‘long march through the institutions’ the Left agained majority control of the media. At first when social media was new they ‘owned’ it, and it was GREAT. But now that the general population has engaged with it, it’s drifted back to the middle. So not only have they lost control of social media, it’s threating the control they have over the traditional media.
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My quick submission (for what it’s worth)…
“This bill is not about protecting children.
It is about forcing adults to use age verification or identity verification (such as facial recognition technology) to access social media (and perhaps the internet itself, depending on how ‘social media’ is defined).
Such legislation has extraordinary consequences for privacy and political debate.
It is reprehensible that the major parties are even contemplating such legislation, let alone rushing it through at pace such as to avoid all scrutiny.
I note that sensible solutions to children accessing inappropriate content (of which certain aspects of social media are but one part), such as mandating use of parental controls at the point of sale, do not appear to have even been contemplated (these controls are inbuilt on, for example, the iphone).”
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Have they asked their teenage children?
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When the present “social media” giants were in their infancy, I enlisted in half a dozen to evaluate them, deciding back then that they were not for me and henceforth ignoring the. I have not felt any disadvantage.
Our children are adults, our youngest grandchild is 15, so the government Bill is not relevant to us in the particular sense.
Should we be interested in the general sense, should we spend time on objecting? No, there are better ways to spend our time.
Social media will pass its peak when many other people feel the benefit from life without it. Geoff S
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missing the forest for the trees
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Agree.
But others WILL differ, as is their right.
At the moment.
FWIW. I tried one or two.
I am still on Linked in – it keeps sending me job ads for ‘retired’ positions. How good is their AI?
Also – KIDS WILL BE KIDS.
Nuff said.
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Geoff Sherrington,
I see you found time to post a supercilious comment at Jo Nova’s.
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As discussed in another blog post, in my experience there isn’t a better way that works in practice.
I’d be interested in hearing how many commenters here have early-teen children that will be affected by the ban?
It’s not just about bullying although that is one problem area. There are many other aspects of social media that are harmful – I can’t list them directly as the words mean my post would be stuck in moderation. Start with eating disorders and adults masquerading as children and go from there.
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The underlying stated premise of the Bill is false.
To establish a minimum age for social media use can only be achieved by harvesting 100% of social media users’ authenticated identities.
That is the real purpose of the Bill, to intimidate people from free expression of views which would result in government doxxing, cancellation and persecution.
The Bill’s strict government censorship intentions are obvious, by necessarily compelling 100% of social media users to self identify.
The stated premise of the Bill cannot be achieved by any other means.
Members and Senators should be warned that their turn will come too, where they are prevented from commenting, from satirising, from alerting the public to the malfeasance of those in power.
It is offensive to all Australians that a Bill would be presented to Parliament founded on covert lies as a Trojan Horse for oppressive censorship of public opinion.
The Australian peoples’ ability to contribute to public commentary without fear of being targeted for punishment by organised groups is an established and even sacred expectation in our society.
By outsourcing the responsibility for compliance, the government is attempting to turn social media platforms into vigilante censors, whose methods will appear to leave the government’s hands ‘clean’.
Not in 123 years of Australia’s federation has the public seen such a malevolent and deceptive approach to legislative drafting.
On the following segments and criteria of the Bill, each is the most extraordinarily obvious tapestry of lies ever presented to an Australian Parliament:
• Establishing an obligation on age-restricted social media platforms – the obligation lies with the parents and guardians of the children. Neither the government nor social media companies are parents.
• Defining the regulated entities and regulated activity – you cannot define that which is in a constant state of change
• Privacy Protections – there are none. This is a clumsy and deliberate lie.
• Review – there will be none. This is government ‘theatre’ and everyone knows it.
• Consultation – there will be none. This is government ‘theatre’ and everyone knows it.
• Statement of compatibility with human rights – there is none. Its purpose and intent are to flout all human rights in respect to freedom of political speech.
The Bill indicts all those whose fingerprints appear on it, and it must be rejected in totality.
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This may possibly be the catalyst that finally activates”The Men Who Want to Be Left Alone”
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Amen.
How many more “conservative” voters are the Liberal party willing to lose in trying to poach some of the disgruntled Labor/green voters.
This is a woeful idea.
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