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Australians are broadly supportive of these kind of actions - there is a view that foreign internet behemoths have failed to moderate for themselves and will th

Australians are broadly supportive of these kind of actions - there is a view that foreign internet behemoths have failed to moderate for themselves and will therefore have moderation imposed on them however imperfect. Can’t say I blame them.

bigfatkitten 1y ago
If you read through the issues that ASIO says they are most concerned about, it’s clear that companies like Meta have a lot to answer for. https://www.intelligence.gov.au/news/asio-annual-threat-assessment-2025 https://www.intelligence.gov.au/news/asio-annual-threat-asse...
- homeonthemtn 1y ago
  But never will~
- hilbert42 1y ago
  We don't need ASIO to tell us that. The real problem is that early on when Big Tech first took a stranglehold of the internet in the early 2000s that governments failed to regulate, they did SFA despite the warning signs. At the time it was obvious to many astute observers what was happening but governments themselves were mesmerized and awed by Big Tech. A 20-plus year delay in applying regulations means it'll be a long hard road to put the genie back in tbe bottle. For starters, there's too much money now tied up in these trillion-dollar companies, to disrupt their income would mean shareholders and even whole economies would be affected. Fixing the problem will be damn hard.
  - BLKNSLVR 1y ago
    Even harder now that the US President is siding with the tech broligarchy since it aligns perfectly with the America First ideology. (It may be the last thing that the US has the world lead on) It's also why legislation protecting privacy and/or preventing the trade of personal information is almost impossible: the "right" people profit from it, and the industry around it has grown large enough that it would have non-trivial economic effects if it were destroyed (no matter how much it thoroughly deserves to be destroyed with fire).
- marcus_holmes 1y ago
  I just read through that, and it doesn't even mention Meta. Why do you think this is about "companies like Meta"?
SchemaLoad 1y ago
I'm split on it. 100% agree that kids being off social media is better for society. But I can't see how it could be enforced without privacy implications for adults.
- 2muchcoffeeman 1y ago
  Don’t buy them devices and lock down your computer and networks. I guess if a teenager is enterprising enough to get a job and save up and buy their own devices and pay for their own internet then more power to them.
  - SchemaLoad 1y ago
    Obviously an impossible task. Kids need computers for school, and every school provides laptops. Kids don't need access to social media.
    - 1718627440 1y ago
      No? This was how it was for me. And the only downside was, that all the other kids are glued to their smartphones. Why is this even controverse. Is there any rational reason why kids should have smartphones? The only reason I see is to let the big companies earn money and because adults don't want to admit, that they are addicted themselves.
      - frollogaston 1y ago
        Yeah, I think the thing usually missing from the child smartphone discussions is that many parents are addicted, sometimes even more than their children. Wouldn't expect a phone-addicted parent to moderate their kids, or if they tried, the kids would notice the hypocrisy.
      - SchemaLoad 1y ago
        Don't know how long ago you went to school, but at least in Australia, every student is provided a personal laptop for school work which is capable of connecting to social media. Maybe you could block it on your home wifi, but that't a step beyond what most people are capable of. And you'd be an extremely unpopular parent if you were the only one blocking social media while every other kid continues to arrange event invites on Facebook Blocking it at the service level would be significantly more effective and mean all kids would have to socialise and send using IM platforms instead.
AnthonyMouse 1y ago
> there is a view that foreign internet behemoths have failed to moderate for themselves and will therefore have moderation imposed on them however imperfect. This view is manufactured. The premise is that better moderation is available and despite that, literally no one is choosing to do it. The fact is that moderation is hard and in particular excluding all actually bad things without also having a catastrophically high false positive rate is infeasible. But the people who are the primary victims of the false positives and the people who want the bad stuff fully censored aren't all the same people, and then the second group likes to pretend that there is a magic solution that doesn't throw the first group under the bus, so they can throw the first group under the bus.
- bigfatkitten 1y ago
  > The premise is that better moderation is available and despite that, literally no one is choosing to do it. It’s worse than that. Companies actively refuse to do anything about content that is reported to them directly, at least until the media kicks up a stink. Nobody disputes that reliably detecting bad content is hard, but doing nothing about bad content you know about is inexcusable. https://archive.is/8dq8q https://archive.is/8dq8q
  - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
    Your link says the opposite of what you claim: > Meta said it has in the past two years taken down 27 pedophile networks and is planning more removals. Moreover, the rest of the article is describing the difficulty in doing moderation. If you make a general purpose algorithm that links up people with similar interests and then there is a group of people with an interest in child abuse, the algorithm doesn't inherently know that and if you push on it to try to make it do something different in that case than it does in the general case, the people you're trying to thwart will actively take countermeasures like using different keywords or using coded language. Meanwhile user reporting features are also full of false positives or corporate and political operatives trying to have legitimate content removed, so expecting them to both immediately and perfectly respond to every report is unreasonable. Pretending that this is easy to solve is the thing authoritarians do to justify steamrolling innocent people because nobody can fully eliminate the problem nobody has any good way to fully eliminate.

bigfatkitten 1y ago

If you read through the issues that ASIO says they are most concerned about, it’s clear that companies like Meta have a lot to answer for. https://www.intelligence.gov.au/news/asio-annual-threat-assessment-2025 https://www.intelligence.gov.au/news/asio-annual-threat-asse...

homeonthemtn 1y ago
But never will~
hilbert42 1y ago
We don't need ASIO to tell us that. The real problem is that early on when Big Tech first took a stranglehold of the internet in the early 2000s that governments failed to regulate, they did SFA despite the warning signs. At the time it was obvious to many astute observers what was happening but governments themselves were mesmerized and awed by Big Tech. A 20-plus year delay in applying regulations means it'll be a long hard road to put the genie back in tbe bottle. For starters, there's too much money now tied up in these trillion-dollar companies, to disrupt their income would mean shareholders and even whole economies would be affected. Fixing the problem will be damn hard.
- BLKNSLVR 1y ago
  Even harder now that the US President is siding with the tech broligarchy since it aligns perfectly with the America First ideology. (It may be the last thing that the US has the world lead on) It's also why legislation protecting privacy and/or preventing the trade of personal information is almost impossible: the "right" people profit from it, and the industry around it has grown large enough that it would have non-trivial economic effects if it were destroyed (no matter how much it thoroughly deserves to be destroyed with fire).
marcus_holmes 1y ago
I just read through that, and it doesn't even mention Meta. Why do you think this is about "companies like Meta"?

SchemaLoad 1y ago

I'm split on it. 100% agree that kids being off social media is better for society. But I can't see how it could be enforced without privacy implications for adults.

2muchcoffeeman 1y ago
Don’t buy them devices and lock down your computer and networks. I guess if a teenager is enterprising enough to get a job and save up and buy their own devices and pay for their own internet then more power to them.
- SchemaLoad 1y ago
  Obviously an impossible task. Kids need computers for school, and every school provides laptops. Kids don't need access to social media.
  - 1718627440 1y ago
    No? This was how it was for me. And the only downside was, that all the other kids are glued to their smartphones. Why is this even controverse. Is there any rational reason why kids should have smartphones? The only reason I see is to let the big companies earn money and because adults don't want to admit, that they are addicted themselves.
    - frollogaston 1y ago
      Yeah, I think the thing usually missing from the child smartphone discussions is that many parents are addicted, sometimes even more than their children. Wouldn't expect a phone-addicted parent to moderate their kids, or if they tried, the kids would notice the hypocrisy.
    - SchemaLoad 1y ago
      Don't know how long ago you went to school, but at least in Australia, every student is provided a personal laptop for school work which is capable of connecting to social media. Maybe you could block it on your home wifi, but that't a step beyond what most people are capable of. And you'd be an extremely unpopular parent if you were the only one blocking social media while every other kid continues to arrange event invites on Facebook Blocking it at the service level would be significantly more effective and mean all kids would have to socialise and send using IM platforms instead.

AnthonyMouse 1y ago

> there is a view that foreign internet behemoths have failed to moderate for themselves and will therefore have moderation imposed on them however imperfect. This view is manufactured. The premise is that better moderation is available and despite that, literally no one is choosing to do it. The fact is that moderation is hard and in particular excluding all actually bad things without also having a catastrophically high false positive rate is infeasible. But the people who are the primary victims of the false positives and the people who want the bad stuff fully censored aren't all the same people, and then the second group likes to pretend that there is a magic solution that doesn't throw the first group under the bus, so they can throw the first group under the bus.

bigfatkitten 1y ago
> The premise is that better moderation is available and despite that, literally no one is choosing to do it. It’s worse than that. Companies actively refuse to do anything about content that is reported to them directly, at least until the media kicks up a stink. Nobody disputes that reliably detecting bad content is hard, but doing nothing about bad content you know about is inexcusable. https://archive.is/8dq8q https://archive.is/8dq8q
- AnthonyMouse 1y ago
  Your link says the opposite of what you claim: > Meta said it has in the past two years taken down 27 pedophile networks and is planning more removals. Moreover, the rest of the article is describing the difficulty in doing moderation. If you make a general purpose algorithm that links up people with similar interests and then there is a group of people with an interest in child abuse, the algorithm doesn't inherently know that and if you push on it to try to make it do something different in that case than it does in the general case, the people you're trying to thwart will actively take countermeasures like using different keywords or using coded language. Meanwhile user reporting features are also full of false positives or corporate and political operatives trying to have legitimate content removed, so expecting them to both immediately and perfectly respond to every report is unreasonable. Pretending that this is easy to solve is the thing authoritarians do to justify steamrolling innocent people because nobody can fully eliminate the problem nobody has any good way to fully eliminate.