Australian Senate, last sitting of the year. No idea when the Social Media Ban debate is kicking off.
If anyone’s keen, feel free to give a live run-down of anything interesting in this thread.
(sorry about all the edits, just trying to get a decent thumbnail: 
)
The proper comment is here but I’ll quote.
“In the future we are going to look back on seeing children use iPads that directly connect them to the most sophisticated engagement and manipulation algorithms ever as something as horrid as a child smoking a cigarette, or doing any other drug”
Are you aware of dark patterns? How’re they’re all through websites and games now? To the extent that AI now inadvertently writes websites to include because practically all data their trainings are polluted with them? Simply “educating” people out of what amounts to nearly hostile platforms and algorithms is ludicrous. I get a lot of the criticism for the bill I do. People try to pin this as people crying “think about children” and “just let parents work it out” are woefully misinformed and parent have been failing for decades now.
I also thinks it worth noting that the senators in opposition (and unsurprisingly now commenter) all seems to be using highly emotive language to criticise the bill. A lot of reducto ad absurdum going on as well (like 3 comments I’ve seen so far with “think of the children” nonsense). Frankly pretty telling.
I think you’re rather missing the point.
Yes, we have dark patterns, we have algorithms subtly coded and designed to drive us towards desired outcomes. These are the problems, and hitting the age of 16 won’t make them go away. It won’t make you less susceptible. That’s explicitly why I referred to my inlaws falling down the batshit rabbit hole. There is no immunity from this
If you actually want to tackle the issue, you educate and you punish the behaviour. This utter crap of legislation does nothing to address the issue.