Australia has enacted a world-first ban on social media for users aged under 16, causing millions of children and teenagers to lose access to their accounts.
Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, YouTube, Snapchat, Reddit, Kick, Twitch and TikTok are expected to have taken steps from Wednesday to remove accounts held by users under 16 years of age in Australia, and prevent those teens from registering new accounts.
Platforms that do not comply risk fines of up to $49.5m.
There have been some teething problems with the ban’s implementation. Guardian Australia has received several reports of those under 16 passing the facial age assurance tests, but the government has flagged it is not expecting the ban will be perfect from day one.
All listed platforms apart from X had confirmed by Tuesday they would comply with the ban. The eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, said it had recently had a conversation with X about how it would comply, but the company had not communicated its policy to users.
Bluesky, an X alternative, announced on Tuesday it would also ban under-16s, despite eSafety assessing the platform as “low risk” due to its small user base of 50,000 in Australia.
Parents of children affected by the ban shared a spectrum of views on the policy. One parent told the Guardian their 15-year-old daughter was “very distressed” because “all her 14 to 15-year-old friends have been age verified as 18 by Snapchat”. Since she had been identified as under 16, they feared “her friends will keep using Snapchat to talk and organise social events and she will be left out”.
Others said the ban “can’t come quickly enough”. One parent said their daughter was “completely addicted” to social media and the ban “provides us with a support framework to keep her off these platforms”.
“The fact that teenagers occasionally find a way to have a drink doesn’t diminish the value of having a clear, national standard.”
Polling has consistently shown that two-thirds of voters support raising the minimum age for social media to 16. The opposition, including leader Sussan Ley, have recently voiced alarm about the ban, despite waving the legislation through parliament and the former Liberal leader Peter Dutton championing it.
The ban has garnered worldwide attention, with several nations indicating they will adopt a ban of their own, including Malaysia, Denmark and Norway. The European Union passed a resolution to adopt similar restrictions, while a spokesperson for the British government told Reuters it was “closely monitoring Australia’s approach to age restrictions”.
Accounts held by users under 16 must be removed on apps that include TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, X, YouTube, Snapchat, Reddit, Kick, Twitch and Threads under ban
Mumble and Pigdin won't be banned right? Also, swapping mobile numbers and getting on conference calls... Writing letters and all that. There's still other ways to communicate.
I'm almost thinking of making a quick phone app to give them options and ideas on how to communicate outside of the big tech bubble.
I wonder if making your own personal website on Neocities/Geocities will come back in vogue again.
How dare you imply that a parent should educate their children? Don't you know how much they have to work hard already every single day to grow up the child no one forced them to have in the first place??
Lol ok just ask every parent who already can't manage their children's online habits to set up a pihole. I'm sure they won't have any issues with that.
PiHole is only easy to set up for us becaise we're a group of giant nerds. The average parent will think you're talking about their mouth when you say pihole.
For a social media ban to be effective without ostracizing individuals, it has to include the entire friend group.
As an analogy, if the kid's friends all text each other, but your kid doesn't have a phone, they miss out socially. They miss out on organized and impromptu hangouts. And they miss out on inside jokes that develop in the group chat. Over time they feel like more and more of an outsider even if the ready of the group actively tries to include them.
On one hand I do think social media has ruined society, and kids should definately not be on it till their brain has matured a bit, on the other hand I worry how corrupt officials could use this in their favor
because not everyone in the country is under 16. So if you're in your 40s and suddenly decide you want to start using tiktok or facebook then you have to provide proof that you're not a teenager. which means providing ID or selfies or both to whomever they use to verify your identity. Now with that info they can now build a profile about what you do online. Also the issue that what happens if this info you've provided is in a data breach. OR they simply sell it to data collection companies.
That and it's a 'social media ban' which is a pretty broad term. Depending how you define social media it could ecompase a lot of other platforms not included in the initial list i.e. Steam, Discord, etc.
This could lead to further restrictions on freedom of speech and anonymity dependent on whatever agenda the government is pushing or to try to control dissent by forcing the poplace to provide some form of ID to access any platform/access the internet.
That may be a leap too far from where we currently are, but it's an important factor to consider as it could have wider reaching consequences if left unchecked.
That being said, I think the large social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter are cesspools that prey on children/teens and are designed to be addictive even for adults.
It's due to that I'm stuck on the fence a little. If anything we as a society should be looking to pressure social media companies to operate ethically.
What has happened instead is that the Australian government has basically pushed the onus on social media companies to block access to these platforms and threatened them with a fine. There's no real plan for implementation, no push for education on social media and its issues.
These laws are written deliberately broad to enable mass censorship. They don't just ban sexual material, but use vague statements like "objectionable material." Actual real-world news is being censored and kept from the eyes of teenagers. Pretty much anything on the Gaza war is considered objectionable material and inappropriate for children to learn about.
It could be used as a wedge to further attack freedom of speech or they could require ID verification for anyone and then use that info to track you and target you if they think you are against them. The nazis used the census data to find and target Jewish people because back then religion used to be recorded in it, Trump and the republicans now require people on visa to have their social media accounts public so they can target anyone who they deem "anti American" and deport them. Any law should be made with checks and balances in place keeping in mind how the worst of humanity could abuse it
Nah. It's not an age issue. It's a social media issue. This stuff is bad for everyone. If you want to protect kids from the dangers of social media, start regulating how social media works for everyone. Why is it ok to start poisoning someone's mind the minute they turn 18?
Some good silver linings here, but what everyone needs to remember here is that nobody would be supporting this at all if facebook wasn’t intentionally predatory and bad for (all) people’s brains.
If regulators in Australia had a spine they would call for an end to those practices, and now that’s infinitely harder to do
I think that's easier said than done. There are a lot of negatives associated with social media and some are easier to put restrictions on (say violent content) but I don't think we really have a good grasp of all the ways use is associated with depression for example. And wouldn't some of this still fall back to age restricted areas, kind of like with movies?
But yeah, it would be nice to see more push back on the tech companies instead of the consumers
True, but there is momentum. It's empowering other countries and that could lead to a second pass at legislation in Aus after its not so outlandish or it could lead to another country doing something better and then Aus copying after the costly validation was done by someone else. I think waiting for perfect legislation likely leads to what we've had for a while and that's even less / very little push back on tech companies
The act of promoting or curating user submitted data makes the company strictly liable for any damages done by the content.
I assume you don't mean simply providing the platform for the content to be hosted, in that case I agree this would definetly help.
The deliberate spreading of harmful false information makes the hosting company liable for damages.
This one is damn near impossible to enforce for the sole reason of the word "deliberate", the issue is that I would not support such a law without that part.
I left out the hosting part for just that reason. The company has to activately do something to gain the liability. Right now the big social media companies are deliberately prioritizing harmful information to maximize engagement and generate money.
As for enforcement hosters have had to develop protocols for removal of illegal content since the very beginning. Its still out there and can be found, but laws and mostly due diligence from hosters, makes it more difficult to find. Its the reason Lemmy is not full of illegal pics etc. The hosters are actively removing it and banning accounts that publish it.
Those protocols could be modified to include obvious misinformation bots etc. Think about the number of studies that have shown that just a few accounts are the source of the majority of harmful misinformation on social media.
Of course any reporting system needs to be protected from abuse. The DMCA takedown abusers are a great example of why this is needed.
This one is damn near impossible to enforce for the sole reason of the word "deliberate", the issue is that I would not support such a law without that part.
It would also be easily abused, especially since someone would have to take a look and check, which would already put a bottleneck in the system, and the social media site would have to take it down to check, just in case, which gives someone a way to effectively remove posts.
That kind of aligns with some actions I would love to see but I don't really see how it helps in the example I used to highlight some of the harder things to fix, depression. How does that improve the correlation between social media use and depression in teenagers? I can see it will improve from special cases like removing posts pro eating disorder content but I'm pretty confident the depression correlation goes well beyond easy to moderate content.
Also, if we presumed that some amount of horrific violence is okay for adults to choose to see and a population of people thinks its reasonable to restrict this content for people below a certain age (or swap violence for sex / nudity) then do we just decide we know better than that population, that freedom is more important, or does it fall back to age restrictions again (but gated on parts of the site)? I'm avoiding saying "government" here and going with "population of people" to try to decouple a little from some of the negatives people associate with government, especially since COVID
But yeah, holding tech companies accountable like that would be lovely to see. I suspect the cost is so large they couldn't pay so it would never happen, but I think that's because society has been ignoring their negative externalities for so long they're intrenched
The kids will move to less monitored platforms and even on things like YouTube, parental controls are now gone.
You need to have an account for parental controls to be applied to, kids aren't allowed an account, vis-a-vis, no more parental controls or monitoring for problem content.
My greedy motivation is to not interact with children on the Internet. I don't actually care what other people's children do on the Internet beyond that.
As someone that grew up with an "unmonitored" internet. I can say that it was significantly more healthy than the profit driven "keep watching" algorithm that is all of social media today.
Yeah. I saw "two girls one cup" and "lemon party". But, did I slowly have my perspective of reality changed by the 30 second videos I swiped on for hours at a time for days on end?
No, most of my time was spent learning about computers, "stealing" music, and chatting with my real life friends.
I don't think a kid today can experience that internet anymore. It's gone. But acting like "unmonitored" internet access is worse is pearl clutching and ignoring the fundamental problems the profit driven internet has created at the expense of societies mental health.
Kids will absolutely find another place to connect online in Australia. But, honestly, I think whatever that is will be healthier than the absolute brain rot that is profit driven social media.
Wow I’m shocked you have no downvotes. I totally agree but Lemmy seems to hate internet restrictions, especially porn. Don’t come for their porn. They’ll destroy you.
There is literally nothing negative about this. Children will be exposed to less internet propaganda, and forums are generally much better with fewer children. Everyone wins.
And the suicide rate of queer and other marginalized kids will skyrocket. What's a few thousand dead kids in the name of protecting the children, right?
Wasn't aware that social media keeps kids alive?...
I've seen enough stories on kids being cyber bullied into suicide that I really doubt there's enough happy inclusion on these platforms to balance that.
Let's legally require social media companies to gather even more sensitive information about their users, making them more vulnerable to identity theft in the process and isolating the most vulnerable in our society from their support networks. There is literally nothing negative about this.
Strangely enough, support networks can exist outside of social media. It's very possible to directly message friends or neighbors without being subjected to the dregs of public social media. It remains possible to get world/local news without an attached public forum.
If you're going to make a space that has content for adults and allows for free adult discussions (with all the nuance and complications that entails), then restrict it to adults only.
This is only a problem in conjuction with legislation requiring social media use (ie: as an official broadcast system, payment platform, electoral tool, etc...). If we fight that and force it to remain an opt-in disinformation platform then who cares?
As it currently stands nothing is forcing you on these platforms other than a conditioned familiarity. Even worse, there are no tech or legal protections preventing them uniquely identifying users today. Them getting an official state ID doesn't change much. More barriers to entry for a shitty surveillance and propoganda platform? Literally no downsides there.
It's a bandaid. And just like previous attempts like this all this will do is make Australian kids better at circumventing the censorship or using an alternative website. Which, honestly, is probably a positive in and of itself. I'd much rather my kid be visiting some random forum type website (like I grew up with) then the absolute brain rot that is social media algorithms.
Seeing "lemon party" posted before the mods removed it definitely fucked me up less than the slop being fed into the brains of teenagers on social media today.
That is why I think FB and others might been quietly lobbying for this solution. This way they can stll be predatory, as long as the kids pretend to be adult. Or just abuse adult users. The alternative, of not being evil, is not compatible with their business model. But it is the business model that should be banned, not socializing online by teenagers.
Tech giants are well known for lobbying against any legislation that gives them less freedoms to exploit markets and regulations of any kind that impact them - but this legislation that was targeted specifically at regulating them and removes a significant number of users - "this is suspicious, I think they might be the ones pushing it!"
There's so many people in under this post trying to turn it into anything but what it is - legislation attempting to protect kids from the harms of social media. Which, again - are well documented.
I was watching a piece on this the other day on PBS and they had some sound bites from youths they interviewed. It really hit me just how much dumber kids get as I get older. They aren't actually dumber, but my understanding about how ignorant they are just keeps getting clearer. I remember think similarly in my youth, so it's not unique to this generation, so no shade, but kids are dumb.
I'm not saying they are dumber than we were, I'm saying all kids are dumb due to ignorance. I do think that a lot of the current generation coming out is better adjusted than my generation, but they are still ignorant to the real world. The more I experience the real world the more ignorant I see that they are.
Without a doubt. Like I said, I remember having views as a teen that were bad due to lack of life experience. I can look back into my 20s and think of plenty times where I was notably better than my teenage years but now I can see I still didn't have it. It's just the nature of growing up and getting older. We all evolve and have new life experiences that highlight our previous gaps in knowledge. It was just really noticable when I was listening to the sound bites in those PBS interviews the other week and it hit me like a truck. A sad, sad truck.
I'm not convinced it happens. I sure as shit feel like an old man some days physically, but my mind ranges from juvenile 12 year old potty humour to 70 year old get off my lawn and everywhere in between. It's less often as I get older, but some days I get humbled when presented with something that I was sure was true that turns out to not be. It's best to take it in stride as a learning opportunity rather than mope about it. It's the xkcd "lucky 10000" situation.
I think that's just experience on your own part. I don't think people have really changed for thousands of years. You can go read translations of ancient accounts, and they don't really sound all that different from today, which is why Ea-Nasir is such a meme.
I'm not saying today's youth is dumber than past youth, I'm saying all youth are dumb due to ignorance, but especially when it comes to social media since that's relatively recent in the grand scheme of the world.
I'm not opposed to the idea that kids shouldn't have access to social media, but they obviously do. Their social lives are online, and their insecure little brains are going to scream that they've been kicked out of the tribe when you cut the link
The ban won't work, but will also cause a lot of damage
Like teenagers, who run off social validation, suddenly feeling like they're excluded from their society
Kids are going to kill themselves.
And far more kids are going to develop complexes that they'll never recover from
Social isolation hits the brain like physical pain. We're hardwired to feel social isolation as trauma, logic can't save you from feeling like you've been cut off from your peers
Withdrawal is an unpleasant, but necessary, part of detox.
On the other hand, I 100% agree it's going to be a shit show. Technological development has outpaced the law as long as I've been alive, and the disparity is only growing... Authorities are not equipped to provide solutions to the problems that technology has created, and continues to create.
There is precedence though. We age gate: nicotine, alcohol, gambling etc..
we shouldnt expect parents to be monitoring children 24/7. actually, as children get older they should be given freedoms, parents have the right to expect our society has some guardrails.
The guardrails already exist. Put parental controls on your kid's devices. Done, solved. Block social media sites, monitor what they're doing online. Don't go making it mandatory for everyone to give social media companies more information than they already have.
A better comparison would be "let's put a government mandated ID scanner on everyone's liquor cabinet so that their kids can't access it! Oh you don't have kids? Too bad, still need that ID scanner!"
Maybe the focus should be on a free (government funded, ideally FOSS) parental controls software suite that makes blocking social media on all major platforms (iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, and Linux) simple and easy. Promote it to parents, and get them to parent, instead of deanonymizing the internet for everyone.
The bans are for under 16s, not just 7 year olds. Parents don't control all internet activity for 15 years, at that age they are going to have some autonomy outside of the house.
I'm not sure there is a direct irl analog when it comes to controlling digital spaces, since they are personal by nature. and I think this is where the debate comes in.
Should parents be following their teenage child into every store to make sure they aren't buying alcohol?
I get the concern with providing social media companies a government ID, I certainly would never give them one! I would just not use them. But they provide net negative value in my opinion so no loss.
Parents who were also raised by social media? This isn't a new problem but it is a problem that's getting worse, I don't know if a ban is the answer but so far nobody has even suggested an effective alternative to reducing screen-time for both adults and kids.
This ban isn't supposed to solve a problem overnight, but it's supposed to influence some segment of the population to socialize, to form real communities and to hopefully grow up capable of helping their own kids not get addicted.
This is a real problem, it's widespread across the globe and many, many studies have shown the harm social media has on a huge percentage of teens.
Also, parents work. Parents sleep. You can't fucking hover over your teen night and day, you would hate that worse.
The solution is education not bans. This is crazy. Regulating social media access has some major privacy concerns, will make parents more complacent and will only cause kids to seek other more dubious means of communicating. It also places a major wall in front of the development of new social media platforms.
But what do we do about the fact that even though our knowledge, research and understanding of the problem has increased, the problem has gotten worse? Is there more that can be done on that front that you think would be effective? Genuinely asking to help me shape my opinion.
It's blooming into a larger-scale societal problem than just hoping enough people pull through, a lack of stable mental health and attention spans across large swaths of your population start to erode your society.
Fuck this Helen Lovejoy-arse shithole country. I wonder how many abused youth, marginalised teens and kids who made the mistake of being born to parents living in remote areas just lost access to their support networks. I wonder how many people are gonna have their identities stolen because of data breaches containing either documents or biometrics necessary to enforce this. And for what? So boomer politicians and their constituents aren't challenged by their well-informed children about the genocides they're facilitating at home and abroad? So the pigs in this police state have an even easier time surveiling citizens with all the identifying info websites are gathering??
Social media use by kids and teens has been demonstrated factually to cause harm to people's mental health and social lives. The sources are plenty and widespread.
I still don't know if a ban is the answer, but at least it's an attempt to address a problem. I'm curious what your answer would be to this growing problem?
I figure holding tech giants directly accountable for the specific harms they've caused would be better than punishing an entire population but unfortunately our politicians are mostly either invertebrates who are too cowardly to pick fights with foreign corporate entities (so they're useless drains of political will) or they're actively supportive of them on the grounds of being ideologically pro-business (so, evil).
They feed us their poisons (surveillance capitalism and an unhealthy information ecosystem driven by algorithmic optimisation for advertising revenue) so they can sell us their "medicines" (age gating and mandatory identification online—more data harvesting as a selling point to advertisers) while they suppress our cure (an internet by independent creators as opposed to capitalist brands)
figure holding tech giants directly accountable for the specific harms they’ve caused
I don't disagree that the entire institution is rotten and causing harm, but in terms of just socializing online, just the act of forming communities and forums and discussion groups and sharing content, the essence of what's becoming harmful, what is the right answer here? The stuff that causes a lot of the harm is just what people tend to do online, because humans broadly are not meant to substitute real social connections for whatever is happening when we scroll and type and read other people's thoughts and fantasies and depressed manifestos of strangers every day.
Even now, you're reading my text inside your head in your own voice. The act alone of having this discussion is creating an entirely new kind of information pattern in your brain that we haven't had in the last half-million years or so since our brains evolved. Do you know what this new kind of information processing is doing to your view of the world? Do any of us?
I know if you type "research teens social media health" into google you will have days of reading material about the research done and how harmful these practices are. But I'm not sensing that anyone even cares honestly. Is it better that we let whatever happens happen? I'm not being facetious, I want to know if people genuinely think that this isn't a problem worth fighting.
The stuff that causes a lot of the harm is just what people tend to do online…
The online harms I'm concerned with are bullying, harassment and misinformation. Platforms should be required by society to moderate against these, or face penalties proportionate to revenue. Instead just banning under 16s, even if it could be done in a way that is both effective and respectful of everyone's privacy (I'm not convinced that it can) would still be a lazy abrogation of this responsibility, still leaving kids vulnerable to the same behaviours in offline spaces and everyone else vulnerable to the harms purportedly being caused among the youth online currently. But the government isn't interested in this because these behaviours serve to entrench existing social hierarchies, and the government—being in charge of the nation-state—likes existing social hierarchies.
I figure holding tech giants directly accountable for the specific harms they’ve caused
What if; the social media giants are in another country. Your country doesn't have jurisdiction there and can do fuck all in reality.
Maybe fine them???? Sure, which they will fight in court until the end of time; all the while the harm continues.
I don't know if a ban will work, or what extra harms it will cause. But there are no good options to tackle this on the large scales of whole countries.
Algorithmic social media is mind cancer; if you have a better suggestion for tackling this issue. Let us know.
Lemmy is social media; but there is no algorithmic feed, my views are not being manipulated by some engagement maximizing machine.
What if; the social media giants are in another country. Your country doesn't have jurisdiction there and can do fuck all in reality.Maybe fine them???? Sure, which they will fight in court until the end of time; all the while the harm continues.
The ban proves it's possible to legislate, so maybe they should just legislate something better lol? Holding platforms accountable to a bare minimum standard of moderation against misinformation, bullying and harassment might be a starting point. And hey, if socmed's really that bad for you, then us adults could benefit from this alternative, too! In any case, this ban is literally worse than just leaving the problem be.
1/ it will show the social media companies that, Australia at least; has tools that they can use to reduce their power.
Holding platforms accountable to a bare minimum standard of moderation against misinformation, bullying and harassment might be a starting point.
This would be great; but it is also too little too late. They have tried, and failed at exactly this for years.
I don't see how both these claims can simultaneously be true. Either Australia has tools to hold these companies to account, in which case, how would they have previously failed if they'd already tried? Or it doesn't, and this is just one more completely futile policy that won't give companies any more than the usual slap on the wrist if it ever goes to court.
I argue that they didn't try, because they never actually cared about children's wellbeing, because if they did they'd have done better than this, ergo this policy isn't really about that and is actually about making citizens more easily identifiable online.
Additionally, it does nothing to reduce the power of seppo tech giants. On the contrary, they've got money, they'll be fine. Independent social media sites however, don't all have the resources to implement verification systems, so some will feel the financial burden of compliance a lot harder, and others will simply cease serving Australian users, further strengthening Silicon Valley's hold over the internet.
As I have said over and over again in this thread, what the ban will do is cut children suffering domestic abuse (a problem that is absolutely rife in this country) off from their support networks. It'll cut minority kids that're subjected to bullying by their peers off from their communities. It'll drive more kids to shadier corners of the internet where they're at greater risk of predation. I'm not being hyperbolic when I say this is going to get children killed. Furthermore—and again, as I've been repeating all over this thread—everyone—yes, that includes adults—will be required to submit personally identifiable information to private organisations just to communicate with other people online, making anyone in this country who uses social media a potential victim of identity theft the moment a data breach happens. And happen it will. It's happened before, and it'll happen again. What's more, knowing that the platforms they're using have their identities will make a great many people more hesitant to speak critically about existing power structures, especially the government. This is bad.
I stand by my previously stated opinion that all this is worse than the status quo, but even if it weren't you should be asking why this is the solution that the government came up with.
I don’t see how both these claims can simultaneously be true.
Sorry, my poor communications...I was referring to the social media companies, when I said they had been trying and failing for years. Not trying that hard mind you; moderation is a very expensive problem to solve, and they don't want to spend money they don't explicitly have to.
(it's) actually about making citizens more easily identifiable online.
Maybe. That is speculation, probably a nice little side effect. But not the primary goal.
Independent social media sites however, don’t all have the resources to implement verification systems, so some will feel the financial burden of compliance a lot harder, and others
This is a great point; and there is an easy way to solve this problem. Not that the govt will care that a simple solution exists. If you don't have an algorithmic feed a lot of the spread of misinformation is curtailed. If you are not allowed to host images/video etc directly than the moderation of them can be off loaded to 3rd parties.
What’s more, knowing that the platforms they’re using have their identities will make a great many people more hesitant to speak critically about existing power structures.
Another great point. I don't have a good answer to this one, but there are anonymous leak avenues etc for serious stuff.
I know parents who successfully regulate their kids access to social media, games, tv, movies. Pushing this regulation is not the solution. Does more damage and will only make parents more complacent.
I am mostly asking people here what they think the alternative should be. Like you say, parents who manage and monitor this are going have better outcomes... but that's not the norm, and the problem is getting worse despite all of us having more knowledge and proof how vital it is for their kids to have their internet use managed. So I am not convinced any kind of education campaign is going to do much. Most parents are just as addicted to their phones and rather scroll than parent. This is a societal problem with many intersecting problems.
The ban also affects everyone who isn't willing to undergo the age check.
Kids will find a way around is. They'll move to fediverse, and the cooler kids will still hang around the mainstream platforms thanks to their older friend, sibling or cool uncle.
It's not designed to be perfect, it's designed to influence a population towards better practices. If it even makes just 10% of young people grow up a little less alone and less asocial, it will be a success. That success can be built on and maybe in time we can push cultures in regions to not want to use social media as a substitute all the time. There is a very real effect how laws influence the attitudes of people.
It’s not designed at all. Some pearl-clutches said “won’t somebody think of the children”, and then made the social media companies figure out how to implement the ban.
The social media companies all looked at the free, government mandated access to user biometrics and complied.
Do I think that social media should be restricted for children and teens? Sure. Do I think this if going to go about as well as the 2007 porn filter that the government tried to implement? Absolutely.
Do I think that social media should be restricted for children and teens? Sure.
Okay, I agree and I am not exactly cheering for government telling anyone what they can and can't look at... but what's the alternative here? I am cautiously siding with the idea behind the regulation if not the execution, but so far nobody has suggested what we do about a problem that is real, proven and studied and is leading to a worse world.
I'm being serious here and in good faith. Should we do anything?
Am I in the wrong here for thinking we need to do something about this? Or is everyone just okay with whatever the end-result will be from subsequent generations of people growing up anxious, depressed, lacking social skills, without relationship partners? We already have "loneliness" being considered a global health risk, and it's tied directly to digital communication habits. I would ask you or anyone here to just type "research on health social media teens" in google. Just try it and see how much work has gone into studying this problem.
yeah we need to do something about it, and people seem to be trying their best to come up with bullshit arguments against it. "people will find ways around it" and then saying not to bother etc i mean, people under 18 sneak into clubs and get beer... or maybe fake an ID and hit a pub... or get an older friend to do something for them.... it doesnt stop us as a society holding a view that under age drinking isnt great, and we make some effort to enforce that even if its not perfect.
Some pearl-clutches said “won’t somebody think of the children”, and then made the social media companies figure out how to implement the ban.
Bingo.
It's never about "the children." It's a way to normalize handing over biometrics and anonymity to an assumed authority to use the internet.
It's always about control, control, control. It's about tying real identities to online activity, then it's about wholesale harvesting your secrets you didn't even know you were keeping.
Then it's yet another instrument to make sure you shut up and don't step out of line or else.
First they take us away from our kids by necessitating that entire households need full time careers to survive.
Then as a substitute for education and actual parenting we're so eager to offer up our childrens' futures in the name of "protecting" them from the inevitable consequences of parentless households.
Some pearl-clutches said “won’t somebody think of the children”, and then made the social media companies figure out how to implement the ban.
It's more than pearl-clutching though.
Kids dependency on social is a genuine social problem. Any parent that cares about their kids is deeply concerned about this.
I don't really buy the "govt access to biometrics" angle. These companies have all the biometrics they could ever want.
The ban is going to be easy to circumvent technologically, but not so much socially. At this very moment, being the evening of 10 December, families around Australia are having conversations about social media and the problems it can cause.
The Fediverse is social media. Wouldn't instances be required to do age verification? I mean, I guess that'd only be enforceable on Australian instances, but it seems like the whole world is going in that direction.
Maybe just live a happy life instead? Lemmy is an ok place, but even this is just completely unnecessary. Mankind isn't cut out for so much information and communication.
Arcades and malls have been dead for a long time. Capitalism took them away.
Everyone is missing incentive to go outside and hang out with real people, but that's only because we have an alternative that fills you up and requires less effort. Our "socializing" is junk food, it only harms you.
Maybe more young people will start doing what kids have been doing since the dawn of time, and making their own communities and their own places to hang out and play and do active things together, face-to-face.
Most malls ban unaccompanied minors. And most places where kids used to hang out similarly discourage their presence. The death of third places is a well-documented phenomenon, one that goes back decades before anyone dreamed of social media. And while kids have been forming their own communities since the dawn of time, kids haven't been raised in suburban hellscapes since the dawn of time. If you can't drive. If there's no way to your neighorhood except a giant highway that's impossible to bike on, how in the hell are kids supposed to meet up with each other in person? Digital technologies are really the only way kids have to socialize nowadays. We've taken everything else from them.
Digital technologies are really the only way kids have to socialize nowadays.
I don't disagree, but digital technologies are causing a lot of harm. I thought I would prepare for the discussion with a couple links to some suggestive studies, but there have been so many rigorous studies and scientific papers on the harm of social media on young minds that I don't even know where to start. Denying it is like denying climate change at this point.
And maybe my take is becoming radical, but I don't think we should be looking at it in terms of a youth/adult problem. There are likely far more adults addicted to the junk-food substitute that is arguing on twitter or making separate identities to fabricate ideas on message boards who have completely lost their handle on reality. Relationship rates are plummeting, people are so lonely it's being declared a health emergency.
Like, seriously... what should we do? I know the popular answer is to attack the social media companies and "regulate" them but the problem is more fundamental than advertising, it's that we're not evolved to socialize with words on screens, seeing all these thoughts and feelings and unchecked wild, emotion-provoking, short-attention-span messages isn't good for us. It may make you laugh spending an evening scrolling dumb memes, but if you do something like that every night, you're missing time that you could be spending improving your life, your health, your relationships and so on.
And replacing those evolved drives with something else, something alien to us.
As a millennial I honestly just miss how something like MySpace was basically a micro blog, and otherwise, we just chatted with friends-only programs like Yahoo! Messenger / MSN / ICQ/ whatever. There wasn't really some motive to "connect" you to a million "randos" and make you slavishly compete for their fickle approval.
Growing up in a weird kinda rural/suburb hybrid area, the Internet was my gateway to the world outside of school.
It definitely had its problems and drama, but mostly we chatted with people we actually knew (Yahoo chatrooms notwithstanding. Yikes lol) and didn't care about what was "trending" across the world. Algorithms didn't control and force perception of our reality then.
It was literally just about enabling communication.
Outside of that, there was also a much better culture of maintaining privacy and anonymity online, and that everything you see online is BS until proven otherwise.
Of course, this was before techbros decided we should use our real identity everywhere for all to see.
Nowadays it seems like every service is about using your friends as bait to connect you to some hivemind of toxic manipulation to farm you for ads. It encourages creating cults and scams and brainrot bullshit because it's all about harvesting people's already-strained attention for profit, instead of just being a communication platform.
TL;DR: I remember the Internet as a place to log in and hang out, then log off, when meeting with friends outside of school was a logistical nightmare reserved for things like birthday parties if you were lucky.
A lot of damage is already done, but I think if we obliterated the Facebooks and Instagrams and TikToks of "social media" and instead it focused on augmenting existing relationships rather than siloing people as a billion lonely socially-starved individuals in a crowd, we'd see it much differently...
Would you be in favor of nationalizing the internet in order for this to work? That is, no more commercial entities controlling access, no more media sites allowed to use algorithmic or artificially intelligent systems to influence the viewing habits of users, no more ads working their way into everything you see and do, no more sensationalized headlines and distracting video titles competing for attention because it will all be demonetized by law. (ideally, in a world of spherical, frictionless cows.)
In the US the government used to have standards and regulations for things like if a kid's show could be exclusively used to market toys, or that news stations had to follow a fair press agreement. The reason for this was all access to television had to go through airwaves, and the broadcasters for those airwaves were US government property. All broadcasters had to follow a host of rules and guidelines. This is why cable news was such a world-changing thing. Cable was privately owned.
This also has the side effect of the government controlling the news narrative, and I think we have seen enough of that.
I just don't really know if there's a good solution here, for a problem that has to have a solution or we all suffer.
Comment clearly made by someone who does not actually live in the country this discussion is about. Shopping centres are doing just fine. (To be clear, I am firmly against the ban)
They're at a time in their lives where community and free association are vital to them, and yet since they're not necessarily a profitable demographic, they're kicked out and shunned by everywhere that's not home or school, because all that's left is "commercial spaces."
People then wonder why teenagers flip off society and get up to no good, and then maybe wonder why we all turned out to be lonely adults with like maybe one long term friend if we're lucky...
In Australia we have this thing called school, all the kids go there.
I have kids at ages affected by this ban. They don't care about it at all. They already communicate with their friends via iMessage and FaceTime (both unaffected by the ban), they walk to school - so they often walk with friends. Theres a small skate park near the local shops they also walk to and hang out with friends sometimes, they also walk to the shops and practice basketball with friends at nearby ovals with practice courts regularly. They go to cinemas or big shopping centres (malls) with their friends sometimes - but have to be driven there anyway so parents have to coordinate.
TLDR: the ban doesn't affect a lot of kids at all, and they socialize more or less the same as I did when I was a kid.
The only kids heavily affected are those with Snapchat, Tiktok, Facebook and other crap that they shouldn't be on to begin with, and are getting a huge favour done to them by removing them for a few years.
They will probably increase their profits, by finding methods of marketing to kids at increased prices like the tobacco and alcohol industries have done for ages.
People with a serious criminal record. Murderers and worse. Those who leave their victims alive but scarred mentally or physically.
Then those with less serious criminal records. Fraud. White collar crimes. That sort of thing.
Then other "undesirables" depending on who isn't liked by whoever's in charge.
And then the goalposts for what's desirable will start to move.
And the scope won't just be limited to social media. Websites will be categorised further. Some might remain open access to all people (except the ever increasing list of those to be protected and those who shouldn't have access) but others? No. Those sites themselves are undesirable.
Ooh, and social credit! Maybe you'll need to earn social credit which you'll require to access some websites, with some like social media only being provided to people with a high enough social credit score! /s
The age & general cohort of who this applies to is in the legislation (under 16s). Think more about which sites/platforms it applies to. There was some indecision about YouTube (its in EDIT: yt kids is out) & but signal/whatsapp/telegram are not affected - yet.
So Australia is using facial scanning to verify age, allowing everyone else to remain anonymous? That's how it should be done.
Here in Florida MAGA HQ, I'm hearing calls to verify the identity of EVERYONE on the Internet, because that's the ONLY way they can keep the kids off. I even heard one MAGA state legislator say that it's no difference then carding people for buying alcohol. That's how we keep booze out of the hands of kids, so it will work to keep the Internet out of their hands, too.
They want to kill Internet anonymity, just as a report comes out that the DoJ wants to pay bounties to people who report "anti-Trump behavior."
This will go to the Supreme Court before we're finished.
Here in America, they want Driver's Licenses, with names and addresses. There is no good faith in this effort. They want to tie every person to their online activity, and protecting kids is just an excuse, as usual.
I mean, I am 100% pro-freedom of access and speech and all, but tbf anything that super murders social media is a net positive to the world at this point, until it's less harmful and addictive.
have a look at who proposed this change and you'll see why it's being done. it's clear as day that this isn't a win for anyone on the internet in Australia
AFAIK only big platforms are required to take measures, so it's actually the opposite of what you said. it shifts power to smaller platforms who don't have to comply with these rules.
Yeah?, are you willing to let these companies gather even more data by making it mandatory for EVERYONE to submit a face scan or ID for age verification?
Although I agree that children should not be using social media at all, banning is not the solution. It should be for the parents to let their children use social media or not and if they should be using smartphones at all. If I were a parent I would give my kid a dumb phone just to call and sms (and maybe play snake). If they were to go on a trip, I would give a smartphone without any Appstore — just a dumb phone with parental restrictions, secure messenger like Signal (even Whatsapp if needed) to allow keep in touch with us and friends and any coordinators on that trip. If they were to use social media, it would only be on a Linux PC/Laptop.
I mean there are other social activities — Sports, Reading clubs, etc. It is not as if the world didn't socialize before social media. Bullying is not a new problem. Kids should be comfortable enough with their parents to share (which social media addiction doesn't allow) that they are being bullied and not with random stranger online who doesn't give a fuck anyways.
Yeah, but at some point they will and then they'll have to deal with all of the problems without anyone to help them manage the challenges. So either you parent them now or you just set them up to fail later. Take your pick.
Pretty vague but let me make the best out of it. I'd rather prefer my kids to physically explore the world and socialize rather than forming opinions of it and the society through an echo chamber on a 6 inch screen. It is more setting up to be a better human being (if not successful) than a failure. Most of social media is nothing more than following your favorite creators. Staying in contact with your friends is as easy as asking for their number or their home address so they can actually talk and socialize — you absolutely don't need social media for it (you will only need, at most, Instant Messaging apps).
It should be for the parents to let their children use social media or not
The issue is, parents who do not want to let their children use social media have really lost the battle because every other kid is on social media. So if even if a parent stands their ground on a strict "no social" policy, their kid is an outcast.
With this law, even though some kids will still be on social, parents are empowered to hold the line.
This is exactly the purpose. I am largely against banning things but it's SOCIAL media. Parents who want to make the objectively correct decision for their child have to go up against the zeitgeist and risk complete isolation of their kids in exchange.
As long as social media's goals are commercial and have the effect of "digital cocaine", keeping kids and adolescents out of it should be the default, worldwide.
all her 14 to 15-year-old friends have been age verified as 18 by Snapchat
I love how this sentence is just casually sprinkled there. So platforms are getting $50m fines if they do not implement "age verification", but no problem if they fail to identify minors as such? Tells you everything about how they really care about protecting children.
Or, hear me out, let's not waste time developing useless and harmful surveillance technology.
None of this is required to safeguard children, and it does a bad job in its attempt - while doing a great job of scanning every user's face and documents.
Parents should be responsible, educated and empowered with tools to control their kids' activities online. Networks and mobile devices can relatively easily be configured to restrict and monitor activity, especially for young children where you might want to choose what to allow, rather than to block. There will be ways around them, but if that 1% is motivated enough and knows they shouldn't, I think that's fine.
Since she had been identified as under 16, they feared “her friends will keep using Snapchat to talk and organise social events and she will be left out”.
FFS, we all got along just fine and dandy with group-chats via text message. We weren't fucking cavemen.
The fact that this is her fear (and the fact that it's a legitimate fear) proves just how much controls like this are needed. It's literally digital crack that they think there's simply no other way to communicate anymore (both her and her friends)
"One parent said their daughter was completely addicted to social media" Well then fucking take away her phone. Get her a dumb phone. Install parental controls. Go to a therapist if yo have to. But nooooo the government has got to do everything for us incompetent fucks
One parent told the Guardian their 15-year-old daughter was “very distressed” because “all her 14 to 15-year-old friends have been age verified as 18 by Snapchat”. Since she had been identified as under 16, they feared “her friends will keep using Snapchat to talk and organise social events and she will be left out”.
I think the ban should only apply to public-facing platforms, where everybody can see your content.
Platforms where you only talk to your friends should maybe be left out of it.
I would like to say that this is good for the quality of content on social media as well..
There's less bullshit content on social media if there's fewer kids, and also there's less incentive for other people to create bullshit content for teenagers to consume, if there's fewer teenagers on the platforms in the first place.
All umami instances have been infected with a persisting crypto miner. Umami was affected by the next.js CVE but quietly released a fix, so most of their users missed it
Describe the Bug I am reporting this to confirm that a critical vulnerability in Next.js (CVE-2025-66478) led to a root-level compromise on my server, where Umami was running. I understand Umami ha...
All recently open issues are about this. I was a victim, but I'm not the first and people on reddit have done better investigations than I have. Look for the name of the process at the top
Describe the Bug I am reporting this to confirm that a critical vulnerability in Next.js (CVE-2025-66478) led to a root-level compromise on my server, where Umami was running. I understand Umami ha...
Wow I'm glad I happened to see this here. Thank you for the post. I was just thinking about putting all my services behind a VPN too, I think I'm going to go ahead and put that at the top of the list...
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has reaffimed his firm refusal to cede any territory, resisting U.S. pressure for a painful compromise with Russia as he continued to rally European support for Ukraine.
“Undoubtedly, Russia insists for us to give up territories. We, clearly, don’t want to give up anything. That’s what we are fighting for,” Zelenskyy said in a WhatsApp chat late Monday in which he answered reporters’ questions.
“Do we consider ceding any territories? According to the law we don’t have such right. According to Ukraine’s law, our constitution, international law, and to be frank, we don’t have a moral right either.”
And they act in their self interest, so it's basically a dice roll. Oh, also, Russia controls USA, and USA controls the world, so I'm kind of hunkering down and trying to find an AK at this point.
Far from it. A lot of people in Europe are brainwashed by Russian propaganda, even more people are not doing that great and will not sacrifice anything to help Ukraine. In many countries the right is either in power or very close to getting it. Each government is very carefully calculating how to keep the war going without losing the next elections. I think European troops should have been providing air defense to western Ukraine from the very beginning of the war but half or most of the people (depending on the country) don't support sending any troops there.
The European people really shouldn't want to use their own military anyway. Much better to just continue being America's bitch (as America, and everyone else, slides into fascism.)
What if the vast majority of Ukrainians had an interest in ending the war via negotiations, or even to cede land? Would you still stand with Ukrainians?
Yes. If the people of Ukraine are done with the vicious pounding they are giving Russia, its leaders and their already terrible image, it’s up to them to decide that. You have no saying in that. Nor made up statistics and lies about Ukraine and the Ukrainian people.
More than three years into the war, Ukrainians’ support for continuing to fight until victory has hit a new low. In Gallup’s most recent poll of Ukraine — conducted in early July — 69% say they favor a negotiated end to the war as soon as possible, compared with 24% who support continuing to fight until victory.
This marks a nearly complete reversal from public opinion in 2022, when 73% favored Ukraine fighting until victory and 22% preferred that Ukraine seek a negotiated end as soon as possible.
What is Ukrainian leadership doing to understand the hopes of average Ukrainians - regarding an end to this war?
A negotiation typically ends when both parties get what they want. Maybe they don't get everything they want, but they are happy enough with the results to accept the terms.
Capitulation is not negotiating, it's literally giving up many concessions for nothing in return.
Keep in mind that Ukraine was tricked once already with the Crimean war peace deal that saw them give up territory. Russia invaded again and the U.S. turned a blind eye to their aggression for a second time despite repeated promises of security.
You would have to be an idiot to take any deal that gives up territory at this point. That's not a negotiation, it's just surrender. It's kicking the can down the road to give Russia time to recoup their losses and invade again in a few more years.
The United States has proven to be an unreliable ally in the best of times, so why would they accept a peace deal brokered by a pedophile conman?
A negotiation typically ends when both parties get what they want.
This is unlike any negotiation I've ever been in. Id say a negotiation ends when both parties agree on what they wont get. Your negotiation with the used car salesman doesn't end when you get half off sticker price and the salesman gets sticker price. That's just a contradiction.
Regardless... call it what you want: surrender, capitulation, conceding territory, etc... it's just semantics.
Suppose the Ukrainian people wish to surrender. Would you still stand with them?
Your negotiation with the used car salesman doesn’t end when you get half off sticker price and the salesman gets sticker price. That’s just a contradiction.
What kind of idiotic analogy is this? I can't even wrap my head around it.
Regardless… called it what you want: surrender, capitulation, conceding territory, etc… it’s just semantics.
No, it's really not just "semantics". Words have specific meaning.
I completely believe that the majority of Ukrainians want a negotiated end to the war. War sucks and everybody who has had to live trough one will tell you so. But if the "negotiation" is Russia saying "Give us all the territory we have occupied/seized so far, plus some additional territory that we have not yet occupied, and we will withdraw our troops." that's not a negotiation. That's conditional surrender. I really doubt that the people are clamoring to surrender their land and homes to Russian occupiers.
Suppose the Ukrainian people wish to surrender. Would you still stand with them?
I suspect that no matter what I think the Ukrainian people should do, if they decide that they are ready to give up the fight, then that's none of my business. I'm not in the trenches with a rifle, after all.
But if they Ukrainian people want to continue to fight, and negotiate for a favorable peace agreement, I'm all for supporting them so that they can win and make all the bloodshed so far worth it.
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and guess that Zelenskyy has a better grasp of the pulse of his own citizens than any of us do.
if they decide that they are ready to give up the fight, then that's none of my business
But if they Ukrainian people want to continue to fight, [...] I'm all for supporting them
Thats some precise and deliberate language you're using. Yet you've still avoided answering the simple question.
Sending tens of thousands of Ukrainians into the grinder?
"Hell yeah! Slava Ukraini! To the last man!
Ukrainians use their agency to negotiate an end to the war
"Meh, not my business"
It's pretty clear that when this war most likely ends via negotiation and a land concession, all the gung ho support we see in threads like this one is going to evaporate.
lmao, bro, I can't force them to fight. I'm just a guy on the other end of the computer. I think you don't understand what the word "support" means.
I support Ukraine's right to independence and freedom.
I support the cessation of hostilities in the region.
I do not support surrender to Russia. Why would I? Choosing to fight and choosing not to fight are two diametrically opposed concepts. Therefore, I do not support a resolution in which Ukraine gives up land to Russia, period.
It’s pretty clear that when this war most likely ends via negotiation and a land concession,
Don't hold your breath on this one, Chief.
all the gung ho support we see in threads like this one is going to evaporate.
Wow, what a stunning prediction. Next are you going to predict that the sun will come back up again after it goes down?
Regardless of how the war ends, the support generally ends with it. That's how thing things tend to work. it's pretty hard to care about a think when the thing is no longer happening. If Ukraine achieved victory through martial victory alone and ended the war purely on their terms, my support would also evaporate because the war would be over.
I do not support a resolution in which Ukraine gives up land to Russia, period.
Well thank you for finally giving up on the evasiveness. Ukrainian agency means nothing to you.
To stand with Ukraine means to affirm the average Ukrainian's agency. To affirm their agency to dictate the terms of the end of the war - even if it means they wish to surrender. You will not affirm Ukrainians if they decide to surrender, so you dont stand with Ukraine. You stand with Zelensky, at best. You stand with Ukraine *so long as they promise to sacrifice the last able-bodied soldier, at worst.
So let's just all be clear and understand that you dont stand with Ukraine. You tentatively condone them, so long as...
I don't think anyone is questioning whether Ukrainians want the war to end. Of course the majority want the war to end as soon as possible. However, when asked specifically about territorial concessions the majority of Ukrainians are not willing to accept concessions. Source.
Maybe the Ukrainian leadership knows more about what the average Ukrainian wants than you do?
However, when asked specifically about territorial concessions the majority of Ukrainians are not willing to accept concessions.
And never did I argue the opposite. The question was: supposing Ukrainians wish to concede territory, would you still support them?
Maybe the Ukrainian leadership knows more about what the average Ukrainian wants than you do?
Potentially, but given your own source, a solid portion of Ukrainians dont share those warm and fuzzies.
As of December 2024, 52% of Ukrainians trusted President V. Zelenskyi, 39% did not trust him. The remaining 9% responded that they could not decide on their attitude. Although trust indicators have worsened over the year, the balance of trust-distrust remains positive – +13%.
And never did I argue the opposite. The question was: supposing Ukrainians wish to concede territory, would you still support them?
If you never argued the opposite what's the point of you question? Or do you just like to ask about unfounded hypotheticals?
Potentially, but given your own source, a solid portion of Ukrainians dont share those warm and fuzzies.
Am I supposed to believe you purely coincidentally happened upon the lowest trust poll? How about we look at the latest data of the same poll. Turns out a big majority of Ukrainians do trust Zelenskyy.
What if you let an HIV infected man-gorilla fuck your mom, just once in a while though, so he'll stop beating her every day. Seems like it'd be in everyone's best interest yeah?
I fully agree on the ethics and morals of it, but I also believe that Zelenskyy isn't unaware of the larger situation here and has good reason to put down his foot.
In the end this is also going to be a litmus test for Russia's Hybrid Warfare. Let it not succeed.
I hope the powers that be act accordingly before Ukrainians had enough of being pummeled. Well, I think they already had enough, but before it gets so bad that nothing will keep them fighting anymore.
I even think the headline is a little offensive, acting as if ceding land is even an option. They ceded land to Russia a decade ago and they're still getting attacked. WW2 should have taught us that you can't appease guys like Putin and Hitler.
It was stolen and they absolutely fought for it. They just didn't have the backing of its allies, and didn't have the equipment they have now. Ukraine was still being forced to not really have a military during that time as well
Long as he is able to, thats great. If, as I am suspecting, the jUS and Russia write up a false document essentially giving Russia what it wants without Zelenskyy's input or acceptance things might accelerate into direct conflict with nato
Tags are designed for clarity in general but also for neurodivergents specifically. While I can tell that you were being sarcastic, it's possible that others may have been unable to tell.
I'm not saying that you should have put a tag on your comment, but insulting those for whom it would have been helpful is uncalled for.
Are you speaking as someone that struggles with this or are you speaking on behalf of a hypothetical neurodivergent person?
I would have thought it was implied that my comment was directed at neurotypical people (insulting neurodivergent people for social interaction issues? Is that what you assume of me?).
I am autistic and sometimes struggle to understand indirect statements (especially when not in-person, since there's no tone or expressions to read). I did understand your original comment, but even now I don't see why the second comment should be understood to exclude neurodivergent people. I'm speaking both for myself and for anyone similar to past-me who would have genuinely felt insulted but not said anything.
This doesn't say anything about you, but yes I did assume that a stranger on the internet would insult ND people for social interaction issues. I did just join Lemmy though, so maybe that's an old habit that doesn't apply here. I am glad that I was wrong.
I'm a long way from fully versed in the intricate power plays involved here etc etc, but I'm amazed Russia didnt roll over them, and I'm pretty appalled that the world didnt rally behind Ukraine.
Perun has pretty good videos explaining why, and a big reason is that Ukraine had a very good amount of AA as a former Soviet state and it was enough to keep planes out and they didn't want to send conscripts for political reasons so they sent armored vehicles without a full infantry complement which led to them being easy to pick off with the flood of atgms NATO sent.
I think certain Russians were afraid to tell Putin that the military wasn't ready. They also didn't seem to anticipate Javelin missiles or unified Western support. The US learned a few times that invading a country with the goal of taking over the government isn't always so easy.
Didn't seem like the Russians were adequately trained. Unsupported tanks rolling down urban streets with hundreds of windows overheard from which should-fired missiles could rain down. Putin has sent hundreds of thousands of his own people to the slaughter. Dude fucked up.
Everyone in any position of authority in Russia is on the take. This means that the capabilities of the Russian military is purely theoretical, on paper Russia is a formidable force, on paper.
They sent troops in without equipment, without ammunition, and without supplies. Not because they didn't think they would need ammunition and food but because someone nicked them all back in 08 and everyone in the military is too scared of Putin to tell him this. Probably because they were the ones that took some of it.
Meanwhile, I'm eagerly waiting for the local Tankie to, once again, explain how so much death is justified by the dire threat Ukraine poses to a 17 million square kilometer country with 5,459 nuclear warheads. And, apparently, to their own people. I'm sure NATO is still making them do it, yep.
It's a bit narrow to just write off opposing views as "Tankies."
The vast majority of the world sees the Ukraine war as a conflict between white people. Their big objection has nothing to do with Ukrain vs Russia, it's about the attention paid to a European conflict vs all the others around the world. Many nations notice that while Western nations have never been willing to harm their own economies to end conflicts around the world, those same nations are now asking a bunch of 3rd world countries to support our economic sanctions.
Then there's a whole contingent of people who believe that "supporting Ukraine" is a meaningless platitude without a realistic plan for how to do it. Every sober analysis of the war concludes that it's essentially a war of attrition. There are very few experts who believe that there is any chance that any sort of breakthrough tactic or technology will easily get Ukraine's territory back. We know the math behind that; the rate of movement of the front is primarily determined by the number of people and ordinance you throw at the fight. Russia does significantly more of both. That's been the case for the entire war so far and all signs suggest that it will continue to be the case.
You can go look up the movement of the front over the course of the war. To even out the numbers, we'd have to roughly triple the number of shells we send to the front (ignoring troops for now). That would likely bring the war to a stand still. To start reversing the movement at the same rate we'd likely have to triple it again. So cocktail napkin math says that if we actually want to revert back to pre-invasion borders, we'd have to increase expenditures by around 10x and sustain that for the next 3 years.
Not going to get into logistical analysis (I am behind on that). Nor will I dispute the hypocrisy of focusing only on a "white war." That's fair.
But I'm fervent that the justification for Russia's action is total baloney. I can, and absolutely will, write it off.
To put it another way: even if Mexico was provably 100% Nazi, and they worshipped China and drug cartels and whatever boogeyman we have like gods, I would still be ashamed if my country, the US, invaded them as Russia invaded Ukraine. It’s beyond preposterous to think they pose a military threat to the US, or that it’s our job to purify them, much less to breathlessly excuse such an invasion as (say) Russia’s fault.
If "Tankie" means someone who thinks Russia's invasion was justified, it's the wrong word for many people.
There are many people who agree that Russia's invasion was unjustified and also don't believe that a simple "stand with Ukraine" strategy has a snowball's chance in hell of working. If you look back into US history you'll find a number of conflicts that we thought we could win by just offering advice, logistics, and support; they tend to be costly for the US and catastrophic for the country in question.
Justice doesn't win wars and we know what happens when you keep throwing lives and resources at a war without a solid victory plan.
There are many people who agree that Russia’s invasion was unjustified and also don’t believe that a simple “stand with Ukraine” strategy has a snowball’s chance in hell of working.
Based on what? Putin was clearly losing this war until Trump saved him. Russian losses have been catastrophic and no one can possibly consider Putiin's invasion a success or a smart move. It seems to me like it IS working. And it's preferable to IGNORING the Ukrainians and giving Russia an easy out.
Even before Trump Russia was slowly grinding its way west.
You could look at the various strategic objectives and see the Russians slowly and steadily surrounding them and cutting them off. You could watch the Ukrainian counteroffensives crash against defense in depth. You could see the occasional victories slip away. The HIMARS systems that were supposed to turn the tide are twisted piles of metal.
Ignoring Ukraine would also be dumb. A much better idea would be to come up with an actual feasible plan. One would have been to follow US military advice with the above mentioned HIMARS and execute a concentrated attack to the south to cut off almost half the Russian military. An other would be to accept a ceasefire on the current front, heavily entrench the border to create defense in depth, and use that time to develop an actual counteroffensive strategy.
Ah yes, the fascist plan of "Look, we all know the foregone conclusion. X person will never change their mind (certainly not saying I support them), so you shouldn't stand against them."
You can go look up the movement of the front over the course of the war. To even out the numbers, we'd have to roughly triple the number of shells we send to the front (ignoring troops for now). That would likely bring the war to a stand still. To start reversing the movement at the same rate we'd likely have to triple it again. So cocktail napkin math says that if we actually want to revert back to pre-invasion borders, we'd have to increase expenditures by around 10x and sustain that for the next 3 years.
I disagree here with this for two reasons.
First Ukraine's artillery shell production and transition into nato calibers of 105mm and 155mm is increasing, and the strategic relation of power balance between Russian and Ukrainian artillery is actively changing. This isn't static, Ukraine is quickly developing an advantage here especially when you consider efficiency of resources applied to the front.
Second, Russian air defenses are collapsing, Ukraine is hammering them day in day out and there is no way Russia can replace these air defense radars and missile launchers along with sufficiently trained crew at a high enough rate to sustain this current situation. Russia is HUGE there is an incredible amount of territory that must be covered with air defense. I would not call the current situation a simple battle of attrition right now, Russia is facing an existential collapse of their war machine if their air defenses decisively collapse in too many areas. I am not suggesting the likelihood is high at the moment but the probability of it happening is meaningfully increasing every day.
I am not trying to reject all of your points, but I think the aspects I have brought up have to be taken into consideration. Ukraine will have the capacity to domestically produce and maintain L119 105mm howitzers, 155mm bohdana production has finally begun to hit stride as well, these are strategic leaps forward in terms of practical infantry fighting power and I find conversations tend to ignore these non-flashy but quite meaningful transformations that have happened over the past year or two for the Ukrainian military. They make this moment of Russia's faltering general offensive a far more fragile position than people generally recognize. This isn't to say Ukraine isn't in a fragile position itself of course. What I am saying is I wouldn't expect the status quo to necessarily continue indefinitely here, it will for some time and then all of a sudden it abruptly won't.
It's tricky to find current numbers on artillery production. The most reliable numbers I could find are about a year old and all cite a 3:1 advantage for the Russians.
Do you have sources on what the ratio is more recently?
We like to believe that Russian air defenses are collapsing but do we even know this? We know that some facilities have been destroyed but how many did they have in the first place? What can Ukraine do to exploit a gap in air defenses? Traditionally, air defenses are there to stop enemy bombers but that only matters if the enemy has bombers.
War is difficult. It takes much more than a bunch of people standing around saying, "I support XYZ." It takes a huge amount of resources and involves a lot of dead people.
What can Ukraine do to exploit a gap in air defenses?
...Have you not been paying attention to the Ukraine's campaign of long range strikes utilizing missiles and drones?
In terms of shell ratios, I am less interested in trying to find precise numbers on that since it is an incredibly difficult process to accurately do for one army much less two, but also I am not sure it is necessarily relevant in any absolute sense since Ukraine and Russia utilize their artillery so differently.
In terms of hard facts that have changed well here you go:
These two changes alone significantly change the strategic power balance between Ukraine's military and Russia's military as the L119 is unquestionably the best mass production battle tested towed light infantry support howitzer ever made and the bohdana in towed and self propelled forms is a world class 155mm howitzer that is easily compatible with a global constellation of militaries who may increase military aid at any point.
I have been paying attention to Ukraines missile and drone programs.
Missiles and drones are both very effective but neither of them is a replacement for heavy bombing and Russia still makes more missiles than Ukraine does.
Unfortunately shell ratios are an important detail. That's why the serious policy publications (like FP) spend so much time trying to advocate for increased production.
Don’t look at the front lines. Look at the Russian economy. It’s more likely that the Russian economy collapses or Putin is overthrown due to some internal power struggles or uprising than it is for Ukraine to militarily defeat Russia.
That is as long as the West continues to support Ukraine with the bare minimum to bleed both sides continuously.
The best measure I can think of is GDP growth. It can be hard to estimate but it shows the change in an economy over time. The most accurate data I know of for that is the World Bank.
You'll notice that for most of that period, which includes the entire Ukraine war, Russia's economy has been solidly on par with the other 9 largest economies in the world. They still have active trading relations with most of the world volza.com/global-trade-data/ru…
At the current rates, Ukraine will bleed out before Russia does.
Western propaganda machine constantly pumps out information on Russia's economy being on the verge of collapse. I recall buying into it years ago and, well, we're still waiting.
I think it's a bit of old world thinking at work. In the post WW2 period the West controlled the vast majority of global capital so being blocked out of trade by us meant guaranteed economic despair (if you weren't big enough). The world is very different today but many Westerners (even in leadership) still perceive the world as if we're still in that era.
This is an underestimation of Russia's economic realignment from West to East. Primarily with China and to a lesser extent India. It's hubris to assume that Russia has to have a robust economic relationship with the West to remain solvent.
Financially it's a lucrative one and makes them more resilient to Western sanctions. China is on a trajectory to surpass the US economy in 10 years. Wealth, power and influence are gradually drifting East and South so it's important for Western leaders to adapt now instead of disregarding reality and becoming more entrenched. Being forced to align economically with China will likely be to Russia's long term benefit.
The West (particularly US) is currently doubling down on AGI and fossil fuels (US and Canada). The AGI bet can definitely blow up in its face in the short term. Emerging markets are already pivoting hard to renewables so fossil fuels may not be as good a long term bet as they're hoping. The EU is a stagnant market and the UK is still limping after shooting itself in the foot with Brexit. Many of these countries are now tied up by infighting over immigration, impacting their ability to project power.
The only absolute advantage is the massive defense spending but even the majority of that is by the US so if they decide to leave the rest of the West to fend for themselves then all bets are off.
The vast majority of the world sees the Ukraine war as a conflict between white people.
Wow, way to infantilize the vast majority of the world. Believe it or not, they're as smart as you are and as capable of leaning about a particular conflict.
It's a bit oversimplified but essentially accurate. You can easily find a number of sources that will show you that people is Africa, South America, India, and Asia aren't nearly as concerned about the Ukraine war as Americans and Europeans are.
I know they're every bit as smart as I am because I've had many conversations with them. I find they tend to know more about the Ukraine war, and many other international topics, than most Americans seem to.
So cocktail napkin math says that if we actually want to revert back to pre-invasion borders, we’d have to increase expenditures by around 10x and sustain that for the next 3 years.
This is an oversimplification. When the Berlin wall fell and Germany was unified there were assurances made that NATO would not expand eastward which obviously did not pan out.
The West has pushed forward with NATO inclusion of several eastern European nations including Ukraine since that time. During the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest, George W. Bush insisted on raising the topic of Ukraine's potential NATO membership, despite opposition from Angela Merkel, who was concerned about the implications for relations with Russia.
The concern from a Russian standpoint was an expanding Western sphere of influence, not fear of Ukrainian military action specifically.
What if Canada joined CSTO and signed some pact with China. Does that give the US justification to invade and annex them? Because it violates some handshake from 36 years ago?
If Russia doesn’t like all this NATO expansion, they can drag someone controversial into an alliance or do some other controversial thing. Have at it. A war is not a rational response, unless you’re a tankie.
It's interesting to invoke the US as it typically has a low threshold for military action.
I don't think it justifies war but I would understand if the US perceived that as a national security threat (though it appears everything is a national security threat in the US today). It would be naive to assume a great power would sit by idly and watch that occur.
I definitely understand that many percieve this through a cultural 'us vs them' lens but I would advise against oversimplified conceptualizations. Global geopolitics is complex and a positive outcome in this war is dependent on deeper understanding of historical contexts and how they play into motivation and strategy today.
NATO is such a big threat to Russia, that as soon as Finland had joined NATO, Russia moved it's troops away from that area. Russia's problem with NATO is not that it sees a defensive alliance like NATO as a threat, the problem for them is that they can't bully and invade NATO countries should they feel like it. Which is also why all the formerly occupied countries that are next to Russia, want to join NATO. Who doesn't want their country to be safe from invasion by a fascist state? Tankies apparently.
The most important point to keep in mine is that most of the world (ie countries outside of NATO) do not see NATO as a defensive alliance.
We can argue back and forth about whether Russia was justified to start a war over perceived expansion (I don't believe so) but historical context is important and I don't think it's hard to see how they perceived a threat from their geopolitical perspective, especially if even Merkel recognized that.
Many NATO members contributed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the international legal framework put in place to justify those wars was cited by Putin at the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine.
That is such a tenuous connection to make. America's retarded war on terror was started by America, and some countries that are also in NATO chose to join. All that had nothing to do with NATO, those other countries were not obliged to join, and as you mentioned other NATO members did not.
You can discount it if you like, but if we're trying to analyze how Russia justifies its invasion and perceives its relationships with other nations, then considering the recent past of various NATO members is relevant.
That's like saying BRICS is an aggressive organisation because of what Russia is currently doing... Not the same, but in a similar vein. Not all of NATO was involved in Iraq (many countries were opposed to it, and it may as well have been a US only operation). Afghanistan... There technically was a casus belli, but I'll agree the way the entire thing was handled was a disaster. The occupation following the initial invasion was, notably, a US thing, not a NATO one.
It would be more accurate to compare it to BRICS being adversarial to the US because China has more than 2x the economy of all the other BRICS nations combined and wants to use it as a counterbalance to the G7.
That would be perfectly accurate and the US is actively trying to inhibit the growth of BRICS as an organization.
NATO has not started a war but that is not mutually exclusive from it being perceived as an arm of American imperialism. The general perception is that due to its astronomical defense spending the US has disproportionate influence within the group. There is precedent for NATO countries joining America in unjustified wars previously. This contributes to the perception that, if the US conjures up a reason to go to war with your country, there is a whole club of countries which America may have coercive leverage over (due to defense investment) that may join in seeking to anhilate you.
NATO countries are (or perhaps were) America's sphere of influence.
That's fair, what was meant was whether Russia could feel justified in doing so (from their perspective) in a similar way that America felt justified in its war on Iraq or its posturing for war in Venezuela. All of which are not justified from an objective perspective.
For the warmongers here who fully back zelenskyy refusal to cede territory i would like to remember you that ukraine is in need for men and you are welcome on the front lines defending land.
You didn't answer the question. Personally i wouldn't want to go in ukraine risking to be burned alive fighting over invisible lines on a map so that a government can claim its theirs. For this reason i do not advocate for war or back the ones who are forcing other people to fight.
The majority of Ukrainians do not support ceding territory.
And what a stupid fucking thought process you have going. Russia invaded Ukraine, they should be fucking leaving not having tankie shits suggesting that Ukrainians should just give up.
Answer the question yourself, if you care so much about ukraine land and are afraid about russia why don't you go on the front lines?
A stupid though process is to believe that something is good only because you are not getting your hands dirty and others are doing it for you. Ukrainians should be allowed to do what the fuck they want, if case you aren't aware people are being drafted by force and many haven't been able to left the country for years.
Recently men beetween 18-22 were allowed to leave the border (after two years of not being able to) and many left the country.
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Answer the question yourself, if you care so much about ukraine land and are afraid about russia why don't you go on the front lines?
Because my donations are worth more than my body. Answer the question, why aren't you being paid to be a mouth piece for russian propaganda? Or seeing how you spell... guessing you're sitting in russia trying to convince me and others that we should abandon Ukrainians in their fight against the ruzzians.
A stupid though process is to believe that something is good only because you are not getting your hands dirty and others are doing it for you. Ukrainians should be allowed to do what the fuck they want, if case you aren't aware people are being drafted by force and many haven't been able to left the country for years.
Yea it's called a war for your survival, they're being drafted because it's needed. Again, the majority want the war to end but the majority don't want to ceded territory. This isn't rocket science.
Recently men beetween 18-22 were allowed to leave the border (after two years of not being able to) and many left the country.
Ok and? People don't like war, people don't like dying...why don't you ask the questions why ruzzia is attacking Ukraine and killing civs?
It's up to ukrainian people to decide what they want to do, not to the martial law or any ruler.
Fueling this war and empowering authoritarian governments is how we all end up under a boot. There are plenty of countries that are still in business with russia including USA (both current and previous administration). Fighting over inches of land benefits governments not the people that are long gone from that burned land.
The chance of Ukraine giving up territory increases a lot once they lose all their fortified front lines and the piece of land which Russia currently doesn't control It has the highest elevation of any landmass in the area
What a mess of a situation. When the soviet union collapsed assurances were made that NATO would not expand eastward beyond Germany. That promise obviously wasn't kept and Russia has perceived that as a provocation in the case of Ukraine being right on their border. But there's more than enough blame to go round and Russia is obviously not helping themselves.
The big questions are if NATO carries any significant impact with a disengaged US and what will be the consequences of Russia now strengthening its relationship with China and India in a world where it already seems like power, wealth and the epicenter of innovation are slowly drifting from the US to China.
It seems to me that the US has come to a realization that it can't project power over the world like it used to and would instead like to focus on its geographical 'sphere' (the Western hemisphere including Canada and South America) instead. Trumps recently released national security strategy document seems to suggest as much.
Unfortunately it's hard to imagine how this war is won for Ukraine without US engagement or a change in the mindset and strategy of the EU.
Trump is a russian asset. The majority of the USA and it's corporate overlords are not happy that trump has given away a fuck ton of our soft power.
Also russia promised not to invade Ukraine when they gave up their nukes...this has nothing to do with NATO, and everything to do with putin being an imperialistic fuck.
No doubt imperialism is involved but I think we need to be realistic in recognizing that non-NATO countries do not see NATO as a defense alliance. They see it as an extension of the American empire/imperialism. With the Trump administration it seems like even America has come to see it that way.
In 2019, the US pulled out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty claiming that Russia had violated the treaty by developing, testing and fielding a ground‑launched cruise missile (GLCM) designated SSC‑8.
Independent analysts noted that the evidence for the Russian violation was contested, with some questioning the reliability of the U.S. claims and pointing out that the United States itself operated missile‑defense systems (e.g., Aegis Ashore) that could be interpreted as infringing the INF’s ban on land‑based intermediate‑range missiles.
This fed into their perception that if Ukraine joined NATO such weapons would pointed in their direction from Ukrainian territory.
On August 4, 2025, the Russian Federation announced the termination of its unilateral moratorium on deploying ground-launched intermediate-range (1,000–5,500 km) and shorter-range (500–1,000 km) missiles, six years after the US pulled out
Not good if you're a fan of denuclearization.
The tough thing about soft power is its built on trust so its unlikely America will be getting it back.
They can not see NATO as a defense alliance all they want... that's literally what it is. And it's why countries join it when russia is trying to invade them. Even suggesting russia is acting in any sort of good faith is bullshit. They're the aggressor in Europe... period.
Well they started the war so there's no question they're the aggressor. But to mount a legitimate defense it is important to understand the factors that contributed to their choice and judge their legitimacy. Certain actions taken by the US are noteworthy.
If we assume we are good faith actors and whoever it is we are against are acting in bad faith then we fail to see the whole picture.
Nothing the USA did, should warrant russia from invading its neighbors. Period. This is not a "well NATO" or "well USA". That's bullshit tankie/russian propaganda talk.
The reality is the US has started numerous wars on shaky grounds / manufactured consent and we at least try to reflect on their rationale and judge whether there's any way for empire to be held accountable for war on false pretenses. In the US' case it essentially never is.
This is clearly a very Western leaning audience that is entrenched in their perspective which is totally fine. As long as it's understood that they are also perceiving reality through propaganda disemminated by their elites.
I don't support imperialism in general, regardless of where it comes from. I'm more interested in how empire justifies imperialistic behaviour and how its subjects align themselves to that behavior. This thread has been illuminating in that regard. I imagine there will be quite a few American supporters for war in Venezuela, for example.
I agree with you. Nothing the USA or any other party has done justifies Russia's war in Ukraine. But how the state justifies imperialism and how the subjects buy into and hold dearly their state's mistruths is a fascinating sight to behold.
Gorbatschow and the former Marshall of the USSR both denied the existence of these verbal assurances They found NATO expansion bad and a grave mistake but never had any reassurances by the West of not expanding To be honest, I find it ridiculous that the Baltic states which could easily be invaded within a few days without foreign help would need to cope with a constant threat of invasion just because Russia is unsecure
After reading the comments. Is Shawn working from the Russian Embassy in Washington DC? The clown fails to understand that nobody with a sane mind wants to be occupied nor influenced by the damn Russians.
If anyone in the Trump administration had any brains at all, this would have been obvious from the outset.
The only people who can see advantage to Ukraine seeding territory to Russia, is Russia. Everyone else involved can see what a monumental tactical error that would be. Especially since everybody knows the only reason Russia is even at the negotiating table is because they are desperate, given that is the case, there is zero reason to capitulate.
Before we talk about today’s announcement, let's take a moment to appreciate what this community has built together. What started as a project to preserve webpages and articles has quietly grown into Linkwarden, a tool used by researchers, journalists, and knowledge collectors all over the world.
As we’ve grown, the Linkwarden community has helped us reach:
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None of this would've happened without you. Thank you! 🚀
Today, we’re excited to launch something you’ve been asking for since the very beginning: the official Linkwarden mobile app, now available on iOS and Android.
Here are the highlights so far:
🧩 Create, organize, and browse your links: A native, mobile-first experience with collections, tags, and powerful search.
📤 Save links directly from the share sheet: Send interesting articles from the browser or any other app straight into Linkwarden, no copy-paste required.
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📱 Built for different screen sizes: Supports iOS / iPadOS, and Android (phones and tablets).
🔜 And more coming soon: This first release is just the foundation, expect many improvements and new features soon.
Get the app
To use the app you’ll first need a Linkwarden account (version v2.13+ recommended).
You can choose between:
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⚡️⚡️⚡️ Self-hosted collaborative bookmark manager to collect, read, annotate, and fully preserve what matters, all in one place. - linkwarden/linkwarden
[Igor] Rogov, 29, was arrested in July 2024 after, prosecutors say, an explosives-filled parcel that had been addressed to him was found in a warehouse in central Poland. In their indictment, the prosecutors say that during their investigation into the package they established that Mr. Rogov had cooperated with the [Russian spy agency] F.S.B.
In addition to spying, he was accused of participating in a Russian plot to send incendiary packages on flights around Europe. Fires last year at shipping hubs in Britain and Germany were linked to the alleged plot, part of a broader Russian campaign of hybrid attacks against Europe that Western officials say have included drone incursions, cyberwarfare and acts of sabotage.
A Russian national charged in Poland with spying for Russian intelligence has admitted to passing information to Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), Polish media reported Monday, citing case files.
Investigators also allege that Rogov received a courier shipment containing components for a bomb, including liquid explosives, fuses and a power source.
A Russian national charged in Poland with spying for Russian intelligence has admitted to passing information to Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), Polish media reported Monday, citing case files.
A three-year-old girl was killed by Israeli forces in Gaza on Sunday, according to local sources inside the Palestinian territory.
Ahed Tareq al-Bayouk was reportedly playing near her family's tent in Mawasi, Rafah, southern Gaza, when she was shot.
The Israel Defense Forces said in a statement that it was "not aware of a strike" but would "conduct an additional review" as more information was provided.
Ahed al-Bayouk's death appears to have taken place on the Palestinian side of the so-called Yellow Line, behind which Israeli troops agreed to withdraw as part of the first phase of a US plan to end fighting in the region.
It should not be reported that Israel is reviewing this. They always just say they are going to review something to get a headline like this. Israel approves of its massacres.
A key UN report on the state of the global environment has been "hijacked" by the United States and other countries who were unwilling to go along with the scientific findings, the co-chair has told the BBC.
The Global Environment Outlook, the result of six years' work, connects climate change, nature loss and pollution to unsustainable consumption by people living in wealthy and emerging economies.
It warns of a "dire future" for millions unless there's a rapid move away from coal, oil and gas and fossil fuel subsidies.
But at a meeting with government representatives to agree the findings, the US and allies said they could not go along with a summary of the report's conclusions.
As the scientists were unwilling to water down or change their findings, the report has now been published without the summary and without the support of governments, weakening its impact.
What the fuck does “not the only ones with nukes” supposed to mean? Every entity with them needs close fucking attention paid to how it behaves and what it says.
I’m not saying do what America wants because they have nukes, I’m saying America is a fucking rabid dog and you don’t take your eyes off a rabid dog.
“Fix your shit not our problem” is a very American thing of you to say and think. Idiot
Pokrovsk has not fallen yet. That is despite President Vladimir Putin's recent claim that Russian forces have taken the city.
There is no doubt Ukraine has been losing ground in this key city in the east. For Russia, Pokrovsk is another stepping stone towards its goal of taking control of all of the Donbas. But Ukraine needs to prove it is still capable of resisting.
At a Ukrainian command post, well behind the front line, orders are relayed by radio in rapid and quick succession. Soldiers watch dozens of live drone feeds. They are coordinating strikes on Russian positions inside the city.
The commander of the Skala Assault Regiment, Yuri, is keen to prove to us that Ukraine still controls the north of the city - to show that the Kremlin's claim that it has taken Pokrovsk is a lie.
The problem is Russians are doing the same and they both have to somehow defend incomplete lines with gaps or risk getting fully surrounded and cut off fron support.
Late one night in April 2020, towards the start of the Covid lockdowns, Shanley Clémot McLaren was scrolling on her phone when she noticed a Snapchat post by her 16-year-old sister. “She’s basically filming herself from her bed, and she’s like: ‘Guys you shouldn’t be doing this. These fisha accounts are really not OK. Girls, please protect yourselves.’ And I’m like: ‘What is fisha?’ I was 21, but I felt old,” she says.
She went into her sister’s bedroom, where her sibling showed her a Snapchat account named “fisha” plus the code of their Paris suburb. Fisha is French slang for publicly shaming someone – from the verb “afficher”, meaning to display or make public. The account contained intimate images of girls from her sister’s school and dozens of others, “along with the personal data of the victims – their names, phone numbers, addresses, everything to find them, everything to put them in danger”.
McLaren, her sister and their friends reported the account to Snapchat dozens of times, but received no response. Then they discovered there were fisha accounts for different suburbs, towns and cities across France and beyond. Faced with the impunity of the social media platforms, and their lack of moderation, they launched the hashtag #StopFisha.
It went viral, online and in the media. #StopFisha became a rallying cry, a safe space to share information and advice, a protest movement. Now it was the social media companies being shamed. “The wave became a counter-wave,” says McLaren, who is now 26. The French government got involved, and launched an online campaign on the dangers and legal consequences of fisha accounts. The social media companies began to moderate at last, and #StopFisha is now a “trusted flagger” with Snapchat and TikTok, so when they report fisha content, it is taken down within hours. “I realised that if you want change in your societies, if you come with your idea alone, it won’t work. You need support behind you.”
Gen Z are the first generation to have grown up with social media, they were the earliest adopters, and therefore the first to suffer its harms. Now they are fighting back
A small brown line snakes its way through the rainforest in northern Sumatra, carving 300 metres through dense patches of meranti trees, oak and mahua. Picked up by satellites, the access road – though modest now – will soon extend 2km to connect with the Tor Ulu Ala pit, an expansion site of Indonesia’s Martabe mine. The road will help to unlock valuable deposits of gold, worth billions of dollars in today’s booming market. But such wealth could come at a steep cost to wildlife and biodiversity: the extinction of the world’s rarest ape, the Tapanuli orangutan.
The network of access roads planned for this swath of tropical rainforest will cut through habitat critical to the survival of the orangutans, scientists say. The Tapanuli (Pongo tapanuliensis), unique to Indonesia, was only discovered by scientists to be a separate species in 2017 – distinct from the Sumatran and Bornean apes. Today, there are fewer than 800 Tapanulis left in an area that covers as little as 2.5% of their historical range. All are found in Sumatra’s fragile Batang Toru ecosystem, bordered on its south-west flank by the Martabe mine, which began operations in 2012.
“This is absolutely the wrong place to be digging for gold,” says Amanda Hurowitz, who coordinates the forest commodities team at Mighty Earth, a conservation nonprofit monitoring developments at the open-pit mine. “And for what? So mountains of gold bullion bars can sit in the vaults of the world’s richest countries.”
Tapanuli orangutans survive only in Indonesia’s Sumatran rainforest where a mine expansion will cut through their home. Yet the mining company says the alternative will be worse
The unsustainable production of food and fossil fuels causes $5bn (£3.8bn) of environmental damage per hour, according to a major UN report.
Ending this harm was a key part of the global transformation of governance, economics and finance required “before collapse becomes inevitable”, the experts said.
The Global Environment Outlook (GEO) report, which is produced by 200 researchers for the UN Environment Programme, said the climate crisis, destruction of nature and pollution could no longer be seen as simply environmental crises.
“They are all undermining our economy, food security, water security, human health and they are also [national] security issues, leading to conflict in many parts of the world,” said Prof Robert Watson, the co-chair of the assessment.
Reporting from Fallujah, Jacobin documents how US-made weapons laced with toxic metals and depleted uranium have turned cities razed by war into biohazards. Soil, bodies, and whole generations are being poisoned in their wake.
Tens of thousands of students across Germany walked out of lessons to oppose the reintroduction of conscription, denouncing the government’s militarisation drive and the growing danger of a third world war.
The federal government says it is keeping a close eye on lethal strikes by American forces on suspected drug boats in the Caribbean, while continuing with operations in the region.
Canada has conducted Operation Caribbe — an anti-drug trafficking mission in partnership with the United States Coast Guard — since 2006.
The Department of National Defence says that mission has nothing to do with the deadly strikes conducted by the U.S. Air Force.
This shift has left Canada and other allies in an impossible position, according to Rob Huebert, director of the Centre For Military, Security and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary.
"I think the Canadian government is quite rightly being very cautious on its activities to ensure Canadians are not caught up in any kind of illegal activities, but at the same token trying to maintain this working relationship we have," Huebert told CBC News.
Tens of thousands of students across Germany walked out of lessons to oppose the reintroduction of conscription, denouncing the government’s militarisation drive and the growing danger of a third world war.
A few hundred people gathered in central Madrid, with thousands more rallying in nearly 80 cities across the globe. On Saturday, December 6, the Venezuelan diaspora responded to a call from Maria Corina Machado, the leading figure of the opposition to Nicolás Maduro's regime, ahead of the ceremony where she is set to receive the Nobel Peace Prize on December 10 in Oslo.
On Plaza España, Venezuelan flags mixed with placards condemning the government in Caracas. For a long time, the opposition wanted to show a united front as Washington increased pressure on Venezuela. "The Nobel is a huge step forward for us. It means there is no longer any disagreement about the criminal nature of Maduro's regime," said José Antonio Vega, Spain coordinator for Vente Venezuela, the party founded by Machado in 2012.
The opposition leader, forced to go underground in Venezuela, confirmed that she would travel to Norway in person to receive her award, despite the risk of being declared a fugitive by authorities. The Nobel Committee awarded her the distinction on October 10 "for her tireless work in support of the democratic rights of the Venezuelan people, and for her fight for a fair and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy."
In Madrid and in dozens of cities around the world, opposition figures demonstrated unity as the Nobel Prize is set to be awarded to their leader on December 10 in Oslo, convinced that the collapse of Nicolás Maduro's regime is imminent.
Chinese government circulated sexually explicit deepfakes of dissident Yao Zhang.
Yao Zhang says she doesn’t have any friends, yet every week, thousands of her 175,000 YouTube subscribers tune in to her channel to listen to her live takes on Chinese current affairs.
“China isn’t a democratic country. Everyone suffers in that regime,” Zhang told Radio-Canada during an interview held somewhere between Montreal and Quebec City.
Concerned for her safety, the 39-year-old guards any information that could give away her location.
And for good reason: the Quebec YouTuber, who refuses to be silenced, has been the target of an intimidation campaign by the Chinese government for over a year.
“I have to be very, very careful,” she said. “I stopped all communications with the Chinese community because I don’t know who I can trust.”
[...]
Trained in accounting at McGill University, Zhang did a 180 during the pandemic and began offering news commentary on YouTube, which she continues to do today. The Communist Party of China and president Xi Jinping are often the subjects of her criticisms.
“I’m with Taiwan, I’m with the Uyghurs, I’m with Hong Kong. I’m against the Chinese government,” said the pro-democracy activist.
It was in September 2024 that Zhang first noticed sexually explicit AI-generated images of herself circulating online.
“It wasn’t just one photo. There were many, many of them,” she remembered with disgust.
Shared by anonymous accounts, the images were published on social media under posts of official accounts belonging to the Canadian government and then prime minister Justin Trudeau.
[...]
For the YouTuber, there was no doubt the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was behind what she was seeing. And she was right.
In March, Global Affairs Canada (GAC) released a statement blaming the PRC for a new "spamouflage" campaign using sexually explicit AI-generated images to target individuals in Canada. Zhang says the government told her she is the first documented case of the campaign.
“This new campaign employs various tactics to intimidate, belittle and harass individuals based in Canada who are critical of the PRC,” reads the statement.
Notably, Zhang and members of her family have been doxed. Her date of birth, phone and passport numbers all appear on a doxing website that labels her as a “traitor.” The site, which is still accessible to this day, also uses degrading language to spread defamatory sexually explicit statements about her.
[...]
Though the YouTuber benefits from a certain degree of protection in Canada, she can’t say the same for her family in China.
In 2024, after a trip to Taiwan to support the island’s independence, Zhang said China's national police put pressure on her aunt and grandmother living there in an attempt to silence her.
The strategy is a well known one, detailed in a report published earlier this year by the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions.
“[The PRC] employs a wide range of tradecraft to carry out its activities, one of which is to use a person’s family and friends living in the PRC as leverage against them,” it reads.
[...]
Zhang says she’s received death threats against her and her family and is worried about retribution if she were to ever return to China.
“I’ll go to prison,” she said. “I’ll be like all those who have wanted to change China.”
[...]
Transnational repression is a “genuine scourge” in the country, concluded Marie-Josée Hogue, who presided over the public inquiry into foreign interference. The threat it poses “is real and growing,” adds the report.
The former Canadian ambassador to China, Guy Saint-Jacques, who occupied the function from 2012 to 2016, says budgets allocated to cracking down on dissent “increased substantially” after Xi came to power in 2012.
[...]
Notably, an Enquête investigation revealed that a Chinese dissident found dead in British Columbia in 2022, Hua Yong, was the target of an espionnage operation led by the Chinese secret police.
[...]
Zhang says she is at peace and hopes that more Chinese people in Canada and elsewhere in the world will speak out.
“I am using my life for something very important,” she says.
Last week the survivors of Super Typhoon Odette that struck the Philippines in 2021 filed what may be the most ambitious climate lawsuit to date against global oil giant Shell.
The NSW Resources Regulator’s November 25 “Investigation information release” neither explains what caused the tragedy nor makes any recommendation for how to stop more workers being killed.
The Honduran election has been overshadowed by naked imperialist intervention, with Trump vowing there would be “hell to pay” if the country failed to elect his chosen candidate.
The European Commission said it will “make sure” it receives money owed by Elon Musk’s X after the company was fined €120 million for failing to meet transparency rules.
The Commission on Friday said X has breached transparency and deceptive design obligations under the EU's platforms regulation, the Digital Services Act, and issued the €120 million penalty.
The decision set off a cascade of accusations of censorship from U.S. officials, Musk and his supporters, with some suggesting the company should refuse to pay the fine.
If eventually fines do get calculated on their total income (which is possible, they can issue fines up to 2% of total yearly income if I remember correctly) and these fines are starting to come in more frequently it gets quite expensive really fast.
The EU does this already. And I agree, $140million is not much, EU-wide. Last I heard it was just 1 member state who issued a similar fine - times 27 that would already hurt a little.
All the dumber that Musk is making such a stink about what is really less than peanuts to him.
It is peanuts to him but I think his hissyfit is not so much about the money but the fact that the EU has the capacity to regulate his company. As an billionaire in the US he is very much used to doing whatever he wants with no consequences or constraints from regulatory agencies.
The ambiguous "charges" seem like a "we don't like you" fine, rather than a fine for anything X does. It seems like google and reddit should have that kind of fine for making ads that sit where posts or search results should be moreso than anything X did. Everybody who uses the service knows that they take a payment for the blue check. They were pretty vocal about it. Maybe Google and Reddit paid the fines and just kept up business as usual and the EU is happy because they got their money. I don't like X or musk, but I don't think they should pay the fine.
*"The breaches include the deceptive design of its ‘blue checkmark', the lack of transparency of its advertising repository, and the failure to provide access to public data for researchers" *- Seriously? Okay. So openly arbitrary that I know you yourself would be up in arms about it if you didn't hate Musk. I am all for hurting Musk, but this is an obvious subversion of justice.
Yes. Seriously. And if x wants to operate in the EU then it has to follow EU law.
Consumer protection still exists and what x is doing with it's 'verified' badges is just straight up deception. The only thing it verifies is that that account has paid x money.
Second, relating to transparency in advertising. Hybrid warfare is a major threat to the stability of Europe's society, institutions and democracy. A major vector for that is propaganda carried out through Facebook and X. Both through fake users and adverts.
The EU should very much take this seriously and I'm glad that they are.
[X] hasn't replied to POLITICO’s repeated requests for comment.
lol
Not the main point, but I found this interesting:
Regnier also justified the Commission’s continued use of X as a platform for corporate communications, despite the severity of anti-EU comments posted by Musk over the weekend and the platform’s decision to suspend the Commission’s account for paid advertising.
The EU executive uses 15 social media platforms and hasn't made a decision to suspend its use of X, Regnier said.
All these platforms are ways to "get in touch to citizens, stakeholders, to do some outreach work, to precisely speak about what we are doing in the EU," he said.
Statements comparing the EU to Nazi Germany are "part of the freedom of speech that we very much praise in the EU," which "allows even for the craziest statements that you can imagine," Chief Spokesperson Paula Pinho said.
The Commission stopped "using paid advertising or any paid services for X" in 2023 and its regular account remains open, Regnier said.
So why is the EU this interested in defending spreading lies and propaganda? It comes off to me like a complete lack of a backbone. Like a pacifist who believes so intensely in pacifism that they'd rather let a nation commit genocide, than stopping it with force. Which, after writing that, also seems to apply to the EU...
You could take a dime from a millionaire and they would cry about it forever. It's not about the money it's about the conversion of money to power, it's a loss of power they're upset about not necessarily the actual money or what it could be used on.
Oddly enough, I think this would be an effective thing.
Musk, like all bullies, just doesn't want any accountability whatsoever. Yes, the amount is trivial given his means, but as we saw in South America, he is perfectly willing to back down when a challenge is meaningful, culturally if not materially.
Right, just like Florida Senator Rick Scott didn't get wealthy committing the largest Medicaire fraud in history, after pleading the 5th over 185 times in his trial. The blame was the company that he owned, and was the CEO. The company paid a massive fine, but he kept his stolen government money, and went on to run for Governor of Florida, where he continued his campaign of stealing from the government, doubling his net worth, and is now a Florida Senator, where he was recently caught on video railing against talk of abolishing insider trading for Senators, whining that "Democrats want to keep people from earning money!"
No, you penis with ears, making a living is fine, but you are using a method that would put any of the rest of us in prison for years, and that happens all the time. We just expect YOU to live by the same laws as US.
He HATES it when people post these reminders of how his entire fortune is build on taking money from the government, as he rails against Career Politicians, and runs on term limits, which he never introduces once he's on office.
Ultranationalist Israeli politicians, including National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, wore golden noose-shaped lapel pins to a meeting on Monday in order to show their “commitment” to advancing a widely condemned bill to mandate the death penalty for “terrorists” who kill Israelis. The pins resemble the yellow ribbon pins that Israeli leaders have worn throughout their genocide to to…
Tee hee, genocide is so funny! Look at his fucking face. He's happy about this. Murdering innocents. Maybe he should be the one with a noose around his neck.
Nothing inevitable about it. That kind of thing only happens when you're defeated in war, taken prisoner by your enemies, or when your entire country sees and regrets the course it has taken. Bush and Cheney faced no consequences, and Kissinger faced no consequences, because no one in a position to bring that about wanted to. Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir, Smotrich and the rest will face no consequences unless Israel's apartheid regime falls. And that looks unlikely in the near future.
Either circumstantial changes like the rise of the global South (not counting those that have been up for a while because they sleep with the West) will mean the end of Western imperialism or it'll kill us all (the rest by the West, the West by their own hands and ecological collapse). These dreams are too unrealistic even for me, and I believe in the unseen! 🥲😭
Man. Fuck Zionists, and anyone who supports Israel at this point. There are a lot of good Jewish people in the world, and Israel is ensuring them another Holocaust
I find it astounding that when you bring up Jews who oppose Zionism and support Palestine, the Zionists act like you're talking about Russian online trolls and that its impossible to be a Jew and oppose Zionism.
They're basically MAGAts. They're so devoid of morals and worth, that they literally can't fathom that some of their peers have empathy, compassion, and wisdom.
I wonder what Israel's long-term plan is. Because if they achieve their objective and wipe out Gaza then they're going to be international pariahs for pretty much the rest of history.
Regardless of what governments made decide there is going to be extreme social pressure for businesses to not work with them, and the thing is they represent such a small market it isn't worth the inevitable boycott doing business with them would result in. The Israeli government have to know this, civilians living in Israel must know this, yet here we are.
They're banking on making people believe the Palestinians don't deserve to live, and that enough people simply won't give half a shit about a bunch of brown people dying. Coupled with plenty in the west hating muslims because of american wars of aggression and propaganda, I think they'll succeed. Even if in say 3 months, the whole palestinian area is simply wiped out, bulldosed into a giant gravel parking lot, not enough people will give a shit, because they just don't give a shit about other people.
The British and Americans have also committed a bunch of war crimes and exterminations of people and are not pariahs. My expectation is, sadly, that nothing will meaningfully happen if they were to "achieve their objective".
Here is what I use it for: - Download top voted pictures from CivitAI - Pull weather data and get notified if it is going to rain - Subscribe to events posted by the police (polling their API) - Scrub lunch restaurants for todays menu - Get notified when a streamer I follow on twitch starts streaming - The same for YouTube but I haven't finished this one yet. - Webhook (combined when a one file web page) to note down every time my oldest kid has this strange coughing. - Send me this week's number (because some people use it and knowing that today is week 50 can be useful a few times a year).
I use ntfy for my notifications. I was also planning to monitor if I sold anything in Guild Wars 2 but I haven't bothered setting up a table in a database to keep track of if I have seen the latest changes, otherwise I would get the same notification over and over.
Pull weather data and get notified if it is going to rain
That's a pretty respectful list you have there. I am working on something that will pull in weather data and forecast maps, but haven't completed the flow yet.
I wanted to do the same for One Punch Man but ended writing a bash script for it instead. File access and variables was the biggest hurdle (but both are solvable).
Knowing if it is going to rain in the next hour is nice because I take the bike to work. I like to know which clothes to take with me.
The latest thing I've cobbled together with n8n is a routine that goes out to sol24.net/ and pulls in the current Aurora forecast and the current 7 day video of solar flares into my dashboard. I've always had a fascination with how the sun affects the earth and the protective layers of our atmosphere, since I was a child. I built my own 5 watt, code only, transmitter and receiver and would set in my room late nights collecting QSL cards and talking to people from all over the world . I quickly learned that the ionosphere and other protective layers affected how far my little 5 watt signal would bounce. Solar flares burn holes in the ionosphere and prevent a good bounce halfway around the world. So the challenge was to pick days where there was good ionosphere coverage, and minimal solar flares in conjunction with antenna positioning.
This is the current video which takes you from 11/29 to 12/5. It's mind boggling to me the absolute power and energy represented: sol24.net/data/stereo_7day_euv…
You could probably conjure up something in bash to do this, but I really like working in n8n.
Local hosted n8n: local AI llm agent (for privacy), that can use tools to search the web, check my emails and calendar, save memories, get Youtube transcript, etc.
Scheduled workflows to get me some stock info every morning.
Working on a research crawler with crawl4AI.
Only limitations seem to be my will to learn new stuff. I'm sure all this could be written in Python or something but I'm not a programmer.
I've done some of that stuff in Python, and n8n is just lovely, far simpler. You can also add a node that runs Python code in n8n, so you only gain simplicity, but lose almost nothing.
Just to be clear there are two versions. One with nuts for those who want that AI experience, and one without nuts for the anti-ai faction in the group. The n8n ai-starter kit will spin up n8n with AI. I use the plain n8n mainly because I don't have the equipment to run an in-house AI properly or rather effectively, and I don't want to connect to AI exterior of my network. A friend of mine runs the ai-starter kit and does some really impressive stuff with it, but he has all the new toys to properly run it.
I've only ever added AI to n8n workflows through ollama nodes/tools and agents and whatnot. I haven't seen the version where an AI llm is baked in yet. I did see we have tables now which is handy. Like I said, I'm self self-hosted tho so, either way, don't have to use it if you don't want. I'd probably recommend anyone just install whichever is easiest unless, it's forcing you to download the llm blobs/models and you don't have the space for it.
The helpfully named site AlternativeTo is good for such questions. It's populated by users and served me well over the years.
IFTTT and Zapier are the primary non-self-hosted alternatives, both have been around for ages and have lots of available integrations.
Node-RED and Huginn are the self-hosted alternatives. Huginn is older than both n8n and Node-RED, afaik, and seems to be primarily focused on online queries like updates to a webpage.
In the end I haven't used any of the self-hosted ones, since I'm more of a code guy, so can't say if one is better than another for anything.
You can integrate a host of things into n8n including AI, however you can also just run n8n as an automation tool without anything else integrated. It does take a little reading of the docs to figure that out. I am sure that most people run n8n with AI, and admittedly, the front page of the n8n site promotes the AI version because other users would like to run n8n with AI. Some in this thread are suffering from knee jerk syndrome.
You're entitled to your opinion. 🤷♂️ I will not go near a product that tries to make anything AI the primary focus of itself. This is my opinion and I'm not really looking for anyone to change it, nor am I looking for anyone whose opinion I can change. 😊
Do you take this so personally that you are now resorting to ad hominems? My guy. 🤭
Is this your personal project? Why are you getting this butthurt? I just don't care about AI, because I don't need to use it. And I don't have to care about AI for anyone.
You should see my inbox full of people just like you yapping on and on about this n8n thing, explaining what it's for, when I explicitly said I don't want to know more.
Listen, so you won't feel so sad anymore: I'm not opposed to using AI, I'm just sick of hearing about it because I don't need it for the reasons everybody is saying I should.
Now can you either act like an adult or not talk to me again? Thanks, my dude.
could be one of those cases where the product predates ai but some c-level asked an engineer "could we use this for ai" and the engineer said "i mean, technically yes" and then marketing changed every single mention of the product
yeah this project has been on github for six years and seems to have been closed source before that. it's a graphical automation tool.
like, everything can be used with ai. github itself has "ai agent" plastered everywhere. it's just a buzzword. doesn't mean it's built specifically for ai.
It's automation. Skim the link I sent. Something pops up in a log file or an API returns X instead of Y and you can do some logic based on that. Send yourself an email, ping another API, etc. Sure, you can use it to query an LLM API but that's just marketing. Frontpages are marketing, yes
Marketing matters. I am not interested. And that's fine. I don't have any use for this product, AI or no AI. Everyone can go about their business now and relax all your efforts to make me interested in this. Thank you for showing me that respect.
Anything that puts on the front page of its project site the use case for itself to relate to AI agents instantly makes me suspicious and not interested. I can't help it.
I get it. Some of us are staunch anti-ai. That's fine. I am not an n8n sales person, but I just wanted to make it clear, there are two versions and you can integrate a host of thing into it. Personally, I would run the AI version with a private AI that doesn't need an external LLM. But my equipment is not that new and it takes some power to run AI efficiently and effectively. No issues with anyone, it just seemed that there was some confusion.
I'm running n8n now, and used Node-RED several years ago.
I'm ultimately coming to the conclusion that I prefer Node-RED. They're pretty similar in capability, at least for my purposes, and the modern UX of n8n doesn't make up for its weird license, in-app upsells (e.g. "this feature is only available on the Enterprise plan"), and increasingly AI-centric functionality.
I self host n8n in a docker container on my home lab mainly as something to just fuck about with.
Production workloads include leveraging my work calendar and completing my daily time sheets, cleaning up my mailbox at the end of the week, and providing access alerts for my Traefik proxy.
My most common use case is telegram integration via bot API - adding mobile controls to services that otherwise don't have acceptable (for me) UI. I've also tried their LLM integration and tool node to create a simple agent that reaponds directly to messages, but for now it can only save links to my linkwarden instance. I found it acceptable and plan to add more tools. Basically, i want it to automatically decide what to do with stuff that i send to chat.
I can't think of a use case, that couldn't be realized in Bash instead.
Well, everything can be done in bash (or in python, more probably), but n8n makes it easier to tweak. With "batteries included" many stuff can be done without prior research and without external dependencies. They even added built-in databases in recent release.
In a statement issued on Wednesday after its annual meeting in The Hague earlier this week, the Assembly of States Parties (ASP) vowed to uphold the integrity of the Rome Statute and said it was “gravely concerned” by threats and coercive measures targeting the court.
The meeting took place in the shadow of US sanctions already imposed against a number of ICC senior officials, including judges and the chief prosecutor, Karim Khan.
Diplomats speaking on the sidelines of the event told MEE that the Trump administration had tried to exert further pressure on the ICC in the leadup to the ASP meeting by calling on the court to drop its investigations into war crimes in Palestine and Afghanistan as a condition for lifting sanctions.
The oversight body of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has shunned US demands for the court to drop its investigation into Israeli war crimes and to amend its founding treaty to prevent the prosecution of nationals from countries that do not re…
Hello, I am a person who has only used thread based "social media" their whole life. I never liked platforms such as twitter and instagram and preferred aggregators like reddit, and nowadays, lemmy.
I tried joining twitter once, failed, closed my account and went back to reddit. Same with instagram. Kind of glad that I did not use them.
I recently created an instagram account because my friends use it's messaging feature. And because my generation uses instagram handles like phone numbers of old (i am 20).
I really want an active mastodon account. There are really cool people there and there are some thoughts I can't express with the "forum format".
I mostly repost cool stuff I see, but even after joining a reasonable amount of discourse, and trying not to look like a bot, I am yet to get a workable amount of social circle. Whereas I easily fit into places like lemmy.
what am i doing wrong
edit: Just realized the title looks like a "I wanna be famous" post. It really is not
You don't necessarily need "followers" to actively participate. On Mastodon (and other parts of the Fediverse) many people will follow hashtags as much as they will follow accounts.
Follow hashtags you find interesting, and when you post, include hashtags that are relevant to your post, this is a great way to participate and also how people will find you.
Make sure your hashtags are relevant. Including hashtags that are "trending" but not relevant is considered spamming, and you may find yourself muted or blocked.
Adding to Brian's comment, if you use hashtags, please avoid spamming them. First and the main reason, because it's spammy. And second, too many hashtags cause visual noise.
And if you're still looking for an instance, maybe pick some mid-sized Mastodon instance (plus it has good Peertube compatibility). Would advise, however, to avoid creating an account on Mastodon Social as it eclipses the other instances, risking to defeat decentralization. You could also pick a Friendica or Mbin instance as both support microblogging and threads.
On Mastodon (and other parts of the Fediverse) many people will follow hashtags
I don't really like Mastodon either but I stopped following hashtags entirely because for some reason it ignores language filters for them, meaning my feed is chock full of shit I can't even read.
Steps to reproduce the problem Set languages to filter from Settings -> Preferences -> Other. To make this bug more easy to reproduce, set it to allow only Russian. Follow any hashtag that has a lo...
I agree it’s definitely worth following hashtags liberally for things you’re interested in. Your feed should really open up with that.
But it’s also worth doing a longish #introduction post, adding hashtags of things you like and pinning that to your profile. You might already have done that but you can always do a fresh one. People will also boost introduction posts so that might get your profile out there more.
I have an introduction pinned on my profile if it helps: beige.party/@brian
It adds searchable metadata to a post. Like if you go in Netflix and search for an actor or browse a genre. So I can follow #rugby without having to follow every single person posting about rugby, and I will see all posts that have that tag. Then I can find individual people within that topic to follow and interact with directly.
Exactly this, and the other benefit of hashtags (at least on some apps for Mastodon) is that you can mute them. So, if you’re following someone whose posts you enjoy, except their posts about #rugby, you can mute those posts and not see any of them. I find it a really great way to keep my feed as only those things I’d prefer to see.
Antennas are underrated, they works pretty well for capturing many small signals about one area of interest. Mastodon columns with multiple hashtags pinning comes second this.
I actually enjoy Mastodon because the "followers" you get or the ones you follow are few and it's all manageable. I don't understand the appeal of following so many that you can't possibly keep up with what they write about or who they are.
Having used Mastodon for a few years, I would say that it doesn't work like that. There's no reason to expect interaction unless you bring an IRL group, or stick close with a popular niche topic. Most people I interact with have an agenda, and don't need me for anything other than boosting their posts. Some are intensely hostile to anything other than standalone posts. Anyone replying across the platform is labelled a 'reply guy' and basically dissed and shunned. "Ultimate cancelling", I think.
Most of Mastodon doesn't want to support the rest of Mastodon AFAIK. There isn't a broad society with popular encouragement as you had with early Instagram, Twitter, and Reddit.
At the outset of popularity for the platform, a lot of long term users were very upset about popularity. To the day, those users are trying to discourage other people. If you post, they might even counter-post as cleverly as possible to attach disdain to anyone interacting with you.
Don't take any of it personally. It's not about you. Luckily you're not special in this regard. Post there if you want to, but never expect something beyond passing jerks.
Start with following some person who posts about things you care. Sometimes respond if you think you can contribute to the topic, be nice and soon you'll get your circle.
Apart from the stuff already mentioned, never stop shouting into the void about stuff that interests you or projects you’re working on. Add a few relevant hashtags so your toots can be discovered. It may take a while, but people will come. Don’t give up.
Human rights defender and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who advocates for Ukraine on the international stage, Oleksandra Matviichuk, has called on Germany to supply Ukraine with long-range Taurus missiles and to take a more decisive stance against Russia.
...
Matviichuk noted that it takes Russian missiles less than a minute to reach, for example, a school in Kharkiv.
“The only way to prevent this is to stop these missiles while they are still at a military airfield in Russia. For that, we need Taurus,” she told the media group Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland (RND) in an interview.
As stated, the human rights defender urged Germany to more thoroughly analyse the mistakes the country had made in its relations with Russia, particularly highlighting cases of bribery of the German elite during the construction of the gas pipeline.
In her view, until 2022, Germany — like the civilised world in general — allowed Moscow to act with impunity for far too long.
...
“Russian war crimes in Chechnya, Moldova, Georgia, Mali, Libya, Syria — no one was held accountable,” Matviichuk emphasised, calling on Berlin to act more decisively now by reassessing its overall policy toward Moscow.
“We are living in times that test all of us for genuine leadership, genuine courage, and genuine responsibility,” she stated.
Earlier, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz did not oppose supplying long-range missiles to Ukraine. However, after taking office, he has not made the corresponding decision.
Human rights defender and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who advocates for Ukraine on the international stage, Oleksandra Matviichuk, has called on Germany to supply Ukraine with long-range Taurus missiles and to take a more decisive stance against Russi…
She probably had an orgasm while saying it too. Just imagine the stock price. Thank you, brave Ukrainian fighters for all the stock pri...i mean, democracy, you're dying for. SLAVA UKRAINE!
Production of Taurus cruise missiles has been suspended in Germany Thomas Gottschild, head of the German representative office of the MBDA missile manufacturer, said that the production of Taurus cruise missiles in Germany has been suspended due …
If you really want people to think positively about the person in question, I suggest not to name the Nobel peace prize within the text. Kissinger and Machado should be enough to suspect a neonazi bias.
My draw to HomeKit is the ecosystem, and its ease of use for me and for my kids (we are all iOS users).
I have been reading about the differences between both Home Assistant (HA) and HomeKit (HK), and I do like the idea of having more control over everything, and exponentially more devices available to me through HA.
In fact, what inspired my research is to look for an alternative to myQ for my garage door opener. And while I have found ratgdo that can do everything myQ can do, and more, it’s my basic understanding that HK support is not as great as HA.
I do understand that to use HA, I will need something to use as a dedicated hub; I have a few Pis running in my house already that I could easily make into a dedicated hub. So that’s not an issue.
I am also tech savvy, but I do not wish to spend all of my waking hours tweaking things. More importantly, I want to know if my kids can easily use HA devices without them having to be tech savvy.
Can HA be set up in a way that my kids can just point and click using apps on their devices? Can anybody help show me (screenshots, videos) what that might look like?
Thousands of contracts and documents outline the contours of DHS’s surveillance capabilities: geolocation, facial recognition, DNA testing, eye scans, spyware, licence plate cameras, credit reports and more. AI tools cross-reference datasets, while mobile apps give field agents information at their fingertips.
At the same time, the proliferation of data brokers and digital, “open-source” intelligence has made surveillance easier than ever. Unlike the government programmes revealed by Edward Snowden over a decade ago, DHS has not needed to build extensive in-house capabilities — vendors now offer sweeping tools at relatively low cost.
A wide array of private corporations, from global powerhouses to niche start-ups, have secured hundreds of millions of dollars in government contracts, including AT&T, Thomson Reuters, Palantir and Clearview AI. Some have hired lobbyists with ties to the White House to capitalise on ICE’s growing ambitions.
Individual surveillance technologies should be understood within the “mass surveillance context”, says Emily Tucker, a professor at Georgetown Law School. “All this stuff is being used together.”
Former officials say internal safeguards have been sidelined. “There’s less oversight and more willingness to break the rules,” says Deborah Fleischaker, who served as DHS’s privacy officer and ICE chief of staff under Biden.
“Things are just unbound,” she adds. “People are doing things that have never been done before, in ways that have never been done before, with fewer safeguards in place.”
More than a dozen former senior government officials familiar with Trump’s deportation push spoke with the FT, most on the condition of anonymity fearing retribution.
They hold a range of views about the administration’s policies and left the department for a variety of reasons, but all shared concerns about the volume of data collection, the lack of oversight, and the shift from criminal to immigration work. Many raised fears that surveillance tools may soon be used on left-wing groups and protestors who ICE claims are threats to its agents.
An FT analysis of federal procurement data shows ICE has spent at least $353mn on surveillance contracts this year, up 27 per cent from 2024. In July, Trump’s spending bill gave ICE $29bn for operations on top of its existing annual budgets for the next four years, empowering the agency to buy more tools.
ICE is hiring staff to monitor social media, seeking contractors in Vermont and California to gather “information obtained from commercial and law enforcement databases as well as publicly accessible, open-source and social media platforms.”
ICE is also hiring old-fashioned private investigators. A tender posted last month seeks contractors to “use all technology systems available” to find addresses for persons of interest, including “physical observation”. The agency says it has approximately 1.5mn names it will divide among these vendors, who can earn between $7.5mn and $281mn based on the number of people they locate.
ICE and Customs and Border Protection also collect DNA from detainees and asylum applicants, according to a privacy disclosure. One attorney says he was representing a US citizen who was given a cheek swab while incorrectly detained. Samples are stored in an FBI database where they are queryable by a range of law enforcement agencies.
ICE has also signed a contract with BI² Technologies, a vendor selling handheld eye scanners. Former officials questioned the need for the devices, noting that the agency held few, if any, iris scans to search. “My first question is why?” a former privacy official says. “What do you expect to get out of this? If they’re just out there collecting irises and biometrics, that’s a problem for me.”
“They’re spending a lot of money on things they might not even use, to benefit people who are maybe close to the administration,” says Dave Maass, director of investigations at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital privacy nonprofit monitoring ICE’s surveillance purchases. “They’re moving very fast.”
Procurement records also show that ICE has obtained tools previous administrations found problematic.
In August, ICE removed a hold on a $2mn contract with the Israeli spyware firm Paragon Solutions, which sells a phone-hacking tool called Graphite. It has been used by the Italian government to target European journalists with iMessage and WhatsApp attacks, according to researchers at The Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto.
The contract was paused by the Biden White House, which had banned the use of spyware sold by foreign companies with human rights concerns. Paragon was subsequently acquired by US-based private equity firm AE Industrial Partners, which also controls Department of Defense contractor REDLattice.
A major earthquake of magnitude 7.6 has hit Japan's north-eastern region.
The quake occurred at 23:15 (14:15 GMT) at a depth of 50km (31 miles), about 80km off the coast of the Aomori region, the Japan Meteorological Agency said,
It prompted tsunami warnings which have now been downgraded to advisories, while waves of 40cm (16in) were seen in some places.
Local media reports that some people in the region have been injured, while trains have been suspended as a precaution.
[quote]A Fediverse Enhancement Proposal (FEP) is a document that provides information to the Fediverse community. The goal of a FEP is to improve interoperability and well-being of diverse services, applications and communities that form the Fediverse.
T
A Fediverse Enhancement Proposal (FEP) is a document that provides information to the Fediverse community. The goal of a FEP is to improve interoperability and well-being of diverse services, applications and communities that form the Fediverse.
The FEP Process is an initiative of the SocialHub developer community, a liaison of the W3C Social Web Incubator Community Group.
Discovered this today. If you're on the developer side of things or are interested in how the Fediverse / ActivityPub is being built and enhanced, take a look at this codeberg repo.
when reading through the jellyfin with chromecast guide i realized that it would probably be less effort to just let the casting api be public, with the added bonus that i could then cast my library to any device that supports it. but that seems like it would paint a giant target on the server.
what's the recommended way of doing stuff like this? ideally i want to be able to go to someone's house and just play some of my media on their tv.
not that any of this is doable in the near future, since i'm behind cgnat and won't get my colocated bounce server up until spring.
i've set up servers with static ips in datacenter settings before. the way you know you're online is usually that your cpu activity jumps a few percent from all the incoming ssh traffic from russia and china. i don't want to risk anything happening to my home server.
I am not sure lol. perhaps your ssh port isn't exposed to the internet, or maybe the bots are just ignoring you? maybe your hosting provider has some sort of security process to reject those attempts preemptively?
Non standard port. But aren't secret chinese hack farm scanning wider than just 22 ? I don't know and deep down believe that it's pawned and scrubbing logs.
The resources required to port scan every port on every IP is generally not worth it. AFAIK they tend to stick to lower ports or popular ports. Unless they're intentionally targeting a specific IP or IP range, they're just looking for low hanging fruit.
The ability to generate a bunch of traffic that looks like it's coming from legit, every-day residential IPs is invaluable to disinformation campaigns. If they can get persistence in your network, they can toss it into a bot net which they'll sell access to on the dark web.
A sucker opens insecure services to the open internet every day, that's free real estate to bot farms. Only when the probability of finding them is low enough is it not worth the energy/network costs. I think hosting on non-standard ports is probably correlated with lowering that probability below some threshold where it becomes not worth it...don't quote me, though.
At the end of the day, the rule is not to depend on security by obscurity, but that doesn't mean never use it.
This whole thread (that I shamelessly hijacked) is very informative and allowed me to understand that cybersecurity is in practice a mixture of concrete nerdy log books and vague feeling of being under a threshold of worthiness.
I woke up this morning and there was a faint noise coming from the server: immediately thought "ok that's it, it's pawned and become a node in a vast grid of malicious bots"....it was a cron verification of drives
Hah yeah, I've definitely pulled the plug on my router before because I wasn't sure what I was seeing.
I mean, cybersecurity I would consider to be a research field. In practice, yeah, it's a bunch of people just doing their best.
I tend to keep everything inside my network and only expose what I need visible on non standard ports, one of those being a VPN. It's not that I couldn't run these services public facing, it's that the people taking the time to constantly update, configure, and auditing everything full time to head off red team are being paid. I don't need to deal with an attack surface any larger than it needs to be, ain't nobody got time for that.
Allowing external access to your services means that any misconfiguration or bugs can be exploited to gain control of your machine(s).
Once that happens they can be fucked with, your data stolen, your resources co-opted for someone else’s use, etc. and often times it can be made to look as though whatever bad shit it’s doing is your doing.
So, understand your security posture. You can’t be too careful. Taking over weak or exposed machines is a global industry now.
But you can, in fact, be too careful. Availability is one arm of the security triad.
If whatever complex configuration you have set up to avoid exposing something to the Internet is incompatible with something and what you wanted to do can't be done, or if you look and see that setting all that up would be too hard and don't bother to expose the service at all, then your security posture is incorrect because your service is just as unavailable as if someone else broke it.
Okay thanks for mentionning overblown paranoia, that's what I have.
What kind of exploitable server misconfigurations are we talking about here?? Brute forcing won't work because fail2ban, right? I'm a noob and deep down I'm convinced that my homeserver is compromised and has beenpart of a bitcoin mining farm for years... Yet, not a single proof...
my homeserver is compromised and has beenpart of a bitcoin mining farm for years
The very first Linux server I deployed on a VPS was hacked almost immediately because of my ignorance. The bot gained entrance, and they supplanted a miner rig. Now, on a tiny VPS, it's pretty easy to tell if you're running a coin miner because all of the resources will be pegged. However, I got to thinking, on a corporate server, if they did manage to do this, it would almost be undetectable until someone started reviewing logs.
It’s not just opening stuff to the internet, it’s opening stuff to the internet without any authentication in this case. If you don’t know how that’s bad…….
I set up Jellyseer so my friends can request whatever. Just blame your full collection of My Little Pony and Gilmore girls on that one friend from Finland (unless you're in Finland, and then use Greece).
EDIT: ddns does not work behind cgnat, only vpns and cloudflare tunnels do. my bad.
cgnat is doable with a dynamic dns service. you sign up free at duckdns, freedns, or desec, set up the subdomain you want (example.dedyn.io), install or host in a container a small ddns tool that will periodically (5 min typically) check what your current ip is and update your dns record with that dns service automatically with an api. some routers even have a dynamic dns setting so you can do it without a separate install.
as far as security, you'll at a minimum want a long, unique password for any jellyfin accounts, and you should place it behind a reverse proxy like nginx, nginx proxy manager for a gui, caddy, or traeffik for some docker automagic fuckery i still don't understand. i use nginx proxy manager, set up a wildcard *.example.dedyn.io certificate and force ssl on each service i'm forwarding.
you can get fanicer and have an authentication layer self hosted as well like authelia or authentik, but beware that apparently mobile apps and smart tv apps for jellyfin do not play nice because they use the same http port as web access and do not have the ability to pop open a web portal for a secondary auth and will not work with these yet. so it's a good extra layer and 2fa sso addition but only if you use the webgui jellyfin and don't rely on an app, which considering you're asking about casting is probably not your use case.
what else you can do is set up a crowdsec or fail2ban service that will read logs from either the reverse proxy or jellyfin itself and ban ips thru your host firewall that fail to log in to help prevent bots from brute forcing in.
it's not perfect but with a reverse proxy, ip banning tool, and strong, long passwords on jellyfin it should be relatively ok.
however it would probably be most secure to setup an openvpn or tailscale to vpn to your host and have a definitely secure link to jellyfin from everywhere. i don't use these myself so i don't know about limitations this way such as mobile app or smart tv app compatibility, though. and if you want to share with other users it comes with its own security considerations of letting others have a vpn into your host.
hope some of this helps, also there's a cloudflare tunnel thing you can use instead of those dynamic dns services for domain redirect to ip behind cgnat, but i haven't used it either and don't know what all it entails.
oh dang, i thought i saw docs and comments saying ddns would help behind a cgnat too, must be mistaken. it's just for isps who give semi-static ips that change, not full cgnat. after some quick googling it looks like tailscale or other vpn or cloudflare tunnel are your only options.
as i said i'm getting my bouncer server set back up next year after the datacenter it's in has finished renovations, so actually getting a public address is not the biggest issue.
I mean, anything with a web server can have vulnerabilities. Just look at the LastPass breach where hackers got in through an employee's exposed Plex library.
Sure, software can always be vulnerable. What's the difference between me consuming it from someone else or my private server?
Plex was running on his private computer, not a dedicated server, right? Windows? His version was 75 versions behind the current version at the time. How could the malware escape the server's/plex' sandbox? With a keylogger? Why wasn't he using a password software? This isn't the best example for your point
Plex was running on his private computer, not a dedicated server, right?
They opened it to the internet - that's the big difference (and the topic at hand). Security is a multi-layered thing, but if your weakest point is a gaping hole, the rest doesn't mean much. To my point - assuming Jellyfin ain't gonna have vulnerabilities even when you're fully up-to-date, is foolhardy.
This video addresses many of the concerns of hosting stuff in public, and details a way (and some tools) to do it relatively securely. (There's always a risk there'll be a zero-day vulnerability in a web application like Jellyfin, but you can mitigate against them if you use the right strategies/tools, and you're vigilant enough.)
Since you're on cgnat, you can set up Pangolin on a VPS, or Tailscale-->rinetd-->Tailscale tunnel, also on a VPS. (Apparently frp is another similar solution, with p2p proxying.)
i'll worry about the nat traversal when i get my bouncer back up, but it will probably be less full-featured than pangolin. previously i just used a reverse ssh setup but that was a bit too rudimentary.
Yea I haven't tried Pangolin myself - looks a bit bloated for my tastes, but I have tried rinetd across Tailscale and it worked brilliantly (very simple conf file), and I've done reverse ssh before (using autossh) which was a bit fiddly. frp does look promising though, just as a VPS<->home bridge.
Not spesifically helpful with your cgnat-situation, but my jellyfin runs on a isolated network and it's just directly exposed to the internet via named reverse proxy in order to share the library with family and friends. Should someone get access to that they can obviously use the VM for nefarious purposes, but it's a known risk for me and the attacker would need to breach trough either my VLAN isolation or out of the virtual environment to my proxmox host if they wanted to access my actually valuable data.
Sure, there's bots trying every imaginable password combination and such, but in my scenario even if they could breach either the jellyfin server or reverse proxy it's not that big of a deal. Obviously I keep the setup updated and do my best to keep bad actors out. but as I mentioned, breach for that one server would not be the end of the world.
With cgnat there's not much else to do than to run a VPN where server is somewhere publicly accessible and route traffic via that tunnel (obviously running a VPN-client on jellyfin-server or otherwise routing traffic to it via VPN). Any common VPN-server should do the trick.
i like how everyone got hooked on the cgnat thing when i gave the actual solution in the main post. but yeah there's always the option of not doing anything until i see issues.
Also, don’t use the default “data/media/{library name}” (or whatever the suggested format is) folder setup that the Trash Guide has you set up. At least change the “tv”, “movies”, etc name to something different. Jellyfin has a known vulnerability where an attacker can get access to media without valid credentials if they already know the file path. Jellyfin devs have stated that they have no intention of ever fixing this, because it would require completely divesting from the Kodi branch that everything is built on. And since everyone follows the Trash Guide to set their *Arr stack and library up, guessing file paths is laughably easy.
You’re using the suggested file naming in your *Arr stack, so Jellyfin can automatically match media? Congrats, so is everyone else. You’re using the suggested folder layout so your *Arr stack can use hardlinks? Congrats, so is everyone else. At least change the library folder names. Since your library folder doesn’t need to match the name of your Jellyfin library, you can literally have your “tv”, “movies”, and other folders be named whatever you want. Hell, name your tv folder “peepee” and your movies folder “poopoo” for all I care.
This needs to be copypasta'd as a reply to every comment suggesting that opening up jellyfin to the internet is easy and everyone should do it to get away from Plex.
having your ssh port blocked in the firewall being second
So like if I want to access my PC from outside, is it enough that I don't have a firewall installed but that I open up some random port and redirect it to my PC's port 22, and then connect to it via the random port?
make sure you aren't accidentally exposing jellyfins port directly to the internet
If you don't want to worry too much, you can setup a vpn (like wireguard) on your server for ssh access.
Using a non standard port is a good idea, but not entirely foolproof because bots might still port scan (even if unlikely that they do that for ssh I'm not sure). At a mininum, you probably want to use keys for login like the other commenter on the main comment said.
Personally, using a vpn for when I want access to SSH when I'm out is worth the couple hours setting it up the one time (very simple setup with wireguard-easy for example). Maintenence time spent on upgrading is very low.
(Tl;dr personally I'd use a vpn to access ssh specifically rather than exposing it to the internet)
Same thing for Jellyfin?
Not 100% sure what you mean, but to clarify: Don't accidentally expose jellyfins port to the internet (eg the default port 8096). Make sure it is only accessible from outside your network through your reverse proxy.
I agree, there is a lot of paranoia, but honestly that's probably a good thing, because the people who are paranoid might not know that much, so a good amount of paranoia is healthy there.
The chance of being exploited is very low for me to care too too much. Why spend countless days locking up my entire infra when there's a very low low chance anyone could exploit me in the first place (obviously get your setup to a good standard, I don't recommend not reading up on anything and exposing server, etc. Just for me, I don't need to over do it).
That being said, personally I have ssh behind a vpn because that's a very important service that only I am accessing anyways, so it makes sense for me to disable that attack vector.
An Idea I am also using for other things where I do not want to use a VPN: 1. Setup a reverse proxy (e.g. traefik) 2. Setup an oauth middleware for everything (forward Auth) 3. Create rules to exempt very specific request based on IP, headers, etc... from the middleware.
In the casting use case you have to find a request and check if there is any parameter that you can use to safely whitelist the request. Ofcourse someone could get behind this and fake the request to match the whitelist. But without knowing that there is even a whitelist no one will really try
My workaround will be to get a Chromecast or anything castable, a travel router (probably gli.net), setup a VPN and use that.
Any other device that's outside of my home is unable to open a connection due to authelia intercepting the connection and the client unable to understand that.
Ziggurat
in reply to SLVRDRGN • • •rozodru
in reply to Ziggurat • • •DreamButt
in reply to Ziggurat • • •redwattlebird
in reply to Ziggurat • • •Mumble and Pigdin won't be banned right? Also, swapping mobile numbers and getting on conference calls... Writing letters and all that. There's still other ways to communicate.
I'm almost thinking of making a quick phone app to give them options and ideas on how to communicate outside of the big tech bubble.
I wonder if making your own personal website on Neocities/Geocities will come back in vogue again.
T156
in reply to Ziggurat • • •If enough of it is still around. A lot of the old spaces that used to exist aren't around any more.
Plus things like YouTube and Discord aren't banned, do chances are, they would end up there instead.
Github may be, strangely enough.
CaptainPedantic
in reply to SLVRDRGN • • •Have you tried parenting her?
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Kami
in reply to CaptainPedantic • • •like this
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comrade_twisty
in reply to CaptainPedantic • • •ms.lane
in reply to CaptainPedantic • • •CaptainPedantic
in reply to ms.lane • • •"Give me your phone, give me your laptop" works pretty well.
My phone has a giant "setup parental controls" button. You can block specific websites using tools like PiHole that are easy to set up.
ThrowawayOnLemmy
in reply to CaptainPedantic • • •Ricky Rigatoni
in reply to CaptainPedantic • • •DreamButt
in reply to CaptainPedantic • • •WoodScientist
in reply to DreamButt • • •ameancow
in reply to DreamButt • • •davad
in reply to CaptainPedantic • • •True, but there's also a little more nuance.
For a social media ban to be effective without ostracizing individuals, it has to include the entire friend group.
As an analogy, if the kid's friends all text each other, but your kid doesn't have a phone, they miss out socially. They miss out on organized and impromptu hangouts. And they miss out on inside jokes that develop in the group chat. Over time they feel like more and more of an outsider even if the ready of the group actively tries to include them.
BackgrndNoize
in reply to SLVRDRGN • • •athairmor
in reply to BackgrndNoize • • •TrackinDaKraken
in reply to athairmor • • •rozodru
in reply to athairmor • • •Nuggsy
in reply to rozodru • • •That and it's a 'social media ban' which is a pretty broad term. Depending how you define social media it could ecompase a lot of other platforms not included in the initial list i.e. Steam, Discord, etc.
This could lead to further restrictions on freedom of speech and anonymity dependent on whatever agenda the government is pushing or to try to control dissent by forcing the poplace to provide some form of ID to access any platform/access the internet.
That may be a leap too far from where we currently are, but it's an important factor to consider as it could have wider reaching consequences if left unchecked.
That being said, I think the large social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter are cesspools that prey on children/teens and are designed to be addictive even for adults.
It's due to that I'm stuck on the fence a little. If anything we as a society should be looking to pressure social media companies to operate ethically.
What has happened instead is that the Australian government has basically pushed the onus on social media companies to block access to these platforms and threatened them with a fine. There's no real plan for implementation, no push for education on social media and its issues.
WoodScientist
in reply to athairmor • • •BackgrndNoize
in reply to athairmor • • •WoodScientist
in reply to BackgrndNoize • • •Arcane2077
in reply to SLVRDRGN • • •Some good silver linings here, but what everyone needs to remember here is that nobody would be supporting this at all if facebook wasn’t intentionally predatory and bad for (all) people’s brains.
If regulators in Australia had a spine they would call for an end to those practices, and now that’s infinitely harder to do
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porcoesphino
in reply to Arcane2077 • • •I think that's easier said than done. There are a lot of negatives associated with social media and some are easier to put restrictions on (say violent content) but I don't think we really have a good grasp of all the ways use is associated with depression for example. And wouldn't some of this still fall back to age restricted areas, kind of like with movies?
But yeah, it would be nice to see more push back on the tech companies instead of the consumers
Arcane2077
in reply to porcoesphino • • •porcoesphino
in reply to Arcane2077 • • •ℍ𝕂-𝟞𝟝
in reply to porcoesphino • • •porcoesphino
in reply to ℍ𝕂-𝟞𝟝 • • •The_v
in reply to porcoesphino • • •Its a very simple fix with a few law changes.
This would bankrupt Facebook, Twitter, etc within 6 months.
Attacker94
in reply to The_v • • •I assume you don't mean simply providing the platform for the content to be hosted, in that case I agree this would definetly help.
This one is damn near impossible to enforce for the sole reason of the word "deliberate", the issue is that I would not support such a law without that part.
The_v
in reply to Attacker94 • • •I left out the hosting part for just that reason. The company has to activately do something to gain the liability. Right now the big social media companies are deliberately prioritizing harmful information to maximize engagement and generate money.
As for enforcement hosters have had to develop protocols for removal of illegal content since the very beginning. Its still out there and can be found, but laws and mostly due diligence from hosters, makes it more difficult to find. Its the reason Lemmy is not full of illegal pics etc. The hosters are actively removing it and banning accounts that publish it.
Those protocols could be modified to include obvious misinformation bots etc. Think about the number of studies that have shown that just a few accounts are the source of the majority of harmful misinformation on social media.
Of course any reporting system needs to be protected from abuse. The DMCA takedown abusers are a great example of why this is needed.
T156
in reply to Attacker94 • • •It would also be easily abused, especially since someone would have to take a look and check, which would already put a bottleneck in the system, and the social media site would have to take it down to check, just in case, which gives someone a way to effectively remove posts.
porcoesphino
in reply to The_v • • •That kind of aligns with some actions I would love to see but I don't really see how it helps in the example I used to highlight some of the harder things to fix, depression. How does that improve the correlation between social media use and depression in teenagers? I can see it will improve from special cases like removing posts pro eating disorder content but I'm pretty confident the depression correlation goes well beyond easy to moderate content.
Also, if we presumed that some amount of horrific violence is okay for adults to choose to see and a population of people thinks its reasonable to restrict this content for people below a certain age (or swap violence for sex / nudity) then do we just decide we know better than that population, that freedom is more important, or does it fall back to age restrictions again (but gated on parts of the site)? I'm avoiding saying "government" here and going with "population of people" to try to decouple a little from some of the negatives people associate with government, especially since COVID
But yeah, holding tech companies accountable like that would be lovely to see. I suspect the cost is so large they couldn't pay so it would never happen, but I think that's because society has been ignoring their negative externalities for so long they're intrenched
ms.lane
in reply to Arcane2077 • • •Where?
The kids will move to less monitored platforms and even on things like YouTube, parental controls are now gone.
You need to have an account for parental controls to be applied to, kids aren't allowed an account, vis-a-vis, no more parental controls or monitoring for problem content.
socsa
in reply to ms.lane • • •wheezy
in reply to ms.lane • • •As someone that grew up with an "unmonitored" internet. I can say that it was significantly more healthy than the profit driven "keep watching" algorithm that is all of social media today.
Yeah. I saw "two girls one cup" and "lemon party". But, did I slowly have my perspective of reality changed by the 30 second videos I swiped on for hours at a time for days on end?
No, most of my time was spent learning about computers, "stealing" music, and chatting with my real life friends.
I don't think a kid today can experience that internet anymore. It's gone. But acting like "unmonitored" internet access is worse is pearl clutching and ignoring the fundamental problems the profit driven internet has created at the expense of societies mental health.
Kids will absolutely find another place to connect online in Australia. But, honestly, I think whatever that is will be healthier than the absolute brain rot that is profit driven social media.
venusaur
in reply to Arcane2077 • • •socsa
in reply to Arcane2077 • • •Arcane2077
in reply to socsa • • •socsa
in reply to Arcane2077 • • •Arcane2077
in reply to socsa • • •WoodScientist
in reply to socsa • • •stickly
in reply to WoodScientist • • •Wasn't aware that social media keeps kids alive?...
I've seen enough stories on kids being cyber bullied into suicide that I really doubt there's enough happy inclusion on these platforms to balance that.
Walk_blesseD
in reply to socsa • • •You are a fucking imbecile.
stickly
in reply to Walk_blesseD • • •Strangely enough, support networks can exist outside of social media. It's very possible to directly message friends or neighbors without being subjected to the dregs of public social media. It remains possible to get world/local news without an attached public forum.
If you're going to make a space that has content for adults and allows for free adult discussions (with all the nuance and complications that entails), then restrict it to adults only.
This is only a problem in conjuction with legislation requiring social media use (ie: as an official broadcast system, payment platform, electoral tool, etc...). If we fight that and force it to remain an opt-in disinformation platform then who cares?
As it currently stands nothing is forcing you on these platforms other than a conditioned familiarity. Even worse, there are no tech or legal protections preventing them uniquely identifying users today. Them getting an official state ID doesn't change much. More barriers to entry for a shitty surveillance and propoganda platform? Literally no downsides there.
wheezy
in reply to Arcane2077 • • •It's a bandaid. And just like previous attempts like this all this will do is make Australian kids better at circumventing the censorship or using an alternative website. Which, honestly, is probably a positive in and of itself. I'd much rather my kid be visiting some random forum type website (like I grew up with) then the absolute brain rot that is social media algorithms.
Seeing "lemon party" posted before the mods removed it definitely fucked me up less than the slop being fed into the brains of teenagers on social media today.
Kindness is Punk
in reply to SLVRDRGN • • •a_non_monotonic_function
in reply to Kindness is Punk • • •That was my first reaction after processing the news--lets hold them accountable for hate, exploitation, etc.
If they can't play nice they don't get to do business at all.
Jajcus
in reply to Kindness is Punk • • •The alternative, of not being evil, is not compatible with their business model.
But it is the business model that should be banned, not socializing online by teenagers.
pulsewidth
in reply to Jajcus • • •Tech giants are well known for lobbying against any legislation that gives them less freedoms to exploit markets and regulations of any kind that impact them - but this legislation that was targeted specifically at regulating them and removes a significant number of users - "this is suspicious, I think they might be the ones pushing it!"
There's so many people in under this post trying to turn it into anything but what it is - legislation attempting to protect kids from the harms of social media. Which, again - are well documented.
Jumuta
in reply to Kindness is Punk • • •Dalraz
in reply to SLVRDRGN • • •PriorityMotif
in reply to Dalraz • • •BassTurd
in reply to SLVRDRGN • • •foofiepie
in reply to BassTurd • • •Er no.
My progeny is a decade ahead of where I was at his age. Smarter and more self assured and stable.
He’s not dumber. But I’ve realised I am.
BassTurd
in reply to foofiepie • • •foofiepie
in reply to BassTurd • • •Ah I see. Yep. And it’s easier to see it as you get older.
Didn’t want to miss out on the chance to diss myself though. I was as dumb as a rock back then. And in many ways, still am.
BassTurd
in reply to foofiepie • • •foofiepie
in reply to BassTurd • • •BassTurd
in reply to foofiepie • • •frongt
in reply to BassTurd • • •BassTurd
in reply to frongt • • •Bonifratz
in reply to SLVRDRGN • • •So, Australia's first?
SpacePirate
in reply to Bonifratz • • •ThomasWilliams
in reply to SpacePirate • • •E_coli42
in reply to SLVRDRGN • • •sudoer777
in reply to E_coli42 • • •theneverfox
in reply to SLVRDRGN • • •This is going to be a shit show.
I'm not opposed to the idea that kids shouldn't have access to social media, but they obviously do. Their social lives are online, and their insecure little brains are going to scream that they've been kicked out of the tribe when you cut the link
The ban won't work, but will also cause a lot of damage
ameancow
in reply to theneverfox • • •Like what exactly?
theneverfox
in reply to ameancow • • •Like teenagers, who run off social validation, suddenly feeling like they're excluded from their society
Kids are going to kill themselves.
And far more kids are going to develop complexes that they'll never recover from
Social isolation hits the brain like physical pain. We're hardwired to feel social isolation as trauma, logic can't save you from feeling like you've been cut off from your peers
bcgm3
in reply to theneverfox • • •Withdrawal is an unpleasant, but necessary, part of detox.
On the other hand, I 100% agree it's going to be a shit show. Technological development has outpaced the law as long as I've been alive, and the disparity is only growing... Authorities are not equipped to provide solutions to the problems that technology has created, and continues to create.
theneverfox
in reply to bcgm3 • • •Withdrawal isn't what I'm worried about... You can't cut teens off from their peers and get a good result
Those who can will evade, those who can't will feel a crippling level of isolation. That doesn't do good things to a teenage mind
EvilBit
in reply to SLVRDRGN • • •socsa
in reply to EvilBit • • •EvilBit
in reply to socsa • • •lunelovegood
in reply to SLVRDRGN • • •Literally the fault of the parent.
yes_this_time
in reply to lunelovegood • • •There is precedence though. We age gate: nicotine, alcohol, gambling etc..
we shouldnt expect parents to be monitoring children 24/7. actually, as children get older they should be given freedoms, parents have the right to expect our society has some guardrails.
yes_this_time
in reply to yes_this_time • • •UnpledgedCatnapTipper
in reply to yes_this_time • • •The guardrails already exist. Put parental controls on your kid's devices. Done, solved. Block social media sites, monitor what they're doing online. Don't go making it mandatory for everyone to give social media companies more information than they already have.
A better comparison would be "let's put a government mandated ID scanner on everyone's liquor cabinet so that their kids can't access it! Oh you don't have kids? Too bad, still need that ID scanner!"
Maybe the focus should be on a free (government funded, ideally FOSS) parental controls software suite that makes blocking social media on all major platforms (iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, and Linux) simple and easy. Promote it to parents, and get them to parent, instead of deanonymizing the internet for everyone.
ameancow
in reply to UnpledgedCatnapTipper • • •But nobody does that, and the problem is getting worse.
What's your answer if you can't get a population to make better choices and people are being harmed by something?
I'm not saying there's a right answer here, I am genuinely looking for alternatives on a societal level to address a proven health problem.
yes_this_time
in reply to UnpledgedCatnapTipper • • •The bans are for under 16s, not just 7 year olds. Parents don't control all internet activity for 15 years, at that age they are going to have some autonomy outside of the house.
I'm not sure there is a direct irl analog when it comes to controlling digital spaces, since they are personal by nature. and I think this is where the debate comes in.
Should parents be following their teenage child into every store to make sure they aren't buying alcohol?
I get the concern with providing social media companies a government ID, I certainly would never give them one! I would just not use them. But they provide net negative value in my opinion so no loss.
I like the idea of FOSS parental controls.
irelephant
in reply to UnpledgedCatnapTipper • • •ameancow
in reply to lunelovegood • • •Parents who were also raised by social media? This isn't a new problem but it is a problem that's getting worse, I don't know if a ban is the answer but so far nobody has even suggested an effective alternative to reducing screen-time for both adults and kids.
This ban isn't supposed to solve a problem overnight, but it's supposed to influence some segment of the population to socialize, to form real communities and to hopefully grow up capable of helping their own kids not get addicted.
This is a real problem, it's widespread across the globe and many, many studies have shown the harm social media has on a huge percentage of teens.
Also, parents work. Parents sleep. You can't fucking hover over your teen night and day, you would hate that worse.
2deck
in reply to ameancow • • •ameancow
in reply to 2deck • • •I agree.
But what do we do about the fact that even though our knowledge, research and understanding of the problem has increased, the problem has gotten worse? Is there more that can be done on that front that you think would be effective? Genuinely asking to help me shape my opinion.
It's blooming into a larger-scale societal problem than just hoping enough people pull through, a lack of stable mental health and attention spans across large swaths of your population start to erode your society.
2deck
in reply to ameancow • • •Walk_blesseD
in reply to SLVRDRGN • • •And for what? So boomer politicians and their constituents aren't challenged by their well-informed children about the genocides they're facilitating at home and abroad? So the pigs in this police state have an even easier time surveiling citizens with all the identifying info websites are gathering??
ameancow
in reply to Walk_blesseD • • •Social media use by kids and teens has been demonstrated factually to cause harm to people's mental health and social lives. The sources are plenty and widespread.
I still don't know if a ban is the answer, but at least it's an attempt to address a problem. I'm curious what your answer would be to this growing problem?
Walk_blesseD
in reply to ameancow • • •I figure holding tech giants directly accountable for the specific harms they've caused would be better than punishing an entire population but unfortunately our politicians are mostly either invertebrates who are too cowardly to pick fights with foreign corporate entities (so they're useless drains of political will) or they're actively supportive of them on the grounds of being ideologically pro-business (so, evil).
They feed us their poisons (surveillance capitalism and an unhealthy information ecosystem driven by algorithmic optimisation for advertising revenue) so they can sell us their "medicines" (age gating and mandatory identification online—more data harvesting as a selling point to advertisers) while they suppress our cure (an internet by independent creators as opposed to capitalist brands)
ameancow
in reply to Walk_blesseD • • •I don't disagree that the entire institution is rotten and causing harm, but in terms of just socializing online, just the act of forming communities and forums and discussion groups and sharing content, the essence of what's becoming harmful, what is the right answer here? The stuff that causes a lot of the harm is just what people tend to do online, because humans broadly are not meant to substitute real social connections for whatever is happening when we scroll and type and read other people's thoughts and fantasies and depressed manifestos of strangers every day.
Even now, you're reading my text inside your head in your own voice. The act alone of having this discussion is creating an entirely new kind of information pattern in your brain that we haven't had in the last half-million years or so since our brains evolved. Do you know what this new kind of information processing is doing to your view of the world? Do any of us?
I know if you type "research teens social media health" into google you will have days of reading material about the research done and how harmful these practices are. But I'm not sensing that anyone even cares honestly. Is it better that we let whatever happens happen? I'm not being facetious, I want to know if people genuinely think that this isn't a problem worth fighting.
Walk_blesseD
in reply to ameancow • • •The online harms I'm concerned with are bullying, harassment and misinformation. Platforms should be required by society to moderate against these, or face penalties proportionate to revenue. Instead just banning under 16s, even if it could be done in a way that is both effective and respectful of everyone's privacy (I'm not convinced that it can) would still be a lazy abrogation of this responsibility, still leaving kids vulnerable to the same behaviours in offline spaces and everyone else vulnerable to the harms purportedly being caused among the youth online currently.
But the government isn't interested in this because these behaviours serve to entrench existing social hierarchies, and the government—being in charge of the nation-state—likes existing social hierarchies.
absGeekNZ
in reply to Walk_blesseD • • •What if; the social media giants are in another country. Your country doesn't have jurisdiction there and can do fuck all in reality.
Maybe fine them???? Sure, which they will fight in court until the end of time; all the while the harm continues.
I don't know if a ban will work, or what extra harms it will cause. But there are no good options to tackle this on the large scales of whole countries.
Algorithmic social media is mind cancer; if you have a better suggestion for tackling this issue. Let us know.
Lemmy is social media; but there is no algorithmic feed, my views are not being manipulated by some engagement maximizing machine.
Walk_blesseD
in reply to absGeekNZ • • •The ban proves it's possible to legislate, so maybe they should just legislate something better lol? Holding platforms accountable to a bare minimum standard of moderation against misinformation, bullying and harassment might be a starting point. And hey, if socmed's really that bad for you, then us adults could benefit from this alternative, too! In any case, this ban is literally worse than just leaving the problem be.
absGeekNZ
in reply to Walk_blesseD • • •I don't really agree; the ban will do two things.
1/ it will show the social media companies that, Australia at least; has tools that they can use to reduce their power.
2/ show kids that this is really serious; it is not just your parents saying shit you can ignore.
Will some kids work out how to get around it; yep, 100%. Will it be a big portion; maybe, tech literacy is not as high as it could/should be.
This would be great; but it is also too little too late. They have tried, and failed at exactly this for years.
It is that bad for you! Algorithmic social media is doing you harm.
Walk_blesseD
in reply to absGeekNZ • • •Wall of text incoming.
I don't see how both these claims can simultaneously be true. Either Australia has tools to hold these companies to account, in which case, how would they have previously failed if they'd already tried? Or it doesn't, and this is just one more completely futile policy that won't give companies any more than the usual slap on the wrist if it ever goes to court.
I argue that they didn't try, because they never actually cared about children's wellbeing, because if they did they'd have done better than this, ergo this policy isn't really about that and is actually about making citizens more easily identifiable online.
Additionally, it does nothing to reduce the power of seppo tech giants. On the contrary, they've got money, they'll be fine. Independent social media sites however, don't all have the resources to implement verification systems, so some will feel the financial burden of compliance a lot harder, and others will simply cease serving Australian users, further strengthening Silicon Valley's hold over the internet.
As I have said over and over again in this thread, what the ban will do is cut children suffering domestic abuse (a problem that is absolutely rife in this country) off from their support networks. It'll cut minority kids that're subjected to bullying by their peers off from their communities. It'll drive more kids to shadier corners of the internet where they're at greater risk of predation. I'm not being hyperbolic when I say this is going to get children killed.
Furthermore—and again, as I've been repeating all over this thread—everyone—yes, that includes adults—will be required to submit personally identifiable information to private organisations just to communicate with other people online, making anyone in this country who uses social media a potential victim of identity theft the moment a data breach happens. And happen it will. It's happened before, and it'll happen again.
What's more, knowing that the platforms they're using have their identities will make a great many people more hesitant to speak critically about existing power structures, especially the government. This is bad.
I stand by my previously stated opinion that all this is worse than the status quo, but even if it weren't you should be asking why this is the solution that the government came up with.
absGeekNZ
in reply to Walk_blesseD • • •Sorry, my poor communications...I was referring to the social media companies, when I said they had been trying and failing for years. Not trying that hard mind you; moderation is a very expensive problem to solve, and they don't want to spend money they don't explicitly have to.
Maybe. That is speculation, probably a nice little side effect. But not the primary goal.
This is a great point; and there is an easy way to solve this problem. Not that the govt will care that a simple solution exists. If you don't have an algorithmic feed a lot of the spread of misinformation is curtailed. If you are not allowed to host images/video etc directly than the moderation of them can be off loaded to 3rd parties.
Another great point. I don't have a good answer to this one, but there are anonymous leak avenues etc for serious stuff.
2deck
in reply to ameancow • • •ameancow
in reply to 2deck • • •I don't disagree with any of that.
I am mostly asking people here what they think the alternative should be. Like you say, parents who manage and monitor this are going have better outcomes... but that's not the norm, and the problem is getting worse despite all of us having more knowledge and proof how vital it is for their kids to have their internet use managed. So I am not convinced any kind of education campaign is going to do much. Most parents are just as addicted to their phones and rather scroll than parent. This is a societal problem with many intersecting problems.
socsa
in reply to SLVRDRGN • • •redwattlebird
in reply to SLVRDRGN • • •Michal
in reply to SLVRDRGN • • •The ban also affects everyone who isn't willing to undergo the age check.
Kids will find a way around is. They'll move to fediverse, and the cooler kids will still hang around the mainstream platforms thanks to their older friend, sibling or cool uncle.
ameancow
in reply to Michal • • •KaChilde
in reply to ameancow • • •It’s not designed at all.
Some pearl-clutches said “won’t somebody think of the children”, and then made the social media companies figure out how to implement the ban.
The social media companies all looked at the free, government mandated access to user biometrics and complied.
Do I think that social media should be restricted for children and teens? Sure.
Do I think this if going to go about as well as the 2007 porn filter that the government tried to implement? Absolutely.
ameancow
in reply to KaChilde • • •Okay, I agree and I am not exactly cheering for government telling anyone what they can and can't look at... but what's the alternative here? I am cautiously siding with the idea behind the regulation if not the execution, but so far nobody has suggested what we do about a problem that is real, proven and studied and is leading to a worse world.
I'm being serious here and in good faith. Should we do anything?
Am I in the wrong here for thinking we need to do something about this? Or is everyone just okay with whatever the end-result will be from subsequent generations of people growing up anxious, depressed, lacking social skills, without relationship partners? We already have "loneliness" being considered a global health risk, and it's tied directly to digital communication habits. I would ask you or anyone here to just type "research on health social media teens" in google. Just try it and see how much work has gone into studying this problem.
lightsblinken
in reply to ameancow • • •"people will find ways around it" and then saying not to bother etc
i mean, people under 18 sneak into clubs and get beer... or maybe fake an ID and hit a pub... or get an older friend to do something for them....
it doesnt stop us as a society holding a view that under age drinking isnt great, and we make some effort to enforce that even if its not perfect.
MonkeMischief
in reply to KaChilde • • •Bingo.
It's never about "the children." It's a way to normalize handing over biometrics and anonymity to an assumed authority to use the internet.
It's always about control, control, control.
It's about tying real identities to online activity, then it's about wholesale harvesting your secrets you didn't even know you were keeping.
Then it's yet another instrument to make sure you shut up and don't step out of line or else.
First they take us away from our kids by necessitating that entire households need full time careers to survive.
Then as a substitute for education and actual parenting we're so eager to offer up our childrens' futures in the name of "protecting" them from the inevitable consequences of parentless households.
lightsblinken
in reply to MonkeMischief • • •harmbugler
in reply to lightsblinken • • •null_dot
in reply to KaChilde • • •It's more than pearl-clutching though.
Kids dependency on social is a genuine social problem. Any parent that cares about their kids is deeply concerned about this.
I don't really buy the "govt access to biometrics" angle. These companies have all the biometrics they could ever want.
The ban is going to be easy to circumvent technologically, but not so much socially. At this very moment, being the evening of 10 December, families around Australia are having conversations about social media and the problems it can cause.
sobchak
in reply to Michal • • •Scrollone
in reply to sobchak • • •Ibuthyr
in reply to Scrollone • • •harmbugler
in reply to Michal • • •myfunnyaccountname
in reply to SLVRDRGN • • •WoodScientist
in reply to myfunnyaccountname • • •ameancow
in reply to WoodScientist • • •Arcades and malls have been dead for a long time. Capitalism took them away.
Everyone is missing incentive to go outside and hang out with real people, but that's only because we have an alternative that fills you up and requires less effort. Our "socializing" is junk food, it only harms you.
Maybe more young people will start doing what kids have been doing since the dawn of time, and making their own communities and their own places to hang out and play and do active things together, face-to-face.
WoodScientist
in reply to ameancow • • •ameancow
in reply to WoodScientist • • •I don't disagree, but digital technologies are causing a lot of harm. I thought I would prepare for the discussion with a couple links to some suggestive studies, but there have been so many rigorous studies and scientific papers on the harm of social media on young minds that I don't even know where to start. Denying it is like denying climate change at this point.
And maybe my take is becoming radical, but I don't think we should be looking at it in terms of a youth/adult problem. There are likely far more adults addicted to the junk-food substitute that is arguing on twitter or making separate identities to fabricate ideas on message boards who have completely lost their handle on reality. Relationship rates are plummeting, people are so lonely it's being declared a health emergency.
Like, seriously... what should we do? I know the popular answer is to attack the social media companies and "regulate" them but the problem is more fundamental than advertising, it's that we're not evolved to socialize with words on screens, seeing all these thoughts and feelings and unchecked wild, emotion-provoking, short-attention-span messages isn't good for us. It may make you laugh spending an evening scrolling dumb memes, but if you do something like that every night, you're missing time that you could be spending improving your life, your health, your relationships and so on.
And replacing those evolved drives with something else, something alien to us.
MonkeMischief
in reply to ameancow • • •As a millennial I honestly just miss how something like MySpace was basically a micro blog, and otherwise, we just chatted with friends-only programs like Yahoo! Messenger / MSN / ICQ/ whatever. There wasn't really some motive to "connect" you to a million "randos" and make you slavishly compete for their fickle approval.
Growing up in a weird kinda rural/suburb hybrid area, the Internet was my gateway to the world outside of school.
It definitely had its problems and drama, but mostly we chatted with people we actually knew (Yahoo chatrooms notwithstanding. Yikes lol) and didn't care about what was "trending" across the world. Algorithms didn't control and force perception of our reality then.
It was literally just about enabling communication.
Outside of that, there was also a much better culture of maintaining privacy and anonymity online, and that everything you see online is BS until proven otherwise.
Of course, this was before techbros decided we should use our real identity everywhere for all to see.
Nowadays it seems like every service is about using your friends as bait to connect you to some hivemind of toxic manipulation to farm you for ads. It encourages creating cults and scams and brainrot bullshit because it's all about harvesting people's already-strained attention for profit, instead of just being a communication platform.
TL;DR: I remember the Internet as a place to log in and hang out, then log off, when meeting with friends outside of school was a logistical nightmare reserved for things like birthday parties if you were lucky.
A lot of damage is already done, but I think if we obliterated the Facebooks and Instagrams and TikToks of "social media" and instead it focused on augmenting existing relationships rather than siloing people as a billion lonely socially-starved individuals in a crowd, we'd see it much differently...
ameancow
in reply to MonkeMischief • • •Would you be in favor of nationalizing the internet in order for this to work? That is, no more commercial entities controlling access, no more media sites allowed to use algorithmic or artificially intelligent systems to influence the viewing habits of users, no more ads working their way into everything you see and do, no more sensationalized headlines and distracting video titles competing for attention because it will all be demonetized by law. (ideally, in a world of spherical, frictionless cows.)
In the US the government used to have standards and regulations for things like if a kid's show could be exclusively used to market toys, or that news stations had to follow a fair press agreement. The reason for this was all access to television had to go through airwaves, and the broadcasters for those airwaves were US government property. All broadcasters had to follow a host of rules and guidelines. This is why cable news was such a world-changing thing. Cable was privately owned.
This also has the side effect of the government controlling the news narrative, and I think we have seen enough of that.
I just don't really know if there's a good solution here, for a problem that has to have a solution or we all suffer.
Walk_blesseD
in reply to ameancow • • •Comment clearly made by someone who does not actually live in the country this discussion is about. Shopping centres are doing just fine.
(To be clear, I am firmly against the ban)
MonkeMischief
in reply to WoodScientist • • •This. I feel so bad for teenagers.
They're at a time in their lives where community and free association are vital to them, and yet since they're not necessarily a profitable demographic, they're kicked out and shunned by everywhere that's not home or school, because all that's left is "commercial spaces."
People then wonder why teenagers flip off society and get up to no good, and then maybe wonder why we all turned out to be lonely adults with like maybe one long term friend if we're lucky...
pulsewidth
in reply to WoodScientist • • •In Australia we have this thing called school, all the kids go there.
I have kids at ages affected by this ban. They don't care about it at all. They already communicate with their friends via iMessage and FaceTime (both unaffected by the ban), they walk to school - so they often walk with friends.
Theres a small skate park near the local shops they also walk to and hang out with friends sometimes, they also walk to the shops and practice basketball with friends at nearby ovals with practice courts regularly. They go to cinemas or big shopping centres (malls) with their friends sometimes - but have to be driven there anyway so parents have to coordinate.
TLDR: the ban doesn't affect a lot of kids at all, and they socialize more or less the same as I did when I was a kid.
The only kids heavily affected are those with Snapchat, Tiktok, Facebook and other crap that they shouldn't be on to begin with, and are getting a huge favour done to them by removing them for a few years.
Poojabber
in reply to myfunnyaccountname • • •ikidd
in reply to SLVRDRGN • • •chunes
in reply to SLVRDRGN • • •yazomie
in reply to SLVRDRGN • • •Siegfried
in reply to SLVRDRGN • • •palordrolap
in reply to SLVRDRGN • • •Who's next to be blocked?
I mean, now that the infrastructure and policies are in place, it's only a matter of time.
skisnow
in reply to palordrolap • • •null_dot
in reply to palordrolap • • •palordrolap
in reply to null_dot • • •People with a serious criminal record. Murderers and worse. Those who leave their victims alive but scarred mentally or physically.
Then those with less serious criminal records. Fraud. White collar crimes. That sort of thing.
Then other "undesirables" depending on who isn't liked by whoever's in charge.
And then the goalposts for what's desirable will start to move.
And the scope won't just be limited to social media. Websites will be categorised further. Some might remain open access to all people (except the ever increasing list of those to be protected and those who shouldn't have access) but others? No. Those sites themselves are undesirable.
null_dot
in reply to palordrolap • • •dustycups
in reply to null_dot • • •Think more about which sites/platforms it applies to. There was some indecision about YouTube (its in EDIT: yt kids is out) & but signal/whatsapp/telegram are not affected - yet.
SleepyPie
in reply to palordrolap • • •Not every new law is a slippery slope that leads to something, this line of reasoning is literally a fallacy.
When we blocked youth from drinking, we didn’t inch towards making it illegal for people in their 30s did we? Worst we got was like 21 in some places.
BarneyPiccolo
in reply to SLVRDRGN • • •So Australia is using facial scanning to verify age, allowing everyone else to remain anonymous? That's how it should be done.
Here in Florida MAGA HQ, I'm hearing calls to verify the identity of EVERYONE on the Internet, because that's the ONLY way they can keep the kids off. I even heard one MAGA state legislator say that it's no difference then carding people for buying alcohol. That's how we keep booze out of the hands of kids, so it will work to keep the Internet out of their hands, too.
They want to kill Internet anonymity, just as a report comes out that the DoJ wants to pay bounties to people who report "anti-Trump behavior."
This will go to the Supreme Court before we're finished.
0x0
in reply to BarneyPiccolo • • •BarneyPiccolo
in reply to 0x0 • • •nickyEtch
in reply to BarneyPiccolo • • •How else will they know if the person is over 16, or just pretending to be over 16?
Gotta verify everyone, scan all of their faces.
BarneyPiccolo
in reply to nickyEtch • • •Mannimarco
in reply to BarneyPiccolo • • •BarneyPiccolo
in reply to Mannimarco • • •0x0
in reply to BarneyPiccolo • • •BarneyPiccolo
in reply to 0x0 • • •Minors don't have to prove they aren't adults, adults have to prove they aren't minors.
It's for the kids, you Commie.
lazyViking
in reply to BarneyPiccolo • • •BarneyPiccolo
in reply to lazyViking • • •cv_octavio
in reply to SLVRDRGN • • •Jumuta
in reply to SLVRDRGN • • •null_dot
in reply to Jumuta • • •Jumuta
in reply to null_dot • • •null_dot
in reply to Jumuta • • •Jumuta
in reply to null_dot • • •null_dot
in reply to Jumuta • • •PokerChips
in reply to null_dot • • •null_dot
in reply to PokerChips • • •On the contrary.
Loads of new platforms have sprung up with are not listed amongst those required to implement age verification.
Yes, any which become successful will be required to implement age verification but... they will already be successful.
gandalf_der_12te
in reply to PokerChips • • •dantheclamman
in reply to null_dot • • •Ibuthyr
in reply to Jumuta • • •lmmarsano
in reply to SLVRDRGN • • •ABetterTomorrow
in reply to SLVRDRGN • • •Montreal_Metro
in reply to SLVRDRGN • • •demizerone
in reply to SLVRDRGN • • •Mannimarco
in reply to demizerone • • •SleepyPie
in reply to SLVRDRGN • • •sonofearth
in reply to SLVRDRGN • • •filcuk
in reply to sonofearth • • •sonofearth
in reply to filcuk • • •fodor
in reply to sonofearth • • •sonofearth
in reply to fodor • • •null_dot
in reply to sonofearth • • •The issue is, parents who do not want to let their children use social media have really lost the battle because every other kid is on social media. So if even if a parent stands their ground on a strict "no social" policy, their kid is an outcast.
With this law, even though some kids will still be on social, parents are empowered to hold the line.
Spitefire
in reply to null_dot • • •RonniePickering
in reply to SLVRDRGN • • •[鳳凰院 凶真 Hououin Kyouma]|[alt: 黃家駒 Wong Ka Kui]
in reply to RonniePickering • • •wabafee
in reply to RonniePickering • • •Treczoks
in reply to SLVRDRGN • • •floquant
in reply to SLVRDRGN • • •I love how this sentence is just casually sprinkled there. So platforms are getting $50m fines if they do not implement "age verification", but no problem if they fail to identify minors as such? Tells you everything about how they really care about protecting children.
null_dot
in reply to floquant • • •That's not how the law is structured.
Sites are required to implement reasonable measures.
If kids are being evaluated as 18, with no additional checks, that's not reasonable and they're risking the penalties.
We're going to find out whether the regulator has much appetite to issue those penalties, but we will see I guess.
gandalf_der_12te
in reply to floquant • • •it's a new technology. it will probably take years to figure out how to do age-verification properly.
floquant
in reply to gandalf_der_12te • • •Or, hear me out, let's not waste time developing useless and harmful surveillance technology.
None of this is required to safeguard children, and it does a bad job in its attempt - while doing a great job of scanning every user's face and documents.
Parents should be responsible, educated and empowered with tools to control their kids' activities online. Networks and mobile devices can relatively easily be configured to restrict and monitor activity, especially for young children where you might want to choose what to allow, rather than to block. There will be ways around them, but if that 1% is motivated enough and knows they shouldn't, I think that's fine.
Hemingways_Shotgun
in reply to SLVRDRGN • • •FFS, we all got along just fine and dandy with group-chats via text message. We weren't fucking cavemen.
The fact that this is her fear (and the fact that it's a legitimate fear) proves just how much controls like this are needed. It's literally digital crack that they think there's simply no other way to communicate anymore (both her and her friends)
Comalnik
in reply to SLVRDRGN • • •Well then fucking take away her phone. Get her a dumb phone. Install parental controls. Go to a therapist if yo have to.
But nooooo the government has got to do everything for us incompetent fucks
SaveTheTuaHawk
in reply to Comalnik • • •I had this issue with a 15 year old. Phone gone, just an analog flippy, put in parental controls to prevent loading brain rot apps.
He's happier for it.
gandalf_der_12te
in reply to Comalnik • • •If this actually worked. I tried it once and it did not work at all. Platforms/apps don't seem to respect the device settings at all.
k0e3
in reply to SLVRDRGN • • •gandalf_der_12te
in reply to SLVRDRGN • • •I think the ban should only apply to public-facing platforms, where everybody can see your content.
Platforms where you only talk to your friends should maybe be left out of it.
gandalf_der_12te
in reply to SLVRDRGN • • •I would like to say that this is good for the quality of content on social media as well..
There's less bullshit content on social media if there's fewer kids, and also there's less incentive for other people to create bullshit content for teenagers to consume, if there's fewer teenagers on the platforms in the first place.